Paris Optimist Club hosted its annual Bottle and Can Drive from its Elm Street headquarters on Saturday, January 10, 2026.
Members spent their morning sorting through various donations of bottles, cans, and even boxed-wine bags, and loading them into the truck before returning them in exchange for cash.
While the Optimist Club collects empties year-round, and has for many years now, the annual drive became a staple event when the COVID-19 pandemic initially thwarted their fundraising efforts in 2020.
“We have a bin just outside of our headquarters here that we leave all year round so people can drop off their bottles and cans, and we scoop them up and take them in. So it’s an ongoing fundraiser, but this bottle drive is actually a fairly new event,” explained Marilyn McCulloch, president of the local Optimist Club. “We started it during the first year of the pandemic when we couldn’t really put anything on. We had to do something to raise money so we decided on the bottle drive. It was great because we were able to do it outside and people could just drop everything off for us to sort and bring in.”
McCulloch said that as always, proceeds from the event will go directly towards benefiting the local youth.
“Pretty much everything we do is based on helping the youth in the community,” she said. “We sponsor various sports teams, help the Girl Guides and Scouts, put on monthly youth dances and seasonal events, and we also provide scholarships and awards to elementary and high school students here . One of the big projects we did was the Paris Optimist Skate Park that’s just across the parking lot here. We actually just donated another $10,000 towards upgrading it this past fall and it’s amazing how much it gets used, not just by kids, but by adults as well.”
In addition to all of that, the club also backs programs like Food for Thought and Campfire Circle Camp (formerly known as Camp Trillium), as well as the annual Community Christmas Hampers.
In order to fund such programs, the not-for-profit hosts a variety of different events throughout the year such as the Loonie-Toonie Drive, their annual Craft and Vendor Show in November, high school football game barbecues and more.
Following Saturday’s two-hour bottle drive, organizers took to Facebook to thank the community for participating.
“Thank you, thank you, to everyone who saved their empties for us and brought them to the Club today! We appreciate all the support and donations to help generate some revenue for the Club to use towards supporting our children and young people in Paris!”
Anyone who missed the event and would still like to contribute, can drop off their empties in the bin outside of the club’s headquarters at 2 Elm St. in Paris.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
