Have some broken hockey sticks? This man will help you donate them to a good cause

Have a couple of broken hockey sticks collecting dust in your basement? Good news: they're not useless, and if you're in Newfoundland, then Glen Greeley has a plan to take them off your hands.

Greeley is collecting donated, broken hockey sticks of all kinds and sizes for a social enterprise in Nova Scotia called the Store Next Door, where people with intellectual disabilities use the sticks to make everything from cowbells to furniture. 

"They're making wonderful things out of hockey sticks," Greeley told The St. John's Morning Show. 

In order to help them do that, Greeley decided to start collecting donated sticks — all types are accepted, from old-fashioned lumber sticks to composite and plastic ones. 

The donations don't just help the social enterprise, he said. Most modern hockey sticks are made of composite materials that do not break down in a landfill the way wood can, and this effort ensures that material is reused by the program in a way that makes that durability a benefit instead of a hindrance.

"If they make you a product, you've got it for life," he said.

Still time to donate

Greeley's involvement in the enterprise came by chance, he said, when he came across a mention of the Store Next Door on Twitter. He saw an opportunity to help them out when his son's girlfriend decided to move back to Newfoundland from Nova Scotia. When Greeley realised they would be driving up with an empty trailer to collect her furniture, he got the idea to fill the trailer with broken sticks along the way.

So far he's collected more than 200 sticks on his own, Greeley said. On Thursday, his son and his girlfriend are making the drive from St. John's to Port aux Basques, and stopping along the way at North Atlantic stores, where the sticks can be brought for donation.

There's still time to get your own broken sticks out of the shed and into Greeley's hands. The deadline for donation to North Atlantic locations is Wednesday night, he said, and the sticks will be picked up there as he drives across the province.

If you're in St. John's, Greeley said he'll pick up your sticks himself — whether it's one or 100. Email him at gleng@nl.rogers.com to make arrangements for pickup until Tuesday evening.

"There's a lot more sticks here to be got," he said. 

"Just the people need to get their arse in gear to go and pick 'em out."

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