Empty Stocking Fund Administrator Lea McGee poses with General Cable employees with a $3,000 donation from the company.

A local manufacturing plant saved over 30,000 pounds of scrap banding in order to donate a large sum of money to ensuring the children of Harrison County have a happy holiday.

Employees at the General Cable Marshall Plant presented the Henry F. Selcer Memorial Empty Stocking Fund a donation of $3,000 on Friday afternoon.

The company was able to donate the funds after salvaging the steel banding that is around the packaging of raw material.

“It was an opportunity to take something that we normally take straight to the landfill, and instead save, and donate funds to the Empty Stocking Fund,” General Cable Plant Manager Jeff Buck said.

General Cable is a global manufacturer of copper, aluminum and fiber optic wire and cable products for the energy, industrial, specialty and communications markets.

Buck said his employees were challenged in May to start collecting and separating the banding, keeping it clean, and then taking it to a recycler in Longview.

Altogether, they collected five loads of banding at 600 pounds per load.

“To think we were throwing away that much high quality steel,”Buck said.

He said the company decided to use the funds raised toward the children of Harrison County.

“Just think if other organizations started doing it,” Buck said.“I am it was so easy to do, and you could give it back to good causes.”

The Empty Stocking Fund will provide about 400 local children, ages newborn to 12, with gifts this holiday season

Lea McGee, Empty Stocking Fund Administrator, said she feels “so blessed” to receive the donation and plans to use the extra funds to “put a huge dent in their waiting list.”

“We are able to help so many children now,” Ms. McGee said. “We have 30 families on our waiting list right now, and we are able to relieve a large part of it.”