Elmsford, NY July 2017— For the past several years, Unitex, a leader in the healthcare laundry industry, has used its Northeast based facilities for a good cause. The company is continuing to partner with Grad Bag, an organization that collects and redistributes lightly-used dorm room items to incoming college freshmen from low-income households.
According to the team at Grad Bag, every year and everywhere, dumpsters and landfills are filled with used, but usable items including desk lamps, bedding, rugs, laundry bags and much more. Grad Bag collects, cleans, packages, stores and then re-distributes these dorm room items to soon-to-be college students who might not have the means to buy these things brand new or on their own. Grad Bag started as a small grassroots effort among the team’s friends and neighbors. Today, companies like Unitex are part of this amazing cause.
Unitex employees pick up various linens and bedding from Grad Bag locations to process at its facilities across the Northeast. The team cleans, folds, hangs, and then returns the clean material back to Grad Bag so it can be distributed to new students at events in New York, Boston, CT and Maine. This year, Unitex picked up and washed 19 bins and over 4,000 pounds of linens in New York alone.
“We are enormously thankful for partners like Unitex,” said Liz Gruber, Grad Bag Co-Founder. “With their generosity and help, we are able to outfit students with dorm room supplies and relieve them of one of the financial burdens of college. We are so thrilled and fortunate to work with companies such as Unitex that share our vision and make it a priority to help others.”
“We are happy to partner with Grad Bag and look forward to helping this incredible organization in years to come,” said David Potack, President of Unitex. “We continually work with schools across the Northeast and this is just another layer of helping students where we can.”
(In the picture: Grad Bag collected a record amount of goods this year including hundreds of comforters, blankets, towel sets, mattress pads, sheet sets and much more. The organization is planning to outfit almost 500 students this year. )