Boxes of pink gloves arrived early in September, all 250 pairs of them. During the month of October, Allied Waste Services drivers throughout the Puget Sound will wear the gloves as part of the company’s Passionately Pink for a Cure – And Still Tough as Nails breast cancer awareness campaign.

“We’ve all been touched by cancer in some way,” said Anne Laughlin, the company’s community relations manager. “We’ve all known friends or family, neighbors or colleagues who have battled the disease.”

Laughlin has watched loved ones battle the disease and survive.

“Support seems to make a huge difference,” she said. “It gives a person strength, bolsters their energy and helps fuel the will to fight.”

She surveyed women in the company – all had either fought against the disease themselves or had watched a loved one in battle, for better or worse.

Barb Davis, in commercial sales, said she supported two friends, one who successfully overcame breast cancer and the other who is now engaged in the fight.

“She is about to go into the kind of surgery where they don’t know what they’re going to have to do,” Davis said.

“Both of my friends have said it is so important to keep perspective,” Davis added. “It’s no longer an automatic death sentence these days.”

“Involvement is one of the keys to the cure,” said Cheryl Burns, a director of customer service at Allied Waste. Burns lost her mother and an aunt to the disease. “If we’re going to fight breast cancer, or any type of cancer, we have to do it as a community – all of us.”

In addition to wearing pink gloves in October, many Allied Waste Services employees will participate in events and organizations that are helping to defeat breast cancer.

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To learn more, visit www.AlliedWasteNorthwest.com