Originally Posted By alisserae Admist all the complaining and gripping we often hear about the Walt Disney Company, I thought this blurb might interest you. It was taken from a weekly newsletter (The Main Street Diary) distributed to WDW cast members. *** "Do You Know...That Approximately 100,000 Articles of Clothing Were Left Scattered Across the Walt Disney World Marathon Course?" In fact, due to the cold weather this year, we had a record amount of discarded running apparel. Custodial collected 70 bins of clothing from the roadside compared to 22 bins collected last year, just a third as much as this year. This translates into appoximately 18,000 pounds, or 9 tons, and equates to nearly 100,000 individual garment pieces. Steve Spreier remarked, "Once Textile Services receives these clothes, they are cleaned and given to charity. The donations go to local organizations such as the homeless shelter, or they are eventually shipped to an international destination through Harvest Time International."
Originally Posted By Disneymom443 I think that people tend to forget all the great things that the Disney Co. does do. It's great that all the clothes left behind is cleaned and given to people in need.
Originally Posted By beamerdog Wow, that's a lot of clothing! Glad to hear that it finds a good home.
Originally Posted By BlazesOfFire Good to hear things like this. And speaking of charities, where does the Disney Hand money go? Is money (that is eventually collected) from the fountains and water rides part of the Disney Hand?
Originally Posted By DeadMansChest Clothing? Well they couldn't find my cell phone and I KNOW I lost it on the Marathon Course! What about that huh?
Originally Posted By alisserae Just for you DeadMansChest...a continuation of yesterday's article that didn't apply much to my post "In addition, to the articles of clothing, with 19 water stops along the marathon route, some 680,000 Dixie® cups of water and Powerade® are consumed and then dropped for the Custodial team to recover. There are also CLIF Shots and Bars, a variety of fruit, power gels, chocolate, and food items, causing wrappers and banana peels to be left scattered throughout to retrieve. A small army of approximately 100 Custodial Cast propertywide have the daunting task of cleaning up behind the runners with sweeper trucks, gas- powered vacuums, pickers, and good-old hands. Of course, they do receive some help from the volunteers along the route . . . but ultimately we rely on our "Can-Do" Custodial teams." Disney Hand supports an almost infinite number of charitable organizations. Yes, all the money colelcted from various bodies of water is donated, I believe Give Kids the World is the beneficiary. In 2005 over a thousand pallets of toys were donated to various organizations, hundreds of tons of food were sent to Second Harvest, and each month over 1200 cast members donate more than 10,000 hours to projects as diverse as restoring homes for homebound seniors, to planting trees, to cheering up children who have life impacting illnesses. The majority of this work is done through the Disney Voluntears organization.
