UniFirst Joins Washington State Mask Challenge

UniFirst Corp., Wilmington, MA, in partnership with the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Washington state and the city of Seattle, recently announced its participation in the Washington Mask Challenge, a statewide initiative encouraging Washingtonians to make, wear and donate cloth face masks. As an in-kind donation, UniFirst has begun collecting and cleaning donated cloth face masks at the company’s facility in Puyallup, WA, before delivering them to the city of Seattle for distribution, according to a news release.

The Washington Mask Challenge was launched in late April by Lieutenant Gov. Cyrus Habib to help stop the spread of COVID-19. With support from the United Way of the Pacific Northwest and Serve Washington, the Washington Mask Challenge matches mask donors with organizations with the most urgent need for cloth face coverings, including nursing homes, homeless shelters, grocery stores, food banks and other organizations that serve the elderly or otherwise vulnerable populations.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted some major weaknesses in our nation’s ability to respond to a health crisis of this magnitude,” Habib said. “But many local partners have stepped up to fill that need, and UniFirst is one of them. Thanks to their extraordinary efforts, we have been able to sanitize thousands of cloth face masks and distribute them to the essential workers who need them the most. They have my deep gratitude.”

To date, UniFirst has accepted and sanitized more than 3,000 face masks from donors across the state, which have been distributed to Sound Generations (Meals on Wheels) and various homeless shelters in King County.

“When first approached about participating in the Washington Mask Challenge, without hesitation, our employee team partners in Puyallup jumped at the opportunity to volunteer our services to this worthy cause,” said Steven Sintros, president and CEO of UniFirst. “Our company was founded on a commitment to serving others, which today is important as ever. It’s an honor to give back to communities across the state of Washington in this way.”

To learn more about the Washington Mask Challenge, visit WAmaskchallenge.org, which provides instructions on how to make simple cloth face masks as well as a centralized platform for coordinating donations.