By Aodhán Doyle SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — It’s been called the disease that effects everyone. No matter who you talk to, it’s seems a foregone conclusion that they know someone affected by cancer.
While breast cancer rates in Central New York are lower than the national average, they have increased in recent years, but now, local businesses are joining the fight to reverse the trend and end the disease.
Brett Bering, 31, founded White Glove Waste and Recycling in 2009, but two years later, he made a decision that has come to define his business.
Instead of just regular black or green garbage bins, the company decided to offer a pink option for an extra five dollars and donated the proceeds to the American Cancer Society.
Ever since the pink bins were implemented, business has boomed.
“Probably 95-percent of all our trash cans out there are pink,” Bering said. “They’re up to over half-a-million dollars now for breast cancer, just from the pink garbage cans.”
Bering’s desire to raise awareness and money for the cause stemmed from his aunt, a breast cancer survivor, and Bering donates time outside of work for the cause as well.
The Baldwinsville native serves on Syracuse’s Real Men Wear Pink committee, an organization created by the American Cancer Society of local male business owners and community leaders who fight back against breast cancer.
White Glove sponsored a Real Men Wear Pink “happy hour” event at Maxwells Bar in Downtown Syracuse on Thursday evening, partnering with the ACS and organizer Rebecca Flint.
Flint, whose mother is a two-time breast cancer survivor, helps organize events like the happy hour at local businesses like Maxwells, and can raise more than 2,000 dollars in a single night.
While October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and as soon as the calendar flips to November, pink ribbons and shirts seem to disappear, local businesses in Central New York and community activists like Bering and Flint make sure that the fight lasts all year long.
