Schwaggin Wagon Collecting Donations on the Road This Summer

If you’ve ever been to a convention, you probably have some of this junk sitting around your office or home: mugs, hats, pens, calendars and other items emblazoned with corporate logos.  You may use some of them for a little while but chances are, before long they’ll end up in the trash.  The brains behind The Schwaggin’ Wagon, Michael Liskin and David Preciado, realized how wasteful that really is one evening over some Thai food, and decided to do something about it.  The Schwaggin’ Wagon, which runs on sponsorships, travels to conventions and takes all that schwag that no one wants and donates it to charity.

The Schwaggin’ Wagon will be at Twiistup4 and the Mashable Summer Tour collecting items and cash donations to benefit Operation Gratitude, a charity that sends care packages to U.S. troops abroad.  The troops love stuff like flash drives, hats and t-shirts, and they share the novelty items with local children in the communities they patrol as a means of promoting goodwill.

Both Twiistup4 and the Mashable Summer Tour are going to be hot events with edgy Web 2.0 companies, influential bloggers and other digerati in attendance.  Mashable’s 2008 Summer Tour will cover 7 cities in less than 1 month, with 500 to 900 attendees per event and will include networking, formal introductions to sponsors, music and appetizers.  Twiistup events connect people from technology, media and entertainment, featuring several startups chosen to show off their products and services to influential bloggers, techies, investors and the media.

Both events are sold out, but you can still contact Schwaggin’ Wagon about sponsorships to help them do what they do best – educate the public about conservation and sustainability, specifically in the recycling and re-purposing of branded schwag.

We love that the Schwaggin’ Wagon is not just making sure that all that junk doesn’t clog the landfills – they’re giving it to people in need.  What an awesome concept.  What we love even more is how they’ve chosen to get their message out – they promote eco-conscious behaviors and party like rock starts at the same time.

Link [Schwaggin’ Wagon] + [Operation Gratitude] + [Twiistup4] + [Mashable Summer Tour]