Saturday, June 6, 2009

AVEDA Volunteer Event

Aveda is known for being a industry leader in its environmental practices. We just finished celebrating Earth Month and raised over $3 million for clean water. Aveda encourages all of its employees to give back to the community and Earth. 

For the past few months, my coworker Jodi and I had been planning a volunteer event for the Creative Department at Aveda. We chose to help the National Park Service with their Mississippi River Restoration Fund. We picked Garlic Mustard (an invasive plant), planted trees and flowers. At the same time, we also learned about the Mississippi River and the Coon Rapids Dam. 

The garlic mustard actually smelled like garlic. Apparently it can be used for cooking, however, it has taken over the park. Everywhere we looked there was garlic mustard. You would clean up a patch and look up and see a whole field. It was overwhelming. Hopefully we made a somewhat of a difference. This was just one of many piles that we created.


My director Jason and I worked well as a team planting trees. He dug the hold and I put the tree seedling in. If I am correct, altogether we planted 500+ tree seedlings. I hope we did some good with that too. After we planted the trees we tried to avoid stepping on them on our way out of the woods.

  
As I said above, we were by the Coon Rapids Dam on the Mississippi River. I can officially say that I have walked across the river via the Dam. It was pretty cool to see. I am always amazed that I live by the Mississippi River after reading about it in school.


The day seemed to be a success. We all had a great time and the Park Service was great. Somehow I got nominated as the social director for future events. So I guess that means everyone had a great time. I was happy to get everyone out of the office to enjoy the weather and not think about work. 


I am really enjoying my job at Aveda despite the many environmental challenges we face in developing packaging. The best part is that I am starting to feel comfortable with coworkers and have begun to develop some great friendships. 

1 comment:

Kristan said...

Aw, that looks and sounds awesome!! Maybe I should "plant the seed" of doing something like that at Coho...