Quick, what do all these things have in common? Water-testing kits. Persimmon seedlings. Preschool program subsidies. NEST FEST t-shirts. A new Boxerwood banner. If you answered kindness, generosity, environmental stewardship, and Mohawk Industries, then you’re right on all counts. Although this business has been pretty low-key about it, Mohawk has been helping Boxerwood advance its earth care mission for several years now. The help ranges from the material (kits, trees, banners, t-shirts), to the programmatic.
Mohawk makes carpets from recycled material (7 billion plastic bottles annually!). But the company also forges something else: community partnerships. Every year Boxerwood teaches hundreds of children whose mothers, uncles, grandparents, dads, aunts, or cousins work at the Mohawk plant in Glasgow. Many of those children attend schools unable to fully fund their Boxerwood programs. Support from the Mohawk Carpet Foundation (Georgia) helps subsidize those learning experiences.
Connections with the local plant, meanwhile, have also led to an abiding collegial friendship with Mr. Marty Bullins, sustainability manager at the Glasgow plant. In addition to overseeing waste reduction at the Mohawk plant, and beehives and native tree plantings on the facility campus, Marty and colleagues have found time to join us in the field. He’s been in the river with us, and in the classroom, introducing high school students to the world of sustainable manufacturing.
In this relationship both partners are learning, growing, and benefitting from the strengths of the other: we look forward to writing more chapters together.
