The Ohio Department of Transportation held a Statewide Roadway Cleanup on Saturday, April 18th, 2015, and Value Added Packaging was excited to participate! Adopt-A-Highway is an organization that the company supports throughout the year, and the opportunity to join others in the Keep Ohio Beautiful program was too good to pass up. Since June of 2014, our stretch of highway has been undergoing construction, preventing us from doing any roadway cleanups last summer. Saturday we were able to start one mile ahead of our normal route and go about a half mile into our designated area before the construction signs prohibited us from continuing. That 1 ½ mile stretch of road  needed some love – our small, dedicated team filled fifteen bags of garbage!

As happy as we are with our team of litter demolishers, the company feels we could have done more. Value Added Packaging offers a paid time off incentive to its team members for participating in Adopt-A-Highway and other events that promote physical activity. These incentives generally draw a decent crowd, but Adopt-A-Highway is an activity that is proving to be difficult to gain team momentum. The environment is important to our company as a whole, and we attribute the enthusiasm breakdown to the incredibly hard work required to clean up trash: walking on an incline in the heat and fighting the wind so that you can get that piece of tire into your garbage bag, although comical, can be difficult. Since participation declined for this event the second time around, Value Added Packaging wants to know – how does your company motivate employees to participate in corporate volunteer programs?