Humminbird® Office Locations Take to Heart Clean Earth Challenge

Johnson Outdoors and the National Wildlife Federation have teamed up to inspire people to get outdoors and take simple conservation actions to help clean up our planet. The goal is to pick up one million pieces of litter from the great outdoors. At its core, the Clean Earth Challenge is a way to show stewardship, respect, and care for growing environmental concerns—one of the very tenets of Johnson Outdoors.

In April 2022, Johnson Outdoors launched the Clean Earth Challenge and has really tried to create a program that’s action-oriented with a conservation aspect to it. From the very beginning, organizers had decided to make a partnership with the program. So, for a while they were in search of the perfect partner, specifically an entity with a solid reputation and years of conservation experience. Johnson Outdoors ended up partnering with the National Wildlife Federation, which has turned into a great partnership.

Johnson Outdoors has been involved in responsible manufacturing for years, encompassing the same tenets of responsibility set forth by our company founder, Sam Johnson. Carrying on his passion for environmental stewardship and sustainability, Johnson Outdoors recently planned and organized Clean Earth Challenge cleanups for its offices around the world to go outside and pick-up trash to show their commitment to larger global efforts and those of its customers.

Nancy King, Alpharetta, Georgia, Human Resources Senior Generalist remarks: “The Johnson Outdoors Clean Earth Challenge is a global initiative for the brands. All of the JO brands and divisions on some level or another have participated. I’m familiar with our offices in Alpharetta, Georgia; Eufaula, Alabama; Mankato, Minnesota; Little Falls, Minnesota; and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I know all of these offices participated in the Clean Earth Challenge.”

King continues: “In Eufaula, Alabama, they organized a couple of days and Johnson Outdoors Chairman and CEO, Helen Johnson, came in and participated. The Eufaula Humminbird team chose to clean their own large area of property on Lake Eufaula and picked up various kinds of trash. In Mankato, the Minn Kota team went to Red Jacket Trail Park, which includes Red Valley Lake and Trail and 42 volunteer Minn Kota employees participated.”

Lake Lanier is a highly used body of water in North Georgia, so after a season’s worth of recreational use, things get left behind, so the Alpharetta, Georgia Clean Earth Challenge team—coordinated by Nancy King—partnered with the Lake Lanier Association, which is a volunteer organization that oversees the lake for an end of season make-over.

And farther north, the Little Falls, Minnesota office took to the water on a local river filling their Old Town kayaks with miscellaneous trash overlooked by people and floodwaters. The chorus of cleaning continued north of the border as well in Toronto, Ontario, where a group of Johnson Outdoors employees picked up around their city.

King notes: “We coordinated with the Lake Lanier Association to take four boats out to a group of islands called the Three Sisters Islands. We had 96% participation from employees at the Alpharetta office, which was fantastic. We made several trips over the islands and split up into groups and worked with buddies. We combed the islands of Lake Lanier to pick up trash blown and washed onto the otherwise isolated islands. One of reasons we chose Lake Lanier was not only does it provide drinking water to the majority of the state of Georgia but it’s also the location for Johnson Outdoors to test its products. For all of us, it seemed like the right thing to do to give back to this body of water that means so much to us as a company.”

All of the islands on Lake Lanier are free to camp on. Unfortunately, not all visitors are good stewards of keeping the islands clean. There are no signs enforcing litter removal and visitors don’t always take care of their trash. That said, there was a lot to pick up and dispose of by the Alpharetta team.

Alissa Sadowski, Alpharetta, Georgia, Technical Writer, Humminbird states: “We picked up over 21,000 pieces of trash from the islands over a four-week period.”

King concludes: “I think if you’d ask most of the employees about the Clean Earth Challenge on Lake Lanier, they’d say they had a good time despite the work and it’s something we plan to keep to doing as a company moving forward.”  

Connor Leipold, Corporate Strategic Branding Manager, Johnson Outdoors, concludes: “With the Clean Earth Challenge, we’re trying to communicate Johnson Outdoors’ core values of environmental conservation and the importance we place on that value. We firmly believe that the more people get outdoors the more they feel the need to protect the environment that we love to be a part of.”

You Can Show Your Support

You can take the lead of Johnson Outdoors brand offices across the board and do your part to take the Clean Earth Challenge where you live. Simply visit the Clean Earth Challenge website to learn more about how you can help!