A group of Arthrex employees representing three Southwest Florida locations recently spent their Volunteer PTO day with Coastal Conservation Association Florida (CCA) planting mangroves along the beach at Lover’s Key State Park in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
After Hurricane Ian damaged crucial, protective vegetation, the area became vulnerable to habitat destruction and sinking shorelines.
The purpose of CCA is to educate the public on the conservation of marine resources. They hope to promote and enhance coastal resources for the benefit and enjoyment of the public.
“I've been a member of CCA since 2012, so actually, before I even moved down here and started working at Arthrex in 2014,” said Manager of Data and Analytics Chris Peruski. “I found out from our state representatives that they were going to be doing a mangrove restoration. I got all the information, communicated it to the Arthrex community and we ended up having in total 15 people.”
Around half of the Arthrex volunteers were from the Manufacturing Engineering Department at AMIE. Senior Engineer David Lopez Castellon gathered seven of his colleagues to participate.
“Every year we volunteer as a team, and we use that as an opportunity to do team building,” said David. “When Hurricane Ian happened, we volunteered as a team in that area, so when I saw this opportunity to plant mangroves, it was a great event for us to come together, back where we volunteered last time.”
Senior Engineer Nicole Santana Melendez appreciated working with the rest of the Manufacturing Engineering group.
“The culture of our team is already very good, but I think it just further improves that and solidifies it,” she said. “It’s nice to see that your coworkers really care about you as a person - to even spend time with you outside of work. We were taking care of each other because it was hot, and just making sure that everybody got enough water and took a break in the shade for a little bit.”
Despite the difficult work and the early-afternoon heat, spirits were high throughout the event.
“It kind of caught me off guard about the number of people saying they really appreciated this opportunity to do something to restore our environment and restore the State Park,” said Chris. “Everybody was happy.”
The group spent its time transporting mangrove propagation from the truck to the coastline, digging holes for the plants, and planting 850 mangroves.
After the work was done the team got lunch at The Fish House Restaurant in Bonita.
“We all went to lunch and had a good time after working really hard,” said Chris. “There’s a wall in that restaurant that shows where the water line was inside during the hurricane. It was interesting to point that out.”
Overall, the experience not only helped strengthen the state park’s protective vegetation, but also strengthened the relationships of the participants.
“We were able to spend a lot of time together outside of the office to get to know each other a little better and grow that team camaraderie even more,” said Senior Engineer Darren Beckford. “It made us even better coworkers and, at the end of the day, we can also serve our mission of Helping Surgeons Treat Their Patients Better by being stronger teammates.”
The team would like to thank Arthrex for the opportunity to use PTO to give back to the community and environment.
CCA is planning on doing a sea grass planting project at Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park in the fall. Click here to view other CCA initiatives.
Arthrex’s Volunteer PTO benefit allows employees eight hours of paid time off each year in order to give back to their community. Look for more stories of Arthrex employees using their Volunteer PTO benefit on Arthrex LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.