On Friday, September 24th, the Charlotte team rallied to support clean and healthy waterways in our community during Inolex's "Together We Serve" volunteer day. The event was one part of our month long celebration of the company's 145th anniversary.

Working alongside the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, our team spent the day removing unwanted materials from the waterways within Iswa Nature Preserve. The preserve is part of the 7,600 acres of protected land managed by Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. It's an area especially meaningful to us with our flagship manufacturing facility located just 20 minutes down the road.

In total, we removed a staggering 100lbs of trash and unwanted materials from the water system.

The amount of litter and debris collected from just a few volunteer hours is troublesome. The Catawba-Wateree River begins in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, is 225 miles long, and flows through 26 counties in North and South Carolina, including 11 lakes along its path. It is home to a diverse ecosystem of plants, animals, trees, and aquatic life. Further, it provides drinking water for more than 2 million residents, electricity generation for 3.7 million homes, and is a unique part of the area's industry, agriculture, and recreation.

Inolex selected the site for cleanup as it aligns with our sustainability pillar of Operating Purposefully. More specifically, our efforts serve to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6, which recognizes that sustainably managing water goes beyond providing a safe water supply and sanitation. The SDG #6 establishes citizen responsibility to addresses broader water issues, such as water quality and wastewater management, water scarcity and use efficiency, water resources management, and the protection and restoration of ecosystems.

Core to Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation's mission is to preserve and protect the waters of the Catawba-Wateree River Basin. It's program includes water quality monitoring, education programs for children and adults, lake and stream cleanups, and microplastic monitoring, along with environmental advocacy and policy making at the government level.

Around the world, our water systems are being stressed by pollution, development, and shifts in climate. By caring for the health of waterways in the communities where we live and work, we are helping little by little to impact the broader responsibility to protect one of our most vital resources.