Lush purchased this billboard for an entire year on Coliseum Blvd in Fort Wayne, Indiana!  This location is a zoned industrial area.  The area near the billboard lies next to a metal recycling facility, a concrete recycling facility, a golf course and historic oil storage tanks…all next to the Maumee River.  This is very important because we have been working to protect AT LEAST one side of trees on 2,500 miles of streams in Allen County, Indiana! READ MORE HERE

Photographer Tracy Seaman took this lovely shot and Lush made it possible to create a billboard with a message that could reach a larger audience!

Stickers, patches and brochures were just the start of our expenditure of Lush funding!

Brochures were created to make an impact to those who could not access the internet or who wanted more information in their hand!

…and Amanda Arnold and J.T. passing them out, look great at our public events.

The full-size professional tent Lush bought us, is a harbor from the rain we sometimes encounter as river folk…but sometimes it just covers our delicious vegetarian food and coffee!

…but rain or shine we always get some attention from onlookers.

Here were our old signs…they were a little confusing when people tried to find us. We used to use real estate signs from one of our deceased members.

Now we are using 5 beautiful full color signs, so people can find us at remote locations deep in the woods, on the riverbanks!

We had promotional fliers printed to advertise our fundraiser, A Bazaar Evening on the Maumee.

…and SO MANY 8 PAGE EDUCATIONAL BOOKLETS and stickers!

These patches you are only able to EARN by volunteering 40 hours to save the Maumee River… they cannot be purchased.

After discussing many options of how to put a description of our work into a patch, we came up with 3 designs.

In both designs, look for the trees, and reflection of the trees, on both sides of the river in the distant background. This is where we work. The scythe and machete are crossed behind the skull because when we tame wild overgrown areas. There are so many invasive species that do not belong there, so we have to kill them, or they will overtake the natives. The river tamers decide what lives and what dies on the riverbanks!   More info on invasive species still being sold.  The words changed on one patch reads the Latin term Vivat Flumina, which is an expression or acclamation as “long live the river” in plural form.

The flower design was from the native genus of Mallow that grows in the river water of our region. We protect and plant native species and remove the invasive species. This patch has the words “Mni Wičoni” (Mni wi-cho-nee) —which is the Native American Lakota tribes term for “water is life”. This design was chosen in addition to the original black and white skull design because we wanted it to be a little more feminine than the skull, since there are so many women in our group!

Lush purchased Save Maumee, stainless steel water bottles to serve at all of our events. It is VERY important to Save Maumee that single-serving plastic water bottles are NOT served to any of our volunteers because of the waste stream it creates and exploitation of water sources.  This was a very special touch to be able to afford real stainless steel ones!

We even got new chairs for our lovely ladies up front! We need them nice and comfortable so they can help volunteers to sign in!

Food NOT Bombs fed us vegetarian and vegan food, thanks to Lush, at all of our events in 2018!

EVERYONE LOVES THE SWEATSHIRTS AND T-SHIRTS!

We now have all sorts of colors and designs for the hard workers to choose from!

We got red ones…

…and yellow safety vests

and blue ones…

…and we let our supporters customize their own shirts.

Save Maumee Black Hoodie Sweatshirts seem to be the favorite!

Lush funded Save Maumee representatives going to Hoosier Environmental Council’s, Greening of the Statehouse 2018.  We sponsored Indiana’s largest annual gathering of environmental advocates who desire engagement in the 2019 General Assembly.  Save Maumee is a nonpartisan group, but it is important that we continue to be focused on solutions that can reduce air and water pollutions.

Beyond beautiful advertising, this allowed time to open up so we could work on other initiatives that will definitely improve water quality!  Like helping to apply enough political pressure to open a Hazardous Household Waste Facility, which is open  EVERY TUESDAY instead of once per year! Allen County Solid Waste currently serves approximately 300,000 citizens.

But we just wanted to thank the lovely Lush Cosmetics people for everything you do…so we can do everything we do.