By Ian Hope
Edmonton, Alberta — July 27, 2011 — Travis Albert, who has owned and operated Jaybeck Truck & Auto Salvage in Edmonton since 1988, is a father of three and proud grandfather of four whose passion for the past 21 years has been playing slow-pitch… up to 170 games a year. You have to wonder, how does he fit it all in? One thing’s clear, he knows what stamina and commitment are all about!
Travis was the only Edmonton yard who volunteered to help Summerhill Impact with their ‘Mow Down’ program. This program is run annually across Canada. Under the program people can take their old lawn mowers to a Home Depot location where they will get a credit towards the purchase of a new mower. This serves to retire from use, inefficient and polluting mowers, encouraging customers to update to a cleaner burning yard tool…so really positive for the environment especially when you consider how much pollution these little oil burners put out relative to their small engine sizes.
Travis did pickups at nine different Home Depot locations in the Edmonton area and collected over 300 mowers! When asked why he volunteered to do these mower pickups, he simply replied, “oh, I don’t know.” The AARDA Editor though feels that Travis is just being modest in saying that- indeed our experience with Travis is that he always has a positive attitude and makes a contribution to the community as well as his Association whenever he can.
Action like that speaks so very well of Travis, and Jaybeck Truck and Auto. Let’s face it, it makes AARDA look really good also with an important strategic partner- Summerhill Impact. Summerhill by the way provides $10,000 annually to the association in consideration of what AARDA does to encourage its members to participate actively in their mercury Switch-Out program… so on behalf of AARDA, thanks so very much Travis for showing such a great example of leadership and community service!
All members are encouraged to respond to the call for help in collecting mowers when Summerhill next runs the Mow Down program- we will need help in all Alberta communities, and ‘many hands make light the work as they say’!
See photos of Travis and his collection of mowers here. (Photographs thanks to Tim Donovan, retired Executive Director of AARDA).
