I had a great time filming with Good Morning America last week and I look forward to seeing all the other stories this week about all the environmental heroes.
Watch video segment here.

#recyclelikeryan #project3r #maketheseatrashfree

We had an awesome turnout at our Project3R beach clean up this past weekend in San Clemente and we picked up 140lbs of trash! Thank you to my school and to everyone that came to help and also to our event sponsors for the raffle prizes. After our event, I was happy to jump on a live video with our friends at AO Latinoamérica who were also doing a beach clean up in Ensenada. They picked up 233lbs of trash!

I’m so excited – we just launched our Project3R apparel on the site. Pick up a hat, hoodie or a shirt in a bunch of different design combinations. Two great things about the new gear. First, it’s all made from recycled water bottles in the material AND all the proceeds from the sales go to Project3R to help fund community clean up and education events. We’re going to be adding new gear over time so check back often to see what we’ve got in the online store. We ship internationally.

Thank you Voyage LA for the interview! You can read it here.

I had a great time speaking at the CIE Colombia Youth Entrepreneur Event last week! I met some new friends and enjoyed hanging out with all the kids at the event. I even got to speak one of the days there to students at the University of La Sabana! It rained every day we were there, I tried new food from Colombia and I took a tour of a salt mine that was really cool.  I hope I get to go back again someday. I had a great time. Unfortunately, my mom got altitude sickness so she wasn’t feeling very good for half of our trip. She’s better now that we’re home. Thank you CIE for hosting us!

What an awesome event! We had a nice breakfast and then did a beach clean up with the West Coast crew from SUN BUM (thanks for hosting the event). After the clean up, we looked at micro plastic from water samples we took at the beach under a microscope. It was crazy to see plastic in the tiniest forms. Thank you so much to the SC Johnson Company for giving me a van today to help with my Project3R events. What an amazing surprise! This van will definitely get put to use and the best part is it’s electric! Look for it at upcoming events.

This past week I toured Rehrig Pacific Company. They are located North of Los Angeles and they’ve been making trash bins since 1913! They used to make bins out of wood long time ago but now they make bins and all sorts of other containers, pallets and stackable container holders (like the kind that holds soda bottles) out of recycled plastic. I met them at Waste Expo last month and I wanted to learn more so I asked for a tour. Their facility is amazing! I even got to help assemble a trash bin.

Did you know that all of the trash bins they make have a trackable bar code that can tell how many times the container was dumped, and if it was picked up? I saw the big molds that make the bins and I had no idea there were so many colors of trash, recycle and compost bins. As you can imagine, their warehouse was huge and they have facilities all over the country. Next time you recycle a plastic bottle, it might just get made into your next trash bin. Thank you Rehrig for the the tour and keep up the great work!