We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Preston Ross III a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Preston, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Around 2020, as Raleigh grew, I noticed much more litter than before. So I had the idea of doing something about it. What was just supposed to be a weekend hobby, with maybe 4-5 folks maybe once a month turned into a mission and a nonprofit.
In almost 3 years, we have had nearly 200 litter cleanups, hosted over 1000 volunteers and removed nearly 100,000lbs of litter. And that doesn’t include the bags of trash removed by our Adopt the Block volunteers. Nor the thousands of pounds of metal recycled in our landfill diversion program.
Preston, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
So I am originally from Chicago but have been in Raleigh for 20+ years. I’ve always had an environmental mindset but far from perfect when it comes to sustainability. I want to do the solar panels on the roof, the electric car, growing my own food, the whole 9 yards. But that is hard as hell and very overwhelming. So I decided I would start small and picking up trash would be an easy gateway.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
To start TGRC, I invested about $10k. I am still not sure how I had $10k to invest but somehow I did. But thankfully when we became a 501(c)3, the community started helping out financially and that is what funds us to this day.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Oh yea I do. So I know that our cleanups aren’t solving the litter issue and are just a temporary bandaid to the problem. I have accepted this as reality while investigating the underlying cause and a lasting solution. But what I wasn’t prepared for is just how temporary that bandaid can be.
We hosted a cleanup last year that took place around a heavily littered area in SE Raleigh. We removed about 650 pounds of litter and made what is usually a dump of a road appear pristine… like beautiful. But what I hadn’t prepared for was just how quickly our efforts would be for naught.
So, the cleanup occurred at 9:00am on a Sunday morning. It was a nice day. We had 21 volunteers and in 2 hours got the job done! That evening I was informed that we may have overlooked the collection of a bag of trash we had filled. We don’t leave bags! That’s a rule! So the next morning, early, I hopped in the truck to not only grab that bag of trash, but to admire our work. We had worked our tails off. I couldn’t wait to see it. That is when I realized how quickly what we did could be
undone. Some 18 hours after we had bagged that last piece of litter, this stretch of road looked like we hadn’t touched it. Litter everywhere. Cans, bottles, plastic bags; you name it.I thought, why the hell am I doing this? What’s the point!? Are we even making a difference? Does anyone even care? We are struggling to stay above water as it is, might as well close up. But I didn’t. I pushed through. Understood that there are bigger issue at play here and decided i will do what I can for as long as I can. shop!
Contact Info:
- Website: raleighcleanup.org
- Instagram: @raleighcleanup
- Facebook: @raleighcleanup