ANDERSON COOPER: The 2013 CNN Hero of the Year
is Chad Pregracke.
CHAD PREGRACKE: Certainly, I've winged a lot in my life.
But that night, I just was not prepared to give a speech.
Umm.
AUDIENCE: [laughter]
CHAD PREGRACKE: Walking up there, I felt bad to win,
just because everybody's got great causes.
Everybody is just as passionate.
And again, the world wins.
I've met so many great people today, the other heroes.
And I'm really moved by all their stories
and all the things they do around the world.
And I'm just going to give 10 grand to each of them,
because they're awesome.
So that's why I split the money.
And I gave 10,000 to each different hero--
the other nine.
- Chad says his decision to share his prize money
with the other top 10 CNN Heroes was a spur of the moment call,
but he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his portion.
CHAD PREGRACKE: A little less known
thing that Living Lands and Waters does is we grow trees.
A lot of people know us for river cleanups.
My goal when I set out was to get a million trees planted,
so I used the money to help expand the nursery.
- (CHANTING) Plant a tree!
CHAD PREGRACKE: Since 2013, we have planted our 1 millionth
tree, which is really cool.
- Planting trees, removing trash,
keeping the planet cleaner.
Chad says that his involvement with CNN Heroes
has helped him do all of this and more.
CHAD PREGRACKE: So since 2013, a lot has happened.
By the end of this year, I'll have done and helped facilitate
over 1,000 river cleanups.
Let's do this.
And have worked side by side with over 100,000 volunteers.
Just make piles every 100 feet.
And removed over 10 million pounds of garbage.
All right.
It's really cool.
All you need to do is just change your world,
whatever that is.
The river, for me, was my world.
It's a freezer.
It's like I didn't like the problem.
Doing something about it.
All right.
Let's tie your bags up, and we're going to head back.
- [cheering]
- Fantastic experience.
CHAD PREGRACKE: Thanks a lot, man.
- Chad and his group have invested
in state of the art equipment that's taking
garbage removal to a new level.
CHAD PREGRACKE: We were able to make such a big difference
in a quarter of the time.
So it's really rewarding really.
Just mountains of garbage that would
have taken 30 times as long.
It's really the excavator, as well, that's been helping us.
So our new goal is a million pounds
a year for many years to come.
It's amazing.
It's like the excavator with people power mixed--
it is a completely different operation than it was in 2013.
- Chad Pregracke he has spent much of his life
getting dirty in order to keep the planet clean.
Today, he and his crew have cleaned up 23 rivers
in 20 states.
CHAD PREGRACKE: What is this thing, dude?
- We caught up with Chad recently
on the Ohio River near Cincinnati
where his operation was in full swing
CHAD PREGRACKE: It's dusty.
So we've been on the Ohio River for almost two months,
and we've done 241,000 pounds of garbage
in a 30, 40 mile stretch.
In the last 30 days, we pulled out four boats, three cars,
over 255 gallon barrels, thousands of tires,
millions of plastic bottles.
There are places-- the whole river
is just rafts of plastics.
It's bad.
It's really bad.
And let's see him up there.
- For Chad, the operation is also a family affair.
CHAD PREGRACKE: What's really cool is I live with my wife
on the barge and my daughter.
All right, folks.
My wife, Tammy, sets up all of our big events.
Skylar's out here now, my daughter.
She's really been running the excavator,
and that's what she's really getting good at.
SKYLAR PREGRACKE: Down?
- On top of the push to clean up rivers,
Chad and company also want to spread the word
and educate the public about the harmful effects
that trash and waste have on America's rivers.
- This is a lesson on sustainability.
And what does sustain mean?
- Chad's group built a floating classroom
so that teachers and students can come on board
and learn first hand.
- When the vegetation's lost--
CHAD PREGRACKE: Garbage is just one of the problems,
but the fact that all these cities and towns
along the rivers-- they all pull the drinking
water directly out of it.
17 bags.
And the stuff we're pulling out--
I mean, barrels, and a decent amount have substances in them
from oil to chemicals to you name it.
A new front door, Tammy.
There is no other agency or anything coming out here
to do this, so we're pretty much the only people
with the scale of an operation doing this like this.
And it needs to be done.
- It fertilizes the nutrients--
CHAD PREGRACKE: In conjunction with all our cleanups,
adding education in there--
it's a necessity.
By the end of this year, we'll have had over 10,000
either teachers or students through the classroom.
That's how you not only get the river clean, but keep it clean
is through education.
- But the amount of garbage continues to pile up.
Just when Chad started to wonder what to do with it all,
some sponsors stepped up to help him with recycling efforts.
CHAD PREGRACKE: What's great in the last three years
too is we built some good partnerships.
They're taking our tires and doing different recycling
things with it.
Pulling the stuff out of the river is one thing,
but then disposing of it properly is another thing.
And they're actually putting them back in plastic parts
and shredding it and recycling it.
- 10 bags.
- Chad says what he does is not just about the environment,
it's an expression of patriotism.
CHAD PREGRACKE: 12 bags.
Green is great.
I think what we're doing really is more red, white, and blue.
I think it's really a patriotic thing to do.
There's a lot of different ways to serve your country.
I certainly feel like all these volunteers have come out here--
my crew of people that I work with
and all the other great organizations
doing different things.
It's really-- that's just being patriotic.
It's making the country a better place.
We're going to clean up some rivers today.
Are you guys ready?
- Decades of diligence and determination have paid off.
For the results Chad sees didn't happen all at once.
They were years and years in the making.
CHAD PREGRACKE: Yeah!
Another fridge down.
It really does make me pretty proud
that we are able to make such a big difference.
I didn't start out with a master plan.
I'm just an average person--
There we go.
--doing a unique job, and it's had big results.
But I think if nothing else, this is a perfect example
of an average person who can make
a big difference with a lot of help from a lot of people.
Good game, good game, good game, good game.
Yes, we got it.
And it happens.
You can do it.
Yeah!
So do it.