- All right, everybody.
We're back with Aimee Garcia and J.B. Smoove.
(audience cheering and clapping)
I think y'all are gonna love this next story.
I'm very excited about it.
I'm all about recycling, just doing what I can,
but this is crazy.
Lots of major cities make it nearly impossible
to recycle glass.
It's either not available curbside,
or collection places are hours away,
which, nobody's got time for that.
That's exactly what was going on in New Orleans
until our next guests decided to step up.
Now, not only have they recycled
more than 2.5 million pounds of glass,
(audience cheering and applauding)
they're using the recycled glass
to help improve the community.
That makes them rad humans.
(upbeat music)
All right, from, I love this, the name of this,
from Glass Half Full, let's say hi
to Max and Fran, everybody.
(audience cheering and applauding)
It's amazing to meet you two.
Meet everybody, meet Aimee, meet J.B.
- Hi. - Hey, hello.
- What's up? We're just bringing people together.
Okay, so this all started,
which makes us friends already, over a glass of wine.
This idea, like, was cultivated
while y'all are having wine one night, right?
- Yep. - Yeah.
So, like most good ideas, most crazy ideas,
it started over a bottle of wine.
We were- - Bottle, not glass.
- I love that you didn't say glass. I love it.
- No, no, past the glass. - It was a bottle.
- That kinda day.
- Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, we were college seniors at the time.
So, about two years ago.
I was studying international development
and Fran was studying chemical engineering.
And we're sitting around kind of lamenting
about our consumption and that, by all likelihood,
that glass bottle was probably gonna go to the landfill.
And we thought, hey, why not us?
Instead of contributing to the problem,
maybe we could try to solve it.
And we broke out the computers, started doing our research,
and we realized, yeah, we could take this glass waste
and turn it into something that actually benefits
our community over and over and over again.
So we launched a GoFundMe,
and the local paper picked it up,
and we ended up raising $20,000
and were able to buy our first glass pulverizing machine
and bring it to our college backyard.
- I just love that you own a glass pulverizing machine.
Like, that's so fun.
- That's the first one.
- Like, it seems so fun.
So, and everything's kind of, blown up, right?
- Yes. So as you can see,
we thought it would be really small, this like, pet project.
I mean, we started in a backyard,
and then suddenly the glass just started coming
and it kept coming.
And so, we had to move into a smaller warehouse,
and then eventually, into our current facility,
which is 40,000 square feet.
We're recycling thousands and thousands of bottles a week.
We're averaging about 150,000 pounds a month
of recycling this glass.
And it's just grown so much bigger than we ever expected.
- 'Cause y'all work with restaurants,
you work with people that usually dispose
of a lot of waste, right?
- Exactly, we have residential customers
that we pick up the glass from.
We also go to casinos, hotels, bars.
And then, of course, we have a free option
where anyone can participate
to keep that program accessible.
- Yeah. Oh, this is so cool. (audience applauding)
So I love, so you break the glass down,
it becomes like, this sand, right?
And so, how does that help the community?
Tell everybody, I'm so excited for them to know.
- Yeah, for sure.
So, hurricanes and flooding are obviously top of mind
for anyone living in New Orleans,
anyone living on the coast, for that matter.
So, we take that glass sand,
pulverize it into a really, really, fine size,
which is super absorbent,
and then we fill sandbags with that sand.
And folks from around the city, from around the state,
use those sandbags to protect their homes,
their businesses, from flooding.
So we're already making a dent in, you know,
preparing against disasters.
But our ultimate goal was always to try and restore
the Louisiana coast land.
Louisiana loses about a football field's worth of land
every 100 minutes due to coastal erosion.
So, again, really, really top of mind.
And when we realized that we could actually solve that issue
and take that glass waste and use it as sand
to combat those problems, because we don't have enough sand
to combat the erosion crisis.
- You're building it back up. It's crazy.
- Yeah. We're building it back up.
You know, we jumped into action
and haven't looked back since then.
- It's so cool.
Do y'all, are you into like,
helping combat like, climate change?
I know that you, do you and your wife have a garden?
Y'all grow your own? - Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
We have a vertical gardens called LA Urban Gardens.
It's like a hydroponic garden.
It's absolutely the most amazing thing ever.
We are vegans, yes, and to walk out your home,
and go to your own little garden,
and cut off what you need, and cook what you need,
instead of getting in your car
and driving to the supermarket for stuff you don't need.
But to have it there is the most amazing thing in the world.
- It's so cool.
- Yeah.
- But this ripple effect that you're doing
is so huge, and so cool and innovative.
I love it. I love it. - Thank you. Thank you.
- So what's next for y'all?
- So, like I said, we've seen so much demand
for glass recycling that the next step
is hopefully building out a new facility
that's capable of recycling all of the glass
in the Gulf South region,
and then making a dent in our coastal erosion issues.
- That's amazing. - Thank you.
- I mean, who would've thought you could do,
I never even thought of that.
Well, if you're unsure of what the recycling restrictions
are where you live, check your city's website.