- A lot of communities are just being forgotten.
And that's why we like to come in with 501CTHREE.
And we started to put water boxes
and these water filtration systems into communities
of color that really needed them
that were being affected by these disaster scenarios,
like best example of what was happening and what is still
happening in Flint, Michigan.
That was really my time when I said,
"Hey, I wanna do something.
I wanna change this.
I wanna create something new for the world."
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To be honored with this award and to have the award
presented by Al Gore, is like,
Al is like my favorite person ever.
This whole thing is like a dream of mine.
And the fact that I'm receiving this award from this amazing
prestigious college is just such an honor.
I'm really glad that people look up to me when it comes
to my philanthropic work and what I do with 501CTHREE
and JUST water because we need more climate warriors.
We need more young people that care about this
and that are dedicating their lives to making sure that,
you know, we don't destroy the planet.
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My surfing coach was telling me that the ocean was alive.
That the ocean loved us in the world and people
and that it wanted to connect with humans,
but that it was also dying.
And it was because of, you know,
things that humans were doing that was killing it.
That really sent me back to school,
just really in a weird head space where I just wanted to get
to the bottom of why is the ocean dying, what's happening?
And then I started to learn about the oceans dying
our atmospheres depleting.
Our land is turning into deserts.
You know, we're cutting down our forest
and I just started to learn so much about it.
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A lot of these communities are communities of color
and people are simply just not giving
these communities proper funding.
They're turning a blind eye and they're
just allowing these people to go
through these terrible things and it's really sad.
And that's why we like to come in with 501CTHREE
and we like to do some amazing stuff
but then also educate people on what we're doing so that
they can know, oh, wow.
I didn't know that, you know, this was happening over here.
I didn't know that it was that bad.
They have people lining up around the corner to grab
these little plastic bottles of water
but they're showering in them.
They're using them for their cooking food
and they're drinking it.
So it's just, it's going, going, going.
So what we did is said,
"Hey, we're gonna start giving people water
in these huge five gallon jugs instead of, you know,
just individual plastic bottles of water that
they can come back and they can continue to refill.
And they can take as many jugs as they want.
One of my most personal stories is just going down
and putting the water boxes and seeing the kids
that have been exposed to these levels of lead
and the lead that is getting inside of their brains
and how that's gonna have long-term effects.
And the fact that they're not even thinking about that type
of stuff, they're just thinking about normal,
you know, kids' stuff.
And it's just really intense to be there with them
and to understand what's happening
and try to offer a solution,
but still realizing that there's things that are
really terrible, that are going wrong
in the world right now.
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I wanted to create something that was gonna be better
for the environment and I wanted to create something
that's gonna have less plastic and most importantly,
I wanted to create something that would involve
less CO2 emissions in its production.
We've got to up to 80% of the bottle to be made out
of renewable resources and we're actually pushing
that even further and when I say renewable resources,
I'm talking about things like paper.
So the paper carton,
and I'm talking about plant-based plastic
that comes from sugar cane in Brazil
that we use in our caps.
So we're trying to use different innovative materials
to reduce the CO2 emissions involved
in the production of bottle.
That was like a huge accomplishment for us
because, you know, when I was younger,
I just really wanted to give something to the world
that was a step in the right direction
to show other creators and entrepreneurs
to also innovate in that direction.
And I feel like that's what started to happen.
And I'm so excited because now there's so many
different sustainable bottle of water options.
When there was none before I feel like
we've helped to open up this whole category.
And that was just like something that we wanted to do
ever since the very beginning.
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It's time for us to wake up.
It's time for us to learn about what's going on in the world
and really look at it from a scientific point of view
where we see our effects that we're having on the climate
and how we can make small adjustments to all of our lives
to make sure that we're not torturing the earth.
And then it's still here for the next generation, you know,
because we really need everybody to get on board with this.
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