Since January 2020, he and neighbors have collected over 2,600 pounds (that’s the equivalent of about 195,000 bags) of plastic bags and film for Trex Community Recycling Program. He started by going door to door to collect film in his neighborhood, and then he built boxes, including one with a roof, for his neighborhood to collect materials. He also helped the Upper Palmetto YMCA start their own film recycling program. While monitoring duck boxes as part of his Eagle Scout project, Roman noticed a lot of trash in the adjacent stream and he started an “Adopt-a-Stream” program. Since April 2020, he and his work groups have removed more than 6,000 pounds of trash and debris. Roman organized 13 “QuaranClean” Workdays with up to 100 volunteers and collected over 8,000 pounds of trash during the Pandemic. Roman also started his own business last summer rehabilitating mailboxes in his neighborhood, which helps keep the old mailboxes out of the landfill by making them look like new. He was recently recognized as the 2020 York County South Carolina Environmental Student of the Year.

In 2016, Brunswick County decided to offer municipalities an opportunity to participate in multi-jurisdictional disaster debris contracts for both management and monitoring services. There are zero costs to participate in the contracts. Once activated, the County and all participating municipalities experience the same cubic yard costs. Out of the 19 municipalities in the county, 14 of them decided to participate in the contracts. In addition to the opportunity to participate in both contracts, the county also offered to provide assistance in the development of a town’s own debris management plan. For Florence in 2018, the total quantities of debris that was managed under these contracts totaled 708,119 cubic yards of vegetative and 3,843 tons of construction and demolition debris.

Given the urgent need to keep hundreds of families working and learning from home during a global supply chain shortage of computer hardware, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library turned to Informative Technologies Inc. as its sole source provider of computers and tech support for 1,400 households under a Q3 CARES Act grant. Informative used open-source software to quickly turn recycled hardware into Chromebook compatible devices. They could achieve this production at scale thanks to their multi-year strategic partnership with eCycleSecure (a R2 electronics recycler which has the county as a client and is a statewide contract holder for North Carolina). What resulted was not only a supply chain miracle, which resulted in 2,055 units created in the space of 4 months, but the Charlotte Library overall won first place in a national competition of innovative urban libraries.