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The Cycle of Ups and Downs


If you have a bit of time today, you might want to head over to the East Lot of the Broken Land Parkway Park and Ride. The good folks of Upcycled are holding a community cleanup event from 11 am to 1 pm. 


These were the words that caught my eye:

Join us this October for our final community cleanup—a chance to give back and celebrate all we’ve accomplished together.

Wait - - what? Upcycled is calling it quits?

This October, we invite you to join us for our last community cleanup as we wrap up five years of Upcycled projects. Together, we’ll spend the day caring for our trails and public spaces, removing litter, and celebrating the collective effort that has transformed over 10,000 pounds of plastic into lasting community resources. This event is more than just a cleanup—it’s a way to honor the volunteers, students, partners, and neighbors who made this journey possible. We hope you’ll stand with us one final time to leave a cleaner, brighter, and more connected community.

We will meet at the East Lot of the Broken Land Parkway Park and Ride. From there, we can walk over to the West Lot, and if time allows after cleaning these areas, we will continue on to Lake Elkhorn.

Sigh. I’m a big fan of the mission of Upcycled to give single use plastic a long term purpose. The work they’ve been doing in Howard County to support that has been amazing. (I just did a quick check and I see that I’ve mentioned them on the blog at least a dozen times.)

Upcycled was founded in 2019 by Orlando Goncalves and Freddie Striano in response to the amount of plastics they were finding on their outdoor hikes around Howard County. As they collected trash and plastics on their hikes, they challenged themselves to answer this question: how can we give single-use plastic a long-term purpose? 

In addition to community cleanups, they’ve held Waste Warrior Workshops for kids, and partnered with schools to turn collected single use plastic into benches and raised garden bed structures. All of that has added up to over 10,000 pounds of plastic being diverted from landfills and the natural environment. 

Keeping a non-profit going is hard. You need more than workers to fulfill your mission, you need funds to keep it all going. To be clear,  I don’t know why Upcycled will be ceasing operations at this time but I do know they will be missed. Having a truly creative Great Big Idea and daring to pursue it is a beautiful thing. 

The following statement on the Upcycled Facebook page describes this more as a pause than an irrevocable termination. I offer it here in its entirety.




Gosh, I hope it’s not the end. This is valuable ecological and community-building work. Also - - cool points for thanking community partners. The act of expressing gratitude is never wasted.

If you want to sign up for today’s clean up and let them know you’ll be coming, here’s the link: 


To Orlando Goncalves, Freddie Striano, and everyone who has participated in Upcycled: thank you. 



Images from Upcycled social media


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