Meet Aly Jobson, Chris Roberts and Tori Bootpetch of Colorado Trash Crew

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aly Jobson, Chris Roberts and Tori Bootpetch.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Aly, Chris and Tori. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We all moved to Denver about three years ago: Aly is from Iowa and me (Tori) and Chris are from Texas. We fell immediately in love with the mountains and the beauty of Colorado. It’s funny, we actually met Aly on a hike up Mt Elbert our first year here. We kept passing each other going up and eventually joined hiking parties. We all three connected immediately. We finished the hike together with burgers and beer to celebrate – and we have been friends ever since!

Fast forward to 2019, Earth Day. We noticed a lot of litter all around our favorite places, so we decided to take on the #trashtag challenge and plan a fun cleanup gathering with our friends. It was so great to see so many people getting involved and making a big impact on our city, that we decided to make it a frequent thing. We created Colorado Trash Crew as a way to rally together friends and neighbors to help keep Colorado beautiful and clean!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Our movement gained a lot of traction very quickly, so that was pretty awesome but it took us by surprise! We all three work full-time jobs so we spend our evenings and weekends planning and organizing cleanups and social media posts.

We definitely do struggle occasionally with juggling our careers, daily lives, and our organization. We are constantly group messaging each other about things like emailing local businesses, creating a captivating Instagram post, logistics of our next cleanup, or which photo to use for the website. We spend all day working, then come home and keep working – but seeing a group of people get out and actually have loads of fun cleaning up trash makes it all worthwhile.

We also struggle with finding funding opportunities. We are so new and are working on networking/finding other organizations we can work with on clean-ups to provide our volunteers the best experience (free meal/drinks/perks).

Colorado Trash Crew – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We are a non-profit that focuses on cleaning up the local Denver area, one piece of trash at a time. We are passionate about the environment and do our best to educate people about the effects of their habits and decisions (single-use plastics, etc) and we provide opportunities for people to give back to our wonderful planet.

Our organization is unique because it’s completely centered around a sense of community. Our cleanups are focused on connecting neighbors, local businesses, and other organizations to one another to combat this huge environmental problem together! We are proud of the fact that we are growing exponentially despite all of us having full-time careers. Our friends are getting involved, we’re getting noticed and we are absolutely making a difference.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Most people may define success as completing a goal, but we believe that success is defined by attempting the goal. As long as someone is willing to try something that they’re passionate about, they have already succeeded!

We have had cleanups where our volunteer count greatly exceeded our goal and other cleanups where we were the only ones who showed up. While reaching a certain goal is always a great accomplishment, overcoming your own fears or doubts to work towards that goal is the greatest thing you can do.

We can see our organization growing, the awareness of our group increasing, and are being contacted by many organizations to collaborate on clean-up events. We see that as great success so far.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coloradotrashcrew.com
• Email: coloradotrashcrew@gmail.com
• Instagram: @cotrashcrew
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/cotrashcrew

Image Credit:
Tori Bootpetch

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