Statement (Bram Francetti)

From January to June, Project Ripples has been hard at work recycling bottles and working towards another fundraising goal, collecting funds to help our partners in the Philippines. With increased sanitary and health precautions, such as masks and distancing we continued to collect and recycle plastic bottles in our community. We averaged 3,000 bottles a month, for a total of 18,037 bottles in the first half of 2021. As people avoided brick and mortar stores during the pandemic, potentially decreasing access to bottle returns, Project Ripples was able to bridge the gap by consolidating and completing this recycling on the behalf of our donors. We were able to expand outreach through connections to our neighbors and community leaders, while still upholding COVID safety. By returning all of these bottles at grocery stores we raised more than $900 exclusively through recycling. As we look to the future, we hope to resume bottle collection at some of our local public schools and look forward to increasing community engagement as New York gets closer to normal.