Cans, Bottles, and Hours Are Brightening Futures

By PATRICK GILLESPIE

At a weekend youth basketball tournament in Central Florida, courts are squeaking from basketball shoes pivoting around the hoop, fans are cheering at good passes and made threes, and kids are eyeing the rim, hoping to make a dazzling play and pick up the win.

But off the court waiting to play their next game, all the high schoolers aren’t just staring at phones and tablets. They’re picking up cans and bottles, stuffing 50-gallon bags, and asking people if they are finished with their water or soda so they bag it. 

A partnership has sprung up recently between Trish Trash, a Fort Myers-based non-profit, and Elite Sports Events, a Florida-based entertainment and events planning company. Students interested in banking Bright Futures Scholarship community service hours have collected 30,000 recyclable materials at major weekend tournaments that thousands of people attend. 

As a result, they are earning Bright Futures community service hours. And simultaneously they are learning about the environmental benefits of recycling. It’s a grassroots program with a growing impact, and it’s changing the way Florida teens think about their future — and their footprint.

“Wherever there’s a can or bottle, they’re finding it,” said Victor Rodriguez, who works for Elite and coaches a boys basketball team in Orlando. “You’ll see these kids walking around with bags looking for stuff. It’s a teaching moment for them as well.”

Trish Barron spent nearly four decades as a perioperative surgical nurse, where she watched recyclable materials — clean surgical packaging, dialysis containers, and more — get tossed into incinerators or landfills simply because there wasn’t a better system in place. But what truly pushed her into action wasn’t in the OR — it was what she saw at her daughter’s volleyball tournaments – overflowing trash cans filled with bottles and cans, and no recycling in sight.

“After every game, there’d be bottles everywhere — Gatorade, water, wrappers. It wasn’t just messy,” Barron said. “It felt like a missed opportunity, especially for the kids.”

That realization became the founding idea behind Trish Trash, which she co-founded in 2020 with Jim Pennington, a disaster recovery expert with a background in logistics. Their goal: make recycling transparent, traceable, and easy to do, especially in places where it typically doesn’t happen.

That vision gained momentum in 2024 with a connection to Elite Sports Events Charities. Founded by Kim Fessler, Elite is dedicated to supporting underserved athletes across Florida through organized sports and leadership development opportunities. The organization is committed to helping student-athletes develop leadership, service, and life skills beyond the game.

Together, Trish Trash and Elite launched a program that rewards Bright Futures-eligible community service hours to high school athletes who collect recyclables at tournament events — turning discarded bottles into stepping stones toward higher education.

“I liked their idea, their energy, their goals,” Fessler said. “The things Trish Trash said they wanted to do are things I believe in. I think it’s a great opportunity for kids to help themselves and help the environment at the same time.”

The model is simple, scalable, and student-centered. At the start of each Elite Sports tournament, players and coaches check in with the Trish Trash team and receive large recycling bags. For every full bag a team collects and returns, each player that participates earns two hours of community service credit, verified on the spot. Smaller bags earn one hour.

These hours count toward Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program, which requires anywhere between 30 and 100  verified community service hours as a condition of scholarship eligibility. For many student-athletes, especially those with busy weekend sports schedules, that requirement has been a significant barrier.

“We saw a real gap,” Barron explained. “These kids are showing up, they’re committed, but they didn’t have time to get their service hours. We thought — what if we bring the hours to them?”

It worked.

So far in 2025, Trish Trash has supported four Elite Sports tournaments between March and April and are scheduled to participate in the Elite Summer Classic on July 12 and 13 and the End of Summer Slam on July 25 through 27. Each event expands the reach of this mission — merging athletic participation with environmental action and educational opportunity.

When Trish Trash first began offering community service hours in 2022, only 15 students earned 150 hours  as the non-profit looked for local events to attend.  By 2023, participation tripled. Events expanded to include the Gladiator Games basketball tournament, ROTC programs, and local art festivals. That year, 38 students earned 455 hours.

Through the partnership with Elite Sports, Trish Trash reached a new scale. With structured events and momentum building among coaches and parents, more than 70 students have earned more than 6,500 community service hours across the first four tournaments — and two more remain this season.

“I wish this was around sooner,” Rodriguez said. “It gives (kids) hope. A lot of these kids are low-income and they may not be able to get a scholarship.”

On top of the student impact, the effort is creating an environmental impact. In 2025, students have collected 200 large bags of recyclables, enough to fill a 5-by-8-foot trailer plus 40 more bags that wouldn’t fit. That amounts to more than 25,000 plastic bottles and 4,500 aluminum cans that may have ended up in landfills around Florida.

The ripple effect goes far beyond tournament venues. Sites are cleaner. Teams are more engaged. Families and communities are more connected. And students are stepping up — not just as recyclers, but as role models.

“We’ve got moms handing out bags, kids trading recycling tips, venue staff stopping by to say thank you,” Pennington said. “Even janitors are pitching in — not because they have to, but because they want to support the students. It’s not just about collecting bottles. It’s about teaching responsibility — and building community.”

That community now includes ROTC students, art festival volunteers, chili cookoff attendees, and more. To date, Trish Trash has mobilized over 1,500 volunteers statewide, contributing 6,000+ service hours toward environmental and educational goals.

“I started Trish Trash because I wanted to give people, especially kids, a reason to believe again,” Barron said. “In recycling. In their futures. In the power of doing something small and good that grows into something big and lasting. Every bottle counts. Every hour matters. And every one of these kids deserves a shot at something bigger. If we can clean up a gym, and get someone to college while we’re at it — why wouldn’t we?”

INFO BOX:

To learn more, visit www.trishtrash.com or email info@trishtrash.com.

Trish Trash Youth Engagement Growth