Protecting the planet by recycling is now Maria Lott’s purpose in life, but there was a time when that was not a high priority for her.
Like many people, she thought separating and cleaning plastics and other recyclables was too daunting and time-consuming. However, she changed her mind about 14 years ago, thanks to some input from her children.
Lott’s son, Eddie, worked as a bartender and traveled the world before bringing his talent to bars on Dallas’ Greenville Avenue. He saw a lot of waste, from glass bottles to food, and wanted to do something to eliminate the excess he saw daily. He learned how other countries conserved and practiced sustainability through his travels, and he came back to Dallas with an idea.
“[Eddie] traveled to so many countries, and when you travel from country to country, you see their condition. It’s like traveling from house to house and seeing who best cares for the house,” explained Lott. “And when we asked him, ‘Okay, which industry are you going to want to have a business in?’ one of the choices was recycling, and I said, ‘Oh, that sounds like an excellent thing!'”
From that moment on, Lott worked alongside her son to help create and grow Recycle Revolution. The small but mighty independent recycling center works with residents and metroplex businesses to establish recycling programs.
“It’s like, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by everything that made sense as to why you need to recycle,” says Lott.
Recycle Revolution picks up where city recycling programs often end.
The company works with businesses and residents weekly to recycle specific items, such as toner and ink cartridges, E-waste (electronics and computers), and bulbs and lamps. It also handles materials that are hard to recycle or are not accepted by city recycling programs, like styrofoam, food, and batteries.
Recycle Revolution also creates compost and accepts waste at its community drop-off location.
“I’m 65, and I’ve worked for many places. I’ve always said that the hardest, most difficult boss I’ve ever had is Mother Earth. The Earth expects perfection and humans bombard her with artificial materials like plastic,” Lott says.
She notes, “The plastic will go to our kids, and all of its remnants don’t go away. If it takes 100 years for a piece of [a drinking] straw to biodegrade, you can imagine the time it would take for all the different kinds of plastics [to decompose]. And what about glass, which will never biodegrade, never in a zillion years, and you stick that on her? It’s like, where’s it all going to go?”
Lott’s family joined her in the mission to address these questions. Both her husband and her sister help Lott maintain operations at Recycle Revolution, and her son, Eddie, continues to explore ways to promote sustainability through researching green industries.
“I remember my daughter, not to brag on her, but she was 6 years old in first grade, and they were given a task of thinking about how they could help the community become clean,” explains Lott. “As a 6-year-old, she said, ‘If every person in the community picked up just one [piece of] trash a day, then the community will be clean all the time because one resident picked up their one [piece of] trash from the street every day.'”
Lott agrees that it was pretty profound for a 6-year-old to think about cleaning up anything, but she understood that Earth was the only home we all have.
“We cannot put blinders on our eyes and say, ‘Oh, it’s gonna go away;’ It doesn’t. My grandkids and my great, great grandkids, I want a clean environment for them. I want them to be able to eat food and drink healthy things, and not something that’s got plastic in it.”
Lott lives by one piece of advice: “Let’s just do it one step at a time, because you can’t tackle it all.”
“My goal outside and inside my house is to not buy or use plastic straws. But as I said, you go one step at a time; you can’t do it all,” Lott explains. “Just like my daughter says: every person in the community, if they would pick up one piece of trash, they would have a clean community. I tackle straws.”
What piece are you willing to tackle?