--- title: Meet the Man Who Got the #Trashtag Trend Spreading description: Meet the man who encouraged "bored teens" to pick up litter, spurring the viral #Trashtag trend on social media. canonical: https://time.com/5549019/trashtag-interview/ author: Rachel E. Greenspan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-03-12T17:44:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:47:09.947Z og:title: Meet the Man Popularizing the Viral #Trashtag Trend og:description: He hoped the challenge would show the world that 'we're all in this together' og:url: https://time.com/5549019/trashtag-interview/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet the Man Popularizing the Viral #Trashtag Trend twitter:description: He hoped the challenge would show the world that 'we're all in this together' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Meet the Man Who Popularized the Viral #Trashtag Challenge Getting People Around the World Cleaning Up > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=c70cead4-3a39-4953-8ac4-f58f964abb60&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How to Live Zero Waste [Watch (HLS stream): How to Live Zero Waste](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8mpOqofH.m3u8) (4:06)  _Published 2018-03-27. Bea Johnson, author of Zero Waste Home, explains her 5 step process to living waste free_ by [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Mar 12, 2019 5:44 PM UTC by [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Mar 12, 2019 5:44 PM UTC When Byron Román encouraged “bored [teens](http://time.com/5324130/most-influential-internet/)” on social media last week to pick up litter, he didn’t anticipate his post would make a difference. But seven days and hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit later, the world is looking a little bit cleaner. “Take a photo of an area that needs some cleaning or maintenance, then take a photo after you have done something about it, and post it,” Román wrote on March 5, sharing a before and after photo of a messy area being cleaned up by one young man. Román tells TIME that a friend of his in Guatemala had posted the image along with a similar message in Spanish, so he translated the text to English and added the now widely circulated message: “Here is a new [#challenge](https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/challenge?source=feed%5Ftext&epa=HASHTAG) for all you bored teens.” He tagged the post #BasuraChallenge and #Trashtag — _basura_ means trash in Spanish. Soon after, thousands of people posted photos and videos to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, showing themselves cleaning up beaches, parks, schools, streets and more, all around the world. Beyond trying to help the environment, of course, Román says that he really did want to help teenagers make a difference on the internet. “When teens get bored, that’s like the worst thing you can ever have — actually, any person being bored,” he tells TIME. “So, I thought, maybe someone will pick up the challenge and do something positive about it.” The positivity has certainly spread far and wide — Román’s original post has garnered 323,000 shares on Facebook alone as of Tuesday afternoon, and the hashtag on Instagram has more than 25,000 posts. People picking up litter everywhere from Vietnam to the Philippines have sent messages thanking Román for starting the trend, he says. Román says he hoped that a challenge of this nature would help people from different ages bond. “We’re all in this together,” he says. > [](https://twitter.com/frizhbee/status/1104596839511277569) Though Román only helped the trend become more popular, he wasn’t the first to inspire a clean-up movement. Afroz Shah, a lawyer who lives in Mumbai, India, began cleaning up his city’s popular and infamously dirty Versova Beach in October of 2015\. Shah’s work did not go unnoticed: He won the [United Nations’ top environmental honor](http://web.unep.org/championsofearth/laureates/2016/afroz-shah), as a Champion of the Earth, in 2016\. Shah did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment. > [](https://twitter.com/abhirajparab/status/1104241214834933760) The impact #Trashtag could make is yet to be seen — but Román thinks the first step to helping the environment is to stop creating litter and garbage altogether. “I think that would be a better approach to it,” he says. ## Transcript [00:00] We have my sons retainer, the foam [00:05] from my older sons headphones, the [00:09] stickers from my husbands contact lenses, the stickers [00:14] from fruit and veggies. Since 2008, my family [00:18] of four produces one jar of trash per year. The [00:23] zero waste lifestyle aims at eliminating or reducing as [00:25] much trash as possible from your household, but what [00:29] it does is that it translates into a simple life that is [00:34] based on experiences instead of What got [00:38] me started is out of wanting simply a better future for my [00:42] children. A lot of people think that this lifestyle [00:47] is gonna take more time, that it's gonna cost more or that [00:51] you have to be a hippie living in the boondocks. We have [00:54] been able to prove that it is possible to live this lifestyle [00:58] no matter where you live. [ MUSIC ] [01:05] I propose in methodology of Five R's. these Five [01:09] R's are to Refuse to what you do not need, to Reduce [01:13] what you do actually need, to Reuse what you consume. [01:18] To recycle only what you cannot refuse, reduce or reuse. [01:22] And finally, it's rot, which is composting the rest. [ MUSIC ] [01:29] So these are all Refrigerator also for example, we [01:35] buy milk in a returnable container. We also have [01:40] chocolate milk. So once it's done we take it back to the [01:43] store and The manufacturer uses it again [01:48] then for again to buy meat, fish and [01:52] cheese. We simply bring containers with us to the grocery [01:56] store and the staff just place it straight into the jar. [02:00] [ MUSIC ] [ [02:07] MUSIC ] If you go to the grocery store, with [02:13] totes, reusable cloth bags and jars, then all of a sudden [02:17] you're able to completely eliminate packaging from coming [02:20] into your home, and that's something you wont have to [02:23] throw away. If you also implement a composting system in [02:26] your home, Then you'll be able tt eliminate a huge amount [02:30] of waste also. This used to be a trash can, [02:35] which we've turned into a composite keeper. So we only [02:39] empty it once a week, and that's it. [02:44] [ MUSIC ] On my cheeks I use [02:49] chocolate powder, it's actually cacao powder. And all I do [02:52] is grab my one big brush. And I grab the [02:56] excess in a cap, and then I just apply. [03:02] It cost me $ 0. 72 to fill this single jar. [03:07] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] I [03:13] think people see our lifestyle or our home and are like boy, [03:16] I mean this is, I have so much work to do and they kind of [03:20] get overwhelmed by having the picture of how they lived [03:24] and having that picture of how we live and they're like how [03:26] do I get there. But it's obviously, it wasn't [03:30] overnight for us. [ MUSIC ] I've tried baking soda on [03:34] my hair to wash it and it destroyed my hair. I've [03:39] tried moss in lieu of toilet paper. I mean we've tried a lot of [03:42] different things. So little by little we let go of all these extras [03:46] and we found a balance, a system that we could see [03:48] ourselves doing in the long run. And that's when zero [03:51] waste became sustainable. That's when it became a [03:54] lifestyle for us and something that we could see ourselves [03:57] doing for life. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5549019/trashtag-interview/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5549019/trashtag-interview/"},"headline":"Meet the Man Who Popularized the Viral #Trashtag Challenge Getting People Around the World Cleaning Up","datePublished":"2019-03-12T17:44:10.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:47:09.947Z","description":"He hoped the challenge would show the world that 'we're all in this together'","url":"https://time.com/5549019/trashtag-interview/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rachel E. 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