People talk about going out and changing.. To me, that sounds overwhelming, like the world.

It's not about the world.

It's about your world.

Why Rivers, to me, is because that was my world.

I grew up right on it.

That was like my front yard.

My name is Chad Pregracke, and I'm founder, president of Living Lands and Waters, which is an organization dedicated to cleaning up America's rivers.

Oh, look, Ospreay Look.

It's driving the stick.

That's cool.

Like taking candy from a baby.

What drives me is just the tangible results, the adventure of it all.

The people you meet, the cool cities you visit.

We got along, and just right away, it was just ..

It's sincere.

It's not fake.

It's not phony .. My name is Mike Coyne-Logan, a.k.a.

Coach.

I'm from Rock Island, Illinois.

And my roll is just crew, and education facilitator.

Nice, bro.

Hell yeah.

Right on buddy.

Yes, sir.

When I met Mike, he was.

He was rapping with .. And I saw him and was like, This guy's amazing.

And it turns out he's an eighth grade teacher.

And I just said, Hey, if you're ever looking for a change, I'm building a classroom.

So here we are, 16 years later, and he's he's just he's the man.

So right now we're based in Memphis, Tennessee, with our floating classroom in our living quarters.

We're on our floating home.

This barge aka team work.

This is where we live when we're on the river, traveling up and down our river systems.

Come on inside.

Check it out.

Here's the galley.

This is where a lot of people converge, meet and obviously eat.

Of course, you got Fred Sanford over there.

You know, he was a junkyard, man.

So pretty fitting.

We got our bathrooms.

We got the guys, we got the girls bathr..

It's kind of bullshit that the girls have a bigger shower than us, you know?

And they also get two sinks.

I don't know what's up with that.

Oh, now we're going in the classroom down the hall here.

The floating classroom.

We've had all the students.

Here's an electric guitar that was found here in Memphis, Tennessee.

These toys are all different things found in the rivers over the years.

Please look at this.

I can add the new unicor.. That's pretty special.

Here's Callie.

Callie and B.B., her guard dog, B.B.

Trusty B.B.. Callie probably sending emails, catching up on compu.. day's work, getting the media stuff all set up for the week with the students.

B.B.

getting some good pets.

Oh, you do love that, don't you, B.B.?

Callie obviously is just a natural fit right away.

The girls that are out here, they're tough as nails.

They're as tough as anybody you work with.

She just fit right away, you know, like a little sister to me, almost.

You know, before I was at Living Lands and Waters, I was out in Portland, Oregon In a reggae band as a drummer.

Yes.

I've always been interested in the environment.

I had an environmental background with school and also communications sounded like this dream job that I didn't even know existed when they first called.

I didn't even know what a barge was.

I had not much knowledge on river ways.

It was more on lakes oceans.

I was always into scuba diving and just grew up as a competitive swimmer as well.

So I've just always been connected to water.

Callie kind of does it all, but she helps organize like spring break right here.

It's X amount of schools.

There's a lot of moving parts.

My name is Callie Schaser I'm from Waukesha, Wisconsin, originally, and I work with Livi.. as the communication specialist.

We chose Memphis, Tennessee, and we're on Lake McKellar for a alternative spring break program, where we get college students from around the country to come in and help us clean up.

Elvis used to water ski on this lake, which is kind of cool, but since then it's definitely become more industrial and you don't really want to swim in it.

You don't want to mess around in it because of this creek called Nonconnah Creek that comes from the city.

All the litter from the city goes into that creek.

That creek then comes into this lake Mckeller And so we're just trying to stop it before it gets into the Mississippi.

And this is a good place to do it because the Mississippi is pretty roaring out here.

So kicking off spring break with these college students, first of all, as a crew, we're looking forward to it.

You know, it's like we've been inside too, one of the things about this job.

We love is being outside, being on the river, being on the water and doing something and seeing the tangible results.

How is this group of students different than your typical spring breakers that are going down to San Felipe and Cabo, and getting into all the foam parties.

Oh, wow.

You really went there with that foam p..

I mean, I was thinking foam parties, but now I'm like, Wow, what are they missing?

Guys come on down.

Spring break!

How many people been here before, okay a few.

Ok, alright.

Bringing it back.

Right there in the glasses boomerang brought it back.

That’s you.

Guys, My name is Chad Pregracke.

Just want to say thanks so much for coming.

Really appreciate it.

I got to tell you, the next few days are going to make a big difference.

And I know you could of went to Cabo and these other places for spring break.

But I'll tell you what, couple days a work, this place is going to look like Cabo, no problem.

Right?

I mean, for ki.. their time to come out and do this, we want to make it unique, make it not just, you know, you're getting trashed because after a while that gets boring.

So the music and the ridiculous over the top, like coach speeches that’s right garbage ready or not.

Here we come.

Can I get a hell yeah?

Hell yeah!

Oh, can I get a hell?

Hell yeah!

My name is Aminatou Adeniji.

I'm from Côte d'Ivoire.

Ivory Coast.

I define myself as a community person, and I love doing anything that can help the environment and the community.

I don’t care if it is America or Africa, As long as it's good help.

I’m in it.

So is Coach your title or your nickname?

I..

It's a lifestyle mostly.

It’s a lifestyle.

It’s a lifestyle.

We chose this location for spring break because there's just plenty of work to do.

It's a place where you need just the bodies because it's stuff mostly small, single use plastics that are up flooded up in the nearby shorelines.

I mean, I was completely shocked to see how much trash is actually here and just hearing the horror stories of what it was before.

I couldn't imagine seeing that now.

I mean, I can't imagine seeing this now.

It just shows how much we really just throw away and just don't seem to care about.

But here we are trying to pick it up.

This place when we got here, I think 13 years ago, it was unlike any other place I'd ever been.

A close second would probably be D.C. or New York City in some spots.

So the trash was like this deep.

Do you always have this much Styrofoam?

There's always this much Styrofoam unfortunately yes.

I know what they're thinking when they show up.

You know, they're like, this is overwhelming.

But if they could have seen it 13 years ago, it's slow progress.

And it's it's a positive change.

Just trying to keep things light and, you know, keep it going.

You don’t have to call me sir either, just call me Chad.

Ok. Is that cool?

But hey, you need gloves.

I have gloves, but I can pick up the smaller pieces of plastic with just my hands, that’s what I like about you.

Just going for it.

Be careful without gloves.

All right?

Okay.

Hey, nice meeting you.

Thank you very much for coming.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

We’ll just pick this little area up here And then we'll go head out in the boat.

Cool.

All right, let’s do it to it.

All right, guys.

So we're going to head to the barge.

You can see how much trash there is out here within first ten, 15, 20 minutes.

We got almost an entire boatload full.

All right, so here's our barge.

This is home.

Barge.

Home.

Functionally, this is like a floating recycling center.

But when you pile trash up and there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash in here, what it does is it makes a statement about our rivers without having to say a word.

When people see this, they're they're moved because it's their drinking water.

18 million people get their daily drinking water directly out of the Mississippi R..

So all the small towns, bigger cities.

You know, it's important.

Plus, we eat the fish.

I mean, it's good to keep it clean.

So the barges do a lot.

But welcome to the garbage barge.

We have our famous baby doll wall here.

Some say they're creepy, but we think that they they help us and protect us while we're out here on the barge and stay safe.

If you guys find a baby doll, please.

By all means, come up to one of us and we'll get you a zip tie, and then you can hang it up there all by yourself.

We do really try to recycle as much as possible.

We work with a local recycling commission and have volunteers sort through those bags of garbage.

There's another corner of stuff here that are like our bigger plastics.

We used to not be able to recycle that, but this is where Chad kind of comes in.

He's starting this new factory.

He's going to take that and repurpose it into anot..

Instead of just putting it into a landfill, all the tires get recycled.

On average, we typically get about 3000 tires a year that we pull from the rivers.

That's including semis, tractor tires, little tires, tires, rims, tires without rims, you name it, we'll find it, but we don't get tired of it.

Never tired of it.

Tire-less.

When the kids get to the barge, I think it is powerful to s... there's a barge or somebody like getting trash on this level.

And this is the collective efforts of other college students.

And when you get a lot of people together, man, that's that's pretty cool.

That's pretty impactful.

That’s the genius of Chad, you know.

The visual impact of something.

And when you pull into a town and people visually see, man and that all came from a river, because until you get out of the shorelines, you're getting these back water channels.

You may not realize the magnitude of the problem.

Can I get a hell yes.

20,000 more bags to go.

Come on.

What living lands and waters does is just really amazing.

And I just really knew that I wanted to be a part of that.

And I've met, like, so many cool new people, everyone so much fun and happy.

Everyone's getting nicknames, you know, You could have done a lot of things for your spring break, but you chose to come to Memphis, Tennessee and pick up trash.

And that says a lot about your character and who you are.

And you may not know it, but you are potential leaders in your communities.

And we all live in different places.

We communicate differently to different people.

And you can take this back to your community and say, we need to look at different alternatives and there's a better answer.

I like making an impact, so why not?

Why not spend my free time, my spring break out here doing this?

You know, I'm having just as much fun out here as they’re having drinking and doing whatever in Pensacola Beach.

I think so at least.

When we came out here, there would be floating trash a hundred yards out.

So as bad as it is now with you guys and the work that college students like yourself have done over the last 12 years has made a huge impact.

But then it starts thinking about the impact you make your own communities and it can make a difference.

So let's give it up for you.

All right.

No.. We're going to make this fun, though, because this is also March Madness and there's a lot of cool fun finds as evident some of these fun finds that are on our toy shelf back there have been found here in Memphis.

You might find something cool, but today the person who finds the coolest trash find we're going to vote on it is going to win a trophy, leaving Lands and Waters Trash Champ 2023 Trash Madness.

All right, Let the madness begin.

You know what I hope the kids take away from spring break is just that they have the power to do something.

Empower them and be leaders in their communities and go back and be be invigorated, be inspired to do stuff in their own communities and make a difference and spread the word.

We've had a couple of students, too, that come here and they're like, I'm changing my major and I want to do what this is and how do I become more involved and how do I bring this back to my my life?

And we've had it too where students don't want to leave.

They they're like, there’s still trash to get.

How do we how do we get it and how do we become stewards of this constantly and help people to do this Plain and simple.

Like if you see a problem, you can do som.. work will pay off in the long run.

That's all I can say is like you can make a difference.

The more and more people you can make aware of this problem, enga.. And I don't care what political party you're from.

You know, what everybody respects is hard work.

These students came from all over.

None of them knew each other.

Coming in takes them a few days to.. but by the end of it, they've made new friends for a lifetime for living Lands and Waters Trash Champ for Trash Madness in 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee, on McKellar Lake, we have the Gucci bag.

Really, I think that a.. We're here for a reason.

We're here because we care.

If we can't make an immediate change in people's minds, we can show them what we've seen today, and it's planting the seeds really that matters.

Day one done.

Day one done.

Yeah.

If nothing else I said isn't conveyed like this is what I'd really like to say.

Is like.

I'm just somebody of average intelligence.

You know, if I see a problem, know that.

You know, what I figured out is you can do something about it.

If everybody had a cause, the world just be a lot better place.

You can really make a big difference.

And hard work will will pay off in the long run.

Till next time, coming to a river near you.