Ya Fav Trashman / Terrill Haigler / From Trash Man to the white house

What a great honor and so much fun to get to interview Mr. Terrill Haigler (Ya Fav Trashman)

https://www.instagram.com/_yafavtrashman/?hl=en
https://yafavtrashman.com/
Buy some books to donate to kids: 
https://yafavtrashman.com/im-cool-too/

How did Terrill go from trashman to being an honored guest at the white house? 
Did you know you can help his mission to educate children and the community on how to clean up and recycle? 

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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

0:31

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . Today's guest is Mr. Terrell. Haigler Ya Fav . Trashman. How are you? Terrell? I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me. Oh, man. It was awesome that we got to meet at waste expo a few months ago. And this is just it's an exciting time in the world. Recycling and garbage and all of these things because so many positive changes are, are coming through. I was really happy to have you on the show. Can you, can you tell us about your background a little bit? Sure. So I'm born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania right by Temple's campus grew up a normal kid doing a bunch of things. One of the things my mom had me really into is tennis, and then the other thing was dance. So I actually was like a dancer. So I did plays, I did musicals and I actually, I went to a creative and performing arts high school. Oh, wow. I graduated oh seven as a dance major. Went to college did a year, started dancing, professionally doing shows. And then just kind of like the everyday person, just trying to figure life out. Figure my purpose out had my first daughter at 22. So. Couldn't do the gig life with a child. So started trying to find W2 jobs and benefit . I hear that. So between, between 2000, between 22, from, from the age of 22 to 30, had about 19 different jobs. wow. Yeah. You know, I, can, I commend you for that because it's important to try new things. I always say so well done. Yeah. Yeah. And then I started being a sanitation worker for the city of Philadelphia in 2019 and you know, March 13, 20, 20, the, the whole world shifted. And I became an essential worker and didn't even know Very true. So it was so bad here in Philly. I, I had to do something and communicate and just let off some steam. So I started an Instagram, hence Ya Fav Trashman . And that was two years ago on June 17th. And since then, I've been recognized nationally, been invited to the white house Kelly Clarkson show. Good morning, America. The today show live in New York. David New York articles, oped traveling, speaking, incredible. Just did a graduation speech for a high school recently for you. I have a nonprofit, I started a hauling company. Wow. And I continue to clean my city, which is Philadelphia. I've organized 85 cleanups and have picked up over 325 tons of trash in my city. Wow. Wow. And the fight continues. I, I work with legislators and elected officials to try to get more regulation and enforcement around illegal dumping and recycling and. Just doing a whole bunch of things to try to make Philadelphia the best city in the. world and this it's the power of positive energy that I feel from you. And, and I get criticized or I get I get told that I have the same, you know, similar kind of, Hey, you know, you're almost overly optimistic, but I don't care what they say. I think we can do this together. We can, we can make positive changes. We can affect positive change. Yeah. We, we don't have enough time to wait to. COVID proved that there's, there's not enough time to wait to do something. So every single day I'm trying to make impact. Like you, I started social media right at the beginning of, or just before COVID and I had never done anything like that before and now I've got TikTok and all these things, that's just going crazy and, and people are talking about sustainable packaging. So it's like meant to be that we connected. And I'm really excited that for sure introduced us. So thank you. Well, how can we teach the next generation to stop littering? I know that's one of your. Guiding factors. Yeah. I mean, honestly, you just have to show them you have studies have shown that littering is a taught behavior. Yeah. Children don't know how to litter until we teach them. So. Let's teach them or give them a positive interaction with waste and recycling versus the first thing they know is to throw something on the ground. I mean, we, we talked about it before off air. That's one of the reasons why I wrote my children's book. You know, that that age I'm targeting, you know, pre-K to fourth, fifth grade, it just gives them a different perspective and a different interaction with waste and recycling that I didn't have. The first thing I learned about recycling or trash and stuff is, you know, someone yelling at me don't don't do this. right. And then at the same time, you have somebody telling you, oh, throw it on the ground. There's no trash can. So it's like, what. You know, that's why I wrote the book in a fun, light way for children to understand, you know, sanitation workers are cool, littering is bad, and we gotta keep our community clean and we'll put a link to the, the book. You know, how to, how to buy the book at the bottom of the show notes, because we're gonna be talking about this book for a long time. I think it's really important that we educate the next generation. Yeah, no, I think. To, to empower them with the thought processes of, of cleaning and keeping their community clean and not littering. Imagine the type of adults still growing to be, you know, Hundred percent. It's the it's, it's the key we have to, you know, it's, unfortunately we can't solve all the problems here, you know, while we're alive. So we gotta figure out how to train the next group. You know, and I, I spoke at my kid's school a few weeks ago too, and it was really fun to, to speak at an eighth grade graduation. It wasn't high school like you, but, and it wasn't the white house, but man, someday for sure. I see. Yeah. we're we, you gotta go up the ranks, right? so tell us how you went from no social media. To the white house. What was, what was the, the path there? Okay. June 17th, I posted my first post as Ya Fav Trashman June 17th, 2020. Yeah. And I was just literally posting pictures of PS giving information out. And that was the key for my Instagram. Was that the information I was given out was valuable. It was correct. And people started trusting it. So then maybe July. 400 sanitation workers went down with COVID right. Wow. We didn't have the correct PPE or cleaning supplies or anything. So what I did was I was like, I have this, I mean, at this point I had like 3000 followers. I thought this was the cap of it. This was the tip of it. I gotta, I gotta use all I got. So I started a t-shirt campaign, started selling t-shirts. For a fundraiser to raise money for PPE and cleaning supplies. And the news just ran with it. It was on every single thing. Everything in Philadelphia had my t-shirt campaign. I was doing interviews. I had somebody follow me on the route talking to me while I was walking in the rain. I ended up, I ended up selling 2000 t-shirts and raising $40,000. In four weeks. And I was able to buy mask, buy cleaning supplies, buy all, and have it dropped off at the yard and given out and, and everyone, you know, and so then right after that, David mu called then Kelly Clarkson called and then in December of 2020 The, the administration reached out and was like, Hey, we're looking for an African American union worker to talk about the build back better plan. We think you fit the, you know, the, the model . Yeah. Can you come in and interview, give us your thoughts about Biden and Harris and you know, yeah. And next thing you know, I was doing a commercial for the administration and then the July of 2021, July 4th, 2021, I was invited as one of his special guests to awesome. Fourth for July on the south lawn for a private barbecue. Oh, did you get to bring your. No. Nope. Only bought one person. Okay. yeah, no, I took, I took my manager. Okay. Took my manager, who, who was very instrumental in helping me build the brand the way that it was. And yeah, we had 4th of July on the on the south lawn of the white house. Man, what a cool honor and well deserved. I think you know, like you said we have to pick up the garbage it's, you're an essential worker. Yeah. And you know, you're well done. Well done. Kudos to you. I'm I'm very, very excited for you. Well, let's talk about this new book. Okay. Can you tell us about it? Yeah, so it's called I'm cool too. And it, it comes from the fact that when I became a sanitation workers, my kids were clowning me. They were, they didn't want me to pick him up from, in front of the school. I had to park around the corner. My son was like, oh my dad's a pilot. And he's a karate. There's a, I was like, wait a minute. Now, like, my job is so important. You have no idea, but I didn't understand. So the book stems from the real conversations I had with my kids about how essential sanitation workers are to the community. And then. I saw a light click on for all of them. So now they're super conscious of litter and super conscious of trash. And they're going to school and talking about starting a composting program and all these things. And I'm just like, if I can do it for a 10, nine and five year old, I match for. The world. So that's a tough audience. Good for you. at the same time a a woman named Paris had reached out to me and was like, Hey don't know if you ever thought about this, but I help people write children's books. And this, I was like, this is God sent. got together. She was my project manager. The name of her company is called empower creative. And she helped me get through all my deadlines of, of writing this children's book. And then she helped me find a dope illustrator. And now the book is like two days from going to print and we, to this date, we've sold over a we've pre sold over a thousand books already. And, but I didn't feel like that was enough. So I decided to donate $5 from every book sale to the public schools of my city. So at $5 of every book sales goes to the Philadelphia public schools. Awesome. And what a smart way to gather attention for it, such a good cause. And I saw the cover and was just totally impressed with it, so well done on the, well, yeah, no, that Deborah Tyson is an amazing illustrator in Delaware county, Pennsylvania. I, I, I, I can't, like you say we can do it all together. I can't do this alone. So I have an amazing project management team. You know, sometimes I go ghosts and I'm doing 90 things at a time. Yeah. And they like write on me like, Hey sir, you have, so some deadlines you need to make. But yeah, this book experience has been amazing because one of the other things I'm doing is. I, you know, as a social media influencer, I'm always trying to figure out marketing and yeah. And, you know, getting things out there, the word, and I decided to challenge a hundred businesses to purchase a hundred copies and donate them to a school or library of their choice. I love that. And I'm calling it one of the 100. And what that means is that. Businesses will get a customized trophy from me. They'll be mentioned in my press release their logo will be on a thank you postcard that goes out to everyone who's ever purchased a book. And then I'll highlight them across all my social media accounts starting in October. So, wow. What have to do is purchase 100 books, but books are $20 a piece. So that's $2,000. And then they'll get a mail to their house or their company, and they can distribute them however they see fit, but they'll have a trophy. Press release postcard and social media. And then some of the businesses that are, are, are local that have been pur purchasing the books. They wanna do like a little one of the 100 party. So, oh, nice. I might be later in the year, be planning maybe a, a one of 100 party to say thank you to all the business. That purchased a hundred books. I even have some people that aren't businesses that are just like married couples. It's like, we, we're not of business. here you go. We wanna help. Right. And like you said, on your, your website, you can, you can buy one book. You can buy, you can buy five, you know? Right. So I think the, the, the ability for everyone to help, you know, oftentimes I'll get asked, how can I help? How can I help the world be more sustainable? How can I help people do the right things with waste? And this is, this is a great option. Yeah, no, I, in many ways, Not only does the book teach the children about, you know, sanitation workers, littering community, someone has to read it to them. So we're also doing is creating that time where we're not on our phones, not on social media, not watching TV, where we're together, we're sitting, we're all. And then there's actually a little game in the children's book. So there's some people who sponsored some, some stuff in the book. So there's little logos hidden. Throughout the book. And I like that. I scavenger hunt. And, and so what I did for those businesses is that at the end of the book, there's QR codes so that the parents can scan the QR codes and find out about these waste and recycling companies or recycling companies or sustainability companies who have their logo in the book. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, and, and I wanna, I want say right now, sustainable packaging with Cory connors is gonna be one of your, your companies donating to this book. Oh, thank you. We're gonna be one of that hundred. I wanna get my QR code in there. Oh, come on. Let's do it. We're in man. We're let's do we wanna help you? We wanna spread the word. And, and I think listen, if you're listening, join us, join the group. Yeah. And be a part of the solution. Yeah, no, I, I, one, I just wanna say thank you. I really appreciate it. Like when we met at, at waste Expo I, I automatically felt a synergy here and, and I know you came to one of my panels. And you came up to me afterwards and I could just, I could tell that we were gonna be talking again. And so, but, you know, I, I really appreciate that because. I, I, I honestly really believe in this book and I really think that it could really start conversations all around the world on how we look at sanitation workers, illegal dumping litter, but most of all community, right? How do we look at ourselves? Right. In our community, what are we doing in our community? That's is it a positive impact? Is it a negative impact? And those conversations as a fi like my daughter talks about volunteering at five . I love that because she both DC volunteers with me to go do cleanups. So now at five and six at nine at 10. What, you know, when you going to high school? Well, what have you done? Well, I've done 10 community cleanups with my dad. Yeah. I've picked up over 10 tons. Like imagine what that high school application looks like now. and, and that's the people that get hired because the, their empathy, their giving spirit, their generosity and I'm doing the same with my kids. I work I'm on the board for Candlelighters for children with cancer. Oh man. And, and my, my kids will come up to me. Hey dad, can we give this to the candlelight lighters kids? You know, can we, I got $10. I want to donate it. Like, whoa, that's so dope. That's so dope. Corey. It's like, man, like right here, like. It's emotional as a parent. No, because, because you, you, you can not only do you feel, but you in real life see your impact on your children. Like I lost my mother November 20, 20, sorry. No, no, thank you. And, but my mom was such a servant mm-hmm she just, that, that's where I get it from. She's such a servant. One of the things she did was she liked to. Take my, my grandmother cooks huge meals. She liked to take extra food and feed the homeless. So outta nowhere, my 10 year old, you know, called me and was like, dad, I'm, I'm thinking about grandma. I'm really heavy and I'm sad. And I miss her and I wanna do something to like, help me remember her. And she said, can I start a nonprofit like you, but just feed the homeless. I haven't. I have a 10 year old, wanting to start a nonprofit, amazing to feed the home. I, I don't even care what she does in life, as long as she has those, those morals I'm okay. Yeah. Well done. That's the type of children we want to raise. Those are the type of, those are the type of productive citizens that are gonna figure out zero waste that are gonna figure out composting that are gonna figure out, you know, illegal dumping. Like those are the type of kids because they grew up in it. Yeah. And they're, they're not gonna, they're gonna have that attitude of success. Like, I know that we can do this together. If we work really hard and, and communicate with people around us and community well done, do the community that that's, that's my biggest thing. C stripped the world of that community aspect. When I first started doing my cleanups, they were so widely attended and people, I was like, well, why did 300 people show up to clean three blocks? and one woman literally said was like, I've been sitting in my house for eight months. this is the only safe thing I can do is come outside. Wear a mask and clean, and now I'm getting so many DMS, like, Hey, I found my realtor at your cleanup or, Hey, I found that's cool. I found, I found a new buddy and we do cleanups all around the city now. And I have a friend that's like, I call him my trash ambassador. He's created a website where anybody doing a cleanup in Philadelphia can submit to this website. So all the cleanups are on one website. Awesome. I've since my cleanups 20 many groups have started in different parts of the city. So now we have like a Roxboro cleanup and a, a west north and a east and a south and a nice popular street cleanup. And all these people are now like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do, you know, and I say all the time, it's, it's going take all of us to change the. Yeah, no one person can change the world. Everybody has to say yes to the change mm-hmm and I I'm in real life experiencing when people actually say yes to something you're passionate about something you advocate for something you educate about like the, the. It has shifted here in Philadelphia. And I think everywhere in the world can, can use this shift. Yeah. Well, Terrell for president, I say is that next? You going into politics, sir? You'd be great at it. Here's the, you'd be great at it. Here's the thing I'm not gonna lie and say I'm not interested. Okay. Right. But The, the greatest thing a person can do is know themselves. Yeah. And I know myself mm-hmm and there's a certain stigma or aura that has become normal for people in positions of power mm-hmm . And I don't have that aura I'm I'm really down grassroots boots type of guy. And a lot of times it's a photo op and it's a talking you're not doing. And it's a, and I, I am someone who I like to tell people when it's all said and done, right. I want everybody to say that your FA trash man, Terrell header was somebody who did. Yes. And didn't just. Boom right. Bike drop. Yes. that's it. So I love that. I don't know how effective I would be. In the current state of politics. Yeah. You know, well said so, but I'll, I'll, I'll figure it out. I mean, we have some, some revolutionary politicians and people in PO in positions of power that are shifting that. Or I am a, I shifted the narrative on sanitation workers. Maybe I'll shift the narratives on politicians, but, but for right now, I'm just really focusing on. Neighborhood cleanups community advancement, like my nonprofit. We do expungement clinics, food drives, coat drives, financial literacy. First time home buyer seminars. I just, I just came up with a new idea. So if anybody wants to help me, I wanna do a community B Y O B. And it's, it's called bring your own bills. and what I wanna do is I wanna have community members bring their bills to my nonprofit. And by way of sponsorships and grants, my nonprofit is able to pay their bills. Oh, amazing. And it's so needed with, with the inflation and with, you know, gas prices and it's more than ever. One of the worst things as a sanitation worker and is cleaning up an eviction. Those hurt the worst. Yeah. Cause you see someone's whole life. And you gotta throw that, that, that those, those hurt the worst. And it's it's because there's no resources. I, I, I tweeted the other day that everyday people don't have the resources to be everyday people. Yeah. Yeah. I, I heard yesterday that over 40% of Amer Americans have less than a thousand dollars in their banking. Wow. They, they, they just, they don't have a, a resource. They don't have a backup plan. And if the job goes away or the inflation hits they're in trouble. And so, you know, we gotta help each other. And, and it, what, what Ima, so then we talk about, let's talk about, imagine their mindset when it comes to picking up trash in their neighborhood. Right. Do you think they that's high on their list? No, they're not even eating. They're not paying their bills. Their children are home. And that's what I always say. Being environmentally conscious is a privilege. Yeah. It's it is for a privilege. Yeah. That's a great point. I interviewed my friend Sean drew from South Africa and he said the same thing. He said, Corey, you know, people aren't really focused on that right now. And I said, wow, I just, you know, like they're trying to put food on the table, but they're doing it. A lot of these people that live near him are, are picking up recycling and getting paid for. Yeah, and getting, and getting paid well for it. And he said, it's pretty cool to see these, these families being able to support themselves while helping the environment. No. So dope. So dope. So dope. And I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's sad, but they're on the other, on the other side of that, it's, it's people like you and I that have to keep banging the. until, until it's heard everywhere that, yeah. The way that we fix things is just the basics. It's resources, jobs, food. Employment. I said jobs already. Housing, education, public safety. And one of the main indicators of a community is how it looks. The beautification of it is their trees is their green spaces. Is their trash all over place. Is there tires? Is there abandoned cars? Are there. Those those D those for a reason, unbeknownst to me dictate the, the, the flow of the community, you know? Yeah. And so many studies have been done on it. So like, Why I understand gun violence and mass shooting and all thing. But imagine if all those kids had a playground to go to, instead of being stuck up in the house, Googling how to build guns. Right. Right. Well, it sets a precedent. It, you know, oh, there's already garbage. Who cares? Right. Right. And, and, and you're, you're making it acceptable. You're setting the bar low. No, for, for people. And I think what you're doing is you're raising the bar for your community. I got to you, I, I tell people all the time no one will start a trash pile, but everybody will add to it. Yeah, well said, well, thank you, sir. I really appreciate this. Well, no, thanks for having me. You have my vote can you, can you even vote in Philadelphia? No, but I can vote for the USA and someday I'll put that on. We it's gonna be a couple years, but we we'll you there. Okay. Yes. We're friends now. So we'll, we'll be, I love. Well, thank you again. And thank you, Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast. If you're listening, please be sure to subscribe. So you don't miss the next episode and give us a review. We really appreciate that. Thanks, Terrell. Yeah, no problem. And if anybody wants to find me, they can always find me on Instagram @ underscore. Y a F as in Frank, a as in apple, V as in violin, Trashman your fave Trashman and that's across all social media accounts, LinkedIn, and yeah, let's just change the world together. I'll put all your links in the, in the notes, so people can just, just scroll up and click 'em. Cool. Cool, cool. Cool. All right, sir. Thank you. No, thank you.