When I met Justin Appold, a junior at Boston College, the first thing I noticed was his t-shirt. It featured a picture of stick people (Life-Is-Good style) playing a game of beer pong, and the neon writing told me to “Recycle Your Party.” What I didn’t know was that this t-shirt was one of many that are part of a movement to keep the earth clean— a movement started by our very own Justin Appold.
Justin grew up in Islip, New York, spending his summers hanging out at the beach with his brother Brendan and their friends, and the environment has always been important to both of the brothers. “We have this thing where we always pick up one piece of trash and try to leave the beach a nicer place than we found it,” Justin told me. But recently these boys have taken their passion for the environment to a whole new level. According to Justin, on a normal beach day three years ago, he and Brendan were just hanging on the beach with their buddies, cleaning up the trash they found while goofing around, when his brother smiled and said, “Hey guys, we’re sustainably chillin’ right now.”
Justin Appold and his brother, Brendan (left).
The slogan stuck, and the boys thought of how cool it would be to make a Facebook group— “Sustainable Chillin’”— to spread the word and encourage other people to commit to picking up at least one piece of trash on the beaches of Long Island, or really anywhere, to make it a nicer, cleaner place. But they never made the Sustainable Chillin’ Facebook group. Instead, they created something even bigger through a for-profit business. Justin and his brother created their business “Sustainable Chillin’” to sell t-shirts that could spread their movement. The t-shirts were made with 100% organic cotton and environmentally friendly dyes, and each shirt had a different environmental message. They began with 200 shirts and a mission to plant trees for every purchase made.
“We wanted to create a net positive benefit for the environment,” Justin said. The first 200 shirts sold immediately, and the business quickly grew— the boys began selling their shirts online, as well as in seven different stores on Long Island. They recently created a YouTube video, hoping it would “go viral” to help promote their business. Justin wrote the script for the video with his brother, and then they reached out to people in their areas.
They emailed film students at Columbia University and NYU and got a ton of responses for actors and directors. Justin described the filming of the video to me— everyone involved was happy to benefit such a great cause for no price. The actors and film students didn’t even charge, and they had strangers willing to lend over their cars to be featured in the video. One man even allowed them to film at his house after the crew knocked on his door to ask for the favor. The video turned out to be really big, drawing attention to investors offering to work with funding. In fact, Justin was all ready to take last semester off from BC when he was offered funding for Sustainable Chillin.’ Although that offer fell through, Justin is happy to keep his business as it is until another investor comes along.
So how does it work? According to Justin, “When you buy a shirt online, we send you an email with your own tree, and you get to decide where you’d like it planted. There are twelve countries to choose from, and they’re all over the place— from Costa Rica to Honduras and all the way to Zambia. And once it’s planted, you can go online and actually see the tree you planted in a kind of “Sustainable Chillin’ virtual forest.” He wants everyone to get involved, so check out his YouTube video and his website, tell your friends, and join the Sustainable Chillin’ movement to make the earth a cleaner place.