What's our why?
At Re-Up Cycle, we are passionate about transforming waste into resources through innovative recycling solutions. Our mission is to restore humanity by fostering sustainable practices and creating economic opportunities in underserved communities. Building a sustainable future through recycling and community empowerment. Meet Bottle Boy, our young black boy genius inspiring the next generation to recycle and embrace sustainability. This program educates and empowers minority communities, creating environmental stewards of the future.
RE-UP CYCLE, L3C is a proud partner of GROWING HOME, Inc in Englewood keep the surrounding grounds of the urban farm litter free!
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Re-Up Cycle is more than a recycling initiative, it’s a movement. Though we’re in the early stages, we are building a future where communities thrive through sustainability, innovation, and collective action. We invite you to be a part of this journey. Whether you’re an educator, business owner, policymaker, or passionate advocate, your support is key to driving this change forward.
Let’s work together to create a cleaner, greener, and more just world.
SOCIAL
At Re-Up Cycle, we believe change begins with education and community empowerment. Our mission is to engage and inspire underserved communities, particularly in minority neighborhoods affected by environmental challenges. Through our Bottle Boy Initiative, we make sustainability fun for children by using relatable storytelling to encourage eco-conscious habits. Additionally, we build partnerships with local schools, businesses, and organizations to host workshops and hands-on recycling programs. By fostering a culture of sustainability, we aim to equip every community with the knowledge and tools to combat plastic pollution.
EConomicAL
Re-Up Cycle focuses on economic empowerment through sustainable job creation in green industries, offering fair wages and workforce training in underserved communities. We are collaborating with officials to promote innovative policies, like bottle deposit programs, that incentivize recycling participation. Our upcoming Re-Up Cycle app will make recycling easier and more rewarding, enabling community members to track their impact, earn credits, and support a circular economy that benefits both people and the planet.
Environment
At the heart of our mission is a bold vision, a world where nothing goes to waste. Re-Up Cycle is preparing to launch a state-of-the-art recycling facility designed to process plastics, cardboard, glass, and aluminum with cutting-edge technology, ensuring that valuable materials are given new life rather than polluting our environment. By prioritizing eco-friendly operations and carbon emission reduction, we are actively working to combat climate change while promoting a circular economy. As we lay the groundwork for our future operations, we remain committed to strategic partnerships with sustainability advocates, businesses, and government leaders who share our vision. Together, we will redefine recycling and make a lasting impact.
Kristen Turner
Co-Founder of Re-Up Cycle
Kristen Turner is a passionate educator, creative leader, and advocate for youth empowerment serving as the Co-Founder of Re-Up Cycle, a social enterprise dedicated to building sustainable communities through education, innovation, and circular economy practices. With over eight years of experience as an early childhood educator at Nicholson STEM, Kristen brings her deep commitment to fostering growth, curiosity, and character development into Re-Up Cycle’s mission of cultivating environmental consciousness among the next generation.
As an educator fluent in the language of creativity and connection, Kristen believes that sustainability starts with education teaching children to not only care for the planet but to see themselves as stewards of change. Her professional expertise in curriculum planning, developmental success, and evidence-based instructional methods allows her to design engaging, youth-centered learning experiences that merge environmental awareness with academic growth.
Kristen’s vision within Re-Up Cycle is to bridge the gap between education and sustainability empowering young minds to innovate, imagine, and build a cleaner, more compassionate world. Her work reflects her belief that every child, given the right tools and inspiration, can grow into a leader for a better tomorrow.
Sincere-Amir Rishar
Founder
Sincere-Amir Rishar is not a traditional founder. He is a problem-aware builder committed to engineering solutions where systems have failed. As the Founder and CEO of Re-Up Cycle, Amir is driven by a clear and urgent mission to confront plastic pollution at its root, particularly in underserved minority communities that have historically lacked the infrastructure for sustainable development. His work centers on building a true circular economy for beverage packaging, transforming plastic, glass, and aluminum waste into valuable, reusable resources.
Since 2018, Amir has immersed himself in the recycling and sustainability space, evolving from a novice into a self-educated operator with real world, ground level experience. He has studied industry standards, identified systemic inefficiencies, and engaged directly with global leaders such as Erema to explore advanced bottle to bottle recycling technologies, including PET wash-line systems. In 2025, Amir expanded his environmental expertise by earning certification as an Environmental Specialist through Growing Home Inc., an organic farm in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. There, he contributed to harvesting over 19,000 pounds of organic produce, helping feed more than 600 households while deepening his understanding of sustainable agriculture, food systems, and community based impact.
Operating without institutional backing, Amir has personally led grassroots collection efforts, recovering over 11,000 plastic bottles and 4,000 aluminum cans. While limited infrastructure prevented long term processing, these efforts validated both the scale of the problem and the economic opportunity embedded within waste streams. At the core of Re-Up Cycle is a bold vision to introduce a multimillion dollar recycling industry into underserved communities, creating jobs, restoring environments, and unlocking economic power through secondary raw materials. A key pillar of this vision is the Bottle Boy Initiative, a youth focused educational and cultural platform designed to make sustainability engaging, creative, and actionable. Inspired by the legacy building approach of Walt Disney, Amir sees Bottle Boy as the cultural engine of Re-Up Cycle, a character that teaches young people how to think differently about waste and encourages them to transform discarded materials into new products, from small scale 3D printed goods to future manufacturing innovations.
Amir believes that real change begins with awareness, ownership, and action. His long term goal is to establish Re-Up Cycle as a scalable model that can be deployed across underserved markets nationwide, turning environmental challenges into engines for economic and social transformation. Re-Up Cycle is more than an organization. It is a movement to restore humanity through sustainability, innovation, and collective responsibility.