EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — Two entrepreneurs and volunteers took in the sun and took out the trash in East Cleveland on Friday.
News 5 Anchor Damon Maloney first introduced us to The Trash Boys in the summer of 2024.
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Today, they brought their tour of Cuyahoga County to East Cleveland for a big cleanup project.
“I feel like I’m a mentor, I just want to keep doing this the rest of my life,” The Trash Boys, Drevian Arrington said.
Arrington said they were riding by one day and marked off the spot they wanted to target.
“We just seen this street was full of trash, this whole area and decided to make it into a cleanup,” Arrington said.
East Cleveland Board of Education member Lakeisha Eldermire saw a social media post about it and didn’t think twice to join in.
“It definitely needs it, everywhere you see. We've been cleaning up in front of the schools in front of the gas stations and the side streets,” Eldermire said.
The Trash Boys’ mom, Jasmine Arrington, was there too.
“There’s couches, beds, all kinds of stuff that people have been dumping in front of houses,” Arrington said.
Arrington said the goal is to restore community pride.
“East Cleveland is the first suburb of Cleveland, so there’s a lot of history on the pride here that has been lost,” Arrington said.
She didn’t expect this to be where they would all end up one day.
“I just made them go pick up trash one day to get off the video games and look where we are,” Arrington said.
They’re also behind the non-profit, TTT, which stands for Turning Trash into Triumph.
“We’re giving young teens the opportunity to just volunteer like this a chance to do something productive,” Drevion Arrington said.
Jasmine Arrington says being proud of her boys is an understatement. She feels she’s guiding them to their God-given path and purpose.
“This is bigger than my boys. My boys started it. I'm proud of them. This is so much bigger than them, so much bigger than me,” Jasmine Arrington said.
Their new initiative, traveling through Cuyahoga County with The Trash Boys, will take them to other cities in Northeast Ohio all spring and summer.
