We’re excited to announce the winner of our arch, 2025 Matt Kurtz Kindness Grant for their wonderful kindness project. The grant was given by Matt’s Kindness Ripples On (MKRO), an organization that encourages acts of kindness by helping people who have ideas for kindness projects but lack the funding to follow through on those ideas.

Congratulations to Max Steitz and Franziska Trautmann!

They will receive $500 to help fund their acts of kindness project!

Max Steitz and Franziska Trautmann (New Orleans, LA), co-founders of Glass Half Full, are on a mission to keep glass out of landfills, convert the glass to sand and use the sand for rebuilding the eroded shores of Louisiana, among other things.

Until Max and Franziska got involved, Louisiana lacked glass recycling; therefore 295 million pounds of glass were going into landfills annually. They also wanted to do something about the fact that Louisiana loses a football field size of land every 100 minutes due to coastal erosion.

Franziska Trautmann working on coastline restoration.

They said, “Like most good things, it started with a bottle of wine…

As seniors at Tulane University in 2020, we were disappointed and frustrated with the lack of glass recycling in New Orleans. One night, over a bottle of wine that we knew would end up at the landfill unless we did something about it, we hatched a plan to combat this problem. Specifically, we wanted a system that was transparent, accessible, and most importantly, actually recycled glass into something functional. Instead of trying to take on the task of reforming the current system, we decided to look at the ‘glass half full’ by implementing our own grassroots glass recycling program.”

They started with a small machine that could crush one bottle at a time and set up a “go-fund-me” page and a pilot project in the backyard of a fraternity house.

“We began collecting and hand-crushing our friends’ glass with no real expectation for what this project would become. As word spread, participation and support grew; and soon we obtained the resources to move to a location in Uptown New Orleans.

After quickly running out of storage space, supporters rallied to help us expand into a new processing facility on Louisa St. where we’d have the ability to scale up our operations and accept more glass. From there, it was history – we are now backed by a growing team of staff, volunteers and community members who pitch in daily to divert tens of thousands of pounds of glass each week from landfills across the Gulf South.”

Max Steitz with glass diverted from landfills.

Once the glass is diverted from the landfill, it is sorted by color (any plastic or metal components are removed). Then it’s crushed and turned into sand and gravel. The recycled glass sand can be used for anything from coastal restoration and disaster relief to flooring and new glass products.

To date, they have diverted more than 8 million pounds from landfills and restored thousands of square meters along our coast – converting open water back into thriving wetlands.

There were many naysayers along the way. People thought two college kids could never make a dent in this problem. But Max and Franziska decided, no matter how small the impact, it would be worth it.

Franziska said, “Dread, doom and gloom tend to get us nowhere, whereas hope, combined with action can be one of the most powerful tools to enact change.”

Wow, what did you do in college? Seriously, Max and Franziska are incredible and making a big difference in our world. We’re proud to have them in our MKRO family.

 

This grant is given in honor of Matt Kurtz, (1985-2017), a young man whose personal philosophy was to live an honorable, compassionate and non-judgmental life. To give for the sake of giving, to expect nothing in return, to be aware of the world around him and to step in to help others without being asked whenever he saw the need. Matt believed in the ripple effect of a simple act of kindness – like a pebble dropped in water, it goes on and on. You can find out more about how Matt lived his life, examples of his many acts of kindness, big and small, and why this grant was created on MattsKindnessRipplesOn.com.