The Oxford Academy Branch, the first branch of Teens Against E-waste (TAE), is located in Cypress, California. Eight months after Joshua Lou founded the nonprofit TAE and had attempted multiple research and advocacy projects to raise awareness of e-waste recycling, he reached out to the senior apartments near his home to collect used batteries for recycling. After receiving overwhelming responses and large amounts of batteries, he got so excited and thought, "We might be able to collect a million batteries!" That marked the start of the One Million Batteries (1MB) campaign in November 2021.

"I'm going to run a school event to collect batteries," Joshua told his family at the dining table on a Thursday evening, despite seeing skeptical faces. The same evening, he sent out an email to his school's Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO) board members with his proposal, including the details of a schoolwide Battery Recycling Event. With the help of 18 students and adults, the results of the event were stunning—12,288 batteries were collected within two weeks (see his testimonial)!

Since then, the energy has been passed on from one student to another, and TAE has grown exponentially with dozens of branches founded in many cities, states, and countries! In July 2022, we also launched TAE's second global campaign called WEEEcycle to recycle electronic waste other than batteries. We look forward to spreading our initiatives to raise more public awareness of e-waste recycling in our communities both locally and globally.