Outagamie County, WI Recycling and Solid Waste‘s video demonstrates, in a humorous way, that people shouldn’t recycle Christmas lights because it tangles recycling machines. It shows an employee, “Philthy Philm,” angrily untangling the lights from a machine and putting them into a proper drop-off bin. In two days the video has more than a million views, giving a big boost to Outagamie County Recycling and Solid Waste’s popularity.
“I don’t think we knew it was going to go viral. We always joke like ‘Ah, we’re going viral, we’re going viral’ and then it happened I’m like ‘Oh my goodness guys we went viral,’” said Marissa Michalkiewicz, Recycling and Solid Waste Program Coordinator. Marissa Michalkiewicz says Recycling and Resource Recovery Administrator Alex Nett approached her about starting a TikTok account a few weeks ago, aiming to use it as an educational tool.
Employees play characters in the videos, like “Philthy Philm,” putting a persona on the industry. “His real name is Phil, so it’s a play on words ‘Philthy Philm,’” said Nett. “A lot of people referred to Phil as the ‘angry recycle man’ so making that connection that it’s more than just, you put it at the end of your curb and it disappears, that there’s people who actually involved in that and who have to handle it and see it.”
Other characters include “Dirty Dan the Loader Man” and “Leadpoint Luke.” Michalkiewicz says they often refer to each other by their new nicknames now. “We just work with an incredible group of people,” said Michalkiewicz. “I don’t know why they agreed to do these videos with me but I’m very thankful, otherwise this would’ve went absolutely nowhere.”