EcoPress hopes to clean up the Sacramento area one piece of litter at a time

At 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday, Sam Mejia moved along the streets of Old Sacramento with a litter picker in hand, scanning the ground near Joe’s Crab Shack. Around her, volunteers in bright orange vests fanned out along the railroad tracks and nearby roads, filling black trash bags piece by piece.

But Mejia isn’t just cleaning up the city.

As the founder of EcoPress Sacramento, she’s turning that trash into something else entirely—melting discarded plastic into jewelry, home goods and art—while building a growing community effort to rethink waste in Sacramento.

EcoPress Sacramento is an upcycling art studio that aims to reduce plastic waste by turning it into homegoods, jewelry and art. The studio transforms collected plastic by melting it down, pressing it and then trimming it into the desired shape.

For its work in reducing plastic waste into art and other functional products, EcoPress won the 13th annual Calling All Dreamers business incubator program on April 16. The business was awarded a $20,000 prize and business support for its upcoming brick-and-mortar location.

On April 27, EcoPress Sacramento was named one of 12 finalists for the 2026 Western Placer Waste Management Authority Circular Economy Innovation Competition.

Mejia said that the idea to start EcoPress came to her in summer 2025, but she didn’t start pursuing it hardcore until August 2025. It was around that time that she said EcoPress started participating in multiple events, like Maker Faire Bay Area 2025 in late September. EcoPress is also a part of the nationwide Precious Plastic Movement.

Mejia claimed that she was inspired to create EcoPress by YouTube videos and other upcycling creators, recalling seeing a person who transformed medicine bottles into sunglasses frames and another person who made pieces of luggage and purses out of blue plastic bags.  Seeing trash all around Sacramento, Mejia wanted to contribute to recycling efforts.

Mejia said that she had been picking up trash since she was a kid.  It was until around six years ago that she started making art out of it.

“People would often laugh at me and say, ‘What’s the point? It’s just going to end up on the street tomorrow,’” Mejia said. “And I thought, ‘well, they kind of do have a point. What are we actually going to do with it?’”

Currently, EcoPress works with No. 2 HDPE and PLA plastics and hopes to eventually use No. 4 LDPE, No. 5 PP and No. 1 PETE plastic in the near future. Mejia said they completely avoid No. 3 PVC and No. 6 PS plastic for safety reasons.

EcoPress is currently partnered with multiple organizations like EcoJoyous, The Atrium, Flower Fits Market, Refill Madness, Innovate for California and more. Mejia said they often collect trash from them to use toward their products and art.

Prior to the month, EcoPress also hosted monthly clean-up events, where volunteers would pick up within the area near the meet-up spot. Mejia said volunteers usually pick up an average of about 35 to 55 pounds of trash per event.

One volunteer named Christopher Jones, who works for Pacific State Marine Fisheries Commission, usually attends the clean up events by EcoPress with his family. On March 28, he attended with his father, Mike Jones.

Christopher Jones said that he is passionate about environmental stewardship and zero waste efforts, which is what drew him to EcoPress Sacramento.

“It’s great getting the community involved with cleanup and also understanding the recycling process, the waste process and turning something that was once refuse into a usable good,” Christopher Jones said.

Mike Jones expressed how he enjoyed the community aspect of events hosted by EcoPress.

“I get to meet all sorts of different people, and it’s amazing how many younger people are out here doing this,” Mike Jones said.

Tom Huynh, a credentialing associate with Savant Health, volunteered with EcoPress for the first time on March 28. He found out about the event through a post on Reddit, where he said volunteering posts now seem rare, which is what drove him to join. He said he liked EcoPress’ mission to recycle plastic material.

“I think it’s the most important thing in, like, facing our times,” Huynh said, “If we don’t take care of [the Earth], then our descendants are going to suffer.”

EcoPress Sacramento announced Dec. 19, 2025, on Instagram that they acquired a lease for their own retail space in Old Sacramento. Mejia said that EcoPress is currently planning a soft launch at the end of May and a hard launch on June 27.

The retail space is going to be inside The Paperworks building at 1115 Front St., which is currently undergoing renovations. EcoPress will be placed within the first floor toward the back of the building across from a new Wild Sisters Book Company location and next to what is anticipated to be an art gallery, with a museum opening up on the second floor.

Mejia said that once the Old Sac location is open, EcoPress does not plan on expanding for a while and will put a majority of its focus on building community through workshops and more events. 

One idea she shared was a workshop for people of all ages to teach them how to start making art or goods of their own using tools they can find at home. She recalled how she first started getting into the art of upcycling and hopes to inspire others to try out the same.

“I started with a $20 Facebook Marketplace panini press. That’s what I was melting my plastic on,” Mejia said. “Then I was using cookie cutters from the thrift store to be able to cut things.” 

Innovate for California Project Manager and Board Director Shawn Dean said that Innovate for California began their partnership with EcoPress around December 2025. Dean said that the organization hopes to work together with EcoPress to create a closed-loop system of 3D printers that uses recycled filament for local schools and Old Sacramento.

“One of our aspirations is to bring recycling 3D-printed filament into Old Sacramento,” Dean said. “We’re trying to partner with [EcoPress] to buy what is called a Filabot Full Recycling Machine, where you can take the results from 3D printing, crumble it back into the raw material and turn it back into the filament that’s used for 3D printing.”

Along with plans for the new retail space, Mejia also said that EcoPress will soon start to host their clean-up events weekly instead of monthly. There are clean up events scheduled on Sunday mornings throughout May: May 3 in Levar Burton Park, Meadowview; May 17 at Flower Fist Market in Midtown; and May 24 at the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento. Follow EcoPress916 on Instagram for updated information about upcoming cleanups. 

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, CapRadio, Capitol Weekly, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.