NETZERO360 and Neighborhood Oil Exchange Advance Community-Based Partnership to Turn Used Cooking Oil Into Youth Opportunity, Cleaner Drains, and Scalable Environmental Action

Neighborhood Oil Exchange (NOE) and NETZERO360™ Sustainable Waste Solutions are advancing a strategic partnership focused on a simple but overlooked problem hiding in plain sight: what happens to used cooking oil after it leaves the kitchen.

The collaboration brings together NOE's community-based oil collection model and NETZERO360™'s compliance, diversion tracking, ESG, and operational scaling expertise. Together, the organizations are working to support a practical system where residents, property owners, trained youth operators, and approved recycling partners can help keep used cooking oil out of drains and move it into responsible collection channels.

At its core, the partnership is about more than oil. It is about cleaner buildings, healthier communities, youth entrepreneurship, and a new way to connect environmental responsibility with workforce development.

Neighborhood Oil Exchange was created to make used cooking oil diversion accessible at the neighborhood level. The model is designed for communities that traditional collection systems often miss, including multi-unit housing, residential communities, schools, community kitchens, food pantries, and local events. Through trained NOE youth operators, residents can safely hand off used cooking oil for collection, storage, reporting, and recycling.

NETZERO360™ will support the initiative by helping strengthen the compliance structure, pilot planning, sustainability tracking, operational documentation, and long-term scalability of the model. This includes exploring how NOE chapters can align with measurable diversion outcomes, environmental safety practices, and future workforce pathways.

This is the kind of partnership that makes sustainability real. It starts with something as ordinary as cooking oil, but the impact reaches much further. Cleaner drains, fewer preventable maintenance issues, youth learning real environmental systems, and communities seeing that circularity does not have to be abstract. It can happen right where people live.

Lisa Puckett, Chief Compliance Officer of BayArea Compliance (BAC) and founder of NETZERO360™

The NOE model also addresses a larger infrastructure issue. Used cooking oil poured down drains can contribute to buildup, pest pressure, clogged pipes, and added maintenance burdens for buildings and property owners. By creating a simple exchange between residents and trained youth operators, NOE reframes oil diversion as a community service instead of a disposal headache.

For Terry L. McCullough, MSW, founder of Neighborhood Oil Exchange, the work is deeply tied to community, social enterprise, and giving young people a meaningful role in environmental protection.

Neighborhood Oil Exchange gives young people a way to lead. They are not just collecting oil. They are learning why drains matter, why contamination matters, why buildings stay healthier when people understand what is happening under the sink. This is environmental education, workforce development, and community service working together.

Terry L. McCullough, MSW, founder of Neighborhood Oil Exchange

The collaboration is also connected to the development of the National Environmental Systems Safety Technician Association (NESSTA), a newly formed nonprofit association focused on Environmental Systems Safety Technician training, curriculum integrity, workforce development, and standards-based replication. As part of NESSTA's early development, Lisa Puckett has been formally invited to serve as Board Chair. The appointment recognizes her role in helping shape the broader ESST ecosystem, including nonprofit structure, workforce development strategy, youth training pathways, compliance oversight, and national replication planning.

NESSTA is expected to support the training framework behind NOE and related environmental systems safety programs. Early priorities include board development, licensing and replication standards, curriculum review, pilot evaluation, compliance frameworks, and future accreditation preparation where applicable.

The partnership between NOE and NETZERO360™ is expected to begin with pilot planning and stakeholder engagement in California, Michigan, and Chicago, with potential applications in housing communities, school districts, workforce development programs, food service environments, transitional housing, skilled nursing facilities, and community-based organizations. The goal is direct: build a model that can train young people, support cleaner buildings, help residents participate in practical sustainability, and give property owners a smarter way to address drain health and used oil diversion.

This is giving back with structure. Good intentions are not enough. If we want community impact to last, it needs compliance, training, tracking, and a pathway for people to earn, grow, and lead. That is where NETZERO360™ and NOE fit together.

Lisa Puckett

Together, Neighborhood Oil Exchange, NETZERO360™, and NESSTA are laying the groundwork for a community-driven environmental safety model that is local enough to serve one building and structured enough to scale nationally.