Serena Neel, an influencer with millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, has developed a reputation for being a little absurd. But her antics are always for a good cause.
Whether it’s shopping for 45 Angel Tree recipients around the holidays, giving her delivery drivers thousands of free drinks and snacks, or getting a job cleaning porta-potties, she knows how to capture viewers’ attention.
Her most recent escapade? Filling a pool with 50,000 pickles.
Before you worry about how wasteful that is, Neel is already ten steps ahead of you.
The pickles were purchased from Josh’s Pickles, an independently-owned business that found itself with 10,000 jars of pickles that were inedible and not safe to donate.
“We had 10,000 jars freeze. And when pickles freeze, they change cellular structure. They get soft and mushy,” Josh said in a YouTube video with Neel. “So, these aren't edible. They're not sellable. They're not even donatable. We tried.”
So, Neel took them off the company’s hands for another whimsical project, all before the pickles would be recycled and composted.
It was a whole process.
Neel and a whole team of volunteers built an assembly line with a station to break down jars and clean off the pickles in a contraption they called the “Dilliminator.”
People poured jars of pickles down a ramp, where a wire fence and some water separated the dill and garlic from the pickled cucumbers, so as not to clog the pool with extra ingredients.
Once cleaned, the pickles were transferred to a wheelbarrow, which Neel would dump into the pool.
In between wheelbarrow batches, the pool would be sealed to keep things fresh.
“We do need to keep the pool cover closed because apparently if these were just sitting here, they would turn white in like an hour. That's so weird,” Neel said. “So, let's close it. Gotta protect my pickles. It'll be kind of fun, ‘cause then it'll be like a big pickle reveal … when we’re ready to swim in it.”
The garlic and dill remains were dumped into a compost heap, but the pool still smelled a little, well, pickley.
“Anyone that swims in his pool is just going to smell a little garlicky,” Neel said.
As for the jars, Neel decided to use them to build “the world’s tallest pickle sculpture,” too, before they were recycled.
Once it was all done, Neel had the honor of taking the first dip in the pool. She put on a scuba mask and swimsuit and took the plunge.
“Whoa, I feel like an alligator,” she said, adding, “They kind of tickle.”
Josh was the next one to dive in, giggling in disbelief.
Once they tested the waters, Neel and Josh invited the neighborhood over for a pool party, complete with pickle-shaped inflatables and inner tubes.
“A majestic and pickleastic view was before my eyes,” Neel said in her YouTube video. “In this moment, the long hours of Dilliminating, the countless wheelbarrows full of pickles, and my garlic-reeking hair was all worth it. We achieved our dream of building the world's largest pickle pool and breaking my first-ever world record.”
“Seeing Josh's neighbors come together to not only build but enjoy the pool party was just the icing on the cake,” she added.
And of course, once it was all complete, the pickles were picked up for recycling.
“Josh's friends at Recyclops took the truckload of pickles and turned them into renewable energy,” Neel narrated the process at the recycling center.
“They removed all the oxygen, captured the released methane, and fed it straight into the natural gas pipeline, powering homes across Utah with pickles.”
Watch the whole pickle process below:
You may also like: 800-pound butter sculpture from state fair recycled into electricity: 'Enough to power 600 homes for a year'
Header images courtesy of Serena Neel/Instagram
