The environment is getting a little cleaner with the help of 7-year-old Ryan Hickman. He started Ryan’s Recycling Company and has already recycled 200,000 cans and bottles and made $21,000 doing it! This little environmentalist is just getting started and thinks more young people should do the same.
In 2012 at the age of 3, Ryan went along with his dad to the local recycling center and cashed in a few small bags of cans and bottles and decided that recycling was in his future. The day after going to the recycling center, Ryan notified his mom and dad that he wanted to give empty plastic bags to all the neighbors and maybe they would save their recyclables for him. Not only did the local neighbors save their cans and bottles for Ryan but so did their friends, families and co-workers. Today, Ryan has customers all over Orange County, CA and he has a passion to recycle that is amazing. Ryan spends a part of every week sorting thru cans and bottles from his customers and getting them ready to take to the recycle center. Ryan is saving for his future college education (although he might tell you he’s saving for a full size trash truck) and he is a Youth Ambassador at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach (all proceeds from his company t-shirts go to help support their volunteer efforts.) Ryan collects plastic and glass beverage bottles as well as aluminum cans. Ryan and his parents take them in by the truckload every few weeks to the local redemption center where they are unloaded, sorted and weighed.
We showed this tiny vid to our kids, and they were immediately inspired to both start a business, and help the environment! We wish schools would occasionally show short docs like this to kids, and empower them to do more than what’s expected. A child’s voice is often far more powerful than an adults.
Check out the 60 Second Doc below;
If you’d like to help Ryan and help the environment at the same time if you live in the Laguna Beach area, contact him here to schedule a pick up.
For more “60 Second Docs,” the innovative series from Indigenous Media that re-envisions the future of documentary storytelling for the millennial generation, check out: VidMe, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.