A 13-year-old boy has turned thousands of discarded drink cans into a regular source of funding for food banks and charities in the West Midlands. Ryan came up with the idea after wanting to use his spare time to help people in need. What began as a simple collection project has grown into a community effort, with residents and businesses saving bags of aluminium cans for his family to collect. Around 20,000 cans are gathered each week and taken to the family’s Solihull garage, where they are crushed and sold as scrap. The money raised after costs is then donated to good causes.
How a 13-year-old turned cans into a charity project
According to BBC reports, Ryan’s project operates through We Can CIC, a Community Interest Company set up around the collection and recycling of aluminium drink cans. The 13-year-old wanted something he could do in his spare time to support people and eventually settled on collecting cans as a practical way to raise funds.The scale of the work is now considerably larger than a typical weekend project. People and businesses gather their empty cans into bags, which Ryan’s family then collects. The material is taken to the family’s garage in Solihull, where the cans are crushed and prepared for sale.His father, John, helps with the processing and said the operation can take as much as 20 hours a week. The family handles roughly a tonne of cans each month, turning what would otherwise enter the waste stream into a source of income for charitable causes.
PC: BBC
20,000 cans collected every week from homes and businesses
The initiative aims to collect about 20,000 cans every seven days. That figure depends on contributions from members of the public as well as businesses that save their empty containers for the family.Once the cans arrive, they have to be sorted and crushed before being taken to scrapyards. The family does not simply pass the full value of the metal on to charities, as there are costs involved in running the operation. What remains is donated to good causes.John said the family has received substantial support from people in the community and is willing to continue expanding the collection. For residents with bags of aluminium drink cans, the arrangement offers a way to have them removed while directing their value towards local support services.The scheme has also taken on an added relevance in Birmingham, where disruption to household recycling collections has left residents dealing with accumulated recyclable waste during the bin workers’ strike.
Money from cans helps Anawim support women in Birmingham
As reported, the recycling operation raises about £5,000 in cash and food for charities each year. Among the organisations receiving support is Anawim, a Birmingham-based women’s support hub.For Anawim, the benefit goes beyond the money generated from the cans. The collection work gives some of its supporters something practical to do during the week, while the resulting funds and food help maintain its food bank supplies.Megan Heath from Anawim said the donations help keep the food bank stocked. She also described the can collecting as a useful activity for people involved with the organisation, giving them a regular task and a sense of purpose during their days.
Volunteers help keep the collection moving
The system relies on more than Ryan and his family. People connected with the charities also collect cans themselves before handing them over for processing.One volunteer, Angela, who is known to friends as Miss P, spends weekdays picking up discarded cans with a litter picker and bin bags. She collects from Monday to Friday, helping turn litter from streets and other areas into material that can eventually be sold.For her, the work has become worthwhile both because of the practical result and because other women benefit from what the collection produces.An empty can is picked up, stored with others, transported to the garage, crushed and sold as scrap. The money left after expenses then makes its way towards food and other support for people using local charities.
A simple recycling idea becomes regular support for local charities
John said recycling is something the community wants to do more of, while the family’s experience has shown there is also a financial use for material that might otherwise be treated simply as rubbish.That combination has allowed Ryan’s original idea to develop into a regular operation involving residents, businesses, volunteers, his family and local charities. The garage remains an important part of it, despite the amount of work involved in processing thousands of cans.For Ryan, the starting point was much smaller. He wanted to use some of his free time to help people in need and began looking for an idea that could make a difference. The answer turned out to be something many people would normally empty, crush and throw away.Now thousands of those cans pass through the family each week, with their scrap value helping support food banks and other services in the Birmingham and Solihull area.
