Talk about a can-do attitude: A 13-year-old boy has raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity by recycling more than 1.5 million drink cans over the past three years. Ryan Hulance, founder of the We Can initiative, launched his passion project as a way to make money for food banks while also caring for the environment.
The eco-conscious teen was just 10 when he began contacting businesses near where he lives in Solihull, a town in England’s West Midlands region, asking if they could spare any cans that he could sell to be recycled. Scrap metal firms pay between about $0.27 and $1.20 per 2.2 pounds of aluminium — the equivalent of around 65 cans.
“I came up with the idea because I wanted to help people and the environment at the same time,” he told SWNS. “I came up with recycling cans and it just took off from there.”
In the early days, Ryan was collecting a few hundred cans per week and storing his bounty at home. To save space, his parents would crush the cans by driving over them in their car before Ryan bagged them up.
He now collects 20,000 cans a week, and his family, who run a garage, were given an industrial crushing machine that bundles the cans into large metal bales. To date, Ryan has earned around $24,000, all of which he’s donated to charity.
He has his sights set even higher, though: His new goal is to regularly recycle more than a ton of cans per month from his 200 regular suppliers. The family hope their idea will also help the nearby city of Birmingham with its recycling crisis due to a garbage collectors strike that’s been ongoing since January 2025.
“We are very proud of Ryan and really want to help him expand,” said mom Karima. “For the last three months we have recycled [over] one ton per month, but we are capable of much, much more.”
The enterprise takes a lot of time, of course — Ryan spends around 20 hours a week collecting and recycling cans after school and on weekends.
“Sometimes I think I’d rather be playing video games with my friends, because I’m 13 years old,” Ryan admitted. “But actually when I think about it more deeply, I really love what I do because I get to help people and families who are in need.”
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