9살짜리 재활용회사 사장 Inspiring 7-Year-Old Boy Starts Recycling Company and Saves $10K for College
Inspiring 7-Year-Old Boy Starts Recycling Company and Saves $10K for College
캘리포니아의 소년 라이언 히크맨은 쓰레기 재활용을 하는
믿기 힘든 취미로 심오한(?) 관심을 가져왔다.
쓰레기를 빨리 분류하는 것부터 시작된 그의 취미 생활은 재활용의 열정으로까지 변해갔다.
이제 겨우 7살인 라이언은 자신만의 작은 재활용 회사의 사장으로 있다.
"라이언은 3살때부터 쓰레기를 분류하는데 관심을 가졌다"고 아버지는 말한다.
이웃 5가구와 40명의 고정 고객을 확보하고 있으며 그간 번돈으로 현재까지 1,600불을
기부하고 나머지 1만불은 대학예금계좌에 저축하고 있다.
황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터
Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor
By Kelly Richman-Abdou on January 12, 2017
Since he was a tiny tot, California boy Ryan Hickman has had a profound interest in an unlikely hobby: reusable waste. What started as a fascination with sorting quickly turned into a passion for recycling, and now, at the ripe old age of 7, Ryan is the head honcho of his very own small business: Ryan’s Recycling Company.
Ryan’s first encounter with recycling was at just 3 years old, when he and his father meandered into a recycling center to exchange some refuse. “He likes to sort pretty much anything, and he liked putting the bottles in the machine,” his father, Damion, told The Capistrano Dispatch. “He probably got two or three bucks, and he was so excited about it. And of course then he got to sort his change, so that meant more sorting.” After this first eco-friendly encounter, he was hooked. When they returned home, he told his dad that he wanted to start collecting, cleaning, sorting, and exchanging his neighbors’ recyclables. He and his mother even hand-delivered garbage bags to each home to facilitate his master plan.
Now four years later, the young boy’s grassroots project has seen tremendous success. He currently operates in 5 different neighborhoods and has 40 customers, whose trash he sorts in 8 garbage cans in his family’s backyard. He and his parents visit the recycling center every few weekends, dropping off the discarded plastic, paper, and glass detritus. Since launching his start-up, he has recycled 49,000 pounds of waste, 200,000 cans and bottles, and has donated over $1,600 to charity. The rest of his earnings—an impressive sum of roughly $10,000—has gone straight into a college savings account.
In addition to his statistical accomplishments, Ryan has also been appointed as a Youth Ambassador for the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, an institution dear to his heart. He’s even created his own line of charitable t-shirts. While he’s clearly a boy with many altruistic interests, recycling remains his one true love. “He’s very passionate about it, and he likes to get everybody else passionate about it as well,” Andrea, his mother, told The Capistrano Dispatch. “I think he’s rubbed off on all of us now. You find yourself walking past a can on the ground and needing to pick it up instead of walking away and leaving it there.”
Ryan’s Recycling Company: Website | Blog
h/t: [Inhabitat, The Capistrano Dispatch]
All images via Ryan’s Recycling Company.
