A 13-year-old student from Solihull, England, has collected around 1.5 million aluminium cans for recycling over the past three years, according to a report on his initiative.
Ryan Hulance's project, which began with the goal of helping local food banks and cutting waste, has raised about 18,000 British pounds for charity so far. Beyond the financial return for philanthropic causes, the effort has also produced a significant saving in natural resources.
How the project grew
The project started in 2023, when Hulance began collecting a few hundred cans a week with support from local shops. To save storage space at his family's home, the cans were crushed with a car before being bagged up.
The teenager now spends around 20 hours a week on the activity, collecting roughly 20,000 cans a week with the backing of 200 businesses in the region. The initiative has grown into a community interest company called We Can CIC.
What the recycling prevented
The volume of material Hulance has recycled has had a direct impact on environmental preservation. According to recycling industry figures, an aluminium can weighs an average of 14.5 grams, meaning about 70 cans make up one kilogram of the metal. Based on that ratio, the 1.5 million cans he has collected amount to roughly 21.4 tonnes of aluminium.
Producing that same amount of aluminium from scratch would require the industry to mine raw ore. Manufacturing each tonne of primary aluminium demands the extraction of five tonnes of bauxite ore.
As a result, Hulance's collection effort has prevented the extraction of approximately 107 tonnes of bauxite from natural deposits.
Less chemical waste, less energy use
Refining raw ore to produce new sheets of metal generates highly polluting waste. Bauxite mining produces an equivalent volume of caustic mud, around five tonnes of residue for every tonne of aluminium produced, which can contaminate surface and groundwater. Hulance's recycling effort has prevented roughly 107 tonnes of caustic mud from being discarded into the environment.
Beyond limiting waste, recycling cans uses only 5% of the electricity needed to produce the metal from virgin raw material, a 95% energy saving. Smelting recycled aluminium also cuts emissions of gases such as sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide, which are linked to air pollution and acid rain.
