Today we decided to take a photo of all the beach toys I’ve found over the past 18 months of cleaning up my local beach. They were left behind on the beach at the end of the day or washed up on shore. I’m estimating this is from approx. 200 hours at 75 beach clean ups. The broken toys get recycled and all the good toys are being donated to kids in Ghana in a few months. Beach toys are more fun than other plastic pollution but they still hurt the environment when left behind to break down. Please pack out what you packed in when going to the beach, mountains or any other nature spot.
If you appreciate the great outdoors and everything in it, you’ll appreciate the Herculean efforts of Ryan Hickman, who has gone viral for his mission to protect the planet by recycling cans and bottles. Among many other awards, Ryan was named one of the “40 Kids Who Have Changed the World ” by Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2019 and 2020.
Ryan recently hung out with us at the 2022 Cat® WasteExpo booth, where we spoke to him about ways to recycle and clean up the environment. During his visit to our booth, Ryan also got to remotely operate a Cat excavator—not to mention stand in the wheel of a giant Cat machine being used to help reduce landfill space across the planet.
Something clicked in Ryan Hickman when he was three. After going with his dad to a recycling center to drop off empty cans and bottles, he knew he had found his thing.
“I loved it,” he says, “and I just wanted to keep doing it because it was helping the environment and just so much fun.”
The next day, Ryan told his parents that he wanted to collect recyclables from their neighbors. Not only did he do that, but he also started collecting cans and bottles from his friends, family, and even his parents’ coworkers. He was hooked!
Ryan is passionate about keeping plastic bottles out of the ocean. For a good reason…
I had a great time filming with Good Morning America last week and I look forward to seeing all the other stories this week about all the environmental heroes. Watch video segment here.
We had an awesome turnout at our Project3R beach clean up this past weekend in San Clemente and we picked up 140lbs of trash! Thank you to my school and to everyone that came to help and also to our event sponsors for the raffle prizes. After our event, I was happy to jump on a live video with our friends at AO Latinoamérica who were also doing a beach clean up in Ensenada. They picked up 233lbs of trash!
Project3R was founded last year to organize events like this and to provide community education and environmental awareness. Please follow my Project3R social media pages to see what we’re all doing together to make a difference. If you can’t make an event and want to help support our organization, you can donate at project3r.com.
I’m so excited – we just launched our Project3R apparel on the site. Pick up a hat, hoodie or a shirt in a bunch of different design combinations. Two great things about the new gear. First, it’s all made from recycled water bottles in the material AND all the proceeds from the sales go to Project3R to help fund community clean up and education events. We’re going to be adding new gear over time so check back often to see what we’ve got in the online store. We ship internationally.
I had a great time speaking at the CIE Colombia Youth Entrepreneur Event last week! I met some new friends and enjoyed hanging out with all the kids at the event. I even got to speak one of the days there to students at the University of La Sabana! It rained every day we were there, I tried new food from Colombia and I took a tour of a salt mine that was really cool. I hope I get to go back again someday. I had a great time. Unfortunately, my mom got altitude sickness so she wasn’t feeling very good for half of our trip. She’s better now that we’re home. Thank you CIE for hosting us!
These shirts are made from recycled plastic bottles and proceeds from each sale go to help my friends at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center. We only have a limited amount of these so get one before they’re gone!
In my mailbox today! Thank you USA TODAY for featuring me in your BRAINS FOR BUSINESS segment of the BACK TO SCHOOL issue. I’m honored to be included. Thank you everyone who recycles with me. Here’s a link to the online article.
