'I turn cans into cash to help good causes'
BBCThousands of pounds is being donated to charities, thanks to a boy who came up with the idea of turning cans into cash for good causes.
People collect the cans before Ryan's family pick them up to crush them at their Solihull garage before selling them to scrapyards, with the money made after costs being donated to food banks.
The 13-year-old started We Can CIC (Community Interest Company), an initiative to collect 20,000 cans every seven days that his father John said can take "up to 20 hours a week" to process.
The family said they could also help Birmingham with its recycling problem, since there have been no collections for more than a year amid the bin worker's strike.
John said: "We're happy to grow the charity. It all goes for a good cause.
"So we'll be happy to come and collect [residents'] aluminium drink cans and just make it go further for... the people in need."
Ryan said businesses that "collect for us... give us all of these bags of cans".
"I'd rather be playing video games with my friends, because I'm 13 years old," he said.
"But when I think about it, I just love what I do because I get to help people in need, families, by giving back.
"I want to help people in my free time and I started thinking and, eventually, I came up with the cans."
The family process about a tonne of cans a month in their garage.
Ryan's father said: "Recycling is obviously something that people want to be doing more and more and [there's been] a lot of support from the community."
About £5,000 in cash and food goes to charities every year, such as Anawim, a women's support hub in Birmingham.
But the charity is not just benefiting from the enterprise, it is fuelling it as well.
Angela, known as Miss P to her friends, uses a litter picker and bin bags and picks up cans from Monday to Friday.
She said: "It is satisfying for me and to all the ladies, them that benefit from it."
Megan Heath, from Anawim, stated: "It keeps our food bank very well stocked.
"It keeps our champions busy and gives them purpose in their days that they might not otherwise have."
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