People Who Prove the World May Not be Going to Hell in a Handcart: Part 3

Here we go again with another “People Who Prove the World May Not be Going to Hell in a Handcart” post! 😁 I do love using long, slightly silly titles from time to time, I must admit. Writing about environmental issues can be a little intense, so it’s good to lighten things up wherever we can. For anybody who may have just stumbled upon this piece and wants to know whose work I discussed in Parts One and Two of this little series, here are the links. Part One focused on the New York-based urban gardener Sheryll Durrant, while Part Two was about the conservation photojournalist Paul Hilton.
Anyway … I’m excited to get going on this one, because the people I’m discussing here prove that even at an amazingly young age, those who are sufficiently passionate and dedicated about their causes can truly make a difference. The children in this post have all taken some incredible steps to tackle the planet's plastic pollution crisis.

First up is a seven-year-old boy named Ryan Hickman, who lives in Orange County, California.
Image Credit: Ryan’s Recycling

Ryan is the founder of a company called Ryan’s Recycling. His enthusiasm for recycling began at the age of three, when he began to accompany his father to the local recycling centre. Observing that more could be done to promote recycling in his community, Ryan decided to inform his parents that he wanted to give empty bags to all of his neighbours, so that they could save all of their empty bottles and cans for him, and he could then bring them down to the recycling centre. Today, Ryan has customers all over Orange County. He sets aside a portion of his time each week to sorting through recyclable items for customers and readying them to be taken to the recycling centre.
Since 2012, he has appeared on many television programmes, including the Ellen DeGeneres Show. His current initiative is a campaign to collect 300,000 plastic bottles and cans in just ten weeks. The campaign – which is being run by the website Be A Doer – also has a fundraising goal of $28,000 U.S. dollars. This money will be donated to the Pacific Marine Mammal Centre.

Fifteen-year-old Hannah Testa is another environmental activist who has done a lot of work to raise awareness about plastic pollution.
Image Credit: Hannah4Change
Hannah lives in the U.S. state of Georgia. She was passionate about helping the planet from an early age, and she set up the environmental advocacy organisation Hannah4Change in 2014. In 2017, she succeeded in working together with Senators for Georgia to declare February the 15th an annual Plastic Pollution Awareness Day in the state. The aim behind this day is to help educate Georgians on the various problems caused by plastic pollution, as well as offer guidance on how they can take steps to minimise the amount of plastic they consume. She also advocates on behalf of endangered animals.
When I asked Hannah whether she had any advice for other budding environmental activists (for a recent One Green Planet post I wrote), she replied: “You need to realise that you are never too young or too old to make a difference. If you dream it and believe it, you are halfway there. So just go out and try something, you’ll likely succeed. With the internet and social media, there are many effective ways to make your voice heard. As consumers, we all have voices, and we can all make a difference in our own way. If we band together across the world, we can be unstoppable. We just need to care enough to act.”

Two other young activists I would love to highlight in this post are Melati and Isabel Wijsen.
Image Credit: Bye Bye Plastic Bags
These two teenage sisters live in Bali, Indonesia. They attend a special eco-conscious school known as the Green School. The Green School is, by all accounts, a remarkable place: one that aims to draw out children’s innate creativity and problem-solving abilities, while helping them to develop a sense of appreciation for the natural world. It was here that Melati and Isabel’s passion for environmental advocacy was born. It wasn’t long before they began to notice Bali’s problem with plastic pollution, and were inspired to take action to stop it.
In 2013, Melati and Isabel set up a company called Bye Bye Plastic Bags … when they were just 10 and 12 years old, respectively. The company’s work includes organising awareness and fundraising events, co-ordinating beach clean-up days, and encouraging local groups to create bags using alternative materials. The sisters have explained that at the time of Bye Bye Plastic Bags’ creation, only five percent of plastic bags in Bali were recycled. The rest were either incinerated or left to pollute the island’s beaches and waterways. Luckily, the sisters managed to convince the governor of Bali to ban plastic bags on the island by 2018!

You can watch the sisters' eleven-minute TED talk below.

These young people take my breath away because I honestly believe that they present us with an amazing picture of what could be possible. With kids like this around, there is hope for our world yet! Now, in other news...

I do, in fact, have a perfectly adequate collection of matching socks, but you get my point: these kids are achieving shit, and they give us older people a serious kick in the ass to get going. 😂