This Hawaii teenager recycles for charity.
Thirteen-year-old Genshu Price was recycling bottles and cans to save for his college education. He was so successful that he decided to expand his recycling to help others, Hawaii News Now reports.
“After a while we figured that we could branch it off and make it for other students. That way it can be bigger,” he said. “It could help so many people.” He started collecting even more bottles and cans, even preemptively asking people visiting Oahu’s sunny beaches if they were done with their drinks.
Since he started, he and his family have collected more than 100,000 recyclables. Mainstream news outlets have shared his story all over the country. Businesses and schools have chipped in by setting up recycle bins to collect cans for Price’s project.
The most bottles and cans have come from Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii’s cleanups, and from his drop-off depots at King Intermediate, Mililani Uka Elementary, Kualoa Ranch, and other spots. “Within those six months we’ve recycled at least 5,000 pounds,” Genshu said.
The charity, spearheaded by Price, has been officially organized as Bottles 4 College. Their goal is to “create a system where we are collecting at least 2-4 million recyclable cans and bottles annually in order to be able to fund college tuition scholarships for 1-2 Hawaii students annually.”
That’s an ambitious goal, since for academic year 2020-2021, the average tuition & fees for colleges in Hawaii is $5,020 for in-state students and $18,621 for out-of-state students. But the example of Genshu Price and his family shows that voluntary charity can make a real difference in people’s lives. It’s something that we know and live by at Voluntaryism In Action, and as this Hawaii teenager recycles for charity he shows that people can help each other without the force of the government.