Money Daniels spends several hours every week cleaning up cans and bottles in the rivers near his home with other teen environmentalists in Chattanooga, TN. Together, they have collected more than 1 ton of aluminum cans, nearly 1,000 cans a week for a year. In January, he co-founded a club called the Cleanup Kids with his best friend. The project' s mission: to encourage kids to pick up 1 million pounds of trash across the globe before the end of the year.
Daniels says he first developed a passion for wildlife when he was 3. " As far back as I can remember, I' ve always loved animals," Daniels says. Marine life especially interests him. When he began discovering trash on walks along the river with his family, he immediately thought of his favorite sea creatures.
His mission now is saving the earth' s rivers, which he points out are even more polluted than the world' s oceans. " Eighty percent of the ocean' s trash comes from rivers," he says. In 2019, he adopted the name Conservation Kid on Instagram, and started posting about things like how something as simple as a deserted face mask can entangle (缠住), choke, and kill turtles, birds, and fish. Mask waste has increased an estimated 9,000% since the pandemic(疫情) began.
Although he mostly speaks to other teens, Daniels has found that adults are often persuaded by his argument that cleaning up, recycling, and ridding plastic ought to be a selfish act for humanity: when plastics break down, they can wind up in our drinking water. He has met with the mayor of his city, and his experiences speaking with influential grownups has convinced him that adults can change their habits.
But, in truth, the burden to save the planet has landed on children like him. " Kids may be a small percent of the population, but we' re 100% of the future," he says. " And we can save the world. "
