79
CASH DANIELS ONCE FOUND A “CREEPY DOLL
head” in the river. “We fi nd more strange things
than you’d think,” he says: a tiny Mickey Mouse
fi gurine, two old cassette tapes with songs that
dated back long before 12-year-old Daniels was
born, shotgun shells. But mostly he unearths cans,
straws, and plastic bottles that threaten the wildlife
he treasures. He posts some of his most bizarre fi nds
on Instagram and then usually tosses or recycles the
trash—although a friend kept the creepy doll head.
Daniels spends several hours every week clean-
ing up cans and bottles in the rivers near his home
with other teen environmentalists in Chatta-
nooga, Tenn. Together, they have collected more
than 1 ton of aluminum cans, nearly 1,000 cans
a week for a year. His goal for 2022 is even more
ambitious. In January, he co-founded a club called
the Cleanup Kids with his best friend, Ella Grace, a
fellow home-school student who lives in Canada.
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 fi rst developed a passion for
wildlife when he was 3. “As far back as I can remem-
ber, I’ve always loved animals,” Daniels says with a
charming Southern twang. Marine life especially
intrigues him. He is scuba-certifi ed, and when he
is not running river cleanups or working on home-
work, he’s scuba diving virtually with the VR head-
set that he got as a gift. When he began discovering
trash on walks along the river with his family, he
immediately thought of his favorite sea creatures:
“As soon as I found straws and stuff on the beach,
I knew it would harm the wildlife that I love, so I
had to do something to protect it.”
(Naturally, his favorite superhero is Aquaman,
the guardian of our waterways. Daniels says if he
could have a superpower, it would be “destroying
all plastics in the universe.”)
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 ad-
opted the name Conservation Kid on Instagram,
and started posting about things like how some-
thing as simple as a discarded face mask can en-
tangle, choke, and kill turtles, birds, and fi sh. Mask
waste has increased an estimated 9,000% since
the pandemic began, and improperly disposed of
masks are a new bugaboo of Daniels.
Although he mostly speaks to other teens, Dan-
iels has found that adults are often persuaded by
his argument that cleaning up, recycling, and
eradicating plastic ought to be a selfi sh 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 speak-
ing with infl uential grownups has convinced him
that adults can change their habits. “I think after
they talk to me, they think twice about dropping
a cup on the ground,” he says.
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.”
—ELIANA DOCKTERMAN
Cash Daniels
Environmental activist
CHATTANOOGA, TENN. / 12
Daniels’ 2019
book, One Small
Piece, illustrates
the impact of
picking up just one
piece of trash
Gaurangi Gupta, 11
Gupta founded Youth4Us,
which operates programs for
young people like a Bookaid
(give a book, take a book), and
weekly art and reading classes.
REDMOND, WASH.
Genshu Price, 14
Price created Bottles4College, which
funds college scholarships for Hawaiian
students by cleaning up and recycling
trash in Hawaii. It has recycled
over 100,000 cans and bottles.
HAUULA, HAWAII
Jayden Perez, 12
Perez established a nonprofi t
called From the Bottom
of My Heart to collect
donations and resources
to help those in need.
WOODLAND PARK, N.J.
COURTESY FAMILIES
