Gunner Sweeney helped start the family’s recycling business, which has grown to include several routes and drivers. He has insisted on keeping one route, however, to spend time with his father.

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Adjusting your lifestyle to accommodate your children is a struggle every parent goes through. And though it can be especially difficult when your child is telling you how to fix what it is you are doing wrong, it is hard to ignore when they are right.

So when Gunner Sweeney, 8, approached his dad Sean a few years ago about recycling, Sean listened.

“When Gunner was 5 he kind of got into recycling and would root through our trash,” Sean says. “If we got rid of something that could be recycled, he got onto us.”

Not only did the Sweeney become more diligent about separating their recycling, they would make the trip to the recycling center together in order to spend more time as father and son.

“One day we were getting ready to take our glass to the recycling center, and it occurred to me that maybe Gunner and I could spend an extra hour together if we went and asked a couple of our neighbors to take their recycling with us for $5 a month, because he was learning how to count, also.”

So they walked up and down their street with some fliers they made, and that first day in August 2009 they recruited six of their neighbors to sign up for their spontaneous glass recycling service. And with no additional marketing, more and more requests began rolling in.

“Those six people were telling other people about it, because we started getting phone calls and emails,” Sean says. “It grew up to 30 customers by December of 2009, and then Metro Beautification found out about it and invited Gunner to come to their board meeting in January, which was a lot of fun. From there it has grown and grown and we have transitioned our roles a few times.”

By April 2010, their little glass recycling venture was consuming the only free weekend they had to spend together, so they began to accept help. Now the two have three people running 10 of the routes – which have a twice a month pickup – while they maintain one route on their own as well as service new customers.

“That was Gunner’s idea,” Sean says. “He wanted to make sure we maintained at least one. It takes about four or five hours and we talk about all sorts of stuff.”

Gunner, who has a brother and sister and is homeschooled, had initially hoped to get 132 – his favorite number – ­customers signed up for his service. Now, he says, they are at 150 and growing.

“We aren’t really doing anything to intentionally grow, but we get emails all the time from people hearing about it and wanting to sign up and we gladly accept them,” Sean says.

The service is now $7 because of the cost of insurance and a trailer to pick up the glass, but their customers don’t seem to mind. And for Sean, the ability to watch his son embrace his own business has been eye opening, especially when he hears him talk about adult concerns like taxes. Plus, they have already achieved their goal of making recycling easier for a few people.

“We don’t do anything extraordinary,” Sean says. “We have just tried to help make it easy for people to recycle their glass as opposed to throwing it away.”