Because Styrofoam can’t easily be recycled, it often ends up in the trash. But a group of middle school students from Folsom, California, designed a digester that uses bacteria to eat Styrofoam—and turns it into energy and biodegradable plastic.
“It’s a big problem in the world right now,” says 13-year-old Emily Miner, one of the inventors of the tool, called the Polystyrenator. “A lot of Styrofoam is getting into waterways and affecting the environment negatively. Our robotics team thought it was a big problem that needed to be addressed.”
The students dug through the latest research, and combined what they found into their own process. Now, their idea is a semifinalist in the First Lego League Global Innovation Award, an X-Prize sponsored competition that asks young students to create solutions for global challenges.
“It’s not the traditional science fair, where you see something on a poster board,” says Sarah Stray, the innovation award manager for First, an organization founded by Dean Kamen to get kids interested in science, technology, and engineering. (Lego later cofounded the competition.) “This is the real deal.” The winner of last years’ competition now has a working prototype; others have patented their designs.
For students, it’s a chance to solve real problems while learning skills they probably don’t get in school. “It’s really hitting those 21st-century learning skills that we talk so much about—we are not giving students answers to anything,” says Stray. “What we are doing is asking them to solve a problem. Anytime you’re solving a problem, you’re applying those broad thinking skills and the engineering/design process . . . skills that you’re not taught in a traditional academic setting.”
Miner and her teammates hope to bring the Polystyrenator to life. “It made me realize that even though we’re all very young, it doesn’t matter how young you are,” she says. “You can still make a difference in the world.”
Out of thousands of teams from around the world, 20 semifinalist teams will now compete for a $20,000 prize. Here’s a selection of some of the our favorite ideas from the contest….
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