It was just an ordinary Saturday.
My dad was outside mowing the lawn,
my mom was upstairs folding laundry,
my sister was in her room doing homework,
and I was in the basement playing video games.
And as I came upstairs to get something to drink,
I looked out the window
and realized that there was something I was supposed to be doing.
And this is what I saw.
No, this wasn’t my family’s dinner on fire.
This was my science project.
Flames were pouring out, smoke was in the air,
and it looked like our wooden deck was about to catch fire.
I immediately started yelling.
My mom was freaking out, my dad ran around to put out the fire,
and, of course, my sister started recording a Snapchat video.
(Laughter)
This was just the beginning of my team’s science project.
My team is composed of me and three of my friends.
We competed in FIRST LEGO League,
which is an international LEGO robotics competition for kids.
And, in addition to a robotics game,
we also worked on a separate science project,
and this was the project that we were working on.
So, the idea for this project all started
when a few months earlier
a couple of my teammates went to Central America
and saw beaches littered with Styrofoam,
or expanded polystyrene foam.
And when they came back and told us about it,
we really started thinking about the ways in which we use Styrofoam every day.
Get a new flat-screen TV?
You end up with a block of Styrofoam bigger than the TV itself.
Drink a cup of coffee?
Well, those Styrofoam coffee cups are sure going to add up.
And where do all these items go after their one-time use?
Since there aren’t any good existing solutions for used Styrofoam,
almost all of it ends up right in the landfill,
or the oceans and beaches,
taking over 500 years to degrade.
In fact, every year,
the US alone produces almost two billion pounds of Styrofoam,
filling up a staggering 25 percent of landfills.
So why do we have these gross accumulations of Styrofoam waste?
Why can’t we just recycle it like other plastics?
Well, simply put,
recycled polystyrene is too expensive and potentially contaminated,
so there is very little market demand for Styrofoam that has been recycled.
And, as a result, Styrofoam is considered a non-renewable material
because it is neither feasible nor viable to recycle.
And, in fact, many cities across the US have recently passed ordinances
that ban the sale of many products containing polystyrene,
which includes disposable utensils, packing peanuts, Styrofoam cups,
and even plastic beach toys –
all products that are very useful in today’s society.
And now France has become the first country
to permanently ban all plastic utensils, cups and plates.
But … wait a minute.
What if we could keep using these products
and keep benefiting from their cheap, lightweight,
insulating and excellent packing ability,
while not having to suffer
from the repercussions of having to dispose of them?
What if we could turn it into something else
that’s actually useful?
What if we can make the impossible possible?
My team hypothesized
that we could use the carbon that’s already in Styrofoam
to create activated carbon,
which is used in almost every water filter today.
And activated carbon works by using very small micropores
to filter out contaminants from water, or even air.
So we started out by doing a variety of heating tests.
And, unfortunately, we had many failures.
Literally nothing worked.
Besides my dad’s grill catching on fire,
most of our samples vaporized into nothing
or exploded inside expensive furnaces leaving a horribly sticky mess.
In fact, we were so saddened by our failures that we almost gave up.
So why did we keep trying
when all the adults said it was impossible?
Well, maybe it’s because we were kids: we don’t know any better.
But the truth is we kept trying
because we thought it was still possible.
We knew that if we were successful,
we will be helping the environment and making the world a better place.
So we kept trying … and failing,
and trying … and failing.
We were so ready to give up.
But then it happened.
With the right times, temperatures and chemicals,
we finally got that successful test result
showing us that we had created activated carbon from Styrofoam waste.
And at that moment,
the thing that had been impossible all of a sudden wasn’t.
It showed us that although we had many failures at the beginning,
we were able to persevere through them to get the test results that we wanted.
And, moreover,
not only were we able to create activated carbon from Styrofoam waste,
but we were also able to reduce Styrofoam
solving two global problems with just one solution.
So from then on, we were inspired to take our project further,
performing more tests to make it more effective
and testing it in real world situations.
We then proceeded to receive funding
from the NSTA’s eCYBERMISSION STEM-in-Action program
sponsored by the US Army,
as well as FIRST Global Innovation Awards sponsored by XPRIZE.
We were also honored
with the Scientific American Innovator Award
from Google Science Fair.
And using these funds, we plan to file a full patent on our process
and to continue to develop our project.
So, yes, although we started with catching my dad’s grill on fire
and failing so many times that we almost quit,
it was well worth it when we look back at it now.
We took a problem that many people said was impossible
and we made it possible.
And we persevered when it looked like nothing that we did would work.
We learned that you can’t have success
without a little … or a lot … of failure.
So in the future, don’t be afraid if your grill goes up in flames,
because you never know when your ideas might just catch fire.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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