A plan to recycle the unrecyclable Ashton Cofer

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
that 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 other students

who are here in the audience today.

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
took a trip 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 see 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 them
end up right in the landfill,

or the oceans and beaches,

taking over 500 years to degrade.

And in fact, every year, the US alone

produces over two billion
pounds of Styrofoam,

filling up a staggering
25 percent of landfills.

So why do we have these ghost
accumulations of Styrofoam waste?

Why can’t we just recycle them
like many plastics?

Well, simply put, recycled
polystyrene is too expensive

and potentially contaminated,

so there is very little market demand
for Styrofoam that has to be recycled.

And as a result, Styrofoam
is considered a nonrenewable material,

because it is neither feasible
nor viable to recycle polystyrene.

And in fact, many cities across the US

have even passed ordinances

that simply ban the production
of many products containing polystyrene,

which includes disposable utensils,

packing peanuts, takeout containers

and even plastic beach toys,

all products that are very useful
in today’s society.

And now France
has become the first country

to completely ban all plastic utensils,

cups and plates.

But what if we could keep using Styrofoam

and keep benefiting
from its cheap, lightweight, insulating

and excellent packing ability,

while not having to suffer
from the repercussions

of having to dispose of it?

What if we could turn it into
something else that’s actually useful?

What if we could 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’re 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 would 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 temperatures,
times 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

for purifying water,

but we were also able
to reduce Styrofoam waste,

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