Technology has the power to change just about every facet of people’s lives, and these days, it is the younger generation that understands this better than anyone. The rise in green technology is promising to fill huge gaps with regards to the world’s energy needs, particularly when it comes to preparing for a future when it is more than likely that the finite energy reserves, such as coal, are going to run dry.
Young people throughout the world are preparing for this now by coming up with inventions that are not only completely sustainable, but that have the potential to allow individuals throughout the world to become completely self-reliant in terms of their energy needs.
Cleaning The World’s Oceans
Each year, countless numbers of the world’s oceanic creatures are killed because of pollution. Whether these deaths involve seabirds being rendered unable to swim because they’ve been covered in oil or sea turtles trapped by plastic rings and drowned as a result, pollution has become a huge problem and until now, there haven’t been any real plausible efforts to resolve the issue. Boyan Slat, an Aerospace Engineering student who is just 19 years old has come up with a technology that might help to conquer this problem. According to a journalist for Green optimistic;
The concept called Ocean Cleanup Array, combined long floating booms with processing platforms, which can collect and separate trash.
Plastic isn’t biodegradable, which means that it simply continues to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, poisoning sea creatures en masse. In order to try and combat this problem, governmental and private agencies have spent billions trying to resolve the issue, but it seems that Boyan might be able to accomplish in one gyre in five years what these agencies have been attempting for decades.
The design of the project makes use of booms that will be fitted in garbage patches and it is thought that they could end up removing more than 7 million tons of trash. Boyan received the Best Technical Design award for 2012 by his university, Delft University of Technology. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation has taken on the project and is currently searching for financial assistance to help them get the project off the ground.
The Generator That’s Powered by Urine
Four teenage girls from Nigeria have invented a generator that is completely powered by urine. The device functions up to 6 hours on every liter of urine, and individuals are already stating that this could be invaluable in areas where natural disasters have rendered power lines void.
Banana Peels Turned into Bioplastic
Plastic has become one of environmentalists’ top enemies throughout the year; this is not only because it doesn’t biodegrade, but also because of the petroleum that is used to manufacture this material. Elif Bilgin, a Turkish student who is just 16 years old has come up with a way to substitute the common materials used to make plastic with simply banana peels. Basically, the chemical process used to manufacture this material will make use of the cellulose and the starches within the peels to form a type of non-decaying bioplastic that can be used for a variety of applications, including medical prostheses. To award this young pioneer, according to contributors at In Habitat, Bilgin won;
…the honor of becoming a finalist in the Google Science Fair.
This award alone speaks to the enormity of the project since there are many young inventors competing for one of these spots at the fair.
With individuals such as these forging ahead and continuing to make such earth shattering discovering, it seems that it won’t be long before green technology begins to solve many of the world’s most challenging problems, whether it involves developing cleaner technologies for the construction of everyday items or the answer to the destruction of the ocean.
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