What were you passionate about when you were a teenager? A typical answer from days gone by could include sports, music, arts, video games or watching TV. Today’s younger generations are not so dissimilar, except for one thing – they’re also passionate about fighting climate change.
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Fuelled by a drive to make sure the future is a safe one, teenagers today have the weight of the world on their shoulders. Witnessing either the slow progress, or even failure, of international agreements set up by governments, has meant that climate anxiety is at an all-time high for this age group. A 2021 study showed that 59% of youth and young adults are very or extremely worried about climate change, and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.
Tired of sitting on the side lines, young people are now taking matters into their own hands. Over the past three years, over 10,000 young people from over 2,000 schools across 154 countries and territories have applied to The Earth Prize. As the world’s largest environmental sustainability competition for young people aged 13-19 years, this platform is providing an outlet for young peoples’ motivation for climate action.
This year’s winners of the prize have invented solutions such as a groundbreaking flood prediction technology (FloodGate), a plasma-powered crop solution that beats drought (Ceres), an eco-diaper made from banana and coconut (CocoMellow), and a computer network that pools precious energy and resources (Pebble).
In an interview for Earth.Org, the four top teams were asked how they came up with their inventions and what they expect for the future.
How would you describe your solution in just a few sentences?
FloodGate (Sumedh Kotrannavar): “Flooding is affecting almost all the nations in the world and it is a really important issue. In one simple sentence, FloodGate is a revolutionary computational tool that predicts flood patterns in a way that’s never been done before. Different governmental organisations, agencies, but also individual people can use FloodGate to not only predict flood flooding patterns, but also see the susceptibility within their own areas and become more prepared in the event of flooding. It allows them to really have a set plan and gives them an edge.”
Ceres (Beyza Kaya): “I would say our project aims to reduce the effects of food scarcity from drought in local and global communities. Using the power of plasma technology, we can boost germination and growth, reducing reliance on chemical fertilizers and overall enhancing crop yields.”
CocoMellow (Duc Tran): “We have been working on eco-friendly diapers, using coconut coir and banana fiber. Coconut is hypoallergenic and antibacterial, and when it comes to banana fiber, it’s soft. It’s good for babies’ skin.”
Pebble (Orlando White): “Pebble is not a traditional application to The Earth Prize as it’s a purely software-based solution… a tech product. When you have a computer in your home, you only use it for a certain portion of the day. How do you make the most use of this number of computers and distribute workloads? It’s all about connecting as many computers as we can to a network, saving energy (billions of kWh annually), and making it as environmentally friendly as possible, because we’re reducing carbon emissions and rare metal consumption.”
How did you come up with the idea?
FloodGate (Shubhan Bhattacharya):
“We’re all from North Carolina, which has suffered a lot from flooding in general. Especially Wilmington and the coastal areas have really suffered property damage and it has affected the lives of the community. So that was the inspiration behind all of us coming together to work on this.”
CocoMellow (Vi Phan and Duc Tran):
“We wanted to create something that’s environmentally beneficial and something that will create a bigger impact. So we were thinking of disposable products that are used in great amounts. We thought of tissues, fish nets, and then sanitary pads. When we got to the point of diapers, we thought it was great because it’s a product that’s almost a necessity for a huge amount of people. They’re obviously used in great, great, great amounts, daily. We wanted to come up with a more environmentally beneficial alternative. For materials, we began thinking about mango, but then mango is really hard to process. In Vietnam, we have a lot of coconut and we have a lot of bananas.”
Ceres (Diyar Karabulut and Beyza Kaya): “The problem was always there, even before the competition. We’re from Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which recently suffered a 40% decline in precipitation rates, a 80% loss of crops and a local food shortage. Witnessing this drought, this destructive situation up close, meant the food crisis issue was something we worked on with other projects in the past. It makes us said that the most vulnerable communities will be the most affected by climate change, because they don’t have the tools or the budge to mitigate the effects. We want to be able to develop new technologies for global communities to use”.
Pebble (Orlando White): “The idea really came from the fact that we’re both very involved in machine learning. We began thinking about connecting computers together into one network, and saw it was a really good solution to a current problem of underutilised resources, and had great potential scalability”.
What future do you see for your solutions?
FloodGate (Shubhan Bhattacharya):
“All of us are really looking forward to continuing this beyond just The Earth Prize. To see FloodGate’s potential out there, spread awareness about what it can do, hopefully in the future work with large organisations and see how this can be incorporated into governmental policy as well as flood preparedness across local communities. We’re also making technological advancements to make our model the most advanced and accurate as possible. We’re not treating FloodGate as a ‘one and done’ project, we’re more treating The Earth Prize as the platform for us to create more change, garner a lot more connections, a lot more support and that’s going to take the project to the next level.”
CocoMellow (Vi Phan and Duc Tran):
“So far we’ve really enjoyed researching, developing the product, deciding the fibres… weighing up which ones were most suitable from the science perspective, but also the cost perspective. Right now we’re trying to complete the project, develop it as best we can.”
Ceres (Diyar Karabulut and Beyza Kaya): “We have two pilot projects running since October 2023 in two local municipalities, and want to expand these to new locations, with a wider scope and carry out more comprehensive research. We’ve applied for a patent and have a four-step plan (launch, licence, funding scale).”
Pebble (Orlando White): “The problem for the future is really just connecting as many computers as we can to the network, making it as environmentally friendly as possible. We’re definitely developing this as a product that we’re going to release regardless of our result with The Earth Prize. We’re really adamant on making sure this gets out and we can be as impactful as possible.”
If you know a young person aged 13-19 years who could be a future changemaker, encourage them to apply for The Earth Prize 2025!
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