High-Level Project Summary
Our project is an eye opener to the toxic condition that the Earth is going through these days -the trouble with plastic. We studied current situations and took references from websites and data hubs which are alarming.We understand that plastic can be decomposed to a much larger scale by tapping more Ultra violet rays to plastic dump yards and also feeding in more specific bacteria which will eat in and allow plastic to disintegrate to an larger extend.Though we all know and want to eliminate the usage of plastic, there is a limit to what we can at this age as most of our daily use items are plastic based. We believe our project will throw more light on existing findings and help our Earth.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our project is based on the challenge - SuperPowEarth - If the Earth had a superpower that could help or possibly eliminate something that harms the planet in general, such as climate change, what would the superpower be?
The earth is already a super entity that is already doing a lot to keep it going. Being the only planet to host life, rotating on its axis, protecting much of it like a greenhouse and main of all to decompose us and other waste that’s dumped.
But what about Plastic ? Does it decompose on its own ? Does it decompose even if we try to ?
We wish the Earth had this superpower to decompose and clear off this menace we have been facing in the past ,still troubling us and evade this for a sustainable future.
Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. About half the light reaching Earth's atmosphere passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and then radiated upward in the form of infrared heat. About 90 percent of this heat is then absorbed by the greenhouse gases and radiated back toward the surface. We can work toward directing the UV rays to specific Plastic Decomposer centers. UV energy absorbed by plastics can excite photons, which then create free radicals. While many pure plastics cannot absorb UV radiation, the presence of catalyst residues and other impurities will often act as receptors, causing degradation. Plastics which cant be fully decomposed can be used partially as done by Space Plastic Recycling System where they use a system that automated conversion of disposable ISS packaging materials into suitable 3D printer filament.
Studies have been progressing on the fact that certain types of bacteria can eat through some types of plastics.
Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium from the genus Ideonella and family Comamonadaceae capable of breaking down and consuming the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as a sole carbon and energy source, but there are other types of plastic that require to be penetrated into.In order to make any of these naturally-occurring bacteria useful, they must be bioengineered to degrade plastic hundreds or thousands of times faster.
We strongly believe the Earth needs this Super power to fight this toxic change that we are forcing it through.
We have made use of Adobe Photoshop,Microsoft PowerPoint , Microsoft Word and NASA resources to prepare this project.
Space Agency Data
We have used few resources from the NASA Data that were available. We did some extensive research on the internet on how NASA has been collecting data and especially with regards to climate change and environmental changes. We also made use of data published by NASA on how scientists use NASA satellite data to track ocean micro plastics from space. We found it interesting to read through NASA's data on how the Space Plastic recycling system works Thank you NASA for the open data sets.
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/plastic-melt-waste-compactor-flight-demonstrator-payload-pfdp-phase-i
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt2021/scientists-use-nasa-satellite-data-to-track-ocean-microplastics-from-space
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/space-plastic-recycling-system-phase-i
Hackathon Journey
This was such a lovely experience, rather an eye opener to us in many ways. Though we have been thinking about environment issues and climate change, we never knew we would get a venue as great as this to put out our ideas.We chose the SUPERPOWEARTH challenge because we really wanted to put out our suggestion and ideas on how we can march together at a faster pace to stop the trouble that plastic is giving us today. We are all trying to fight against this, but we feel the pace has to multiplied, otherwise we this beautiful Earth will be choked by our actions.
Talking about challenges, time management was our main challenge, however dedicated charts and planning has helped a long way.
We thank NASA and the community Partner Unique world for this lovely opportunity, for all the data and resources provided too. Thank you for asking us to think. Its been a great experience.
References
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/plastic-melt-waste-compactor-flight-demonstrator-payload-pfdp-phase-i
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt2021/scientists-use-nasa-satellite-data-to-track-ocean-microplastics-from-space
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/space-plastic-recycling-system-phase-i
https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2015/em/c5em00207a
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Tags
#plastic,#decompose,#Superpowearth,#earth
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.