Dear Tunza readers,

In the last few months I have been working on an Environment project with the help of my school teacher. Here on I will be presenting my project into four parts as my report will be very long to be read at one go. This will also serve as the monthly report as through this project I intend to help my local community to address the environment problem of reducing the use of Styrofoam.

Introduction: The whole idea of the project was for an individual to be able to express their most valued interests in any subject of area of their choice. Using my skills as a student I was expected to come up with my own idea to create a final product on. Since this is purely based on my talents and interests I wanted to explore various areas where I could possibly be interested in and would want to develop. I had to decide what I was going to work on for the next eight months of my life and I wanted it to be something that is challenging and that I obviously would enjoy doing. To do this I started off by creating a mind map consisting of all my major interests—art, photography, science, technology and writing. After doing this I wrote down possible project ideas that I could explore within that subject. After a week of contemplating I came up with my final project idea and decided to base it around environmental sciences. Being an environmentalist since the age of eight and an ambassador to Tunza UNEP and Samsung  Eco Generation, I chose this as my project idea as I love exploring new ways that would benefit the environment around me. By the end of this project I hope to gain a deeper interest within not only this topic but also different fields within environmental studies that would ease and contribute to the benefit of the environment.

The creation of a digester that sustainably decomposes polystyrene

Global Context: Globalisation and Sustainability

The global context of globalisation and sustainability is linked with my project as I intend to come up with an eco-friendly solution to decomposing Styrofoam, which is not very easy to degrade. My project idea of the creation of a digester that sustainably decomposes polystyrene  links to globalisation as the journey and process this product took me on developed my understanding of not only why this is difficult to degrade but also work on my communication skills to spread this knowledge and information across to as many people as I can because the more people it benefits the better it is. My product also promotes the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance or sustainability.

The question that a student should inquire is “how do we understand the world that we live in”, and I feel that my project does aid my targeted audience to explore and investigate how the current resources that we have can be harmful to us in the future and it vital for us to come up with a way to decompose it sustainably.

Goal:

My goal was to create an anaerobic digester that makes it easier to decompose styrofoam. I chose this goal as I have a lot of interest in the field of environment. My goal was highly challenging as my project was  based around creating a product from scratch with minimal knowledge on how exactly it would work. I had to design and then built something completely new with parts and pieces which would be difficult to put together. I wanted to carry out this project because I not only found an environmentally friendly way to reduce expanded polystyrene volume, but also a way to be able to recycle the plastic as well. In short, my goal was to develop a mailbox-sized system that shreds expanded polystyrene, debulks it with a solvent based on d-limonene (extracted from citrus fruit peels), and winds up with a recyclable 3 with only 10% of the mass of the original expanded polystyrene. After developing my goal and global context I needed a guiding question to help me begin my research and focus my project. My guiding question is “Why is it important to decompose styrofoam?

Prior learning and subject specific knowledge:

 To my surprise, the prior learning I had for a project of such ambition, is astonishing. I had previously done a lot of work in the field of environmental sciences and worked on recycling different sorts of waste, but I never explored the areas of recycling EPS. Although I have not engaged in such an ambitious endeavour before, my prior learning, paired with my research skills in last 8 months, allowed me to achieve my vision regarding my final product. Science being on of my favourite subjects,  and whenever anything concerning the environment is brought up, I feel the need to do my bit. In my previous classes and lessons I have learnt about ecology and how our actions will eventually affect the environment that we live in. In addition, I have learnt about recycling, reusing and reducing waste as much as I can to help the environment in some form. Using this project I turned my knowledge into action and actually implemented ways I could recycle styrofoam sustainably.

                                                                   CONTD.....