I had to write about them. Us, I mean. Teens innovating and saving the world. Since I am a certified innovator myself, I felt the urge to share the works and efforts of all the youngsters who defy the peer pressure to engage in concerts, parties, social medias and spend time and sweat over business plan-making. Plus, there's also the 'comments'. "You're too young. It's one thing to do voluntary works and campaigns, but innovation?" "You can't do this. It will hamper your studies." "You don't even understand the laws of physics, and you expect to make a device using electromagnetism?"

But it pays off at the end. You get scholarships, moneys, grants. You get the ooh and aah from your peers. And, as the competition holders always promise you, you get a nice headstart to make mistakes and stumble and learn from them from such a young age, giving you the opportunity to begin to become successful from the twenties. 

So instead of talking about big-shot technologies that are currently making difference in the environment, I will list you a couple of technologies which have the potential to make a difference - technologies made by the future generation.

Uproot

Anyone knows the thing called weed? Apart from being a very popular name among the youth for you-know-what, it has many harmful effects among the agriculture, in some specific places. Uproot is an IOS application that addresses noxious and invasive weed species, specifically targeting the harmful effects of these plants on California agriculture. This application implements machine learning technology to identify these weed species from on-the-spot for user and even, from an index listing the plants. 

Uproot was the 2019 2nd place Winner in Technovation Girls - a competition for young girls and women to learn how to code and create mobile apps to solutions for a problem. If you read the opportunities section of Tunza Eco-Generation often, you might have seen that I posted the 2020 Technovation Girl Challenge a month ago. The contest is still ongoing at the moment of writing, so any of you women who want to shake up the world, you still have time to participate in it! Competition ends this April 20.

TECO

This is more of bringing an existing approach towards a new solution rather than invention, but nonetheless quite brilliant! TECO is a 3D mobile app game that aims to make players change their behaviours and become more eco-conscious. It presents real-life issues and challenges players to solve them while sharing useful information along the way. This is quite effective if you ask me, because people love entertainment and one of the main reason we are still far behind taking steps to save the environment is that people don't really like heavy, serious stuff in their lives. 3 million waste bottles found in whole Dhaka, a group of youngsters took steps to collect these bottles from around the city… oh no. So sad. Poor earth. Alright. Change the channel. 

This app is succeeding in passing along the real-life lessons as well as fun. It could really be a changemaker.

Team CoCo from Kazakhstan created TECO. They, also, are 2019 Technovation Winners. So seriously, girls, you don't want to miss this. It's a lifetime opportunity.

 eWays

My grandmother can't really believe the value of this innovation. Can you? eWays is a platform which connects you to local companies and organizations which recycle electronic devices and… that's it. Not impressed? Well, did you know that 50 million tons of electronic wastes, produced from thrown away smartphones, computers, smartwatches etc., were generated in 2018 and only 35% were officially recycled? The chemicals and pollutants taken out from these wastes are really harmful to the environment, but if recycled properly, you can refurbish them and extract large parts out of the devices to be used again. Now, do you understand the usefulness of this system? How many of us know how and where to recycle our e-wastes? 

eWays entered the Australia based EarthTech Challenge and became a finalist this year. EarthTech is a bit different from the other existing challenge, as theie submissions are video based. Meaning, they only require a pitch video and a power point presentation for the submission round, last time I checked.

As for why my grandma couldn't believe the need for this service, that's because she doesn't understand how one could throw away an electronic device. They cost so much!

Falcn

This is really cool. You all have to admit it. Falcn is an eco-friendly to camp. It's a metal collapsible camping pot that uses the smart material nitinol to expand with heat. Now, if you'e confused, let me just tell you that the traditional way to camp with bonfire causes a little damage to the ecosystem, producing harmful sulfur. This innovation will cease that problem.

Falcn is a duo team from New Jersey who entered the Diamond Challenge Horn Entrepreneurship last year. Again, if you read the opportunity tab of Tunza, you might have seen I had listed this contest around December, when the submission for 2019-2020 year was open. Diamond Challenge is a good competition as well, mainly asking for two things during the submission round: A 5 page business plan and a pitch presentation.

Agro

Another Diamond Challenge semi-finalist. Agro is a company that operates through Greece - and plans to operate through other countries as well, later - to provide people with lows priced fruit and vegetable that vs been rejected by retailers because of cosmetic standards. This will not only wen sure the poor people could also access the fruits and vegs, but minimize the wastes.

As you can guess, this is a team from Greece. Unfortunately, the team did not make it to the finals, but that does not mean they didn't make it. They could always enter another competition or gather funding in their preferred way to start their business. This is the beauty of these innovation contests, your journey does not end with them.

Trashless

This is a team from Thailand, which entered Conrad Challenge last year, the same contest I entered this year and finished designing my own product. The work of Trashless might seem shockingly simple: it's a trash bin that automatically separates recycles from wastes. But of course, it just seems simple in words. I don't really have the details on what they did (the contest committed won't share the infos), but I can imagine they would need go use some sort of machine learning technologies to implement the system that will let the machine detect what is waste and what is recycle. 

Trashless will be pretty much effective in countries like mine, where people aren't even aware of what recycling objects are. I remember the government providing recycle bins to each home in Dhaka when I was around seven. I think we ended up using it for keeping my toys.

These are just a few of what I could write about. Each and every innovation here was developed by young people under the age of 18. Look at them and tell me our future world is going to splinter apart. Tell me that none of the great young minds cannot come up with much better solutions to the huge problems we face right now.

Before I draw the conclusion, let me tell you one thing: please don't think they are geniuses. They are not. Genius. I know that's what people think, when they hear about a 12 year old kid making a gaming device. These kids aren't any genius. They are just hard workers and believers in themselves. If you're a teenager who's reading this, just know that you are never too young. Not even to innovate. I really suggest you try this out at least once in your lifetime, before you're 18. Innovation isn't for everyone, that's true, but you won't really know the answer unless you have tried it out. 

So there you go. Lists of teen innovations that have the potential to save the environment. I can't wait to see these go in full mass-production and begin to sustain. I can't wait to see much more bright ideas coming up.

In case you happen to be wondering about my innovation… sadly, it has nothing to do with the environment. I tried really hard to come up with an eco-idea, but I failed. I will try next time!

Source:

https://www.conradchallenge.org/19-summit-finalist-teams

http://horn.udel.edu/diamond-challenge-2019-semifinalists

https://technovationchallenge.org/season-results/

https://earthtech.io/challenge/finalists/