Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Eco-friendly Products
Help us transform SARGASSUM into paper, cardboard, and plastic-based materials.
Help Us Solve For Tomorrow!
Breathe Easy: Tackling Air Pollution with Sargassum
Ecotech is an organization set on solving the pressing environmental issue of air pollution using sargassum products.
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Meet the Young Innovators Behind Eco Tech
Marquel J.
- Co-Founder
Esosa O.
- Co-Founder
Daki A.
- Co-Founder
Henry P.
- Mentor
How Sargassum Can Save Our Air!
What is Sargassum?
Sargassum is a brown algae that can be found usually on the shores of beaches and oceanic regions. As it washes up on land, in the hundreds of tons daily, it releases harmful chemicals and heavy metals into the air which damages skin tissues and respiratory organs.
Why Sargassum?
We identified paper and plastic to be the main products burned in incinerators which are harmful to the environment. We realized that sargassum would be less harmful if burned in the incinerator. More importantly, we could design products to break down fast enough to avoid the incinerator completely.
Sargassum, while in the ocean, is a diverse habitat but once it washes ashore it becomes an ecological and economic nightmare. There are millions of tons that are rotting, destroying communities. We decided to use millions of tons of waste sargassum to replace countless trees. Sounds like a win-win!
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So, What is the connection?
Air Quality
Sargassum can help air quality through its role in the marine ecosystem, primarily by sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2). When it is in the ocean, sargassum absorbs CO2 during photosynthesis, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
Trees
Trees are utilized to make paper. After the papers have been used, they go into the trash and in our case incinerators which then release harmful gasses into the air. This makes it difficult for people to breathe, especially when trees aren’t there to carry out their natural job of absorbing the bad gasses and releasing fresh oxygen.
The Sunshine State
We went to Florida to conduct our research because there are multiple oceanic communities being overrun with sargassum. In addition, the leading expert in sargassum resides there. Florida spends hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up sargassum from their beaches each year and even just late last year, were looking for alternative solutions to their problem. We traveled to meet with the Mayor’s office in Miami to develop a plan that addresses both of our issues.
"Aren’t y'all Just making paper"
- No, actually we have made plastic sheets and we are working on making an extrudable version for use in 3D printers.
"This seems kind of basic"
- That is greatness. Our teacher, Mr. Preston, informs us that the most complex engineering projects should integrate seamlessly into the user's environment.
The problem our project addresses is air quality. In Baltimore, Maryland 13.7% of adults have asthma vs 9% nationally. We found this to be a huge concern. One of the biggest contributors to asthma is bad air quality. After extensive research, we found Baltimore’s incinerator, which was recently fined $1 million for improper waste disposal, Was a major cause. Beyond Baltimore, air quality and asthma are global issues that affect all people.
We identified paper and plastic to be the main products burned in incinerator. We needed to focus on ways to reduce these items from being burned. Around the same time, there was a rise in news reports on sargassum, a brown algae found smothering beaches. It releases heavy metals and nitrogen gasses into the air. Sargassum has the potential to decimate oceanic communities, whose tourism attractions rely on their waters. We thought to ourselves, sargassum is biodegradable and has similar properties to trees and can be used to produce bioplastic.
It originates from the Sargasso sea (part of the ocean filled with a large patch of sargassum) in the North Atlantic ocean
The Caribbean sea, Gulf of Mexico and tropical South Atlantic, more specifically places like the Bahamas, Barbados, southern side of the US, Columbia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, etc.
Paper is predominately made from trees, while plastic derives from oil. Once these materials are utilized, they are often. After the papers and plastics have been used, they go into the incinerators which then release harmful gasses into the air. This makes it difficult for people to breathe. Moreover, with fewer trees absorbing the bad gasses and releasing fresh oxygen, our environmental troubles escalate. With sargassum, we have created faster biodegrading paper and plastic products requiring fewer trees and less oil bi products. No more harmful incinerator emissions, no more bad air quality, no more deforestation and therefore more fresh air.
How can we use your products in our daily lives?
We can make any paper or single-use plastic products: packaging, cup trays, cafeteria paper lunch trays, cup sleeves, coasters, notebooks, scrapbooks, canvases, bulletin boards, trash bags, grocery bags, name tags, poster boards, boxes, etc. Just consider how many envelopes you get in the mail just to throw them in the trash. If we replaced both the paper and the plastic on the envelope imagine how much trash we could eliminate. Imagine how many trees we could save.
We have collected samples of sargassum from all over the gulf of Mexico and Florida
At the moment, we can't really disclose our process, as it is proprietary and we do plan to patent it. What makes it efficient is it is completely environmentally safe and utilizes the most simple procedures to get rid of heavy metals the Sargassum sequesters from the ocean. We also employ a process that is extremely water efficient.
Our solution is feasible and finds a way to change the world without changing behavior. Instead of completely getting rid of paper and plastic which we need or forcing consumers/our main audiences from changing their regular habits, we're instead making our prescribed alternatives readily available. Our solution is already in use in our school and our community. It can be integrated seamlessly into current commercial streams.
We encountered many issues when developing our proprietary process, even while practicing how to make regular paper and plastic so we had an idea how to begin the process in the first place, but every mistake brought us a step closer to perfecting our system and helped inform us on things to consider when we eventually industrialize the process and make it mobile
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