recycling styrofoam

TedTalks always get to me so I'm sure this won't be the last one posted on my blog. This kid, Ashton Cofer and his science group created a way to recycle styrofoam into something extremely helpful. Styrofoam takes over 500 years to degrade and just the US produces 2 billion pounds of styrofoam a year. This is a single use product more often than not and it takes up 25% of landfills! So it's basically the definition of not being sustainable.
After a ton of failures and fires this group of kids found a way to take the carbon already in styrofoam and make it into activated carbon. Activated carbon can be used in water and air filters, meaning they not only repurposed the styrofoam but the product addresses environmental and health problems.

I am simply blown away by this. A group of kids solved a major environmental problem where adults have failed for a long time. Now they have funding and plan on getting a patten for the process they developed. The education system needs to be fostering this kind of outside of the box thinking! Stories like this shed some light on future generations and give us the opportunity to hope that we might be okay after all.

Here's a link if the video attached isn't working for you.