Weekly Competition #38
28 June 2019WINNERS ANNOUNCED:
quiet_horse and methodical_keyboard
This week, we liked seeing the big range of ideas and really creative suggestions that you came up with. We loved the idea from quiet_horse about edible packaging and thought it was good that they drew on their experience from another country. This showed great curiosity and open-mindedness! Methodical_keyboard created this well thought out presentation which showed excellent BNC skills. Well done!
WEEKLY COMPETITION #38
Sometimes, difficult circumstances make people very inventive and creative...just think about the things people make when they're stuck on a desert island!
So, this week, we want you to research the inventions and ideas people have come up with to cope with climate change. What are some of the best inventions that are helping the planet, humans, animals, or nature? How are they helping people to cope or adapt?
Tell us about what you find and what you think about it! Winners will be announced on Friday.
Comments (39)
one invention is that like pikup thing s and there one that cleans out the sea and trash in the sea
Well this might sound silly but it is a great way to benefit the environment and animals to. The idea was created by GENeco (a company) and the idea was that they use human waste too power buses. This can benefit the environment because it means that our waste isn't going to the sewers where they can be a hindrance to animals who live nearby also it means we do not need to use more fuels but rely on something renewable that won't cause emission or the government money.
This very eco-friendly
Another one is by Australian surfers Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski with their masterpiece, the Seabin. It is an automated marina rubbish bin that collects floating rubbish, debris and oil, 24/7. This can benefit the animals that live in the ocean because it cause less plastic pollution which means less endangered species are harmed and more animals can live there longer.
Also, people are inventing new transport (to stop vehicles from causing a third of the global warming) MAG LAV (I think that's what it is called) or magnetic lavation is a train that runs on electricity so that it doesn't release as much fuel also it is able to recover the energy generated when the train breaks and recycle it into useable power.
Next a company called GRT ( Global Research Technology) have designed an artificial tree that is made from a special resin that traps CO2 in the air and then removing it with water.
We could help by switching off plugs and lights we are not using
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HORRIBLE! But I think the very main cause is pollution by plastic and greenhouses.
My invention is buses and cars would be made of soil and stuff like that.
I mean t to fuel them
This is a very common resource that we mostly over-look because of how much it is used- recycling. Paper recycling was reported invented in 1690 in America by the Rittenhouse family in Philadelphia. Metal recycling was claimed to been invented by patriots in 1776 when a statue was melted to make bullets. This helped humans, animals and the environment because it saves more waste from being spread onto the earth, which has ultimately lead to global warming. What would have happened if we had no basic recycling? Now we are trying to find a way to recycle plastic so that animals (sea creatures mostly) don't die by our hands but naturally.
There are satellites monitoring global warming.The satellites are monitoring and keeping tabs on methane leaks. These leaks emit odourless an invisible gas for a long period of time before being visible to the naked eye. Methane traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide does.
I researched an idea about plastic eating enzymes. If we continue without stopping, 12 billion metric tonnes are going to end up in the ocean when it reaches 2050. That’s 1.6 metric tons, or the size of midsize car, for every human on the planet!
All this plastic is extremely dangerous to wildlife and animals but just as dangerous to humans ; It affects the water we drink and the food we eat.
However, a bunch of Japanese researchers have created enzymes to break down plastic. Way faster than the hundreds of years that plastic usually takes to decompose.
I have had my own idea of having remote controlled helicopters or drones that can be adjusted to help Earth. These flying objects can be used for entertainment but can also be used to help stop climate change. We can find a way to have the flying objects to plant seeds, water plants an much more. This can plant trees. Trees are essential for storing greenhouse gas emissions, filtering air and water, nourishing soil, providing food and shelter, and fostering ecosystems.
That was an idea I thought of after watching a TV show about deforastation.
I found something that could help. It is a sieve that makes Ocean water drinkable. This woul be amazing because only a tiny percentage of the earth's water is fresh water the only time that humans can drink. With the ucecaos melting that percentage is decreasing and with population on the rise we need another alternative. This new way of drinking works by using a graphene based sieve to filter out the salt in ocean water. This stops the need for industrial size factories to do this for us as they release greenhouse gases and take up slot of space.
I can't find any information online, but i have some ideas to help climate change to stop.
- Drones that can water plants
-Satellite that can spot leaks
I
One invention helping stop climate change is a tree-planting drone. It has been said that it can plant 1 billion trees a year which is a great way to combat losing 18.3 million acres a year/ 27 football stadiums a day due to deforestation. This is happening because company use trees to produce paper products like tissue, paper, cardboard boxes and more. We need trees to reduce greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and filtering air and water releasing more oxygen also providing food and shelter also just generally helping the ecosystem. These drone fly 6 feet above ground and release seeds onto soil then waters them to help them grow.
I put my my comment in the post section to make it more clear to read but then accidentally posted it please ignore my post.
Lamps To Grow Plants In Windowless Spaces and Sustainable tent that collects rainwater, folds up for easy transport
Drones That Plant Trees.Trees are essential for storing greenhouse gas emissions, filtering air and water, nourishing soil, providing food and shelter, and fostering ecosystems.Yet the world loses 18.3 million acres of forest each year, or 27 soccer fields worth of trees every minute, according to the World Wildlife Fund.Planting seeds by hand always helps, but it’s hard for individuals to match the pace of industrial deforestation.UK-based company BioCarbon is using drones to spray tree seeds throughout ravaged forests and claim they can plant 1 billion trees per year.
A company in the United Kingdom came up with a new way to store liquid and completely eradicate the need for plastics: edible water blobs. Aside from being safe to eat, these innovative containers are biodegradable since they are made from seaweed extract so their perfect for water and fruit juices. It can also be used to store almost any liquid, including shampoos, laundry detergents, and others.
The edible water bottle is a blob-like water container made from sodium alginate gel. The biodegradable blob was created by Skipping Rocks Lab in an attempt to make a more environmentally friendly alternative to single-serving plastic bottles. The container, named "Ooho" by its creators, encloses a small volume of water in a membrane made from brown algae and calcium chloride. The manufacturing process are covered under a Creative Commons license, making the recipe freely distributed and readily available for anyone to use.
Wow like the edible water bottle because it means it causes less plastic pollution.
Yes, and it is also really intriguing how it is formed.
An idea that may be possible is to feed plankton by mixing the warming water with the colder depth water. According to Science Daily about two thirds of the planet’s oxygen is produced by phytoplankton. The warming temperatures are endangering phytoplankton because they are unable to survive in those temperatures. Not only will the Earth lose a large portion of oxygen production but the plankton will not be present to feed other organisms and this will cause death all the way up the food chain. The pumps would only be a temporary solution though because the water will still be warming.
Another one is by Australian surfers Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski with their masterpiece, the Seabin. It is an automated marina rubbish bin that collects floating rubbish, debris and oil, 24/7. This can benefit the animals that live in the ocean because it cause less plastic pollution which means less endangered species are harmed and more animals can live there longer.
Also, people are inventing new transport (to stop vehicles from causing a third of the global warming) MAG LAV (I think that's what it is called) or magnetic lavation is a train that runs on electricity so that it doesn't release as much fuel also it is able to recover the energy generated when the train breaks and recycle it into useable power.
Next a company called GRT ( Global Research Technology) have designed an artificial tree that is made from a special resin that traps CO2 in the air and then removing it with water.
one invention that can help lower the plastic products is an edible packaging for water another product is an edible seaweed cup.
I had my own idea.
I thought about plastic pollution and thought if we had some sort of edible packaging for food items. From the things we eat, to the things we wear. Everything has some sort of plastic. I thought that if we make some sort of later that keeps food fresh and clean and is edible, we can stop the plastic waste that is effecting our earth. I remembered a time when I went to Bangladesh to visit my family. I saw some of the neighbours with seaweed and they were doing something to it. They told me that they were using this to package the food they were selling. At first it made me feel a bit weird. If people were to really buy edible food packaging, will it taste nice? Would they feel comfortable eating something that shop keepers have already felt with? The family showed me their burger and the outside of it was slightly green in a layer of seaweed. I bit straight into it and the seaweed tasted nothing like I expected it to be. It added more flavour to the burger. The family said they add something's to the seaweed to make it taste nice. For sweet food, they add sugary substances and for the savoury, they add different spices and flavours
I have two different ideas to help the planet, humans, animals and nature to cope with Climate Change.
1) Solar powered cars
2) A method to collect and use animals’ waste and cows’ bad gases
1) Solar Powered Cars:
Electric cars have been selling millions, as people believe that it will prevent greenhouse gases however, to produce electricity to charge electric cars, you need fossil fuel and it is the exact same product that has been used to create the harmful greenhouse gas waste. This is slowly dissolving the ozone layer, which protects UV rays and other rays from entering the Earth and causing skin cancer.
Instead, an alternative solution to solving this is using solar energy to power the electricity, which powers the electric cars. Solar power is mainly used by using the sun’s energy and to transfer it into the panel, which can then be stored for energy however, Solar panels are extremely sensitive and can transfer the smallest ebb of light to the a massive burning ball of gas (like the sun) into energy that we can use. On a rainy day or a cloudy day, the energy from the solar power can still be stored and the sun is still there so the solar panels can charge (even though it is hidden behind the clouds).
If we fix the solar panels on the top of electric cars, the car’s battery can be charged by the solar energy, which is very clean energy, and no toxic fumes will be produced. The solar panels can even be actively charged not only by the sun light but also even very small lights such as street light at night.
2) A method to collect and use animals’ waste and cows’ bad gases (methane gas):
Another way to make energy is that the methane gas that is emitted by one cow per year is about 70kg-120kg of methane. If on average, the world had approximately 1.3 to 1.5 billion cows, all the cows in the world would be producing 91 billion kg-180 billion kg of methane gas every year. My idea is to use methane gas in the landfill and that cows are emitting into electricity. We can create indoor cow farms (same as greenhouses) and using extractors to extract the methane gases, which these gases stop spreading into the Earth’s atmosphere, which will stop the pollution caused by cows’ toxic gases. If you burn methane, the product of it will be electricity (clean energy), water and carbon dioxide. With the carbon dioxide, people have created ways to store it such as the “Carbon Capture and Underground storage”. Going through the process of the compression, monitoring, transporting and injecting, the carbon dioxide can be safely stored thousands of metres below the Earth and not to enter the atmosphere.
We can also use animal and human wastes to produce methane gases.
They have already created some machines and technology, which can now capture the methane gas and put it to good use called the “Landfill Methane Capture”. This piece of technology captures all if the landfill that is put to waste, extracts the methane gas with gas collection wells, burn the methane to create heat and finally uses that heat to generate electricity.
In my idea, you can get electricity, water and a less toxic gas that can be stored without entering the atmosphere. If we do this idea of using methane gas, we would have enough electricity to power about 688,000 homes across the nation using about 500 landfills.
In addition, it can be burned to heat buildings (central heating) and power garbage trucks (and possibly other vehicles such as cars, aeroplanes, submarines, ships, space shuttles and buses). Methane gas could possibly be the future of the world and all that is there is to stop Global Warming and reduce the Climate’s effects by a substantial amount.
https://archive.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/solutions/technologies/methane.html
Plastic-Eating Enzymes could eat-up ocean plastics and stop sea animals dying
There are designs of floating houses that are anchored to the sea bed. They are designed for places like Holland, which are threatened by rising sea levels as they are under the sea level.
People have invented a weird invention
"Ooho" is a water in a blob like bottle that you can eat. This benefits the environment and can also benefit the economy. Animals can now feel safe in their own habitat, without having to live in plastic pollution.
i think that a satellite that spots methane leaks because it would be able to stop it before too much escapes. However it will spot us when we burp or blow wind.
A crazy invention that I found was a sustainable house that is made completely made of used bottles. They are fully fire proof, bullet proof and can withstand even earthquakes.
Coral reefs are highly sensitive to heat increases, with two or three degree Celsius spikes posing an existential threat. And as global warming intensifies, coral reefs around the world are dying wholesale. To stop this an inventor called Mo Ehansi invented a pipe that pumps cold water into coral reefs cooling the coral down .
Lots of people have made pictures 🌍 to help climate change such as a picture of Donald trump blowing at a nice healthy world and turning it red and orange ❤️🧡💛 oh and yellow there’s another one that is a picture of a city one side has nice green healthy grass and the other half is all dry and it’s a desert 🏜 with cracks in it and it is truly scary (trust me) and there’s another one with a nice colourful background and it says “101 ways to fight climate change”
As strange as it seems, the oil in coffee can be extracted with a solvent to make a fuel capable of powering a car that can go up to 77.5MPH. So just think, coffee powers cars like it powers you! I think that this is the way forward because electric cars take so long to charge and at the moment hardly anyone is willing to swap from petrol to electric and the idea of a coffee is so strange it has to catch people's attention. For example, charcoal face masks - no one thought of it but all it took is one person to have an idea top start a craze, but this craze will change the world.
bury the excess carbon to decrease atmospheric carbon levels which would greatly affect climate change for the greater good
I have previously designed a car that would (hopefully) reduce carbon emissions. I shall make a post with the PowerPoint and images.
I think a brilliant idea to stop climate change was the solar panel.
Government_
+)Vote for a Government, like the Green Party in the UK, who will definitely do a lot to fight against climate change.
Transport_
+)start a pass system for secondary school to university students aged 11-25, which gives them a discount on public transport on a national level.
+) Singapore has a unique private vehicle usage system, based on your day of birth. If you were born on an odd number day you can only drive on odd number days and vice versa for even number days. They also have a very complex parking system which I can't explain.
Waste_
+)Decrease the amount of waste you send to be recycled in other countries or pay for building the recycling centers there.
+) Increase local recycling.
Forests_
+) Make a law that tells you to plant ten trees for every one you cut.
+) Buildings are being designed to have trees grown on them, these are called garden skyscrapers. Best example is Bosco Verticale, Milan, Italy.
Conservation_
+) Decrease your non-veg consumption by making a special tax for meat and fish.
+) Buy fish from fish farmers.
Electricity_
+) Any future electricity power stations installed should be only of renewable energy.
+) Make non-renewable energy more expensive.
I think that the best invention created for combat against climate change is plastic-eating enzymes. These are enzymes that break down plastic and engulf them. This is helpful for the environment because it reduces the amount of plastic in the ocean and in landfills. Originally discovered in Japan, the enzyme is produced by bacteria which "eats" PET. Researchers reported in 2016 that they had found the strain living in plastics at a bottle recycling site in the port city of Sakai. Scientists created a high resolution 3D image of the enzymes and changed some of the residue to create longer lasting and higher capacity bacteria. This is a reason how scientists are helping to battle against climate change.
"About a quarter of all global emissions come from feeding the world’s 7 billion people, and part of that comes from the consumption of meat." A possible alternative is to start producing lab-grown meat, and to produce meat substitutes that look, taste and feel like the real thing. People may find this silly but some companies are taking it seriously and have already started on plant based burgers.
Biodegradable plastics are plastics that can be decomposed. Some are made out of food waste and straw ect, and others are made from as corn, palm fruit or sugar canes. Although this has more to do with plastic pollution than climate change, it can also save our planet from needing to make machines that recycle plastics, meaning we save our planet from certain emissions.
Before researching this I didn’t realise how much technology and research is currently out there into tackling climate change which actually gives us all some hope! But, this is as long as they cut fossil fuel emissions drastically. The technology I particularly like is the idea of pulling CO2 out of the air and making use out of it by selling it on to companies that require the gas to create a product because carbon capture is an extremely expensive process, and selling the gas is a good way to fund the technology with less need for government funding. Furthermore, it could be a business incentive for many more companies to create products that require the use of the CO2 gas. There’s a company called Solidia Technologies that makes building materials that actually require the need for CO2 in order to make their bricks and cement and by doing so it locks and stores the gas into their materials. This is a complete opposite of making cement the conventional way as it normally emits a huge amount of green house gases causing 5% of the global emissions that we have today.
There is some possible radical and controversial solutions out there that go under the category of Geoengineering which means deliberately altering the atmosphere, land, or ocean to counter the effects of global warming. One aspect of this is Geoengineering Phytoplankton Blooms; this involves adding fertilisers into the ocean to increase phytoplankton growth, to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and when it dies it sinks to the ocean floor locking the CO2 in the seabed. Another approach is to reflect sunlight back into space, thereby cooling the earth, one method is by putting sulphur particles into the stratosphere. Another reflective method is called cloud whitening. This technique involves injecting tiny particles of sea water directly into clouds, causing it to become more reflective and therefore reflecting more light away. However any of these techniques could have serious unexpected consequences and many scientists are unsure about it. But maybe this could be a potential solution if we need it as an emergency, after all time is not exactly on our side.
One technology that I really like is the Ocean Cleanup System that really tackles plastic in our ocean in a massive way. Invented by Boyan Slat, his machine is considered to be a breakthrough technology because if we had to rely on using nets and vessels to clean the ocean it would take thousands of years and tens of billions of dollars just to clean the Great Pacific Ocean containing horrendous amount of plastic, but using The Ocean Cleanup Systems will only take 5 years to clear up half the plastic. The advanced technology utilises the natural ocean current to draw the plastic to the machine rather than the other way round of hunting for it which saves an amazing amount of time, energy and cost. This method will minimise any harm to marine life and will be the saviour of our ocean from the scourge of plastic pollution.
An unusual invention is the electrostatic vacuum cleaner. It was designed by Daan Roosegaarde and was meant to turn copper coils into magnets which attract pollution particles. Although it benefits us in many ways such as reducing emissions in the air, it only can clean a small quantity but to make any change it will have to be able to do the same with much more.