An award-winning student project to reduce plastic waste has advanced to the semi-finals of the Wege Prize, a global competition for redesigning the way economies work.
Elijah Birley, a mechanical engineering student, Isabella Daneyko, a biomedical engineering student, and Carlton Darby, a chemical engineering student, are members of the Decomp team, which is developing an organic plastic waste disposal solution.
Their project uses proprietary plastic-degrading microbes to accelerate the degradation of plastics within weeks as compared to the hundreds of years it takes for plastics to naturally degrade.
It was selected as the Canadian winner of the 2021 Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s (CEC) Youth Innovation Challenge.
The Waterloo team, which also includes Isha Simon, a biology student, and Haya EL-Merheby, a student in the environment, resources and sustainability program, are among 15 shortlisted for the Wege Prize, an annual competition designed for post-secondary students to create regenerative solutions that have a widespread and lasting positive impact.
Other innovative student entries include mobile hydroelectric generators, agricultural waste captured to boost community health, and aquaponics systems that save water and boost biodiversity.