Ashton Cofer and his friends tried hundreds of ways to find a usable, cost-effective solution for polystyrene recycling, in the end, their success inspired so much more…
Ashton Cofer and friends came up with a solution to end polystyrene pollution. According to Ashton, there is no feasablie option yet as it is too expensive to recycle and there is a high risk of contaminants.
Ashton confirmed that many states within the US were now banning the production of single use items requiring polystyrene. His team wanted to come up with a solution that allowed them to get rid of polystyrene in an effective way.
“So the idea for this project all started when a few months earlier, a couple of my teammates took a trip to Central America and saw beaches littered with Styrofoam, or expanded polystyrene foam. And when they came back and told us about it, we really started thinking about the ways in which we see Styrofoam every day.
Get a new flat-screen TV? You end up with a block of Styrofoam bigger than the TV itself. Drink a cup of coffee? Well, those Styrofoam coffee cups are sure going to add up. And where do all these items go after their one-time use?
Since there aren’t any good existing solutions for used Styrofoam, almost all of them end up right in the landfill, or the oceans and beaches, taking over 500 years to degrade. And in fact, every year, the US alone produces over two billion pounds of Styrofoam, filling up a staggering 25 percent of landfills.”
He was recently invited to give a TED Talk which focused on the success of their project. His talk not only went into detail about the project, it covered their many failers which led to success.
“So yes, although we started with catching my dad’s grill on fire and failing so many times that we almost quit,it was well worth it when we look back at it now. We took a problem that many people said was impossibleand we made it possible, and we persevered when it looked like nothing that we did would work. We learned that you can’t have success without a little, or a lot, of failure.”
His goal was not only share the information about the project but to inspire people, specifically the youth, to keep trying no matter what.
You can watch his TED Talk below.
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