If you have teenagers in your house, you may find that they can sometimes throw any old waste into any old bin and you then spend your time taking the cartons out of the black bin and the wipes out of the brown bin. But not all teens are domestic waste vandals. Some teens might even want to make it easier for others to get the right waste into the right bin. Take Transition Year student Alannah Corcoran Cusack, for example. Alannah told Oliver Callan about the bin that automatically sorts rubbish that she and her friends have invented and how they want to take their invention to the SAGE World Cup in Tokyo in August:
"It's an international event for teen entrepreneurs. SAGE actually stands for Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship."
But what is a self-sorting bin and how did Alannah and her friends come to make the thing in the first place? She’s actually pretty modest and refreshingly direct about the team and its achievement:
"Lucky enough I’m gifted with two very talented creative technical minds on my team. So I’m on the PR side, so this is why I’m talking to you here today. They come up with the concept, the bin that sorts rubbish... We have a prototype running right now and we hope to be able to sort plastic bottles, aluminium cans and paper."
The bin and the innovation that powers it are unique, Alannah says:
"We’ve looked through projects with the Creative Spark Labs – they're an international project kind of making organisation – so we’ve looked through there, we haven’t found anything like this design."
It will be possible to tweak the bin, Alannah says, for company use to favour one particular form of waste, depending on the business needs of a given company. And, unlike SAGE, Alannah and her friends have come up with a pretty snappy name for themselves:
"So, we’re Team RUST. That stands for Rubbish Utilisation Sorting Technology."
Oliver wondered what the project to create a self-sorting bin says about Alannah and her friends in Team RUST. Alannah says climate change is part of the daily conversation in their school, Coláiste Dún an Rí in Cavan:
"We’re obviously educated on the global warming and climate change and it’s in our curriculum and we we're talking about it in here every day 'cause it has such an impact on us. But we’re very involved and intrigued by the idea because we really want to make a difference in the environment."
So far, it all sounds extremely encouraging. There is something of a catch, though. In order to get to the SAGE World Cup in Tokyo in August, Team RUST have to, well, get to Tokyo. And that’s not cheap. So they’re fundraising to try and make sure they’re there, representing Ireland, Cavan and Coláiste Dún an Rí:
"The total is twenty thousand – that's to cover, most of that is going into flights and accommodation and we really need to raise funds ‘cause it’s great, the idea of getting there, but in real terms we need to have the money to get there."
Alannah and her friends – did I mention she’s 16? – have already raised over €6,000, but the shortfall is daunting. There are multiple places to donate, including Team RUST on Instagram. Here’s hoping they make it to Tokyo in August.
You can hear Oliver’s full chat with Alannah by clicking above.