I have a question for you. Anybody in the audience who doesn’t have a plastic ID? Anybody? Well, think about it. Plastic is everywhere. The buttons on your shirt, your mobile cover, the water from the plastic bottle you just had, plastic money in the wallet, maybe. It is interesting how plastic has become an integral part of our lives and how we cannot go one single day without it. Do you know what that makes me think? How my generation is inheriting not just this legacy but also the problem that comes with it: the problem of what we throw in our oceans. Hello, everybody. My name is Haaziq Kazi. I am 12 years old, and I alone have a plastic debt of roughly 66 tons and counting. So, in case you are wondering, What is plastic debt? It is the amount of non-cycled plastic which we humans leave behind on this planet. How many Indians in the house today? Raise your hands, please. According to a study, for every person in India, six tons of plastic is not recycled annually. Any Americans here?
Your figures are even more astounding. Ninety tons per person of plastic which is not recycled, annually. Imagine, in a lifetime, how much plastic is left behind because of us. When we die, our bodies go back to Mother Earth, but the plastic debt is left behind as a legacy for the coming generations. Did you know that by 2050, we will have as much, or maybe more, plastic in the ocean than fish? Speaking of which, every time I see people eating fish, I wonder, “Are they eating fish or plastic?” Because the plastic we dispose that ends up in the ocean might have been consumed by the same fish which gets on our plate - talk about the vicious karmic cycle. The magnitude of the problem inspired me to do something about this. Hence, I came up with an idea of an invention that could help make the oceans a cleaner place: an ocean cleaner called ERVIS. ERVIS is an intelligent ship which sucks waste from the ocean surface and cleans it. It all started two years back.
I saw some documentaries and a TED Talk of Boyan Slat about how he wanted to clean the oceans. A few days later, as I came home from playing football, my mom asked me to wash my hands, and as I went to the sink to get the dirt off, I observed a whirlpool of water going down the drain. An idea came to my mind, and I smiled. I drew and created a rough model, a circular ship with saucers attached, a very futuristic design, much like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Come on, we all love the series. Right? This was just the first draft. The propellers weren’t automated, and it only lasted seven seconds in water before coming apart. But there it was: my ERVIS, my vision of changing the oceans. While guzzling down innumerable cups of hot chocolate - you know, I’m still a kid, no coffee for me - I did some exhaustive research to achieve my vision of ERVIS, which is: first, to clean the current waste floating in the ocean; second, to analyze the data from the waste which we collect; and third, to stop it at source, which is getting disposed by the ships.
I also realized that a circular shape was not very efficient and that I had to redesign my ship to be more hydrodynamic. So I worked with scientists and engineers to create a more bleeding edge model. So here’s how it works. The ship is essentially a large boat powered by solar and renewable natural gas, with various compartments, and saucers surrounding it. The saucers float on the surface, gravitate to create a whirlpool to pull the waste towards its center, which is then sent through a tube to various chambers in the ship. The chambers include an oil chamber, which collects waste oil. The next four chambers are for large, medium, small, and micro-waste, respectively. Just imagine ERVIS to be a gigantic vacuum cleaner with many cleaning tubes attached to many dust bags. Once the waste enters the chambers, ERVIS analyzes, segregates, and compacts it, and pumps the filtered water back into the oceans, all without harming marine life in the process.
ERVIS, the ship, is my contribution in making the Earth a better place.
And I hope, in some way, it can inspire you to find your idea which can bring a positive change in the world. Thank you.