OLS Canmore High School
Case Study: OLS Canmore High School iGEM Team
In the fall of 2016, the team decided to pursue their interest in environmentally-friendly and sustainable living by looking at the problem of plastic waste. Their assumption was that, to improve plastic waste management, they will have to improve the recycling or the breakdown of plastics. The team began by doing extensive research and community and industry outreach to learn about current methods used in plastics disposal and recycling. During this process they found out that their assumption was incorrect. The actual barrier lies not in the recycling or breakdown of plastic materials, but rather in the highly inefficient sorting of plastic recyclables, which limits all downstream applications and resource recovery. Therefore, the team changed gears and decided to work on improving the sorting of recyclable plastics. With help from mentors, they came up with a solution which uses synthetic biology to produce tags for different types of plastics. The team plans to run a first trial on PET plastics, and is currently building the prototype for this.
Charting the Team’s Design Thinking Process
Note: These answers were collected over time and not necessarily in the order in which they are listed. The team has already had to loop back many times and will do so again as their project progresses.
Empathize
Who have you spoken to?
- The Canmore Recycling Facility
- The Regional Bow Valley Zero Waste Commissioner (Peter Duck)
- The Chief of Staff for Environment and Climate Change Canada (Marlo Raynolds)
- Loraas Recycling and Waste centre in Saskatoon
- We also went to the Recycling Council of Alberta Conference where we were able to gather information from other recycling facilities in Alberta – it takes a village!
What are the most impactful common issues they experience?
The most serious issue that the recycling industry faces is the ineffective sorting of plastic waste. This is something that we learned from Peter Duck, and that has been reinforced by many other voices.
Especially with the Canmore Recycling Facility, plastic is not sorted at all. This means we, as taxpayers, pay to have our plastic recycled into new products.
What have they already tried to solve their problem?
Currently, they have a system in place in which humans sort plastics on the conveyor belt, but this method is dangerous and inefficient.
Most notably, the Saskatoon Loraas Recycling centre has a pair of robots that use IR light to sort and differentiate between different types of plastic.
Towns tried to set up the 7 types of plastic bins for civilians to sort, but this is highly inefficient and isn’t helping the recycling facility at all. They often end up grouping the plastics together and shipping them. Educating citizens is a large thing. If people learned to sort their plastics properly, we wouldn't have much of a problem.
Define
Who is your primary audience?
Recycling and Material Recovery facilities, both private and government.
Also part of the audience are politicians who may be able to enact the changes we propose with the solution we provide.
What is the challenge you are trying to solve?
We are trying to create an effective solution for sorting plastics at the end stage (after they've been used).
What is the outcome you want for your users?
A fast, efficient, and cost effective solution to the plastics sorting problem. We want municipalities to better sort their plastics so more taxpayer money can be spent on other, equally important tasks, and so that less plastic waste ends up entering ecosystems and landfills.
Ideate
What solutions already exist?
At the Loraas Recycling centre in Saskatoon, a pair of twin IR robots are used to sort all 7 different types of plastics. Each robot costs CAD $250,000 to purchase new. Otherwise, human sorting and spectrophotometers are most commonly used.
What are some radical new solutions you can think of?
Having all plastics pre-tagged or clearly (visibly) labeled so once they arrive at a recycling facility, they can be easily sorted either manually or with a machine. But this would require the cooperation of plastic manufacturers worldwide, and there should be a clear benefit for them.
We are thinking to create bio-tags for the different types of plastic, which will be sensed by a camera and allow sorting into designated bins.
What other industries/ideas have you used as inspiration?
Early on, we were inspired by a plastic-eating organism developed at Yale university, as solution for breaking down plastics.
The system used at Loraas Recycling centre is a possibility, if only we can replace its expensive sensor components with more cost effective ones from bacteria.
Using the Red Fluorescent Protein with the Amino Labs kits inspired our idea for tagging. Elements of our school Robotics team’s endeavors provided inspiration for mechanical processes.
What are your constraints?
We are a high school team so we don't have the resources, especially in microbiology, that larger institutions such as universities or corporations might have.
Prototype
What are core assumptions/parts of your MVP (minimum viable product)?
We will be using bacteria to create colour tags, and are assuming the tags will actually work in binding to plastics and the colours will be visible so our robot can read them and do the sorting accordingly.
Assuming our MVP will be cheaper than what is currently available.
Assuming we will be able to sort the plastics faster, with higher accuracy.
How will you test your MVP quickly?
We will put a new DNA program into bacteria to produce a bio-tag for PET plastics, and test its adherence and fluorescent qualities in the lab. We will also create a 3d model of the system we are thinking to build, which we will show to industry experts. Their feedback and key concerns will help us determine whether or not our idea could be successfully implemented in recycling facilities, and what our next steps should be.
Who can you get to test it?
Actual managers of sorting and material recovery facilities which are well experienced in the industry. These are the most important people since they're the ones who would be using our product in the future. We’ll probably start with our local recycling facility.
Test
How did users respond to your solution?
People are skeptical of our solution at first, because it uses synthetic biology, but once they understand more, the response is generally positive. Many give us good feedback.
It's interesting because it's not a problem people often hear about in the recycling industry. The general public is more concerned about recycling plastics, rather than sorting them.
The person we spoke with at the Canmore Recycling Facility was excited about our project and seemed very interested in possibly having it implemented in our local recycling facility.
What are the strengths of your solution?
It will be cheaper, and hopefully have the same accuracy and speed as products currently on the market. Instead of being limited to sorting only 2-3 plastics, we hope our system will be able to cover the whole spectrum (7+). Our solution would also remove humans from dangerous positions in recycling facilities.
What are the weaknesses of your solution?
We are still in very early stages, so we are still working through some design and planning challenges. We also have to fight a lot of stigma surrounding the genetically modified portion of our project.
Using synthetic biology, we are not too sure if we can live up to the speed of the process we expect. Bacteria don't respond instantaneously like electronics do. They take time. And because of that time delay, it may cause our solution to lose value.
What will you try next?
Once we receive the new DNA, we will put it into bacteria and start our tests in the lab. Depending on our results, we will look at conditions for optimizing the speed and accuracy of our system. Along with this, we will be designing and 3d printing prototypes of our product, and try them out. We expect to learn and reiterate every step of the way.