Did you know?

Did you know that even though geographically Vietnam is a land with a lot of water, only about 39% of people living here have safe drinking water. Our issue that we are striving to solve is the large amount of water pollution of plastics in Vietnam and how accidentally drinking poor water with microplastics, and the habitat of fish being taken away. The human development that this issue connects to are social barriers, this is because people in Vietnam are not that educated about microplastics and how they affect their own lives, which leads to individuals throwing their waste into lakes and oceans in Vietnam. The SDG that this issue mainly connects to is SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, and SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing , indicator 3.9.2 which is the mortality rate by lack of sanitary water and hygiene services . While there are other products solving this problem, they require energy and are not sustainable. Our product is a cap that uses a jelly from a plant called Okra, which filters around 90% of microplastics and bacteria from water all around the world. Okra extract has polysaccharides that when added to water act as a flocculant. They have an adhesive quality that causes microplastic particles to stick to the polymers making clumps that can be filtered out . Okra plants are really sustainable because they can be grown using their seeds while we can also buy them from markets with a cheap price.