Ideas change everything

A plan to recycle the unrecyclable

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Ashton Cofer |

TED-Ed Weekend

• December 2016

From packing peanuts to disposable coffee cups, each year the US alone produces some two billion pounds of Styrofoam -- none of which can be recycled. Frustrated by this waste of resources and landfill space, Ashton Cofer and his science fair teammates developed a heating treatment to break down used Styrofoam into something useful. Learn more out their original design.

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From packing peanuts to disposable coffee cups, each year the US alone produces some two billion pounds of Styrofoam -- none of which can be recycled. Frustrated by this waste of resources and landfill space, Ashton Cofer and his science fair teammates developed a heating treatment to break down used Styrofoam into something useful. Learn more out their original design.

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Ashton Cofer and his FIRST Robotics team won the Google Science Fair for developing a process to convert Styrofoam waste into activated carbon for purifying water.

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TED-Ed Weekend

Ashton Cofer gave this talk at TED-Ed Weekend, a student-focused conference featuring speakers and attendees from the TED-Ed Clubs program. Learn more about how to participate.

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This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.