Three budding young inventors from Galway have come up with an ingenious way to help encourage recycling with their Bottleshot invention, which they are currently showcasing at the 56th BT Young Scientist Technology Exhibition taking place at the RDS in Dublin from yesterday until Saturday.
Andrew Gordon, Reuben Florisson, and Rìain Kennedy, all aged 13 and first year pupils at Coláiste Iognáid, have successfully tested a method of encouraging people to recycle while at the same time helping reduce contaminated recycling collections by giving people a nudge in the right direction with their innovative product.
The Bottleshot is a free-throw basketball based challenge using ‘gamification’ as a user incentive which invites people to shoot their recyclable bottles accurately into a recycling collection point. Their goal is to create a fun, interactive, and competitive challenge, with quantifiable results to determine whether this nudge has a measurable impact.
The results proved conclusive with their research showing a staggering 1,248 per cent uplift in accurate recycling levels.
EU legislation currently states that Ireland must reuse and recycle 50 per cent of all its plastic waste by 2025, so this target provided a clear focus for their idea.
BT Young Scientist has reported that 60 per cent of the entries this year feature climate change and the environment which reflects current worldwide concerns. The boys share a collective passion for environmental issues and activism coining their own phrase ‘Environ-Mentality’ and they are hoping the Bottleshot will shoot them right to the very top.
