October 5, 2020
We love what we do! Everyday we work to protect the marine environment and promote positive change in people. When someone like 15 year old Kerstine asks for our help because she and her team want to stop sea turtles from ingesting plastic bags, we jump at it. It is opportunities like these that make us love our jobs even more!
We interviewed Kerstine to find out about the First Lego League!
1) What is the the First Lego League?
The First Lego League is a competition where young ones for all over Scandinavia who compete in PR/marketing, science, IT and teamwork. Every year the competition has a new theme, and this year it was Animal Allies. “How could we make it better for the animals?”
2) What is the name of your team and of your project?
The name of our team is: LEGOcean. We figured out the name when we were discussing about our project, which of course was about marine litter. We thought that we should have a connecting thread through all of our PR/marketing. Our project didn’t have a name but we were working on it.
3) Why did you pick to work on this project?
We picked this project because we thought that it would be really exciting to hear more about. We had been hearing about it on the TV and on documentaries, and we thought that it was a huge problem to which we wanted to find a solution.
4) What did your project consist of?
Our project ended up to be a machine which could pick up trash in the seas. It floats against the stream so it could collect all the plastic before it ends in the big gyro’s and turtle’s stomachs. We couldn’t find a method to make our plastic so smooth, that the sea turtles couldn’t get trapped or suffocated. So we decided to find a more permanent solution which could solve some of the problems we have right now.
The machine should have a big “mouth” in the front, which should collect all the big trash which floats around in the seas. The back of the machine would have filtered all the microplastic from the big trash, so the finest plastic would be collected and recycled just as the big trash would.
But our project was not “only” our prototype, it was also a message to everyone about the problem with marine litter. We really wanted people to understand why we made this machine, and why we have to think about our seas and its creatures.
5) You have learned so much about marine litter and the devastating effects they have on sea turtles, what will you do about it from now on?
We have learned so much about trash, animals and the seas. We now know that trash have more effect than we thought in the start. We have learned that everything ends somewhere and all the pink stories about recycled plastic only happens very rarely.
We have talked a lot about what we would change I our everyday, and what we could do to reduce the plastic consumption. I have talked with my parents about plastic bags which we buy in the supermarket and what we could use instead ex. Bags which is made out of fabric.
We loved working with you and MEDASSET and we are so thankful for your support and passion to tell us what we didn’t knew about the sea turtle’s life. We admire your great work and the difference you are making every day.
Best
Kerstine Andersen, Uhre School, Denmark.
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