Disney BH6 XPRIZE Challenge Winners: Helping Consumers Make Environmentally Conscious Decisions

[Kamran's BIG IDEA] [Kamran] Hello, everybody at Big Hero 6. My name is Kamran, and I have an idea for your XPRIZE Challenge. Here's the problem: excessive product packaging leading to too much waste. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, in 2012, Americans generated 251 million tons of solid waste. That's about 4.4 pounds per person, per day. While recycling rates have increased, we still end up dumping just over half of our solid waste into landfills every year. It may only take paper 2-3 weeks to decompose, but it takes 450-1000 years for plastic to decompose. Here's my solution: packaging ratings. Imagine a service that evaluates how damaging a product's packaging is to the environment, and gives a simple rating so a customer like you can decide to buy this product or another product with a better packaging rating. I believe if you give people information in an easy-to-understand way, they will make better decisions. We do it all the time when it comes to informing people about what is in a product, so we can decide if it's good or bad to eat. We should inform people about what's around the product, so we can decide if it's good or bad for the environment. This is where science, math, and engineering come into play. This service would get products of all types— I'm just using gum as an example— and break down the packaging in terms of all the important variables, such as the volume, degradability, dimensions, and its material composition. Using those variables, you can rank packaging based on how good or bad they are for the environment. [Most Environmentally Friendly Gum Packaging] [Poppazilla: 8.9 Toc Toc: 7.2] [Gumtastic: 5.3 Gumhorrible: 1.3] I believe if you do that, more people will start buying the products with better packaging, and the companies with more damaging packaging will have to change. That's my big idea. [♪ music ♪] [That's] [Kamran's] [Big Idea!]