This little girl has invented a robot that cleans the ocean of microplastics

    She's only 12, but Anna Du has already designed a system that tracks the microplastics that our seas are now overflowing with. Precisely those tiny pieces of plastic that are often ingested by aquatic animals and cause them to suffocate.

    She's only 12, but Anna Du has already designed a system that tracks the microplastics that our seas are now overflowing with. Precisely those tiny pieces of plastic that are often ingested by aquatic animals and cause them to suffocate.





    A great love for the sea and for animals that led her to do something concrete to stem the problem of marine pollution that we have been talking about for some time now. Anna Du, after a trip to Boston Harbor, he realizes that there are tiny pieces of plastic in the sand.

    He begins to collect them, but soon realizes that microplastics are really complicated to take. The fragments are very small and above all many. He thus decides to study their composition and then come to create an invention capable of tracing them.

    Its prototype is a infrared underwater device therefore capable of distinguishing microplastics from anything that may be in the sea or directly on the seabed. A kind of sub robot with a name ROV, Remotely operated vehicle, which works connected via cable to the remote reference location and which is able to identify plastic waste and remove it without damaging or disturbing marine creatures and the ecosystem.

    This little girl has invented a robot that cleans the ocean of microplastics

    A robot, needless to say, with low environmental impact and sustainable from an economic point of view that made it position among the ten finalists of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, a competition that allows young students to meet the big names in science and to work with tutors to realize their idea.

    In fact, Anna will now have a scientist of reference to turn everything into reality.

    “Science has always been an important part of my life. I am really excited to be able to create something that can really help the world, ”said Anna Du lei who dreams of enrolling in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study sea science.


    The challenge is hard, 8 million tons of plastic they are thrown into the ocean every year, debris that is never completely biodegradable, which with the waves and the sunlight is divided into smaller and smaller pieces and is then ingested by animals and sea birds.


    “In the future I hope to be able to save people with all my inventions as well”.


    Good luck to this little scientist!


    Read also:

    • These guys are cleaning the ocean of plastic (creating jobs too)
    • Boyan Slat's plastic ocean cleaning machine is ready and about to set sail

    Dominella Trunfio

    Photo: Anna Du

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