Just two years ago, a young Puneite, Haaziq Kazi viewed documentaries on television that spoke about the increasing ocean pollution and its dangers to marine life…
This prompted this 12-year-old prodigy to work towards solving this immense concern and help secure the future generations including his own from further damage.
“There are around 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. To help one visualise this, that’s enough to stack two litre plastic bottles from here to the moon and back, twice!”
Annually, over a million birds and 100,000 marine animals die because of the plastic in oceans. These are just the approximate numbers; the reality is much harsher and painful.
“There are five areas which are called gyres and the biggest of them is the great pacific patch which is thrice the size of France and that’s just the one which is floating…
There is also waste which is at the bottom of oceans and beaches. As big the problem is, what had an even more profound impact was how it was affecting marine life,” quotes Haaziq Kazi who sees himself as a problem solver and innovator, working towards creating awareness on ocean pollution.
“What one should realise about marine life dying from plastic is not the number of deaths, rather the process which leads to their death.
Lot of these animals eat the plastic thinking that is food, only for it to get stuck in their stomach or intestinal lining. Most of them are unable to get the plastic out of their body, leading to blockage of their stomach and intestine. This prevents them from consuming food, leading to starvation. We all enjoy learning about marine life whether it’s from fascinating documentaries or if you’ve been lucky enough to go on something like a san diego whale watching trip, but if we continue to ignore our responsibility to protect the environments of these creatures, we might lose them forever.
Imagine not being able to eat anything and starving to death slowly and painfully. This reality moved me, hence I decided to make a ship, ERVIS, which can collect the waste and clean it.”
Speaking to Pune365 on his brain child, ERVIS, Kazi shares, “ERVIS is designed to be environmentally friendly and does not uses high sulphur fuels which normal ships use.
It will be powered by Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) and solar energy, the specifications of which will depend on the river body it will be deployed in, being different for oceans than rivers.
The large boat will be equipped with various compartments and saucers, working on basic physics concept, centripetal force. It also has a multi stage cleaner which uses size-based separation to separate different size of waste and a compactor to compact the trash.
“The saucers float on the surface moving in circular motions to pull the waste towards its centre. These saucers will have a central outlet which will swallow the waste and is connected via a tube to various chambers in the ship.
Once the waste enters the tube, we have various stages which will then segregate it. The first sensor will be an infrared sensor which alerts ERVIS for marine life.
The waste then goes to the first level – an oil filter, which collects waste oil and sends it to the oil chamber. We would like to treat this waste oil, either decompose it or store it for safe disposal. The second, third, fourth and fifth chambers are for large, medium, small and micro waste respectively. The idea is to make it fully autonomous or least partially like TESLA cars.”
Sharing his take on whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robots are the future, Haaziq remarks, “We need to understand Artificial Intelligence (AI) is nothing but a set of algorithms (mathematical equations), AI covers anything which enables computers to behave like humans.
“AI is going to gain more prominence going forward, as a matter of fact there is already a lot of AI we are consuming, from facial recognition employed by Facebook and Google, to google assistant found on android phones. AI is going to change the way we consume technology.
“As computational power and AI evolves, so will robotics.
There is application on robotics in many areas like medical science, manufacturing, life sciences, defense, homeland security among others.
A study by Mckinsey consulting estimates that by 2030, between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation and need to find new jobs around the world. It further states that advances in AI and robotics will change the way we live life, comparable to the shift away from agricultural societies during the Industrial Revolution.”
The ship designed by Kazi is still in its conceptual stage and it will take another 6 months for the prototype design to be developed.
This young mind is currently working on creating awareness on ocean pollution through workshops among his peers.
He is also actively working on a social enterprise around circular economy to focus on how humans can change the way plastic is consumed to a more responsible and sustainable manner.
Solving urban transportation problems is also his area of interest.
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#Pune365 takes this opportunity to wish this young powerhouse of talent all success ahead!
Reach her at loveleen@pune365.com or tweet @KaurKaur18
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