I recently attended the 2015 Finger Lakes FIRST Lego League Championship Tournament and I was really impressed. It was wonderful to feel the huge amount of energy in the gym. There were a ton of happy youngsters running around having a great time and putting their robots to the test. So why are you reading about it on the University’s sustainability blog? Well, that’s because of the theme of the competition. This year’s challenge for the students was called “Trash Trek” and the main mission was “to make less trash or improve the way people handle the trash we make.”
Lego has certainly been striving toward sustainability recently, but I thought that making this the theme of the competition was a really unique way to get there. I love watching kids come up with ideas to make the world better; children are so creative and they are capable of thinking of incredibly innovative solutions.
I walked around their expo and saw the presentations that each group put together, and some of them really surprised me. Some of the kids were really excited to tell me all about their ideas and answer my questions when I got to the booths. Ideas ranged from things like simple plastic carton recycling programs in their towns to improved cigarette butt disposal techniques to making fabric out of plastic bags; their ideas varied greatly in scope and magnitude, but they were all a start at mitigating an issue that is definitely worth thinking about.
The thing that was really cool about this was that the kids actually tried to realize their projects in their local communities. Even if many of them didn’t come to fruition, the project still got the kids thinking about how everyone can reduce waste and how to make innovative solutions to big problems. I definitely learned new things from the projects and heard some thought-provoking answers to some tough questions.
So, should we put kids on climate change panels and send them to the drawing board for new sustainable policy and technology? Yeah, probably. Imagine what we could do with the fresh ideas that youngsters bring to the table. Never underestimate the ingenious powers of kids.
Written by Mariah Greico, Class of 2018