Almost every day we hear the same story about how crucial is to save our environment and natural resources: we need to conserve energy, to recycle, to use water responsibly… And all other things need to be done in order to save our planet. One boy, Oyon Ganguli, being just 9 years old understood that every drop of water counts. What he did impressed everyone — this boy has invented a prototype of a water saving device which he called “The Cleaner” — this innovation filters already used water and make it suitable to be re-used. Wondering how he got this genius idea? You’ll be surprised to find out how truly simple genius ideas are.
I bet everyone remember an ALS ice bucket challenge that went viral several years ago. The point of reminding such challenge is that it become the main inspiration for a boy: while Oyon was watching a video with a guy sitting under a backhoe full of water and it dumped it all on him, he got shocked — such a waste of water! A boy started to discuss this issue with his mom and found out that a 10-minutes shower wastes about 50 gallons of water and that’s quite a lot. And not so long after this conversation a boy started to realize his idea.
And the idea was at the same time very simple and genius: to filter used water by separate different layers of gravel, sand and charcoal after it is collected in a storage tank before eventually being pumped back for reuse. “When someone takes a shower, the water goes down the drain and through the pipe before it reaches a filter with three layers: gravel, sand and charcoal. The water, which is now clean and filtered, sits in a storage tank before it gets pumped back up to the bathtub. Because over time, the filter gets clogged, there will be a little door to make sure you get access to the filtre“ explains a young innovator.
He received a lot of help and support from his mom and his friend Mateo who helped him with a three-layered filter. His mom suggested that these layers can be put in an empty strawberry box and helped him to frame this device with a carbon box. She also was the first who encouraged Oyon to participate in the Mighty Minds a national youth inventors competition jointly run by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Camp Invention, a youth educational summer camp. It was his first significant achievement — he won a grand prize and it is believed to be only the very beginning of his inventing journey. . A boy is now about to start working on another idea, called the ‘Space Cleaner’- which is a solar-powered robot whose one arm melts space junk and the other vacuums up the melted liquid. And what about his future plans? Oyon dreams to become one of three things: an inventor, an employee at Lego or at Mojang (the company that develops the video game „Minecraft“. And we believe how dreams truly come true when you work hard for it!
