With the year 2021 winding down, and the submission date for the Blue Ocean Competition coming closer, many groups of high school students around the world are most likely making significant progress in their pitches. However, what is the Blue Ocean Competition, and why does its presence attract so many?
The Blue Ocean Competition is an entrepreneurship competition for high schoolers all around the world, which claims it is the most prestigious competition. With prizes including $1,000 for first place winners, $1,000 for best social pitch, $1,000 for best Health Care pitch, the resources being provided by the Blue Ocean leadership team comes across as very generous. One factor that makes this competition so significant, is the creativity participants must have in order to tie in social/political conflicts into their product. For example, the winners of the 2020 competition presented the idea of making biodegradable water bottles with the use of banana stems. Similarly, the group I am participating in this competition with, has found a way to reduce the numbers of trees cut down in order to provide for the needs of humans.
Due to the average household using 409 rolls of toilet rolls each year, and there being 122.8 million families in the United States, this means that in the United States alone approximately 50 billion rolls of toilet paper are used each year. One realizes that this is a very significant problem due to the toilet paper tubes being made of wood pulp, which obviously comes from trees. Considering that wood is needed for many human necessities from tables to flooring material, taking away one necessity like toilet paper would positively impact the environment. The reason this would have such a positive impact on the environment is due to 70% of land animals and plant species living in forests. With around 12 million hectares or about 30 million acres of tree cover being destroyed in 2020 alone, the problem becomes evident. Furthermore, considering that tree cover the size of South Africa has been cut down in the last 25 years, without a replacement to some products, many animals and plants that are crucial to the eco-systems will start to lose their habitats and ultimately disappear.
This is where the use of banana leaves comes in, because of how flexible, strong, water resistant and biodegradable they are, banana leaves would serve as the perfect toilet paper tubing material. Due to the strength that banana leaves already have, overlapping these leaves and creating a tube like structure, a toilet paper roll could easily be put around it. When these toilet paper rolls are thrown away, one does not have to worry about them occupying landfills and taking hundreds of years to decompose, as banana leaves degrade within 3 days of being thrown into waste. Due to the fact that fresh banana leaves would most likely rot, processed banana leaves would be utilized in this process as even after years of being used they manage to retain their structure. Another factor that makes the use of banana leaves so probable is that in organic waste markets, they already account for around 23.6% of the waste. With all this waste being put towards toilet paper tubing, and the increased production of banana leaves for this very reason, we as a society could very well see the effects of deforestation minimizing in the near future.