Leave an Apple, Take an Apple

By Cameron San Augustin, Chris Urick and Bella Casares

For the past few weeks in Biology we have been learning about the
topic of biomimicry. Specifically, we have focused on ways to improve our
food system, mimicking natures adaptations and applying it to human
challenges. My group decided to focus on how to improve organic waste in
not only households, but in communities and landfills. For our project, we
conducted a system to improve our problem; consumers have compost bins,
they then take it to a nearby compost area where local farms/ businesses
pick it up and use the soil to their own advantage (i.e. for fruit/ vegetables,
mixing it into tree beds, revitalizing indoor plants and soil amendment). We
got the inspiration for our design from a system that also recycles organic
waste for a larger community. What happens is sea sponges that move along
the coral reef swoop up organic waste that is casted off by coral and algae.
When the organic waste is soaked up, the sponges filter it using filtering cells
inside of there body. Once the organic waste goes through these filtering
cells, it gets spat back out and turns into little nutricious cells for crabs,
snails, and other little creatures to eat. This project was a long process since
we had to go back to the drawing a few times. The reason we had to was
because we realized our first design had a bunch of flaws in it that wouldn't
make it work. Our first design was a personal planter that you can put your
compost in to feed the plants in the planter. When we learned more about
compost we realized that composting has a lot more to it than we originally
thought. For example, the smell of the compost would make the planter only
an outside thing. When we found these flaws we went back to the drawing
board and created a whole community wide system that would be better to
recycle compost for all people and not just for those who have organic waste
in the household.