Introduction:

An underwater view of a section of the Pacific Garbage patch filled with plastic wastes

     Since the advent of material culture after WWII in the 1950’s, disposability of objects has been seen as a luxury to be enjoyed by those who can afford it. As a result plastics have been accumulating as wastes in our environment at intensifying rates. In the United States the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates on average that Americans produce 4.43 pounds of trash per person per day  In 2010 Americans produced 250 million tons of trash, and this does not include industrial, hazardous, and construction based wastes. A specific kind of waste that has entered our environment relatively recently on the planetary time scale is plastic. It estimated that 225 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, and although they represent only 10% of all wastes produced, they account for a much higher percentage of the wastes that enter our environment as pollution. We have decided to try to find a way to curb the amount of plastic accumulating our environment, and have decided to tackle plastic bottles as our main target. We are trying to re-purpose bottles that have already served their function, and provide positive ecological solutions through their use.

          We decided to work on a functional apparatus for catching flies made from the common water bottle. By catching flies we can help reduce the diseases certain types of them spread such as African Sleeping Sickness, Dysentery, and a variety of other diseases carried by the bacteria flies come in contact with .  We believe our project had clearly observable short term goals and eventually could be implemented on a global level with a longer time scale. Our project was to work out the most effective design of insect catcher, and test out the most efficient common liquids and or solutions that attract flies . We established this website/blog as a resource for others to see and potentially utilize our ideas and research. We also created this blog as a gateway for contact to various organizations that deal in Africa or other countries affected by diseases carried insects, and for those interested in seeking alternatives to chemically based pesticides. We have also constructed a simple hand out that can be distributed in print format to those without modern electronics, but preferably also have it available as a PDF that can be sent through email or other forms of electronic communication without having to waste paper. By educating others about this low cost solution to reducing insect borne disease, and providing an alternative to chemically based pesticides, we would hope that our idea would spread to the communities around the world that would need this device the most, and would also spread on the local level to those who are interested...