Hi all!

Cleaning trash out of the Houston bayou system is a project that I wish I could keep working on. There are so many ways it could be solved, and the impact of a solution would be felt not only in Houston, but in many communities surrounding the Gulf. I found myself easily immersed in the project and am excited to see where the actual project team takes it. That being said, I did give this project my two cents and came up with a few prototypes.

To get the process started I began with brainstorming. One of the attached images is a scan of my engineering notebook with sketches of possible ideas. These sketches began as complete designs, but from there I chose whether to prototype as a whole or individually. Generally, the designs seemed to fit into categories of what could collect floating trash and what could collect sinking trash.

My favorite prototype I created was the floating plant island. This is a solution that I think could be very cheap and effective for cleaning up chemical pollutants as the smaller debris that would be tangled in their root system. For further explanations of my prototypes, see the sticky notes attached to each one.

Until next time!

Zoe

brainstorm: 0376_001