This High Schooler Invented a Plant-Based Plastic That Removes Microplastics From the Environment as It Biodegrades

Eighteen-year-old Arya Satheesh created her award-winning Eco Purge to help address the global problem of plastic pollution

Ramsha Waseem | Innovation Correspondent

August 6, 2026 7:06 a.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

Arya Satheesh, an 18-year-old student from Letterkenny in County Donegal, Ireland, has spent the past couple of years studying microplastics. The spread of these plastic fragments measuring less than five millimeters (1/5 inch) in size is a growing concern worldwide, as they infiltrate the environment as well as humans and animals.

The young scientist researched plastic pollution and the challenges of detecting microplastics in drinking water. She recalls finding a disturbing statistic: Only 9 percent of the 507 million tons of plastic produced every year gets recycled.

“I wanted to find a solution,” Satheesh says. “I thought there’s no point in saying, ‘Oh, recycle, recycle.’”

While some individuals willingly limit their plastic use and recycle, research into behavioral patterns shows that others don’t make the effort or simply do not care. Moreover, the fact that plastic is cheaper than most other materials available in the market makes it an easier choice for the larger population.

To address the problem, Satheesh invented Eco Purge, a plant-based, biodegradable plastic. Once disposed of, the plastic takes up to two weeks to degrade and release enzymes into the environment that break down existing microplastics in the surrounding soil and water.

Eco Purge won the European category of the 2026 Earth Prize, the largest environmental competition in the world for young students. The competition inspires students to develop eco-solutions for real-world impact, and it supports them with mentorship and learning resources. Satheesh was awarded $12,500 to continue to develop her prototype.

The path to Eco Purge

Satheesh likes to participate in as many science competitions as she can. She says the freedom that contests give her to research any topic drives her to innovate.

Nearly two years ago, for SciFest, Ireland’s largest second-level STEM fair program, Satheesh developed a smart water monitor designed to detect contaminants in drinking water.

Ultimately, through this work, Satheesh realized that the detection of microplastics only sheds light on the problem, and what was needed was a solution.

“Microplastics can act like toxic sponges in our ecosystems, absorbing heavy metals and synthetic chemicals,” says Charles Rolsky, executive director and senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute, a nonprofit scientific research organization based in Blue Hill, Maine. His current research focuses on detecting microplastics within human tissues, and the potential link between plastic accumulation and chronic diseases.

“When wildlife or humans ingest these particles,” he continues, “they cause internal inflammation, disrupt digestive systems and can release chemical additives directly into biological tissues.”

Satheesh wondered if it was possible to create a biodegradable plastic embedded with a special enzyme that would break down other plastic in the nearby environment. This way, people could use the plastic without harming the environment.

“So people have their normal behavior to throw away things, or we can even go dump this in a dump fill, and it still degrades to release that enzyme in the dump fill to degrade the existing microplastic,” she explains.

“That was the initial starting point of Eco Purge,” she says.

While she had an entire blueprint for her wonder plastic drawn out, Satheesh was aware of a few challenges she’d need to overcome. For one, the enzyme required for her ambitious project wasn’t easily accessible, and it was also expensive, which would factor into the cost of her biodegradable plastic.

To source the recently discovered enzyme, the student turned to ChatGPT to make a list of all the companies that were experimenting with it in Europe and the United States, along with their emails. She then approached these companies to discuss the availability of the enzyme and how she could source it for her research. A few offered to sell her the enzyme.

“But it was really expensive for me to buy as a student,” she says. “Around three milligrams costs about $2,500.”

After several rejections, she finally received a bite from Kevin O’Connor, the director of BiOrbic, Ireland’s National Bioeconomy Research Center. Though he did not have the enzyme on hand at the time, he offered to import it from other countries. “He sourced two types of enzymes from Denmark and Germany for me, and he sent it to Atlantic Technological University, a nearby college that helped me keep this enzyme safe,” Satheesh says.

Then, this past January, she presented a new project, the initial prototype of Eco Purge, at the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, one of Ireland’s top STEM competitions for secondary school students.

Later this year, she submitted her plastic prototype for the Earth Prize competition, where, with the help of the competition’s mentors, she figured out an innovative method using biotechnology to bring her cost-efficient Eco Purge to life.

To test her biodegradable plastic, Satheesh placed a particular amount of microplastic along with Eco Purge in different environments like soil, salt water and fresh water. She observed each environment for a period of six weeks. At the end of the six weeks, both the microplastic contaminants and Eco Purge had degraded.

“The Young Scientist version was primarily a proof of concept,” she says. The Earth Prize version focused on developing the idea into a practical, market-ready product that was scalable.

“So Eco Purge wasn’t just suddenly a huge thing,” says Satheesh, “but it evolved step by step.”

The plastic of the future?

Over the years, the bioplastic industry has experienced significant advances as researchers continue to develop improved biodegradable plastic. Experts have successfully created bioplastics from materials like plant cellulose, renewable agricultural feedstocks and algae. Some of the best-known biodegradable plastic options available in the market include NatureWorks, PlastScience and Novamont. Nevertheless, none of the options present today is capable of breaking down the existing microplastics in the environment like Eco Purge.

“Replacing conventional single-use plastics with a plant-based, biodegradable alternative is a vital step toward stopping the flow of new microplastic waste,” says Rolsky, of the Shaw Institute. “What makes [Satheesh’s] project stand out is the shift from passive containment to an active solution.” He points out that the teenager’s work asks not just how a material can break down, but how it can actively clean the environment around it.

That said, Rolsky doesn’t hesitate to note that while the use of bioplastics to actively deploy enzymes is a creative proof of concept, its practical success will likely be confined to closed environments like compost facilities rather than open oceans.

Rolsky explains that enzymes operate on a kind of a lock-and-key system, meaning an enzyme tailored to degrade one specific plastic type won’t affect the complex mixture of plastics in the environment. Eco Purge targets PET-derived plastics, for example. “In open ecosystems, released enzymes will probably dilute into surrounding soil and water, limiting their contact time and ability to break down nearby particles,” he says.

Moreover, one of the biggest industrial roadblocks in bringing Eco Purge to scale, the environmental researcher observes, is temperature. “Standard plastic processing uses high heat that typically destroys biological enzymes that tend to be more delicate,” he explains. “Scaling enzyme production to a global commercial level could be very costly, making it hard to compete with the low margins of traditional packaging.”

Rolsky continues, “While bringing any bio-functional material to market takes a ton of work, the ingenuity and ambition shown in this design are inspiring and provide a fantastic foundation for future research.”

As a young environmental scientist, Satheesh is already focused on improving Eco Purge with some of the award funds from the Earth Prize. She would like to see companies involved with packaging, bioplastic and garbage bag productions use it in the next five years.

Eventually, she hopes to start her own bioplastic production company.

“That would be a better way of approaching the future of Eco Purge,” she says.

Ramsha Waseem is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in BBC Travel, Dwell, Atlas Obscura and other media outlets.