After Fishermen Deaths, 11-Year-Olds from TN Designed Zero-Cost Life Jackets Using Plastic Bottles

Disturbed that fishermen die at sea every day because they cannot afford safety gear, these boys from a government school in Tamil Nadu designed a cost-efficient life jacket out of waste plastic bottles. The project won the ‘Boldest Idea’ award at the ‘I CAN Awards 2014’ organised by Design for Change.

Eleven-year-old Rishikesh spent a lot of his time playing on the beaches of Ramanathpuram and the neighbouring fishing villages. While there, he’d often heard murmured stories of fishermen tragically drowning at sea. Disturbed by these stories, and knowing that most fishermen cannot afford safety gear, he started thinking.

With his Class VI friends – Praveen, Naveenkumar, Karthi, and Guhan, all of whom hail from agricultural families – from the Panchayat Union Middle School in Muthuramalingapuram, rural Tamil Nadu, Rishikesh went about designing a product that could help fishermen stay afloat, at zero cost. “The idea of designing a life-saving jacket came to me when I saw some plastic bottles floating in the sea,” he told EducationWorld.

The students envisioned putting such discarded plastic waste, which spoils the soil and water bodies, to better use.

Studying the physics of floatation by observing empty plastic bottles in water…

The students began researching on the physics of floatation by experimenting with empty plastic bottles. Stitching together about two dozen such bottles, their first prototype seemed to work pretty well. As Rishikesh knew swimming, he tried out the jacket himself first in a lake, to see if it effectively allowed him to float.