SOLVING FOR TOMORROW: The Princeton High School (PHS) research team has advanced to the national finals of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition and will be competing next month in New York City for the $100,000 grand prize. Under the guidance of PHS science teacher Mark Eastburn, the researchers have used black soldier flies to combat greenhouse gas emissions by transforming food waste into a variety of usable products. (Photo courtesy of Mark Eastburn)

By Donald Gilpin

There’s a lot going on in Mark Eastburn’s science classroom at Princeton High School (PHS). There’s a glass terrarium filled with buzzing black soldier flies. A side room is home to the catfish that are the basis of the fish-raising project that will be using the catfish frass (waste) to branch off into an aquaponics program. On top of a couple of shelves, there’s an oil press used to transform black soldier flies into a variety of useful products, including the soaps which are drying on a plastic rack in the back of the room. 

“We are going to have to expand,” said Eastburn, who directs the PHS Research Program. And as one of 10 national finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest, the PHS research team will be acquiring some resources to fuel that expansion. So far they have won $50,000 in Samsung technology and classroom supplies for their project in using the black soldier fly to transform food waste into usable products and combat greenhouse gases, and on April 24 they’ll be traveling to New York City to pitch their project to a panel of judges in hopes of being chosen as one of three national winners to take home the grand prize of $100,000.

Formed as a collaboration between PHS English-Language Learners (ELL) and research program students, and supported by teachers and administrators from the science and ESL departments, the team continues to develop this multi-faceted project.

“I am incredibly proud of everything our team has accomplished thus far,” said PHS senior Matthew Livingston. “When I started work on this project last year, there were only four others working with me, and now we’ve expanded to more than 30 people working on all different aspects, like raising the flies, using the fly oil, and I even worked on securing rotting fruits and vegetables for the flies at one point by going to the Philadelphia organic produce market to smash organic waste into fly food.”

Livingston, who is also the founder of the PHS Insect-Eating Club, described how his team used recycled materials to design a “bioreactor,” a modified bucket to raise the larvae as they eat food waste.

“As a part of the Samsung competition, many ELL students helped create and build new bioreactor designs to house the flies, and then other students in the research program and I made soaps out of oil extracted from these bugs,” he added. “We also got into contact with a local farm to feed the larvae to chickens.”

Eastburn, who teaches an engineering class that includes many ELL students, wanted to get his engineering students involved in a school-wide project. “Hands-on building,” he noted. So they started designing prototypes for ways to contain the black soldier fly, based on Eastburn and Livingston’s earlier work.  “They ended up taking this to the next level,” said Eastburn. “They got very interested in the husbandry practice of raising the black soldier flies, feeding them, using them as food for the catfish we’ve been raising and chickens we’ve been tending. Then we started with tilapia, a warm-water fish that we’ve also been raising.”

He continued, “From there some of the students started asking about an agriculture project, which got them thinking about different products we could make that would have a longer shelf life than fruits and vegetables. So we’d been thinking about vegetable oils, and from that we came upon the idea of soap-making, and we began to spin into cosmetics.”

Eastburn pointed out that students are currently looking for recipes to create hand creams, lipsticks, and lip balms from the black soldier fly oil. “It really is a very versatile product,” he said. “We’re able to take all this food waste, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, and convert it into very useful products with an insect that is easy to raise and easy to feed because it will eat pretty much everything.”

Future plans for this multi-faceted educational enterprise include bringing the products to market. “My hope is that especially my English-language learning students will have the opportunity to see the entrepreneurship possibilities, creative ways that they can apply the knowledge that they bring into new frontiers and see that they can bring these ideas into a market in a place like Princeton,” said Eastburn.

“I’ve been able to get so many students interested and involved,” he continued, “and such a diversity of students. It’s really rewarding, with native Spanish speakers who have just arrived in this country getting just as involved as the veteran members of the PHS research program. I hope I can continue to build these bridges between the students and continue these collaborations so that this really is a community project.”

Eastburn went on to discuss the potential for the black soldier fly to provide important responses to worldwide environmental challenges. “It’s a miracle insect,” he said. “There are so many things it can produce. It needs to be part of a solution for the future and how we can live more sustainably on this planet. The current paradigms that we have are not effective for long-term sustainability.”

PHS junior Ngan Le commented in an email on the progress of her work in the  program. “Researching more about black soldier flies taught me the beauty of these critters for tackling food waste and started moving the gears to determine how they could be multi-purposed,” she wrote. “This experience has allowed me to stay true to my values of taking action to find solutions without fear of failure when there are challenges.”

Emphasizing the multi-faceted learning experience, she continued, “From my love of dermatology and cosmetics, I tested methods to swap out unethical and unsustainable materials with the black soldier fly products. Through experimentation with different formulas with the black soldier fly oil, it was invigorating to put skills and knowledge from my science classes into practice. By collaborating with diverse members of the community, a sense of team spirit and an embrace of innovative thinking was evident.”

Katherine Monroe, another junior in the research program, wrote, “I went into this project being a little insect-wary, but it’s amazing to see what they can do.”

Monroe, who recently wrote and presented a paper to the World Food Prize Foundation on the potential of insect agriculture to replace palm oil and reduce deforestation in Indonesia, is a believer in the potential of insect agriculture as a means to reduce waste and lessen the damage done by climate change.

Monroe expressed her admiration for Eastburn, the project, and the whole research program. “I’m just so proud of all the hard work that everyone has put into this project,” she wrote. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to work towards manifesting the original vision and seeing how it has developed along the way. It’s fantastic to see it all pay off and we’re thrilled to be named finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition.”

The PHS research team points out that it also has the opportunity win a $10,000 Community Choice award and urges all supporters to view their student-created video and vote for them, “once a day, every day,” on the Samsung website at samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow/.