Styrofoam is a commonly used material. It’s useful in so many ways, but often styrofoam ends up in landfills too often. 25% of landfills comprise of styrofoam and takes up to 500 years to decompose. Ashton Cofer and three other students from Gahanna Middle School East developed foam trash into carbon to purify water.  The students were in eighth grade when the project started and are in currently ninth now. The students got the idea from a trip to Central America, where they found that styrofoam littered the area excessively. They began to think of ways to recycle foam because the solutions for recycling styrofoam was very limited and expensive. Cofer and his friends went through many failures to receive their final solution. The group got together a couple days a week to work on the project and divided up the work. Finally, the group found the solution with the correct temperatures, time, and chemicals. The final name for the idea was called Styro-Filter. The idea received a grant from eCYBERMISSION, First Global Innovation Awards, and from the Lego League. The money will be used to get a patent and further develop research. Ashton was even given the honor to explain his story on TedTalks. The project is a great humanitarian and chemical engineering victory. Cofer and his group turned a wasteful material into a useful material with some hard work and brainpower.