ABOUT 

While I was in middle school, California was enduring one of the most intense and persistent droughts in the state’s history. I distinctly remember seeing signs with the words “Brown in the New Green” plastered across them popping up in every neighborhood. While I understood the intent behind these messages, my determined mind wasn’t ready to accept that our state could not have flourishing green plants once again - I did not want brown to replace green forever and I knew I had to do something about it. I was president of my school’s environmental club, the Greenkeepers, where we did weekly recycling runs, creek cleans ups and watered our school’s trees during the year. While watering these plants, I started to realize how much water was wasted. We would pour buckets of water for these trees, never knowing when we were over watering, and a large portion of that water would evaporate. Around the same time, I learned about the scientific phenomena of diffusion and osmosis – the movement of water from a region of high concentration to a region of low concentration, which results in an equal balance of concentration in both regions. These phenomena always fascinated me and stuck in the back of my mind. While growing up, I occasionally helped with gardening and learned that my parents would spread used tea leaves and coffee grounds as a soil fertilizer to increase the soil’s pH value to an optimal level. As a culmination of these learnings and experiences, the idea of Aqua-Pods was born.