For senior environmental science major Ben McDonald, few things are worse than cigarette butts littering George Mason University's Fairfax Campus.
That is why McDonald is excited about Ash Anywhere, a 3-inch by 2-inch plastic container that can hold 12 to 15 butts in a capped compartment, and fits in a pocket.
The product also features a place for a lighter.
"We're hoping with this that people store them until they can throw them away," said McDonald, part of a three-person team that developed the device.
The idea was one of several to come out of the MIX Grand Challenge, a 48-hour event in which four teams of students set up shop in the Mason Innovation Exchange in Innovation Hall and created prototypes to solve pressing needs in health, education or the environment.
Call it a pop-up challenge, said David J. Miller, executive director of George Mason's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Or a mini hack-a-thon, said Jade Garrett, a master's degree student in applied information technology at the Volgenau School of Engineering and the center's program coordinator.
Either way, it was a demonstration of imagination and ingenuity that also let students experience real-world pressures in conceptualization, time management, decision-making and cooperation in an interdisciplinary team.
"It's about learning the process of innovation," Miller said, "how you come up with an idea, how you improve it and validate it."
And though Ash Anywhere was pronounced best by the five judges for its practicality, potential impact on society and use of technology in production, there were plenty of other ideas at which to marvel.
One team developed reusable plastic packaging, specifically for the textbook shipping market. It could even be a pizza box, senior global affairs major Ethan Ellert said, potentially replacing the cardboard now used and generally discarded.
There was a vertical garden with stacked planters that would be levitated by magnets, saving space and, as freshman information technology major Liam Kelly said, "keeping it off the ground so you don't have to worry about bugs crawling into it."
Finally, there was a cardboard model of an anti-microbial coat rack that would disinfect outerwear using ultraviolet light—a breakthrough, earth science major Bryan Poindexter explained, in keeping germs out of homes.
"Fantastic," Kim Eby, associate provost and one of the judges, said of the competition. "These are the types of co-curricular experiences where they have to use a lot of creative skills, creative thinking. All these things prepare students in the ways employers say they want students to be prepared."
Working on Ash Anywhere were McDonald, junior government major Jamila Carter, senior English major Jacob Rupe and freshman computer engineering major Devon Thyne. The team members did more than design. They called parks and golf courses to understand the scope of the cigarette-butt problem. They sampled students to gauge interest and tweaked the design three times, producing each on a 3-D printer.
For Carter, it was a lesson. "There's always going to be last-minute deadlines no matter what career you go into," she said. "Things like this help you prioritize."
And then there is the payoff."This," Rupe said of Ash Anywhere, "will save the world one butt at a time."
A version of this story by Damian Cristodero appeared in Mason News on December 1, 2015.