This guest-blog post is by Anisha G., a 6th grader in California. Anisha likes to play basketball and music. Anisha stepped up to serve her community as an AlligatorZone Ambassador at The King Library in San Jose, California during the AlligatorZone session held on August 27, 2016. The featured startups and founders were (a) Oliver Deighton, Founder and the CEO of Nickel, a way for parents to pay an allowance to kids in their own MasterCard, and (b) Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, Co-founders of BioCellection, who use bacteria to turn plastic garbage into useful things.

Who doesn’t want to earn and keep the track of the allowance that they earn for doing small and simple things.

Nickel is a cool app, that kids and teens can use to track their allowance. This app is easily available to download from appstore. Not only does it motivate kids to work hard and earn their allowance, but also teaches them how to handle their money with care.

Oliver was the first guest of the day invited by AlligatorZone in Martin Luther’s King Library, in San Jose .

Keshav, one of the AlligatorZone Ambassadors arrived and introduced the first presenter, Oliver to the listeners.

Oliver began talking about his app and how Nickel can be very helpful for kids and teens to learn how to handle money and allowance. He also told parents that it’s a very good way to access kids’ account to add money as a good way of earning interest every month (or subtract money).

Nickel app comes with a nickel card, which is divided, into 2 sections, nickel pocket and allowance, the nickel pocket resembles trading of stocks where money can grow.

Before Oliver started Nickel, he was working as a product Marketing manager at Google, and also worked as Vice President of Marketing at VigLink.

We can try Nickel app free for first 2 months. For more information about his new venture we can read from his website :http://nickel.co/

Saying “No More” to Plastic Pollution

Cleaning up plastic pollution is a major problem affecting us globally, killing millions of marine animals throughout the world. A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the spectacle of plastic waste is visible. Tons of plastic debris get discarded every year, everywhere, polluting land, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.

Next, host Keshav introduced the presenters Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, where they talked about their plastic-eating bacterial research, which started as a Science Fair project in high school and later they came up with the idea of BioCellection. They also told audience about their high-school field trip, where they saw landfills filled with plastic pollutants and other harmful materials like styrofoam (one of the major plastic pollutants) .

Later on they came up with the idea of starting their company called BioCellection.

BioCellection is a genetically engineered bacteria that will be able to breakdown plastic faster than naturally occurring bacteria.

Miranda is a synthetic biologist, an environmental advocate and a 2016 UPenn college graduate. She used novel chemistry and genetic engineering to create useful things out of these Styrofoam structures.

Miranda’s objective is to remove the most dangerous plastic from landfills and convert it to bacterial food, which can be found in powdered form and valuable liquid, so our landfill does not get populated.

I think, American cities are taking the steps to save environment from plastic pollution, by encouraging people to use reusable grocery bags. It is hard to believe, but a small change could bring a huge impact on protecting our environment.

Schools are also teaching youth to follow 3R’s of environment that is REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE. If you think, you are interested in this super Biology work please checkout their wesite http://www.biocellection.com/