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Microplastics are one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the century. Due to their ability to go undetected, they are widespread in aquatic environments, posing a great risk to native marine life. However, detecting them typically needs expensive lab equipment and specialized training, such as in FTIR spectroscopy, Raman analysis, and fluorescence staining.
Mission
Mission
Our mission is to democratize microplastic detection by creating an affordable, scalable, and portable device that empowers anyone to use it.
Vision
Vision
We aim to bridge the gap between current microplastic detection methods and the general public by making it accessible to everyone. By allowing communities access to reliable tools like these, we foster education and advocate for global collaboration on an important issue.
Values
Values
Our Core Values:
Affordability: We believe environmental monitoring should be accessible to all, regardless of financial means.
Accessibility: Our system is designed for easy operation, ensuring the general public can use it confidently.
Education and Empowerment: We aim to inspire learning and engagement, allowing for larger-scale data collection within communities all around the world
Collaboration: Working with citizen scientists and field researchers to receive reliable data is an important part of our project. Additionally, working with schools allows us to inspire the next generation with hands-on experiments.
Sustainability: We are committed to solutions that protect ecosystems, safeguard public health, and promote long‑term environmental sustainability.
About Us
About Us
ZapTrap was created to tackle one of the fastest‑growing environmental challenges of our time: microplastic pollution. As microplastics continue to spread through waterways, ecosystems, and even the human body, the world urgently needs tools that can detect contamination quickly and affordably. ZapTrap brings that capability to the people who need it most, including schools, community labs, environmental groups, and regions without access to advanced laboratory equipment. Our work focuses on building practical, scalable microplastic detection technology and strengthening the networks needed to put it into action. As ZapTrap grows, we are actively:
Building collaborations with educators, environmental organizations, and water‑quality groups to integrate microplastic monitoring into classrooms, field programs, and community science initiatives.
Working with public‑health and environmental agencies to support data collection efforts that can inform guidelines, standards, and local decision‑making.
Helping reduce microplastic exposure by enabling early detection of contamination in rivers, lakes, and household water systems, before it spreads further into ecosystems.
Developing a low‑cost, globally deployable platform that can be used in regions without access to spectroscopy labs or expensive analytical tools.
WHY DOES THIS WORK?
Hydrophobic plastics are attracted to charged surfaces, and changes in capacitance can quantify the thickness of dielectric layers.
Research has shown that electret filters can capture particles as small as a few microns, which is around the size of many microplastics. Similarly, capacitance-based sensors are widely used in electronics to measure thin films or coatings, proving the reliability of this measurement technique.
ZapTrap combines these principles into an innovative, low-cost detection system.
Proposed Design
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