李晓涵

It started with a trip to the dump1）.

In 2011， Miranda Wang visited a waste transport station in her hometown of Vancouver. She and her friend Jeanny Yao， now a senior at the University of Toronto， were appalled2） to see the "enormous" amount of plastic accumulating in the facility.

"I realized it doesn't just go to the moon or get thrown away into magic land. It's very much there，" Wang said.

So they decided to do something. As seniors in high school， they read through the hundreds of pages of scientific papers and had an idea： find bacteria that could degrade3） plastics. Researchers at the University of British Columbia invited Wang and Yao to use their lab space to start working on their project.

Now four years in， Wang and Yao are turning their high school science project into a multi-million dollar， award-winning business venture4）. They are the co-founders of BioCellection， a company that takes plastic pollution out of the ocean and then uses genetically engineered bacteria to break down these plastics into a product used in the textile industry.

"Basically， we upcycle5） plastic pollution into usable materials，" Wang said.

BioCellection recently won the Grand Prize and the Social Impact Prize in Pennvention， Weiss Tech House's technology innovation competition. The company was also a finalist for the inaugural Penn Innovation Prize and won the People's Choice Award at College Pitch Philly， a regional business plan competition held in February， 2016.

BioCellection was the top undergraduate team and the winner of the Social Impact Prize in the Wharton Undergraduate Business Plan Competition， and they are competing against seven other teams for the grand prize this Thursday.

"[BioCellection] has been a top winner or runner up6） in pretty much every major competition there is at Penn across all the different schools，" said Jeffery Babin， the associate director of the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program in the School of Engineering and Applied Science， who has been advising Wang since last fall. "She's been very tenacious7） about moving this forward while she's still a student."

Though Wang and Yao have been developing their idea steadily throughout college， they officially launched BioCellection last May. This year they took their project to the next level， obtaining two patents and nearly $300，000 in funding.

"We've been preparing for this for a really long time，" Wang said.

After graduating in a couple of weeks， Wang and Yao plan to move to San Jose， California， to manage BioCellection full time. Wang will also continue working with a team at Penn that will support further technical development of the upcycling process.

BioCellection's revenue will come from both clearing plastic from the ocean and selling rhamnolipid8）， the usable product produced in the upcycling process. Under their business plan， BioCellection aims to become a $100 million company， taking 243，000 tons of plastic out of the ocean annually， by 2020. Wang said they need just three customers to break even9）， and they have already been approached10） by several companies， including sports clothing manufacturer Adidas.

"The most sustainable technology comes from sustainable business，" she said.

Yao， however， emphasized that the pair's ultimate focus is on the impact of this technology. "[We hope that] people would go to beaches and there would be older people talking about how there used to be plastic pollution and the younger generation would be like， 'Where's the plastic pollution now？'" she said.

Babin added that "she's got a very grand vision11） and is absolutely committed to that vision. And really the vision is to solve the ocean's pollution problems."

"For me， it was natural to couple12） the sense of urgency for how big the problem is to the sense that I can solve problems through science，" Wang said. "This has very much become who I am."

1. dump [d?mp] n. 垃圾場；废物堆

2. appalled [??p??ld] adj. 感到震惊的；惊恐万分的

3. degrade [d??ɡre?d] vt. 使降解；使分解

一切都始于一次去垃圾站的经历。

2011年，汪郁雯来到家乡温哥华的一处垃圾中转站。当她和朋友姚佳韵（现为多伦多大学的大四学生，编注：英文原文发表于2016年4月）看到中转站里堆积着的“数量庞大的”塑料垃圾时，俩人大为震惊。

“我意识到这些垃圾不会就那么跑到月球上去，也不会被扔到某个神奇的地方，它们就在那里。”汪郁雯说。

因此她们决定做些什么。当时还是高中毕业班学生的她们从头到尾阅读了成百上千页的科技论文，然后有了一个主意：找到能够降解塑料的细菌。英属哥伦比亚大学的研究人员邀请汪郁雯和姚佳韵使用他们的实验室，好开始研究她们的项目。

如今四年过去了，汪郁雯和姚佳韵正在把她们高中时的科学项目转变为一个价值数百万美元的获奖商业项目。她们共同创立了BioCellection公司，该公司将海洋中的塑料污染物清理出来，然后用基因工程菌将这些塑料制品降解为一种可用于纺织业的产品。

“大致说来，我们是对塑料污染物进行升级改造，将其变成可用的材料。” 汪郁雯说。

BioCellection最近在（宾夕法尼亚大学）伟思科技工场举办的技术创新比赛Pennvention中获得了一等奖和社会影响力奖。该公司还入围第一届宾夕法尼亚创新奖，并在2016年2月举办的地区性商业计划比赛College Pitch Philly中获得大众喜爱奖。

在沃顿本科生商业计划大赛中，BioCellection是本科生团队中最优秀的一支队伍，获得了该比赛的社会影响力奖，并将于本周四与其他七个团队竞争，角逐大奖（译注：现已获得该项大奖）。……