Meet Quazeem Tiamiyu, a student who turned discarded wood into insulation for beverage coolers

On a hot summer day, when most of his peers grabbed a drink from the cooler and moved on, Quazeem Tiamiyu paused to think about what’s underneath. That very thought led this University of Maine student to develop something extraordinary: a safe alternative to the toxic conventional insulation used in beverage coolers. And he built it from something you might find at a lumber mill.Conventional coolers use polyurethane foam. For manufacturers, injecting liquid foam into moulds is cheap and efficient, which is why the industry standardised on it decades ago. But this foam is made from raw chemicals that are hazardous to handle before processing. The chemicals are highly toxic and carcinogenic. Workers who handle them report respiratory disease and skin irritation. Once in landfills and waterways, polyurethane degrades slowly and pollutes the environment. It is non-renewable, which means it is made from fossil fuels rather than regrown resources. Most of us hardly realise this when we grab a drink. But Quazeem Tiamiyu did. So he made safe insulation using wood fibre foam, a bio-based insulation component that performs well.“Polyurethane foam’s raw chemicals are highly toxic and carcino...