Inventor Fionn puts green twist on motorsport

SCIENTIST and inventor Fionn Ferreira is on a quest to help redefine the future ofmotorsport and make it more sustainable.

The 23-year-old from Ballydehob has come on board with eSkootr Championship (eSC), a revolutionary global racing series designed to create significant social impact by making urban cities more liveable and sustainable through the promotion of micromobility solutions and greener practices. Known for his groundbreaking work in environmental science, Fionn is the team principal of eSC’s Green Journey Racers team.

‘Our aim is to demonstrate that sustainability and high-speed racing can go hand-in-hand.’ he said. ‘The team is focused on making every race a step towards a more sustainable world.’ Fionn brings his unique blend of innovation and advocacy to the eSC.

At 16, he built several inventions using Lego, bits of wood, and microcontrollers to test for and collect microplastics after realising that there were no existing methods for microplastic removal. He developed a magnet-based method to remove microplastics from water with high extraction rates while environmentally safe and cost-effective.

Fionn’s invention earned him recognition as the Global Grand Prize Winner of the Google Science Fair 2019 and garnered the attention of top scientists and industry leaders. He founded his corporation, Fionn & LLC and his foundation, the Green Journey Coalition, in 2020 to continue research and development on his device.

He spoke to The Southern Star from his home in Ballydehob, on a visit from The Netherlands where he’s studying and where he recently completed a masters project on sustainable electrical energy storage. His focus is now on scaling his microplastic technology, and he launched a recent call-out for investors. He expects to have generated ‘several million euro’ from the call. ‘We already have a prototype that works, so the plan is to create a commercial prototype that will be used in drinking water treatment. We’ve decided to focus on drinking water first, as people consume up to 5g of plastic a week, and then turn our focus to cleaning up the oceans.

‘We have interested clients such as drinks companies. We have engineers lined up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we’d hope that within a year we’d have a device that could be used in a pilot location,’ he said.

‘The plan would be to licence the technology so it can be built into devices ... and give me time to invent other things!’ said Fionn, who is also hosting a new game show for young people in the climate space across Ireland an RTÉ Jr starting this autumn.