The Elias Project
I used to think science only belonged in laboratories — places that were sterile, precise, and tightly controlled.
But Elias Project taught me that sometimes, science begins… next to a trash bin by the elevator.
To be honest, I was terrified of going door to door asking strangers to sort their waste.
Convincing bacteria to grow in antibiotic medium was easier than convincing a building guard to change a habit he’d had for 30 years — one trash bin for everything.
On the first day of campaigning, I came prepared with a full presentation about plastic recycling procedures. No one cared. So I changed tactics — I stopped talking about “the environment.” I started talking about money.
“If we sort correctly, we can sell the recyclables for 118 million VND — and I’ll turn all of that into new plants for every household.”
I won’t pretend otherwise: Elias Project wasn’t just an environmental campaign.It was a social experiment — to test whether science could become a daily habit.And when I saw the final numbers — 11 tons of paper, 21 tons of plastic, 18 tons of tin cans, and 7 tons of glass sorted properly — I knew I had just proven a hypothesis:Science only truly exists when ordinary people can practice it every day.
