Patrick Keating, 13, an eighth-grader from Southwest Middle School, explains a city he helped build during a Future City competition held Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, at the Kansas University Learned Engineering Expansion Phase 2 Building.

It’s the year 2170 and in the city of Tallakha-Muhara, the residents put their trash directly into air-pressured tubes that run under the city like plumbing pipes. Once underground, the trash doesn’t stay there to leach into the earth as it does in today’s landfills, but is instead sorted to be either recycled or “gasified.”

The city is bright and clean but also made largely of cardboard, recycled fruit cups and juice containers. But that doesn’t make any of its feats less possible. Eighteen Southwest Middle School students designed the city under the mentorship of teachers and civil and chemical engineers as part of the national Future City Competition, a project-based competition for middle school students.

The theme of this year’s Future City Competition, “Waste Not, Want Not,” asks students to design waste management systems focused on the four Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. The team’s captain said that it was neat learning what actually happens to waste after it’s thrown away.

Detail of a future city called Tallakha-Muhara, built by Southwest Middle School students as part of a number of exhibits during a Future City competition Jan. 23 at the Kansas University Learned Engineering Expansion Phase 2 Building.

The waste management systems for the future city called Tallakha-Muhara, built by Southwest Middle School students.

“Most people don’t think about what happens when you toss it in the trash can, put it on your curb and then it’s gone,” said Patrick Keating, 13. “It was really interesting learning what happens to it afterwards and how we could make that more efficient.”

Efficiencies in the city include using recycled products as building materials and using microbes to break down waste into usable substances. That process won over judges at the Great Plains Regional Competition over the weekend, and the tiny cardboard city will soon make a trip to a much larger one.

After winning the regional competition, the Southwest team is headed to nationals in Washington, D.C., next month. The model itself is just one component of the competition, which also includes a virtual city design, a 1,500-word city description and a presentation to a panel of STEM professionals.

The city is modeled on Mumbai, India, and the team worked under projections for the city to have 75 million people by the year 2170. Rheanne Walton, 13, one of the team’s presenters, said the realities of the city were alarming.

Patrick Keating

Rheanne Walton

“We saw so much stuff that was like, ‘Ahhh, why is it like this? The landfill is polluting their water sources,’ and stuff that’s just causing a whole bunch of problems,” Rheanne said. “We chose that location to try to help that.

But beyond lessons on waste management, Patrick and Rheanne both said the main thing they learned was how to work in a team and cooperate. Three presenters, Patrick, Rheanne and Sivani Badrivenkata, work with other members of the team to research, complete the project and prepare for the competition.

“You’ve got to learn sometimes that your idea isn’t always the best idea,” Rheanne said. “Sometimes it is, but sometimes other people’s are actually better, so you have to listen to them and be nice to them even when you’re mad at them, which is sometimes difficult.”

Members of the Southwest team will travel to Washington, D.C., with their coach, Danielle Lotton-Barker, to compete in the national Future City Competition Feb. 15-17.