Think the Earth

One of the Honorable Mention winner, team Upcycled. (The left most is the reporter, Angie Amasawa)

Earlier this year on April fourth, the fifth annual University of Washington Environmental Innovation Challenge (EIC, produced by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship) was held in Seattle. While business plan competitions to promote student entrepreneurship are quite common across the United States, EIC places focus on the technological innovations to solve the world's environmental problems. Regardless of how outstanding the innovation or the research may be, they must meet the market needs for successful market penetration to contribute to the society. EIC was produced in order to encourage students to consider specific business plan for their own innovations.

As a part of process in the competition, students will first form a team to develop and produce a prototype of clean technology that aimed towards solving environmental issues. Next, they will carry out a business plan to formulate the market opportunity of the product. On the competition day, one representative from each team will deliver a 2 minutes pitch on the originality and the potential of their innovation in front of 115 judges composed of various backgrounds, such as local investors, entrepreneurs, policy analysts, and educators. The product demonstration follows throughout the day of competition, until the winners are announced at the end of the day.

The judging criteria focuses on the product's potential as a solution to existing environmental problem, rather than the technological advancement of the product. Specifically, the business plan that describes the market opportunity, and whether the solution could have a substantial impact on the problem and the people's lifestyle when the product penetrates the market will be judged.

10,000 dollars will be awarded to the Grand Prize winner, where a number of the past winning teams advanced to starting up their own companies. For example, the Grand Prize winner of 2012, Green Innovative Safety Technologies (GIST) recycled automobile tires to produce highway jersey barriers. Through the utilization of waste tires, the technology not only serves to conserve resources as an alternative to conventional concrete barriers, but also has a potential to decrease the impact during collisions. In addition to the awarded fund from the competition, the team raised funds from investors they met at EIC. GIST currently conducts further testing to quantify statistics on increased safety factor.

Furthermore, I also participated in the competition as a part of team "Upcycled." The idea of our innovation actually came from one of the past article in Earth News, "Paper log: Eco fuel for BBQ". While 49 % of the household nationwide uses woodfuel for cooking in India, we hoped to develop easy ways to produce solid fuel from agricultural byproducts from the production of sugar canes and rice at household level. As a result, our team was awarded Honorable Mention! Although our technology was much more low-tech compared to other teams, the technological simplicity was well received. One judge commented, "We cannot forget that 1.2 billion people lives in India. Innovations are not only for developed countries; I hope your technology will contribute to solving the problems in India, even by a little bit." Also, the local broadcast television filmed EIC this year, and our team was interviewed.

As an engineering student, it was a fresh and very rewarding experience to consider ways to introduce technologies to the market. Through EIC, I recognized the importance of multidisciplinary approach to solve the world's pressing problems.