Testing Solutions

The third week of the Climate-KIC Journey was spent refining our climate challenge, generating creative business models and testing solutions. We moved from Lisbon to Valencia by night train and will spend two weeks here at the Universitat de València.

Aside from the evenings spent swimming in the sea, my highlight has been working with Javier de Vicente from Factory4Change on quick and creative prototypes.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when working with systemic climate challenges but by diving into the design process we were able to generate some imaginative as well as tangible solutions.

My team, named Mondo Lagom is looking at waste creation at music festivals. More specifically we aim to reduce the amount tents being left behind at the end of events. In 2015, 11 tonnes of clothes and camping gear abandoned at Glastonbury Festival including 5,500 tents. We think this is an issue in desperate need of innovation especially because of the current lack of recycling potential for modern tents.

Armed with cardboard, lego and string we began the prototyping process for a tent renting service. Key factors in the design of our product and service include: affordability, convenience and comfort for the user as well as sustainable material use, simplicity, reusability and recycling potential.

After several iterations by Thursday we had a 20:1 scale model of our first tent prototype!

On Friday evening we travelled to the Botanical Garden of Valencia to pitch our concept to experts in the field of innovation and sustainability.

We pitched 7 times which helped us to refine and clarify our concept and pitch story. We received valuable feedback on our business model and will spend the next week developing the viability of our idea.