Sustainable and clean PPE

Whole story: Amid a global shortage of PPE, we have looked into the use of bioplastics as a viable and sustainable alternative.

Inspiration Wanting to create a future where a low waste society is compatible with reducing the transmission of disease. To help medical professionals, currently working for a healthier society, make their lives and livelihoods safer.

What it does Medical gloves made from compostable biopolymer materials with antimicrobial properties. These will limit the spread of pathogens whilst reducing medical waste and reducing carbon footprint of production.

How I built it Researched the science of making our antiviral biopolymers for a PPE application including current products and reading the most recent papers. Researched the market to identify where to target our product.

Challenges I ran into As a group we had a lot of ideas and lots of detailed discussion! The challenge was narrowing down the large field of existing research and formulating these ideas into a specific product.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of Finding a creative solution to two huge problems, and making practical plan to implement our product in the real world.

What I learned That there is so much science out there in the hope of creating a more sustainable world! Implementation is the next step but finding an appropriate niche and a suitable market for investment is the hard part.

What's next for Sustainable and clean PPE Getting the product out there and having quantitative results of its effectiveness so it can be more successfully marketed to other high risk disease transmission areas such as airports. The same technology could be implemented into similar products such as foot covers or medical packaging. Then it all becomes about efficiency of production - making manufacture and disposal systems larger scale to maximise the output while minimising materials and transport.