In the United Kingdom, teen inventor Lily-Mai Spinks has won an award for coming up with a simple solution to music festival waste: biodegradable cardboard tents.
Spinks, 17, tells BBC she got the idea for the tent—dubbed Isopod—after seeing how many non-biodegradable shelters are just left behind after large-scale music festivals like Glastonbury and Coachella.
“Most traditional tents used at festivals get used once and people just tend to leave them there,” she said. “The plastic they’re made of can take up to thousands of years to biodegrade, whereas cardboard can biodegrade quickly and can be recycled to make more Isopod tents.”
Spinks is hoping to schedule meetings with festival organizers to promote the idea. The Norwich, Norfolk teen also won an engineering award at the Big Bang Fair for the concept.
Category: Chemicals & Materials
