Chemical Engineering students win third prize in Bright SCIdea Challenge

Three students from the School of Chemical and Process Engineering achieved a place in the final of the Bright SCIdea Challenge and were awarded third prize for their proposal.

The Bright SCIdea Challenge is organised by the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI), and provides support for students to develop an innovative, science-based idea into a business plan and to compete for a £5,000 prize.

Emily Griffiths, Francis Kelly and Alana Prior entered the challenge with their proposal for food labels which score the environmental impact of the product, including the land usage, water usage and carbon footprint.

The FoodPrint scale aims to make complex food production information more accessible, providing a simple and clear way to find out if food is sustainable. The labels would make it easier for people to make environmentally friendly choices when they’re shopping for food.

Photo credit: Andrew Lunn/SCI

The team were inspired by the traffic light labelling system on nutritional labels, which is colour coded to indicate fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt content. While this system is currently used to indicate how healthy a food product is, Emily, Francis and Alana think a similar approach should be used to indicate environmental impact. 

Reflecting on their proposal, Emily said: “I had the idea a while ago, listening to a podcast about the impact of food. We have labels for lots of different aspects such as animal welfare, health, veganism etc but not for the environment. The main point is to educate and make people aware of what types of foods can be more harmful to the environment, and the easy changes they can make while shopping to combat this.”

Photo credit: Andrew Lunn/SCI

The main point is to educate and make people aware of what types of foods can be more harmful to the environment, and the easy changes they can make while shopping to combat this.

Emily, Francis and Alana won a place in the final, which took place in London on Tuesday 21 March. After pitching their idea to an expert panel of senior business leaders and innovators, they were awarded the third prize, winning a trophy and cash prize.

Alana said: “We had a great experience at the event, there was lots of meeting new people, networking, and talking about our idea with other entrepreneurs. We really enjoyed talking about the FoodPrint scale and gained some valuable advice for taking it forward. “

We had a great experience at the event, there was lots of meeting new people, networking, and talking about our idea with other entrepreneurs.

Francis added: “It was completely different to anything we have done before and we learnt a lot from the experience, which we will take forward into our careers.”