Using Cow Manure for Energy: A Look Into the Moove Team
All of the work and ideas that went into making our 2020 Hult Prize Competition pitch
Article Content:
- Hult Prize description and 2020 competition challenge
- Our team
- Our solution and pivots
- Results
Hult Prize Overview:
The Hult Prize is a yearly competition where teams create ventures with ideas to solve major world issues. The competition in international, with thousands of teams from over 120n countries competing for a chance to get their idea funded with $1 million. It has addressed issues like refugees, energy, water, education, and more as it is sponsored by the United Nations. The challenge gives people a chance to develop business development skills and work to fix the many challenges our planet faces today. It provides so many people with the opportunity to create change, and this hits close to home as just a few years ago a team from Rutgers University won the entire competition.
Hult Prize 2020 Challenge:
So now that you know a bit more about the competition itself, let's get into what our task was for the 2020 challenge. We were tasked with creating a business that would provide net benefits to the environment with every dollar earned or decision made. Businesses have almost always had a focus on maximizing profits and decreasing their costs, many times resulting in practices that can hurt the environment around us. This challenge was aimed at reshaping that idea into using a business that can be profitable but also helps the environment with its practices. This was one of the most difficult tasks as it is very broad and offers so much to be done with little places to focus.
The Team:
Its time to talk about the people that aimed to tackle this issue. It started with a group of 5 business school students that spent hours working together, but thanks to some faculty advice we added 2 new members with backgrounds in science to join our team.
I will start with myself. I am an aspiring entrepreneur interested in studying Finance and Marketing at Rutgers. I have joined many organizations including Road to Silicon Valley, Road to Wall Street, and DSP.
Next, we have Anthony Potero, an intended BAIT major with a great resume of activities including RSVP, DSP, and his own YouTube channel.
Anjana Iyer is planning on double majoring in BAIT and Economics and is in multiple organizations including RSVP and Business Discovery Program.
Janice Lee is an intended Marketing major with activities like RSVP, RUWIB, KSA, and Entrepreneurship LLC.
Both William Chen and Sohrob are Biology majors that were able to come in and give a new perspective about our business.
Solution and Pivot:
Now that you know who we are, let's get into what we came up with to compete with. We spent a good amount of time debating what we wanted as our solution, going from ocean trash to air pollution eventually deciding on cow manure. Now, what is wrong with cow manure you might ask?
A few things make cow manure harmful to the environment. Firstly it gives off methane, and although much less than cow burps or farts, when you think about how much cows dedicate, there are serious amounts of methane being released into the air. The other issue which is the main problem is the runoff. Most farms have what is known as a manure surplus, or more manure than is needed for reuse on a farm to the point where it needs to get stored or brought somewhere. The problem is, many farmers don’t store it or handle it properly and allow the waste to seep into waterways through rain and runoff. This contaminates waterways harming ecosystems and potentially infecting people. Many people have been killed or made ill through water pollution and agricultural runoff is a sizable component of that pollution.
We originally planned on going to farms, collecting the excess manure, and bringing it to a lab where we could reuse it into other goods. With some research, we found that manure can be made into cellulose acetate, a fibery material that can be made into biotextiles, bioplastics, and even a safer aerogel. We spent two weeks putting together a pitch deck with this idea and a business plan around it, even pitching it at the Rutgers Hult Prize Competition. After getting third place, we were excited but weren’t guaranteed to get into the next round. We tried making some small adjustments and applied on our won to regionals. When we were accepted we were exuberant but knew we had a lot to change.
We ran into some issues after doing more research. There was already a similar idea to ours with respect to turning the cellulose acetate into other products, and on top of that, we realized we didn’t have the background in science to develop the new products. We realized our strong suit was business and decided to pivot our business idea to focus on the supply chain.
Our new idea was to focus on the transport of the manure to places where professionals could turn it into something environmentally friendly. We found that there are places with anaerobic digestors which are tanks that separate the harmful methane from manure and turn it into reusable energy. This takes the gas away from the atmosphere and provides more energy to be used. We planned to have our own trucks that would pick up and transport the manure, collecting pickup fees and selling the manure to these facilities that could get the renewable energy from it. This pivot changed our idea to something much more reasonable, but with a similar end goal of preventing agricultural water contamination and limiting harmful greenhouse gases.
Results:
All of our hard work of researching and reaching out to companies and faculty was put into making our company as realistic and feasible as possible. Our regional round was made virtual due to the pandemic and we were told to make a pitch video with our deck. We perfected our slides and submitted our video.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it past the regional round, but it was a great experience nonetheless. A group of freshmen was able to make it all the way to regionals with their idea and learned a lot about what went into a business. There was so much more than I realized that needed to be accounted for when planning a business idea and hoping to get funding. The competition was a great experience with amazing mentors and resources to help us gain real-world experience. I recommend it to anyone no matter what background in business as it provides immense amounts of growth opportunities.
Hopefully, this makes you want to compete in the 2021 competition, and I wish everyone who does decide to compete the best of luck.
