Our LaunchX Startup to Combat the Global Problem of E-Waste

June 02, 2019

Our LaunchX Startup to Combat the Global Problem of E-Waste

Our Pitch: Our Product Slows Down the Pipeline of E-Waste Ending Up in Landfills Across the Globe

LaunchX, a nonprofit founded by Ms. Laurie Stach, teaches high school students how to launch a real business startup. LaunchX is not about theory; it is about creating a real business with a product that can be sold successfully at a profit. As an engineer and a graduate of MIT, combined with her experience working at the world-renowned Boston Consulting Group, Ms. Stach realized that there was a need for a helping teach entrepreneurial skills and that this could be done at the high school level. The LaunchX program meets this need by offering two programs: LaunchX, which is a summer residential program held MIT, Northwestern, and the University of Michigan, and LaunchX Clubs, which is a program for high school students around the world that runs during the school year.

Cord Restored: Our Startup to Combat the Global Problem of E-Waste

Although I joined LaunchX Club at Poly and attended the club meetings initially because I was curious about combining engineering and business, I found that I was not as interested in entrepreneurship for its own sake. Some of the ideas that we tossed around might have been able to turn a profit, such as a cable cord organizer, but I could not get that excited about creating another better “widget.” What I found, however, is that social entrepreneurship, or using entrepreneurship to effect positive social change, is highly motivating to me. I realized that I could use my interest in science and business to create products that could address pressing global issues like those we have discussed in our Global Initiatives Alliance seminars and workshops, such as global warming, plastic pollution, or recycling. As such, our team decided to focus on a narrow issue where we felt we could make a positive difference; we decided to focus on slowing down the flow of e-waste to landfills.

At Poly, Alex Froelich successfully applied to start a LaunchX program, with the support of Jack Stellwagen and Finnegan Keller. Jack Stellwagen, Ryan Lavery, Finnegan Keller and I formed a team, Team Emergence, that was one of over one thousand teams from around the world that were active in the 2018-2019 LaunchX Clubs program. One of the highlights of the program was being paired with a mentor. Our mentor was Mr. Kyle Keegan Wang, who is a graduate of Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago as well as Senior Advisor at AdvEn Industries, Inc., a founding partner at KRW Capital LLC and a founder & CEO of Global Energy System Exchange, LLC. Although it was a bit intimidating to reach out to him at first, given his incredible knowledge of startups and our being new to entrepreneurship, Mr. Wang could not have been more friendly or approachable. Mr. Wang provided valuable advice and really honed in on the key market issues we would need to address to gain interest, support, and funding for our product.

Act Locally. Think Globally

We created a product called Cord Restored to help combat e-waste head on. Here’s our elevator pitch: One million tons of external power supplies are manufactured each year, but 60% end up in the landfill, polluting the environment through excessive manufacturing and e-waste. We aim to slow down this pipeline by extending the life-cycle of these items. We offer an array of patent-pending easy-to-apply quick-drying non-toxic non-flammable formulas that repair frayed electrical chargers, wires, and cables; this base formulation can be used in a wide array of commercial and industrial applications; visit us at:
www.cordrestored.com
https://www.instagram.com/cordrestored/
https://twitter.com/cordrestored