Meet Amanda Campbell, 24 from Kingston. She's a well-spoken graduate from UCL, where she studied interdisciplinary architecture. She is also a huge music festival fan having attended more than 30 since her first one at the age of 16.
Her idea is Comp-A-Tent, a fully compostable tent. Its primary use is for festivals, in order to counter the environmental impact of leaving tents behind once the party is over. Simply, you buy the tent with your festival ticket, pitch it, enjoy the festival, then when it's time to leave, you hand it into the recycling bin area and it then decomposes at the same rate as bread.
Her reasons for developing the tent came from personal frustration from being at festivals and witnessing the number of tents dumped, abandoned and otherwise left behind. She learned that, on average, one in five tents are left behind at European festivals, contributing over 750,000 tents every year to landfill or incineration. These tents aren't feasibly recycled, never break down and leach hazardous toxins. It is a problem that plagues festivals. At Glastonbury this year, the clear up cost for organisers was £780,000 ($990,000).
From China, Amanda would like to source materials and manufacturing for her pilot launch. Currently Amanda has been making prototypes with a hand iron and it takes over one day per tent. Amanda would like to find a factory in China with a faster manufacturing process so that it can get down to the target price of £40 per tent.