Final Blog #5 LabCycle

It has been one year since the start of the Innovation Award, and it has been an amazing journey.  With strong motivation in mind, we have been working closely as a team and growing with LabCycle.

With the help of the University of Surrey’s SME Innovation Voucher scheme, we collaborated with experts from the Centre for Environment and Sustainability to carry out a Life-cycle and Techno-economic analysis of various treatment strategies for single-use lab plastic waste, and to develop an experimental plan for plastic characterization post-decontamination. The project demonstrated techno-economic advantages and climate impact mitigation potential from LabCycle’s recycling process compared to autoclave-based recycling process.  Meanwhile, we have been working on a 6-month trial run to further validate our process, and we look forward to future collaboration to characterise and analyse our recycled plastics.

The SETsquared network has provided us with amazing support in the past one year. Thanks to the training workshops and pitching events, we have learned a lot since the start of our entrepreneur journey. We have been able to develop a growing network of business contacts and mentors. They have given me a lot of feedback and support, which has allowed us to develop a stronger business case and seek potential collaboration. They made us see the bigger picture of what we can possibly achieve within the business, allowing us to develop a more sustainable long-term strategy. We look forward to continuing our membership with SETsquared Bath.

Thanks to the Bath IKEEP Programme and Surrey Student Enterprise Intern Scheme, we had the opportunity to work with some amazing interns who have done a great job. Having been on both sides of the IKEEP Programme, once as a student and once as a Company Director, I think this is truly a fantastic programme for both students and companies. LabCycle gained a vast amount of valuable data in the industry, and at the same time the students took many important entrepreneurial lessons too.

Team of students from the University of Bath IKEEP programme who took part in a remote 4-week placement with LabCycle completing a market research project.

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Graduate Enterprise Manager, Siobain Hone said:

LabCycle is such brilliant and simple idea and, like all such ideas, you can't imagine why it hasn’t been done already. Jinghui has worked tirelessly to make LabCycle a success and we are all enormously proud of her and proud also to have had the privilege to support her on this journey.

You can continue to follow LabCycle on their journey via their website and social media.