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Our Team
Our Team
We are a group of 8th-grade students from Thomas Edison Middle School (TEMS). Thanks to Expo Fest, we were able to come up with the amazing product, Kel Jel!
Our Mission
Our Mission
After seeing the terrifying effect that plastic has on our environment, our team set a goal to make a product that will help eliminate all plastic consumer products and to help others go zero waste. We plan for our product to introduce a new way of replacing plastic and hopefully reduce the amount of plastic being produced. Kel Jel seeks to stop all this pollution and to keep our environment clean and healthy for animals and humans to live happily on.
Kel Jel Origins
Kel Jel Origins
"Jelly Pop"
"Jelly Pop"
Jelly Pod was one of the three groups (KelPlastic and Kelp Bound) that students from our team were working on. There were 4 students in this group whose idea was very unique and thought to change the world and hopefully resolve the plastic problem. This idea was proposed when one of the members thought about the containers that body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and any other consumer products. They have plastic packaging and soon enough the team discovered the surprising facts about plastic. During this time, there was also a trend going around social media, “VSCO girls” with their metal straws, hydro flasks, and “Save the turtles” remark. This is another thing that brought the plastic problem to our team's attention, although this trend was more jokes than seriousness. Our team got to work right away with the other teams working as well. Our product would be a jelly pod with a jelly exterior that would dissolve to reveal a homemade body wash inside. We planned on making the jelly from gelatin but changed it to carrageenan powder because we wanted it to be vegetarian friendly. Later on though, we changed it again to agar agar powder. Our body wash recipe is really simple and easy to make, not costing us a lot. One of our struggles during this was figuring out how to put the body wash inside the jelly. We brainstormed ideas, either with a straw, syringe, or even freezing up the body wash into a sphere and pouring the jelly mixture around it. In the end, we planned on making a custom silicone mold to overcome this. Another challenge was figuring out the exact recipe and how much body wash should be in each pod. As mentioned before, we changed the actual jelly producing ingredient multiple times because we were trying to find the best recipe for our pod. With so many out there, we ended up combining a few to form our final recipe. With a body wash, since everyone does not have the same body size we were confused about how much body wash should be in one pod. An accomplishment that helped us solve this was the surveys we conducted. We surveyed students in our school to see how many pumps of body wash they use. Based on that information, we got our set amount of body washes in each pod. If one pod is not enough for someone, they can easily just use another one or as many as they like. Lastly, we didn’t know what shape it should be. There were lots of different shapes to choose from but for our prototype, we planned on making a cube just to start, but when we finally figured out how we would put the body wash inside, we planned on making the pods various shapes and sizes. Jelly Pop was not perfect and our packaging originally was going to be mason jars, but after we combined with the KelPlastic group, our packaging is now going to be made of biodegradable kelp plastic, achieving our goals of eliminating all the plastic from packaging and becoming zero waste.
"Kelp Bound"
"Kelp Bound"
Before making KelJel our primary project, we also had 3 other projects. Plant Bound, Kelplastic, and Jelly Pop. Jelly Pop was an organic jelly body wash pod. Kelplastic was the project in which they would research making plastic made of kelp. Plant Bound was a landscape industry product tree root barrier made of kelp plastic, but a more dense polyester that is can biodegrade after the roots successfully reroute from the barrier to return to the root source It wasn't going to be as groundbreaking as Kel Jel, but it fits with the theme of Kel Jel and it would also help the landscaping industry since there aren't any products specific to our idea. We wanted to make a root barrier that wasn't metal (it would rust) and a root barrier that wasn't made of nonbiodegradable plastic
Now to begin with our journey. We struggled on the project due to limited workers on this project. There were only 4 of us while everyone else worked on the KelJel. With only 4, it was hard to keep track of work since they were distracted with other classwork. One tried the best to motivate the 3 to get them to make the most they can on the projects. The project was tricky, and we couldn't keep in contact from outside of school. None of us knew what material we should mix to make the plastic compound as hard as a rock. But enough to degrade like cotton candy We wanted to mix cellulose powder into the mix of ingredients that the KelPlastic group would make so it could be a sturdy compound. It was good because it was biodegradable from research. We also tried thinking of what other materials we could use to make the product even better, We were also trying to find the cheapest but most resourceful ones like cellulose. Spider silk was not a good pick because of its very high cost. We tried getting the facts of roots and their strength. Things were starting to fall after we were struggling to plan out, and the Kel Jel leaders suggested that we should disband the Plant Bound group as it had a small group of workers that were lost in their thoughts of other work they had condemned by other classes. The Plant Bound was signed “abandoned."
"KelPlastic"
"KelPlastic"
The kelp part of KelJel came from one of the 2 original groups before we merged into one. This group was called Kelpplastic and we were solely focused on making a plastic substitute out of kelp. Originally the idea came about after the Expo-fest kickoff event when we were all trying to think of what to do our project on. Funny story actually, we made our focus around making a plastic alternative because we had wanted to see Travis, one of our classmates, dressed up as a "VSCO" girl for our team mascot. Our original concept/recipe was one working with orange peels, but we left that when we found kelp to be a better alternative. Whilst researching how this product could be made if it would work, and how it could be applied in a real-world setting we were starting to refine the recipe and marketing of it. Then, however, either Gary or Ms. Tangney suggested that we combine our two products of Kelplastic and Jelly Pop into one, seeing as how they were both focused on making a zero-waste product. At first there were some ruffled feathers at the projects being made into one, some people found that while they were both based on being eco-friendly they weren’t similar enough to work. As time went by though and we continued ahead with things everyone calmed down and settled more so into working as one unit. From there it became KelJel.
Breaking Boundaries
Breaking Boundaries
Our idea, “Kel-Jel”, fits in with the theme of breaking boundaries because it is a fun way to get people to take care of their hygiene, while reducing plastic waste. It eliminates the use of all types of plastics. Our product does not have to be just body wash, it can be antibacterial soap and dish soap. This could be a way for hospitals, cafeterias and other public places to get closer to becoming plastic free.
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