Kenneth on BEEcycle

We have MOVED!

2010-10-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

To all our fellow followers, thank you for your support!

We are still here busy writing and updating the blog, but our blog site has moved!

If you would like to read about our up and downs with setting up the BEEcycling recycling business click the following link to find us:

www.beecycle.co.uk/blog

Or visit our webpage!

www.BEEcycle.co.uk

Kenneth

Publicity, Telegraph and Pitch 2009!

2009-06-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

It has been a while again since I have updated this blog... when there is so much going on I keep procrastinating on having to log on and attach pictures and links etc... I actually have a lot of material in the pipeline to write about.. but the problem is taking the time to write it! Good thing is that I won't need to worry about having a writers mental block for a while!

It has been exciting for BEEcycle recently. For one I had been featured in the Telegraph, a UK national newspaper. I met the journalist Widget Finn in the Make Your Mark competition a while back. We managed to stay in touch and she thought my story was interesting enough to get itself onto the business section of the news paper. So here's a link to the online version of the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/startingout/5588264/Beecycle-recycling-for-profit-and-pleasure.html

I was also featured in a newspaper called 'Positive News', a global network which finds and publicizes news about people or companies making a positive impact to the world:

http://www.positivenews.org.uk/artman/publish/article_2327.shtml

Last but not least, I won a regional competition called Pitch 2009. I was required to pitch to a panel of judges in a Dragon's Den format, was grilled for 10 minutes, and then came out to represent the North UK in the finals! The final won't be until November 2009 so I have plenty of time to prepare. Hopefully by that time I will have more in my business to talk about to win the £50,000 worth of prizes! ;)

News here:

Sustainabilitylive exhibition

2009-05-22T07:39:00.001-07:00

This week I went to the sustainabilitylive exhibition which exhibits companies and new technologies in the forefront of environmental technologies. The exhibition was divided into five different sections: Water and sewage sustainability, Environmental technologies, Brownfield/land remediation, Energy management and sustainable business.

There were talks on innovative ways companies and organization reduce energy costs and how to become more carbon neutral. There were stands exhibiting technologies ranging on Anaerobic digestion, water filtration and biological land remediation to wind energy and robotic jelly fish.

Cool Robotic Jelly fish in a fish tank. I asked what it was used for and was expecting an answer along the lines of a groundbreaking world changing state of the art technology for turning seawater into drinkable water or something. It turns out it only floats up and down and was only there to attract delegates and prove that they are able to handle on the manufacture of innovative machinery. It did serve its purpose in attracting attention though.

There was also a competiton a 'Drilling and Tapping' competition for the water industry where contestants were timed to be the fastest in creating a hole in the water filled water-pipe and connecting it to another machinery. As well as being timed for being the fastest they were penalized for the amount of water they lose during the process. It was definitely interesting and whats more, I was quite surprised to see how many female contestants there were!

Lancashire Business viewpoint Live event

2009-04-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Lancashire Business View Magazine held a business network dinner/forum event. Panelists were invited to be asked about business and political issues regarding the Lancashire area. The panelists included Steven Broomhead, Chief Executive of the North West Development Agency, Edwin Booth who founded UK's largest online wine retailing industry, Sir Bill Taylor chairman of Blackburn College, Paul Fletcher; developer of football arenas, Peter Butterfield the editor of the Lancashire Business View and last but not least Imran Hakin; founder of iteddy as featured on BBC dragons den.

After the event I had a brief chat with Imran about his iteddy and how it came into fruitation since the route of our OvO should be quite similar. I later learnt that he has established a fund called rainmakers which focuses on helping young start ups get off the ground!

Over all it was a very inspiring chat as his road is quite similar to how I would like to walk mine. Business is not just about money, but more about enjoying the process, helping people around you along the way. I am really encouraged that he has this same viewpoint and even more impressed with what he is doing to help start ups.

Hopefully I will be able to meet up again with him soon and have a deeper chat!

More Radio

2009-04-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

After the competition, despite not winning, there were quite a few radio stations who were quite interested in BEEcycle's products and in what we do. I was invited on to the panel of Sally Nadens Radio show, BBC lancashire. During the show, I met anothe guest called Linda who is a gardener/ garden designer. We had a good chat about composting and gardening and gave her some leaflets for her to distribute to help publicize my company.

Radio Presenter Sally Naden

Now that things have settled back in, it has been busy. Right now, trying to get this HTML newsletter sorted. Please do subscribe to our newsletter once it is done! It will include details of what is happening in the company as well as interesting facts about recycling and especially food waste recycling around the world! You will be notified when it is ready for subscription!

Meeting my Darling

2009-03-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

So the Make Your Mark Competition ended... and the results?!

Unfortunately I didn't win. However the competition was intense and the winners truly deserved their prize of first place. The one who won in my category of social and community was Kerry Kolbe from Signal Films, which helps young people pursue their dream of film making where they wouldn't be able to do so otherwise. Truly inspirational for helping create better lives in young people!

The competition was held in the swanky Institute of Directors, London

The person who won the 'Peoples vote' award was Dean Rhodes-Brandon who had set up 'Your Local Cinema' which provides subtitles and sign languages in cinemas nationwide for people with hearing disabilities. This really deserved its vote for making this world a better place. I have got a lot to learn from these people about serving and meeting the needs of the community and society. Thanks for everyone's vote for me! So sorry to disappoint!

Although I didn't win, I took a lot from the whole event. I did alot of networking with the people there and with other contestants. It was really interesting to see all these new ideas coming from different young entrepreneurs in the UK. Interesting, and VERY encouraging. I got linked up with a very innovative company who can make promotional models out of compost! This could be something for promotion in the future? There were alot of people from the press there as well (not surprised as the competition was sponsored by dailymail), and the good thing was that they were not only interested in the winners but the other great ideas as well. There were at least 2 journalists/radio broadcasters who were interested in writing about me and interviewing me, so fingers crossed for more free publicity?

The highlight of the day really boils down to the following pictures:

Receives my card (with interest?) A good chat about my business (and how to save the economy?)

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was there to announce the awards. It was a pleasure to meet him and even better when he said 'Ahh I have read about you, your business is very interesting' as he received my card.

I just wonder what he has done to my card at the moment. Handed over to the Prime Minister? Or more likely in the bin.. I just hope he at least throws it in the recycle bin!

Interviewed by the BBC and being in Make Your Mark Competition

2009-03-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been a while since I have update my blog. I have been trying to do an update at least once every 2 weeks (ultimately once a week!) but have been swamped with work. I am getting back it though! I had just came back from a business trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong but will mention that in a later post!
So I have been nominated into the finals of the daily mail Make your mark competition. It is a national competition, and although the winner only gets £1000, it is the publicity and the great feeling of getting recognized which would really matter here. Competitions are always fun. As a matter of fact, because of this competition I have been interviewed by the BBC radio Lancashire. You can listen to the full interview by clicking on the icon below!

One final thing is.... there is a separate part to the competition called the 'People's Vote', and I would greatly appreciate your help! If you like what I am doing and support me and my business I would love you to VOTE for me here. What will happen is on the day they will announce the winner of the 'People's vote' category! Not sure what we get for it, but its the fun that counts, and knowing that you all love me and my worms. ;)

Congrats To Obama

2008-11-08T06:43:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Barack Obama becoming President. I didn't particularly support either candidates in this election, but it is refreshing to see Obama in the White House.

So he claims he is going to make 'changes'. It does sound positive that the 'changes' also includes many issues on the environment, including

-80% cut of carbon emissions by 2050
-Pushing 1 million low carbon cars onto roads in the next 7 years
-30% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Compared to Bush, it definitely is a great direction. There is actually A direction. Though.. realistic? Not sure. We will just have to see if the new president is all talk and no action or not.

Algae and exhibition ONE PLANET FESTIVAL

2008-10-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Because of time I haven't updated my blog on time! (I try to do it once a week) so I've decided to blog about two things in this blog.

The reason for my busyness is due to the preparation for another exhibition for the ONE PLANET FESTIVAL
The purpose for the festival is to celebrate the lancaster district and to encourage sustainability within the area. There would be local food, music, art and exhibitions from local businesses which helps increase awareness to climate change. Our company can't miss out in the opportunity to encourage composting and recycling education here! Hopefully there will be a few important people and teachers who will be interested in our products and what our company does.

Moving away from the exhibition, I want to talk about a potential next big thing. ALGAE. Its on the news and in many articles. People are starting to pick up on it.. why? Because of three green reasons. 1) The fact that algae is green (isn't really a good reason.. but had to put it in) 2) It's very environmentally friendly for its industrial use and 3) MONEY (if you use american dollar bills)

So what's up with algae? Its is the fact that it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere for its own use (up to 50% of algaes mass is carbon) and that it one fast growing micro-oranism with a high prolific rate. Other than reducing carbon from the atmosphere, oil can be extracted from the algae, which in turn is used for bio-fuel (instead of using corn, raising all the food prices!). Further more, the biomass of the algae is not wasted, since it can be composted. If placed in an anaerobic digestion system, it can be used to drive the system producing more elecricity. So to conclude the end product would be lower carbon, bio-fuel and electricity + fertilizer. Seems too good to be true eh? Definitely so... the cost so far to produce a algae farm such as this is prohibitive, and large pieces of land is required to grow these micro-green slime. But with technology now advancing (they've started growing these in large tubes to save space) ... it seems like a very possible route to a sustainable future.

Right.. off to more preparation...

Will post pictures up of the exhibition in the next few days!

*UPDATE* 5:25pm. I have just finished unloading things in the town hall for the exhibition. I came out to my car to find (drum rolls) a parking ticket on my car. A parking ticket.. for 10 minutes of unloading in front of the town hall, and was asked to park there too. Will be getting off to fill in the challenging form now..

Meeting with Wild-Life trust

2008-09-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering, why did I post a picture of a badger on this blog? First of all, its 10pm and I'm still in the office so finding the perfect picture is not exactly my first priorities. Secondly, I must say.. its pretty cute, and it attracted YOUR attention! Didn't it? Thirdly, this morning I attended a meeting in the Environment Centre with the Wild-life trust. A few companies from the Environment Centre was asked to join the meeting which introduced a new project the trust is doing, which is setting up a new reserve. The difference with this reserve however, is that it's right next to the motorway allowing greater publicity and footfall.

These reserves also hold many education activities, encouraging a hands-on apporach to learning, and thats where our company may fit in. It seems that they are quite interested in the OvOs and education pacakage that our BEEcycle has to offer! We will soon see where this can go.

HSBC Unipreneurs

2008-09-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty late blog for this competition... actually VERY late... The competition was held back in April 2008, but since I did not start the blog until a couple months back, it has taken me this long to report on it!

The competition was held by HSBC to seek out the most entrepreneurial student or recent graduate in the UK who has a good business idea or started a potentially high growth business. The prize was £20,000! The process started off by applicants sending in their business plan summary, which then got sifted through from the hundreds down to 100, and then down to 20 and then down to top 10 where they will need to pitch to a few judges. The 10 was then sifted down to the top 5 which had to do a presentation to a large audience of VIP's and investors, and it was then down to the matter of audiences votes to select the winner

It was a long process and but unfortunately I didn't win, and only managed to get down to the top 10... Nevertheless, the competition was fierce and the company who won really did deserve it. 'Scratchface' designed a computer software which allowed colour blinded people to read the computer screen more effectively and easily. So it was definitely a good product for the good of society, and I truly hope that they do well. Although the £20,000 would have helped the company immensely the experience I got from this was valuable, and I know BEEcycle will get the 1st prize next time ;)

Also thanks to Desmond who lent me his place to stay over in London!

Earthworms close relationships with BEEcycle

2008-09-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

When I mention to my friends what my company does and I mention one of them being earthworms, most of the time (if not always) I get 'the look', and my social circle would suddenly diminish to a certain degree....even more so when I mention the wormery that I have in my kitchen... and suddenly I am left with the wall. Thank goodness biology and ecology students, graduates and professor are far more understanding....

Jokes aside, as the managing director, I do place the company's concern as a priority, and that is why the business in worms is important, The potential of recycling and land remediation. Today the BBC has just written an article about land remediation using worms, and you can see it here.
Recent studies have shown worms being able to remove toxic chemicals from lands, however it has been known for centuries that worms are the intestines of the Earth. Worms compost and recycle organic waste, and also remove any impurities in them. There are more than 4000 different species of Earthworms, and each one are more suited or better adapted for particular environments. The ones used in the studies are probably Lumbricus terrestris and Aporrectodeatuberculata. These are burrowing worms you usually find in the UK gardens, and they dig deep down making burrows coming to the surface only to feed.

BEEcycle currently focuses more on composting only, and the worms that we use are slightly different. We use what are called 'soil dwellers', which stays near the surface of the soil feeding on organic matter non-stop making it more suitable for wormery bins. Examples of these species are Eisenia Foetidas and Eisenia Hortensis (formerly known as Denrobaena Veneta).

These are also the 'secret' to the composting action of our OvO's, and we definitely won't be limiting our future use of earthworms here!

Stationary designs

2008-09-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

In the beginning of August I had to use up a budget from a grant which I can use on stationary and marketing materials. At the same time printing.com was nice enough to come up with a stationary offer. 1000 business cards, 1000 leaflets, 1000 mailing stickers, 1000 compliment slips and 1000 header paper all for £299 (originally £799). Being the shrewed business man that I am, I chose the package and also ordered some CD jackets for the educational material CD's. The happiness pretty much ends there, due to the fact that design is NOT my forte, and I could not stretch the budget to hire a designer. So down goes many late nights again, ALOT OF HELP AND ADVICE FROM FRIENDS and my amateur photoshop skills.

I didn't even know the difference between CMYK and RGB.. Problem really arose when I did it all in RGB and had to do them all again in CMYK, and then got told it was not in the correct resolution and had to do it again in 300dpi... Result was ugly artwork designed 3 times... minus my sanity and calmness and probably a few hair. Replaced the mouse and keyboard a few times as well...

In shame, I have posted up pictures of the designs here for you to criticize and for the designers to cringe with hatred and disgust.

header paper:
Compliment Slips
mailing stickers:

CD cover inside and outside:

OvO leaflets (the front is designed to fold over, so stop your quick snapping on the upside down photo)

In the end it all looks very similar, which is good because it brings this format out as the BEEcycle brand. However in all honesty its simply because I am not creative enough to bring in new ideas...which worked for the better!

What does BEEcycle do and its start up

2008-08-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me today (despite knowing her for a whole year already!) "What does BEEcycle do?". So I thought that it would be good to couple that question with how I started up.

BEEcycle focuses its business on Food Waste recycling. There are currently 3 sides to the business.

1. The OvO is an educational toy that help teachers teach about food waste recycling especially composting with worms. The OvO contains a self watering system rendering it easy to use and manage. The children will make their own compost from the food waste and in the end of the process then can plant a seed and grow a plant, taking them through the whole food cycle. The system comes with teaching materials and lesson plans.

2. Wormcast. BEEcycle sells wormcast produced by a local worm farm. Wormcast is a rich organic fertilizer produced by the feeding of food waste to worms. The worms munch through this waste and poop out the wormcast material. Through the digestive system, beneficial micro-oganisms and plant growth factors are added making the wormcast rich, natural and organic.

3. Consultation. BEEcycle consults organizations and community groups on setting up food waste recycling systems. There are many different ways of food waste recycling such as in-vessel composting, anaerobic digestion and bokashi, but each are only appropriate for different cases. BEEcycle helps in clarifying issues and source products for the groups and organizations to start their recycling programme. BEEcycle is currently working with local councils, a social enterprise and the University.

So how did BEEcycle start up? Finishing university with a biochemistry degree in 2006, I didn't want to become just a scientist but to be able to do business where I can apply my scientific skills. At the same time I can across the Enviroentrepreneur school
I had to come up with an environmental business plan in order to get a place for the school. So with a bit of research I found a pretty good potential market in the food waste and composting industry. I spent a further year in doing more research on the sector and the business before applying to Lancasters Enviroment Centre Business Plan Competition in 2007. I became one of the winners for the competition, giving me a year of free office accommodation and business support. I have to admit that this move to Lancaster is a pivotal point for my business. The University helped tremendously and resulted in the incorporation of the company, a business website, stationary, business consultations and access to the laboratories for research.

For the article click here

Even though the competitions has gotten me this far, and with products and services ready, I know that there is still a long way to go... and its still not the time to relax!

Jack of all trades (start-up entrepreneur)

2008-08-18T03:02:00.000-07:00

"Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one". I think the phrase pretty much sums up a start-up entrepreneur, at least this is what I have found out for myself. You need to know a bit of EVERYTHING, if you don't know something then FIND A WAY to learn it and if you still don't know it then at least know how to pull those skills together by networking. But then in the end, even if you can find the right skills from people it will be expensive and so in the end there is no real choice but to do it yourself.

Ideally to have many arms and a poker face to show your calm and collected management with unlimited skills up the sleeves.

The difference between working for a company and starting up your company is that cashflow will always be tight for any start-up. Instead of being able to pick up and call for support or to ask and pay for external help, things will have to be done by yourself to by-pass the cash-flow problems. It does indeed feel like several departments on one head and its when you start envying Shiva will you know that you are A START UP ENTREPRENEUR.

Thinking back on the my past year in starting up BEEcycle I was required to:

Incorporate the Company
Manage finance and account
Market research (although I did have a student helping me, thanks Lucia)
Apply for funding/business plan writing
Read up legislations
Scientific and technical research
Develop products
Design marketing materials
Creating educational materials
Design Webpage (with my amateur skills, this was the most time consuming and frustrating part of the whole list, yet most fulfilling with results)
Network and establish link with suppliers/consumers
Sales and presentations

Sometimes the bigger problem is weighing time and money to decide whether it is more worth it to hire someone to do those things. But until cashflow is up with steady sales, there is nothing we can do but bite the bullet and work 7 days a week + late nights.

Beijing 2008 Olympics starts

2008-08-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

As I watched part of the opening to the Beijing Olympics, I could feel nothing but energy and pride from the City and Country. For anyone who watched the opening ceremony has to agree that was one of the most amazing and cinematic experience for any Olympic games.

Will be looking forward to the games, especially badminton.

Absolute Well Done to China for doing such a good job! Certainly did not let 1.3 billion people down when the whole world was looking!

Setting up BEEcycle's Blog

2008-08-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

I have contemplated starting a blog site for BEEcycle, and now after many hours of editing with my amateur computer skills, I have finally become a blogger myself. I have seen successes of many blogs, but my aim of this page is not to become a professional blogger (although some publicity might be nice) but to jot down my daily frustrations and joy with setting up my business BEEcycle. It has been almost a year since I first started, and things are starting to come together.

This is only an introductory post. I would think that many after reading this post will want to know what I have done so far, been through and what I will do in the future. I have decided to write down the interesting stuff of my year in a seperate post. For now, if you are interested in what BEEcycle does, click on the link to the website on the right hand side.

Kenneth