One morning at the Shambhala Music Festival in the Kootenays a few years ago, young scientist-to-be Paige Whitehead looked around at the vast piles of discarded glow sticks everywhere and was struck by the thought that there surely had to be a more environmentally friendly way to party.
One morning at the Shambhala Music Festival in the Kootenays a few years ago, young scientist-to-be Paige Whitehead looked around at the vast piles of discarded glow sticks everywhere and was struck by the thought that there surely had to be a more environmentally friendly way to party.
The University of Victoria student didn’t know it then, but that was the start of a very big idea. Whitehead has gone on to develop a prototype “Light Wand” lit by bioluminescence, inside a seaweed-based casing that not only dissolves harmlessly wherever it’s discarded, but actually improves the soil.
With a crowdfunding campaign planned for the end of summer to raise capital for patents and production, Whitehead anticipates her “green” glow wands could be in the hands of festival-goers by the 2019 season. Her fledgling company, Nyoka Design, is getting support from UVic’s Coast Capital Savings Innovation Centre, an on-campus business incubator.
“The idea just kept coming back to me,” says Whitehead, who graduates this summer with a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and environmental studies.
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Image via University of Victoria.
