Difference between revisions of "Team:BGU ISRAEL/Entrepreneurship"

Entrepreneurship Summary

As part of the entrepreneurship track, we have started the process of registering a patent. We are currently waiting to fill the provisional requirements of our LC Cutinas sequence, until after the iGEM competition so we can publish all of our results, and focus on promoting the science aspects of our project, thus promoting science. In the coming months we plan to acquire the necessary data and continue the process, with the understanding that our results so far cannot be used as part of the patent. In addition, we plan to assess the compatibility of other parts of the process as patents.

One of our major business collaborations includes cooperation with a group of students in the Master’s program at the Fox School of Business from Temple university in Philadelphia, who conducted a market research for us and recommended a target market and methods of action. Based on this data we have built a preliminary business plan. (see below)

Moreover, throughout the year we have pitched our project to the following companies in Israel – Coca-Cola, Neot Hovav Eco-Industrial council, Be’er Sheva Municipality, Carasso Science Park, Adama Makhteshim and Aviv Plastic. Remarkably, three of which donated funds and supported our project. We have also participated in a fundraiser event in our university, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). This event aims to thanks the donors of the university and to raise funds for the most important projects. At this event, we have pitched our project to donors too.

BGU and its Bengis Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management have invested funds and resources in our project with the belief that our product will become commercial and improve existing plastic treatment methods.

We have performed positive marketing and have instilled the PlastiCure name in the Israeli public consciousness. Five articles have been published about our work in local and national media. We also hosted a lecture by Israeli parliament member Yael Cohen Paran regarding environmental issues in Israel, and have formed relations with our university’s commercialization company that will serve us in the future.

In conclusion, we have created a partnership with people from the industry and research and have established infrastructure and work environments that will serve our project in the near future to develop a product, that will be an alternative to the current treatment of plastic waste.
we plan to keep promoting the above areas immediately after the iGEM competition, with the understanding that we can not register the results that we have published here as part of a patent. This in order to allow different groups in the coming years to advance the science in this area.

1. Executive Summary

Plastic is involved in almost every industry today as a useful, cheap and popular material. Plastics are useful because they are durable, flexible, and can be easily molded into many useful shapes.
Because of its long-lasting properties, plastic does not degrade easily and accumulates waste rapidly if not being treated properly.
PlastiCure provides biological solutions to the problem of plastic waste by means of the genetic engineering of enzymes and metabolic pathways of bacteria, and the use of the engineered bacteria to eliminate waste in the most clean and energy favorable way.
Currently we are at the research and development stage, and working on a prototype product. Our product will be simply a container harboring the engineered bacteria and it will be used discard PET products, such as plastic bottles. The potential customers will be industrial plants in the beginning, and in the future will include the public sector.
PlastiCure’s product provides advantages to customers by resolving three main issues in the plastic treatment process: energy waste, pollution, and transportation issues.

In the United States, the plastics industry is the third-largest manufacturing industry. Today, an average person living in Western Europe or North America consumes 100 kilograms (220 lbs.) of plastic each year, and this figure is expected to grow rapidly as economies in the region expand. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, and generate 10.5 million tons of plastic waste each year. For that reason, among others, the USA was chosen as our target market.

Before entering the US market, the Israeli market will be used as a test market because it is a small country with relative isolation from densely populated media markets so that advertising to the test audience can be efficient and economical. Moreover, Israel is demographically similar to the proposed target market.

About Us

Our team includes 12 students from different academic backgrounds - humanities, natural sciences and engineering. The team is supervised by Prof. Lital Alfonta and Dr. Ramon Birnbaum from the Department of Biotechnology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

3. Market Analysis

For more than 50 years, global production of plastic has continued to rise. Some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a four percent increase since 2012. Recovery and recycling, however, remains insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year.
Worldwide plastic production has been growing with petroleum-based material gradually replacing materials like glass and metal. Today, an average person living in Western Europe or North America consumes 100 kilograms (220 lbs.) of plastic each year, mostly in the form of packaging. Asia uses just 20 kilograms (44 lbs.) per person, but these figures are expected to grow rapidly as economies in these regions expand (Gourmelon 2015).

Method Competition Analysis

Landfills - In 2013, 40% of the plastic used for packaging ended up in landfills. This solution is very cheap, but has many disadvantages - not only does it require lots of space, the plastic buried in the ground also pollutes soil and drinking water.

CHP (combined heat and power) plants - 14% of plastic waste was brought to CHP plants for energy recovery. These facilities use heat and plastic to produce new energy in a form of oil or electricity. This process releases a lot of toxins and pollutants into the environment, and its facilities are very expensive to operate.

Recycling - 14% of plastic waste ends up being recycled. Recycling is the most environmentally favorable solution, but recycling has many disadvantages. It produces low quality products that can only be used once, and it’s also not profitable compared to producing new plastic - in 2015, it was cheaper to produce a new PET bottle rather than recycle an old one. Moreover, one of the major problems is that the cost of picking up and transporting recyclables can range from $20 to $70 per ton, depending on the length and difficulty of the recycling truck routes. All of these reasons are making recycling less and less favorable by the plastics industry.

The other 32% of the plastic wasn’t being treated in any way at all, and ended up polluting the environment and the oceans.

Biodegradation SWOT Analysis

Target Market - USA

As far as American manufacturing goes, the plastics sector is among the most notable success stories (First American 2012).

• 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the 102 billion plastic bags that are used in the United States and about 2,480,000 tons of plastic bottles and jars are disposed of annually around the world. Almost all of them contain PET (EPA 2013)
• In the United States, the plastics industry is the third-largest manufacturing industry, and the outlook is strong, with everything from injection molding companies to 3D printing in high demand around the world.
• Plastics is a multi-billion dollar industry. In 2012, plastics manufacturers shipped approximately $373 billion in goods.
• In an encouraging sign that plastics manufacturers are optimistic about their industry, they spent upwards of $10 billion in 2012 on new capital equipment.
• Consumption of plastic products went up 5.7 percent between 2011 and 2012.
• In the last 25 years, manufacturing has dropped an average of 1.4 percent each year, while plastics manufacturing has increased at an average annual rate of 0.1 percent.
• Accumulated debris on beaches and shorelines can have a serious economic impact on communities that are dependent on tourism, while the debris may house invasive species that can disrupt marine habitats and ecosystems. Heavy items of marine debris can also damage habitats such as coral reefs and affect the foraging and feeding habits of marine animals.
• Waste management is one of 10 economic sectors highlighted in UNEP’s Green Economy Report launched last month, highlighting enormous opportunities for turning land-based waste, the major contributor to marine debris, into a more economically valuable resource.
  The value of the waste-to-energy market, for example, was estimated at $20 billion in 2008 and increased 30 percent by 2014.

5. Financial Projections Draft

Estimates of the financial plan for one year of activity. The data was gathered from previous iGEM business plans and lab workers.

7. References

1. Timur, S., Haghighi, B., Tkac, J., Pazarlıoğlu, N., Telefoncu, A., & Gorton, L. (2007). Electrical wiring of Pseudomonas putida and Pseudomonas fluorescens with osmium redox polymers. Bioelectrochemistry, 71(1), 38-45.
2. Jimenez, J. I., Minambres, B., Garcia, J. L., & Diaz, E. (2002). Genomic analysis of the aromatic catabolic pathways from Pseudomonas putida KT2440. Environmental microbiology, 4(12), 824-841.
3. Sulaiman, S., You, D. J., Kanaya, E., Koga, Y., & Kanaya, S. (2014). Crystal structure and thermodynamic and kinetic stability of metagenome-derived LC-cutinase. Biochemistry, 53(11), 1858-1869.
4. US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency (2013), Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures Report.
5. First American Plastic Molding Enterprise (2012), 10 Facts about the U.S. Plastics Industry
6. Gaelle Gourmelon (2015), Global Plastic Production Rises, Worldwatch Institute.
7. University of Cambridge (2005), Recycling of Plastics, the Improving Engineering Education (impEE) project.