Thomas Wylam, a final-year pupil at Princes Risborough Upper School, has completed a productive year developing his business idea, Cupcycl, after winning first prize in the Small Business Saturday Young Entrepreneurs Competition, held in Thame last December. The competition, which was sponsored by CarmichaelUK, a specialist civil engineering and construction recruitment company headquartered in Thame, was open to young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 who had a great business idea and were based in Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire.
Over 8 million paper cups are disposed of every day, but they aren’t made from easily recyclable materials and take 30 years to rot down in landfill sites. Cupcycl is a waste management project that aims to reduce the number of throwaway cups being disposed of via landfill by providing the infrastructure for throwaway cups to be properly recycled and turned into new goods.
On completing his first year, Thomas said, ‘Thame’s Young Entrepreneur Competition gave me the opportunity to take an idea and run with it. It's fantastic to have gone through this process and get to where I am now, with a project that brings something unique to the local area.
‘Thanks to the event sponsor, CarmichaelUK, the prize included not only the financial means to start up CupCycl, but also 12 months of mentoring. This helped me develop my scheme so that I could exhibit at Thame Food Festival, where I recycled the cups of over 1,200 visitors to my stand. I’m delighted with the interest I’ve had from other local event organisers, who may run this scheme at their events’.
‘The goal for 2018 is to install collection points in Thame so that coffee shop customers can dispose of their cups and ensure they get recycled, rather than go to landfill. Currently, even cups put in recycling bins end up being picked out as contaminants and put into landfill, because recycling authorities don't have facilities to separate the wax coating that waterproofs paper cups’.
