Meet the Exeter schoolboy tackling Climate Change
A schoolboy from St Peter’s CoE Aided School, Exeter has reached the final stages of a national competition to find tech solutions to big challenges like climate change.
BT is delighted to announce that Otto Sutton has made it to the final of the BT Young Pioneer Award as part of Tech4Good 2021. Otto has come up with the idea for an app to help people ‘upcycle’ everyday items they might find in their home to avoid them heading for landfill.
BT co-founded the Tech4Good awards with AbilityNet over 10 years ago, to recognise organisations and individuals who use digital tech to improve the lives of others, and to help to make the world a better place. This year, BT encouraged young people, aged between 9-18 years old, to gear their innovative tech ideas towards tackling climate change.
Entries were incredibly innovative and shone a spotlight on how young tech entrepreneurs and inventors are thinking about new solutions that can support action against climate change, whether that’s helping to reduce CO2 emissions or environmental waste in our day-to-day lives. The eventual winner will receive up to £10,000 in funding, and will be supported by BT experts to help make their project become a reality.
The inspiration for Otto’s app comes after watching the movie ‘The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind’, which sees a young boy make a windmill out of bicycle parts to help save his village’s failing crops. Realising the opportunity to make helpful and useful objects out of old materials, Otto then took five months to finalise his plans for FrankEinstein.
Based on Victor Frankenstein and Albert Einstein, Otto came up with his brand name and the emphasis of the E is to promote the environmental benefits of the app. The app works by simply taking a photo of a product and then responding to the user with suggestions on how the product, or its components can be upcycled. An example could be 'Why not turn these bike tyres into sandals following these instructions? or ‘Why not turn this old washing machine drum into a fire pit?’
There are other websites, like 'instructables', that tell you how you can make something, but not what you can make. Other platforms, e.g. 'freecycle' promote reuse through giving goods away, but Otto's FrankEinstein solution proactively links these two areas, building a valuable database of products that can be made from spare parts in the process.
Otto Sutton said, “I believe FrankEinstein will make the connected global community take the concept of waste and turn it upside down. I want to help educate everyone about waste, encouraging people to connect through a shared purpose and think of waste as a creative opportunity and not a problem. My app seeks to identify and eliminate sources of waste, while reducing the energy and materials needed to make new things.”
To take FrankEinstein from concept to reality Otto is looking to learn more about machine learning and app development. He has already been learning some basic computer programming but would love the help of companies like BT to get to the next level.
Marc Allera, CEO BT’s Consumer Division, said “We’re delighted to once again be sponsoring the Tech4Good Awards, which celebrates innovation in technology, and this year we’re focusing on climate change. It’s incredibly inspiring to see so many young people have so many wonderful ideas for this year’s entries. Using technology for good has been at the heart of BT Young Pioneer for over a decade, and once again this year’s finalists and their incredible ideas have the potential to make a real difference to each of our lives.”
The BT Young Pioneer eventual winner will also be supported with up to £10,000 in funding to help realise their idea, alongside access to BT experts with relevant skills who will volunteer their time to help bring the idea to life. The winner will be announced on 14th July at the Tech4Good 2021 live event. More details here.
Visit Otto’s Crowdfunding page here.
The Young Pioneer Award – part of BT Skills for Tomorrow – shines an important light on how people of all ages can use tech to make a positive difference. BT Skills for Tomorrow is helping 25 million people make the most of life in the digital world. We have already made good progress supporting 10 million people so far.
The programme is completely free and designed to help people across the UK – from children and their parents, older and more vulnerable people, to job seekers and small businesses.
And as part of plans to become a net zero carbon emissions business by 2045, BT is using 100% renewable electricity worldwide. Consumers who buy mobile or broadband from EE, BT or Plusnet are already supplied by networks that are powered by 100% clean power. The company has also outlined plans to electrify up to 28,000 of its 33,000 vehicles by 2030.
