Vape Hackathon: Falmouth students collaborate on innovative answers to the disposable vape sustainability issue

In April, students from our Sustainable Product Design BA and Robotics BSc courses came together for our Vape Hackathon: an event encouraging students to collaborate across disciplines on innovative answers to the sustainability issue caused by discarded disposable vapes.

Students worked together in small teams and were tasked with exploring the potential of recycled vape components and how they fit into the circular economy by designing and prototyping an exciting new product.

All new products had to be designed from disposable vapes and feature circuitry engineered to make use of vape components, such as lithium-ion battery cells and aluminium outer casing.

Competing teams had access to our Robotics lab and plenty of collaborative spaces on Penryn Campus to devise their products. Students were also permitted to make use of a soldering workstation, 3D printers and a laser cutter, among several other tools and components.

After four days of planning and creating, the teams came together to present their concepts and talk through their products. The winning team, comprised of Robotics BSc students Will Thompson and Adam Copeland, and Sustainable Product Design BA students Kate Neville and Noah Barlow, were proud to present their concept, Nest - a smart birdbox capable of detecting bird movement for conservation research.

To hear more about both the concept and the team's experience of working collaboratively and creating the product, we spoke to Kate and Will about how they got on.