The Guelph Creative Recycling Initiative (GCRI), an annual innovation contest offered to Guelph students, offers practical research experience and opportunities to network with industry professionals. The program aims to raise awareness of the rendering industry while introducing new production and marketing possibilities.
“With changes to commodity and energy prices along with the closed foreign markets, the rendering industry has reached a transitional period,” said Scott Henry, product development specialist at Rothsay. “To remain viable there’s a need to develop new markets and non-traditional products. GCRI is part of this solution.”
Students have 11 rendering materials to choose from, all provided by Rothsay: feather meal, meat and bone meal, fish meal, blood meal, poultry by-product meal, low ash poultry by-product meal, pork meal, chicken meal, tallow, yellow grease, and poultry and chicken fat.
In the program’s inaugural year, which was completed in April, the students finished eight projects. The top entries were concrete mix made from various protein meals, feather fiber musical speaker cones, a bioprocess to increase feather protein meal viability, “plasti-fat” (a compound similar to plastic developed by treating tallow with ultra-violet light), and cosmetics.
“The program has shown great potential,” stated Owen Roberts, director of research communications at the University of Guelph and the overall student initiative program coordinator. “The opportunities for the program are almost endless.”
During project development, the students gain knowledge about the rendering industry through facility tours, promotional material, and Web sites.
For support, each team is paired with a faculty mentor who can offer motivation, academic advice, and research tools. Industry professionals judge the competition and offer comments on the entries’ creativity, marketability, and social and commercial value.
The program is so student-oriented that it’s even coordinated by students. And all through the program, the learning process is paramount to the program’s focus. Although not all projects will culminate in a finished or marketable product, the research is valuable to the industry and students’ education.
Program organizers are currently working on developing the 2004/2005 program.
International Report - August 2004 Render