CGA sophomore uses wasted fruit, vegetable peels to create temporary cast, win competition

A Culver Girls Academy sophomore won the $5,000 first prize in the Miclot Family Business Plan Competition for her invention of a temporary cast that can be used to protect an injury until the victim can receive medical treatment.

Shannon Li, who is from Qingao, China, said PeelCast is a thin film made from wasted fruit and vegetable peels that comes in a roll and is wrapped around a body part that has been injured, such as a broken bone or a sprain. When water is added to the film it turns into a hardened cast. She said it is ideal for campers, backpackers, skiers and other athletes and other active people who might be injured and medical care isn’t readily available, as well as for parents caring for injured children.

She said PeelCast also is convenient because it can be easily carried.

“It’s convenient because it can be activated by just adding water,” Li said. “You also can do this on yourself, so it saves a lot of time.”

Li was selected as the winner of the Miclot Family Business Plan Competition hosted by The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur at Culver Academies on Sunday, May 4, by judges Alessa Rodriguez ’22, who is studying international business and finance at Butler University, and Danielle Sealy McDowell ’02, a founder, teacher, advisor, investor, inventor and community leader pursuing a master’s degree in data science at the University of Notre Dame. She will join the faculty at the Rubin School in the fall.

The team of Britton Crockett ’25 (Jonesborough, Tennessee) and JW Roberts ’25 (Columbus, Indiana) finished second and won $1,000 for Pure Pop, an affordable powdered carbonated drink infused with electrolytes, nutrients and vitamins that they plan to market to college students.

Tristan Gamel won $500 for finishing third for his product, Mute, which combines a sleep mask with noise-canceling headphones to create a favorable sleep environment for people with sensory issues. The device is an affordable, comfortable solution for children with an autism spectrum disorder who struggle with sleep. He recently won $2,500 for finishing first in the high school division of the McCloskey New Venture Competition at the University of Notre Dame for his device. Read more about that here.

The Miclot Family Business Plan Competition, started in 2011, is endowed by Andy and Sharlene Miclot of Houston, Texas, who are the parents of Christopher ’08 and Caitlin ’10.

“They wanted to provide students with the opportunity to engage in their entrepreneurial spirit,” said J.D. Uebler, director of The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur at Culver Academies, pointing out the Miclot competition predates the Rubin School.

“Andy and Sharlene had this vision that would allow students to engage in an entrepreneurial process where they could be curious and innovative and share those ideas in a formal way and, oh, by the way, have some seed money to continue if they want to,” Uebler said.

 

 

The “opportunity assessment plan competition” begins with students entering an executive summary of their proposal along with a one-minute video pitch. One of the requirements was they had to talk to someone knowledgeable in the field about their proposals.

There were 15 entries and faculty at the Rubin School narrowed the field to seven finalists, who had to develop pitch decks and further develop their ideas. Students needed to have a viable product or service, conduct a market analysis, key financial projections and marketing strategies.

Each finalist was given 10 minutes to present and five minutes to answer questions from the judges.

Here are the products proposed by the other finalists:

·      Angie De Otaduy ’25 (San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico) Foreneous, a company aimed at helping students in Mexico move to college more efficiently and at a lower cost, including packing and unpacking and providing storage if needed.

·      Shayan Behshid ’26 (Saugus, California) Game Changer Dryers, a portable device that quickly dries and deodorizes hockey equipment between games. Behshid said the market is 300,000 hockey players and millions of athletes in other sports.

·      Joylynn Chung ’26 (Seoul, South Korea) GeoSorb, an environmentally friendly solution to clean up oil spills in oceans by using treated basalt rock to adsorb the oil on the surface of the rock.

·      Tobias Tilley ’26 (Carmel, Indiana) Pack ’n Play, a practice hockey stick designed for training that can be taken apart into smaller pieces and kept in a convenient travel bag that can fit in backpack. The stick, which also can be used as a mini-stick, is made from refurbished broken hockey sticks.

Li, the founder of PeelCast, said she started with fruit peels because she also is trying to solve the problem of food waste, with Americans creating 92 billion tons a year. She said she’s gone through several iterations so she’s added biopolymers such as PCL (polycaprolactone) and chitosan, which can help stop bleeding.

“It’s absolutely sustainable  coming directly from fruit and vegetable peels and its convenient, affordable and durable,” Li said.

It also can be easily cut off with scissors, she said.

She said her plan was to start marketing by using athletes and influencers as well as partnering with manufacturers, with her taking a share of the proceeds.

Li also said she checked with someone who has worked with patent law and said no one holds a patent on this innovation.

She said at most it would cost her $4.87 per roll to make PeelCast, but she said that could be driven much lower by ordering in volume. She said she plans to initially sell a roll of PeelCast for $17.

“Which is very cheap compared to conventional casts,” she said.

She said her primary competitors were gauze, splints and casts.

Li said she plans to use the $5,000 to further develop PeelCast and two other businesses she has founded: Siloisé,  which makes silk scarves and pocket squares, and Peinture de Vie, a natural mineral texture gel paint used by artists.

 

 

Li said she designs the 100-percent silk scarves, which are screen printed onto silk and then shipped to Suzhou, a city in western China, where workers sew the hand-rolled edges.

“We want them to look perfect,” she said. “I’m pricing it in the middle-price range but I hope to make this more of a luxurious brand.”

Li said to start, she will focus on the American and Japanese market with her current connections. 

She said the paint she plans to sell is made of minerals.

“When you touch the dried surface you can feel the texture of the minerals. It’s very fine and the colors are all coming from the minerals, so they are natural,” she said.

Li said she decided to start the businesses because she loves art and business. She said even though she is just a sophomore in high school she already has two failed businesses, a T-shirt business she started in fifth grade and another clothing business she started in middle school.

“I couldn’t find my market,” she said.

She’s hoping these new businesses will be more successful.

“I believe now is the right time to set everything up. I will be busier in the future so if I get this running then I can have other people to take care of this for me,” she said. “Plus, I can’t wait for things to happen. I can’t procrastinate. So I just started them.”