The Bright Futures Inspire Programme allows students from state-funded secondary schools in the North West to design and develop a sustainable product concept based on one of two challenge outlines as set out by Unilever.

In the challenge for 2023 – 2024 St Anselm’s students created a Personal Care and Wellbeing product with social and environmental purpose.

Our students considered

• Raw material and product type

• What components are needed to create the formulation, what are environmental alternatives?

• How would it run in a factory/ how would it be distributed/ how can you keep cost and emissions down?

• How would a large company like Unilever source their materials/ how could you make enough to be sold on a national to global scale?

• How can you use digital to collect feedback from your consumer/ how can you sell the product to them using digital platforms?

• What packaging options are there: less plastic, better plastic, no plastic?

• How can you talk about the unique aspects of your product to entice consumers?

Their concept ‘Pop n Go’ eliminated the use of a conventional bottle but still provides the consumer with shower gel and a range of specific product benefits.  Pods were designed and prototyped and an exfoliator sponge is used to improve the detergent performance.

Congratulations to this year’s team of students who won the award for most innovative product concept.  They made it through 4 rounds of judging, presenting their concept to Unilever staff who specialise in all aspects of the business producing many of the world’s leading brands.

The STEM team this year was Arthur G, Austin D, Stanley D, Noah H and Oliver H.

Well done,

Mr McLoughlin