Otto Sutton from Woodbury, aged 11 years, has been shortlisted for a National Competition with FrankEinstein, his brilliant ‘upcycling’ idea for repurposing and reusing waste material.

His project aims to encourage people to think differently about waste, to see it as a creative opportunity and not as a problem.

Otto wants to create an automatic ‘upcycling ideas’ App. The user opens the App, takes a photograph of a product and the App then responds to the user with suggestions on how the product, or its components, could be upcycled. E.g. ‘why not turn these bike tyres into sandals by following a link to these instructions…?’

Otto’s inspiration came from two things – a film (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind) about a boy who learns how to build a windmill using bicycle parts to help save his village’s failing crops; and a school computing lesson on developing original ideas to better the environment. Those sources helped him appreciate how repurposing an object to meet another use could benefit others, and planted the seed for his machine learning App ‘FrankEinstein’.

You can find out more about Ottto’s idea by visiting the Tech4Good Awards website 

You can also support Otto by visiting his Crowd funder page