BANDUNG, itb.ac.id - The student team from Institut Teknologi Bandung won the national championship in the L'Oréal Brandstorm 2020 competition. The team consisted of Antonius Reynard Affand (Engineering Management), Karin Adriana Widyanti (Engineering Management), Farhan Hadi Taskaya (Engineering Chemistry) won first place with a project called Plus Tree, in accordance with the name of their team. The first winner was won by Team Plus Tree after passing the final presentation at the national level on April 16, 2020, which was conducted online to the L’Oréal Indonesia Board of Directors (BOD).

The background in making Plus Tree ideas was inspired by Horta and Potty dolls. "The use of Horta doll products is an interactive, fun, and cool activity because it grows plants from dolls. So, there was an idea to be able to grow plants from the packaging," said Hadi, a team member. They are targeting sachets as the main focus of the project.

In the competition, there are four main assessment criteria sought by L'Oréal Brandstorm 2020, including innovation (idea creativity), usefulness (real problem solving), realistic (readiness to be published), and scaleable (ease of development in other countries).

"Plus Tree is an innovation created to reduce the use of single-use plastic packaging. Plus Tree changes the initial plastic packaging material (which is made from petroleum) into biomass packaging made from natural materials (starch fiber such as corn and cassava) and can decompose into the ground, "said Karin, one of the team members to the PR reporter ITB.

Karin said, in the Plus Tree package there are seeds that can grow into plants. Plus Tree is also equipped with an interactive application that can be used to help consumers track their activities with Plus Tree packaging such as how many plants have been planted, Plus Tree points have been collected, the nearest dropping point, and other information related to Plus Tree.

"After being used by consumers, Plus Tree packages can be placed into pots along with seeds which will then break down and grow into plants. If consumers do not have land to plant their packaging, then consumers can return the packaging to the nearest dropping point which will then be done by industrial composting to make fertilizer that can be used for greening programs and help the industry, "she said.

Karin explained, for the idea of basic packaging materials (biomass from plant starch fibers), as well as compostable concepts, actually already exist in food packaging, but not yet in beauty product packaging. As for the concept of negative waste or garbage that can grow trees is a new innovation that has never existed before. "Plus Tree is expected to change the behavior of consumers to become more aware of the environment and create environmentally friendly community programs such as plantation communities," Karin hopes.

L’Oréal Brandstorm itself is a place to provide real opportunities for students to work and innovate in responding to challenges in the future. Consistently, L’Oréal Global has been running this program for 28 years in more than 65 countries. For this year, Brandstorm 2020 has the theme "Build a Plastic-less Future in the Beauty Industry" as the main challenge that must be resolved by the participants.

Various challenges must be passed by Team Plus Tree to become a national champion. For example, finding the focus of the problem to develop into a solution (considering different types of customers and business conditions for each region in the world), selecting alternative ideas that are created (considering the impact, novelty, project feasibility description, and adjusting the time of each team member "The time is very long, but the good effect is we never regret anything we send to L'Oreal because productivity is never an accident. It is always a result of the commitment and focused effort," Karin added.

After this, they will prepare themselves to take part in advanced competitions at the international level on June 23-24, 2020. As an ITB representative at the international level, they hope to be able to further develop their PlusTree ideas, boast alma mater, and contribute to Indonesia.

Reporter: Christopher Wijaya (Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, 2016)

Translator: Elisabeth Sirumapea (19017154)