Reducing carbon footsteps, with minimal compromises

The Respray team started to think about creating refillable aerosol cans and their refilling machines. The team is made up of two students: Andor Réti, mechanical engineer student of BME, and Gergely Zámbó, a finance and accounting student of Corvinus University.

In the 2nd semester of the Startup Campus program, gained a 15 million HUF (49000 USD) subsidy, allowing them to create the prototype of the first self-driven machine and can. The objective of Respray is the cooperation with major firms in the deodorant distribution. Interview.

How did you find the idea of the refillable aerosol cans?

Andor Réti: Our common fields of interest are environmental protection and business; this gave birth to this idea. We believe that environmental protection can only be successful if opportunities for reducing carbon footsteps require only a minimal compromise for the consumer. We focused on aerosol cans, as aerosols have adverse health effects, and also produce waste, is caused by petroleum gases, while our solution uses compressed air. Thus the future users will not inhale hydrocarbons.

On what stage you are at the implementation process?

Gergely Zámbó: We started to think about this idea at the beginning of the year, then, during the spring semester, we participated in the program organised by Hiventures, BME Z10 and Startup Campus, helping us to get a positive decision. Currently, the administration of company formation is going on, and seem so that we can start the operation. We managed to make our first successful refill, and technology seems to be adaptable. During the next semester, our goal is to create the prototype of the first refilling machine.

The emission of how many tons of aerosols can be prevented with this method?

Gergely Zámbó: It is hard to answer; we could not find proper papers for this. Though, the gases used as a propellant (propane, butane) are serious problems, but rather for health, not to our environment, since these are not greenhouse gases. For the carbon footstep, the carbon dioxide is responsible, emitted during can production. Theoretically, if everyone uses this technology, it would make the production of 90 thousand tons of metal (steel and aluminium mixed) unnecessary.

The aerosol cans, except a few, end up in municipal waste. Their recycling is highly challengeable due to the overpressure inside. It means that the processed precious metals are not going to be recycled into the production chain.

What plans do you have?

Andor Réti: Our will is to get as many people as possible to know this solution, enabling us to take one step towards sustainability. But for this, the cooperation with the corporations distribute deodorant sprays, is inevitable. Once, when we finish the project, we would like to do something for environment protection.

 

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