Fund Me, KC: UMKC alums aim to transform recycled plastics into functional home décor

Startland News is continuing its “Fund Me, KC” series to highlight area entrepreneurs’ efforts to accelerate their businesses or lend a helping hand to others. This is an opportunity for business owners and innovators — like Nicole Dover and Tony Jordan, and their newly launched venture, Recyclverse — to share their crowdfunding stories and potentially gain backing from new supporters.

Who are you?

We are Nicole Dover and Tony Jordan, UMKC Enactus and UMKC Bloch School Alumni.  We are two innovators who started a plastic recycling project in college and have decided to keep our mission alive post-graduation. We are looking to grow our business to recycle more pounds of plastic, reducing effects on the environment and giving people access to recycled home decor that is functional and stylish. 

What does your campaign hope to accomplish?

With our campaign, we are looking to get our products in the hands of people across the country and get them talking about recycling. We also are in it for the funds; to grow to recycle more plastic, we need larger and different machinery. With this machinery, we will keep more plastic from landfills by converting into useful plastic wood for use in home furniture or as materials for KC artists. 

Click here to view the campaign on Kickstarter.

What’s your ‘why’?

When we learned in college the startling numbers of how much plastic is produced and used versus recycled reused and burned, it made us mad. We spent months trying to find out what we could do about it. Finally, we found an open-source solution called Precious Plastics which we are using and adapting to work for us and our community as we start diverting plastic waste. 

How much do you hope to raise with the crowdfunding campaign?

While our campaign has a listed goal of $2,000 our hope is to make more than $4,000 to really boost where we are going. $2,000 is the minimum for machinery. $4,000 allows us to put more time and effort into it  — propelling our timeline and getting us closer to our goal of recycling one ton of plastic every month. 

Recyclverse

How do you plan to use the funds?

Currently we plan to minimally buy an extruder to make a new mold setup to extrude beams of plastic in common shapes and sizes for small crafting pieces and furniture. We are also looking forward to purchasing new molds for use in our current oven so we can diversify our offering of recycled products further. 

Anything else our readers should know about Recyclverse or this effort?

Only 9 percent of plastic in the world is recycled. The chances of the recycling you put in the bin being recycled are almost zero with current methods locally. We hope to raise the odds by recycling plastic into useful items and home decor. We believe that people need to see the end product of recycling so we can build trust in our operations and let people see just how much plastic can be transformed. 9 percent is too low and creates too much waste on a global scale. We hope to change that.

Click here to check out the Recyclverse campaign on Kickstarter.

This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn