Hulme Students win Best Product award at the Young Enterprise Trade Fair
February 6, 2023Some of Hulme’s youngest business minds have claimed the ‘Best Product’ award at the annual Young Enterprise Trade Fair.
As the world continues to be environmentally conscious for our future generations, some of Hulme’s Senior School students have been inspired to launch their own ecological products.
“Garden Greetings” is the name behind the students’ fully biodegradable seeded paper cards – a unique gift that forms a small but demonstrable step in helping our environment. The cards are embedded with wildflower seeds and can be planted after the celebrations have concluded.
Hulme Students win Best Product
Taking their products to the Young Enterprise Trade Fair at the Trafford Centre on Friday 3 February, the Hulme students won the Best Product award. This was the most coveted prize available! They were supported by Head of Business Studies and Economics, Mr David Rees.
The students had the opportunity to explain and sell their products to the thousands of shoppers in the UK’s third-largest indoor shopping centre.
They made over £120 at the trade fair from the product, going on to make an additional £167.50 the same evening at the annual Hulme Family Association Quiz Night.
Student Spencer Froggat commented: “We are all really happy with the success at the Trafford Centre and the win of the best product.
“We worked hard to make the stall look good and we made sure we had high standards. We’ll continue to work hard in the future.”
Supporting the students, Mr Rees said: “Despite some really stiff competition on the day, Garden Greetings stood out by a mile as the best concept and having the best product range”.
“The young entrepreneurs were really relaxed and professional; better than anything you’ll see on The Apprentice!”.
What is Garden Greetings?
Garden Greetings is a student-led sustainable producer of cards for all occasions, including but not limited to birthdays, anniversaries and events. The student-led business was started to provide a more sustainable alternative to traditional paper greeting cards. The bonus being that they are also better for the planet than their cotton-seeded card alternatives.
Each seeded card serves a dual purpose surprise; from being presented initially to its receiver, to being planted and producing a beautiful flower arrangement.
How do the cards work?
The cards are made from 100 percent recycled paper and embedded with a mix of wildflower seeds. Once the receiver of a card has enjoyed their gift, they are able to plant it in their garden or pot of soil to watch their seeds grow into beautiful wildflowers.
The cards come with QR codes on the back, linking to instructions on how to plant the cards to produce the flowers. Germination can take approximately five to eight days.
Unlike the cotton-seeded alternatives, the recyclable paper cards produced by Garden Greetings are far more sustainable. Cotton is a heavily pesticide-dependent crop, and only covers 2.5 percent of the world’s cultivated land, but uses 16 per cent of all pesticides.
It also requires a large amount of water to grow. It can take 20,000 litres of water to produce just one kilogram of cotton. As a result, cotton production is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The use of fertilisers and other inputs in cotton production releases significant amounts of nitrous oxide. The production of cotton also contributes to deforestation through the clearing of land for planting. With this in mind, Garden Greetings’ recycled paper-based products help to mitigate unnecessary water use, pesticide use, and reduce the amount of deforestation required.
What is Young Enterprise?
The UK faces a serious skills gap, with a high percentage of young people not in education or employment. Whilst at Hulme Grammar School we ensure every student leaves with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the real world, this isn’t always the case for other schools.
Young Enterprise works directly with young people, teachers, parents, businesses and influencers to help build a successful and sustainable future for all young people and society.
Through their hands-on employability, enterprise and financial education programmes, resources and teacher training, they aim to reduce youth unemployment. They also hope to help young people realise their potential beyond education and empower a generation to learn, to work and to live.
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