“Soy Sniffs is a line of all natural, eco-friendly soy odor diffusers,” explained Sara Richert.
One thing the judges liked about the product is that it is almost entirely soy content.
“We have an in-home version of soy sniffs which is derived from soybean oil and stearic acid and then scented with essential oils. It’s 90% soybeans 10% oil for scent. What this replaces is something like a flameless candle and it can be used where flames aren’t safe, or it can replace something like a Renuzit cone which gives off hazardous chemicals such as benzene, petroleum, formaldehyde, which have actually been linked to respiratory issues as well as hormone imbalances.”
The second version is a car air freshener. Sara is from Oak Park, Illinois and her teammates, brothers Evan and Sean Anderson are from Churubusco, Indiana.
“The soycotta flower pots are the best of both worlds in the potting industry,” explained Allen. “Whenever you go to buy a traditional flower pot you would either have to buy the hard terra cotta pot or the soft, brittle peat pots. We try to strike a balance between those. The soycotta pots have the hard exterior of a terra cotta pot, which you can display for months on end, but once the plant grew large enough you could always crack the pot, plant the whole thing in the ground, and in the matter of a week it will fully dissolve and provide fertilizer to the plant.”
Winners of the $500 People’s Choice award were students making up Team Soya Cell. They developed soy-based materials for lithium-ion batteries. Members are Nicholas Dininger from Indianapolis, Arthur Dysart from Baldwin, NY, Ram Saraswat from New Dehli, India, and Jialiang Tang of Dallas, TX, all chemical engineering majors.