Public Summaries of Pitch It! 2008 Finalists

Social Category

Green Bag Project

The Green Bag Project is an environmental non-profit that provides individuals across the US and UK with the tools and support necessary to start community-based reusable shopping bag projects.
With the help of a Green Bag Project Toolkit and an assigned "Bag Buddy" individuals bring together local businesses, schools, and environmental groups to help create and distribute a funky and fashionable alternative to the conventional paper and plastic bag.
Each bag comes with a pledge to no longer use non-reusable paper and plastic and the website provides an interactive community based forum based on a shared goal of healthy and sustainable living. The personal journey to follow through on this pledge is intended to illuminate the way that your everyday habits and actions affect the environment. It is also intended to empower you to take a stand, become part of the solution, and make a difference!
To date the Project has distributed over 10,000 bags which, when used for their lifetime, will offset the production of 5.2 million paper and plastic bags! We aim to distribute 1,000,000 more.

Dual Focus

Many women want to get back into work after having children but struggle to do so. We would like to develop a service that makes it easier to return to work on a part-time basis without losing out. The social network will offer online information on job-sharing opportunities and local childcare, as well as providing the ability to share information with others in the same position.

General Category

Juggernaut

Juggernaut is a free online collaborative project management application tailored to the needs of student groups. Though such groups may be small, they still have enterprise-level needs. Projects need to be directed, tasks assigned and tracked, notes collected, calendars and schedules need to be synchronised, large documents and files shared, events need to be managed – the list goes on. However, students often have little more than email and Excel to do so. We give student groups a set of online tools typically reserved for large companies, freeing them from the nightmare of clerical busy-work they are accustomed to. Juggernaut helps students work together more effectively.

UniMaid

UniMaid UniMaid is a service designed to combat unhealthy living conditions currently prevalent in many university flats. A large percentage of students living in Residential Halls today live in unclean environments, a condition that has been proven to lead to sickness in many forms, most commonly asthma and insomnia. Perhaps most importantly to academically competitive students, a dirty living environment is detrimental to a student's ability to study, leading to a decrease in overall academic performance.
However, as University life leaves very little time for cleaning, UniMaid will provide an ideal solution by offering laundry and maid services on a weekly, biweekly, and monthly basis. Additionally, UniMaid will offer biweekly bottled water delivery to keep each student hydrated. These services will effectively create a cleaner living environment for all budgets, and allow for a healthier and more productive career at University.

ThreadIN

ThreadIN is a software application which provides a fresh approach to shopping for clothes, enabling shoppers to quickly discover trends and styles that suit their personal tastes. By means of digital kiosks in high street retailers, items of clothing can be scanned into the system and based on user preferences and search criteria, discover what similar shoppers have bought, reviewed and searched. Helping customers to stumble upon interesting trends and styles. The application would be accessible at a variety of high-street retailers, and aims to create a social network connecting groups of shoppers.