Janica Echavez
Nationality: Canada
Organization Name: PolyMore
Impact Region: Northern America
About the Social Business: PolyMore produces sustainable products from 100% reclaimed plastic with a piece of unique equipment that converts plastic into yarn.
About the Y&Y Fellow: Janica is a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student from the University of Calgary. She was a business lead for Cathlock, a simple lock attachment for medical catheters and is currently one of the cofounders of PolyMore, a startup aiming to reinvent new ways for plastic bottle recycling. Janica believes that forward-thinking in engineering will rely on sustainable design made to address major global problems in the next decade. Over the past years, since migrating to Canada from the Philippines, she’s diversified her experiences to reflect this idea. She has assisted in research for novel patent-pending nanosensors for hydrocarbon leaking and helped launch an app in the market to scan for endocrine water disruptors. She enjoys learning new skills, ideating, and being in the buzzing communities of the Alberta start-up and energy scene. Recently, she’s been tackling the problem of waste, and thinks there are better ways to handle
and manage this problem. Over the past summer, she’s worked in city-wide logistics for upgrading towns in India into SMART waste-negative cities as a Queen Elizabeth Scholar. She is currently involved with the City of Calgary to recycle the city’s thermoform plastic waste into fabric through a new venture called PolyMore. On the side, she’s been involved with making STEM opportunities more equitable for high school students in Alberta by being a UNESCO Youth Advisor and CEMF Prairie Ambassador for Women in STEM. She’s helped expand national non-profit organizations like Science Expo Canada and the Foundation of Student Science and Technology, to the west coast. She loves film and she’s a photography enthusiast. Her hope is to merge all these interests in arts, engineering, and sustainability into projects that scale and have a high-impact.
Janica Echavez
Nationality: Canada
Organization Name: PolyMore
Impact Region: Northern America
About the Social Business: PolyMore produces sustainable products from 100% reclaimed plastic with a piece of unique equipment that converts plastic into yarn.
About the Y&Y Fellow: Janica is a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student from the University of Calgary. She was a business lead for Cathlock, a simple lock attachment for medical catheters and is currently one of the cofounders of PolyMore, a startup aiming to reinvent new ways for plastic bottle recycling. Janica believes that forward-thinking in engineering will rely on sustainable design made to address major global problems in the next decade. Over the past years, since migrating to Canada from the Philippines, she’s diversified her experiences to reflect this idea. She has assisted in research for novel patent-pending nanosensors for hydrocarbon leaking and helped launch an app in the market to scan for endocrine water disruptors. She enjoys learning new skills, ideating, and being in the buzzing communities of the Alberta start-up and energy scene. Recently, she’s been tackling the problem of waste, and thinks there are better ways to handle
and manage this problem. Over the past summer, she’s worked in city-wide logistics for upgrading towns in India into SMART waste-negative cities as a Queen Elizabeth Scholar. She is currently involved with the City of Calgary to recycle the city’s thermoform plastic waste into fabric through a new venture called PolyMore. On the side, she’s been involved with making STEM opportunities more equitable for high school students in Alberta by being a UNESCO Youth Advisor and CEMF Prairie Ambassador for Women in STEM. She’s helped expand national non-profit organizations like Science Expo Canada and the Foundation of Student Science and Technology, to the west coast. She loves film and she’s a photography enthusiast. Her hope is to merge all these interests in arts, engineering, and sustainability into projects that scale and have a high-impact.
