Editor’s Note: The Cozad New Venture Challenge provides University of Illinois startups with an opportunity to compete for a pool of $500,000 in funding. Gies College of Business is a co-sponsor of the 2025 event, and this year, 57 Gies-led teams are participating in the contest, up from seven in 2024. This is one in a series of features on Gies teams participating in this year’s Cozad, which culminates in the finals on April 17 at the I-Hotel.

As the world strives to provide ways to limit landfill waste, a startup with a Gies Business connection is doing its part. The startup, Bluuzone, is working to create a disposable water bottle that is biodegradable and 100 percent plastic-free.

Rudy Perez, a student in Gies Business' fully online master's in management (iMSM) program, is leading business efforts for Bluuzone, under the direction of CEO Allison Pine, a former classmate of his at California Lutheran University. Perez, who holds a Bachelor of Arts in music from CLU, has been honing his skills for promoting non-profits -- first as a social media manager for CLU’s Sustainable Edible Education (SEEd) Project and currently as the program manager for the Harmony Project, which provides year-round no-cost, high-quality music education to children.

Pine was impressed with Perez’s results and invited him to be a part of the team, which formed at the European Innovation Academy, a three-week accelerator in Portugal.

“Rudy has the right kind of expertise in what we are looking for as a business consultant,” Pine said.

Bluuzone is teaming with researchers at the University of Maryland to develop much of the technology. It is using the Cozad New Venture Challenge as a step to grow the business side of the operation.

“There are so many environmental and health issues that are related to plastics, including cancer, infertility, hormone imbalance, neurological problems, and heart conditions,” Pine said. “We’re a group of entrepreneurial people who are excited and eager to create something new that bridges the gap between innovation and research.”

Thanks in part to Perez’s help, Bluuzone has a lot of momentum. It won a $25,000 intellectual property award from Nixon Peabody and first prize out of 72 teams at the South Carolina Innovates pitch competition. Through Perez’s involvement at Gies and the University of Illinois, the team participated in the Steve Chen virtual workshop and received valuable feedback through a Gies capstone project.

“We want to create something that does not leech into the human body in the same way that a lot of other bioplastics do,” Pine said. “We want it to be biodegradable, but also want the shelf life to not be a problem in the long term.”

To that end, in addition to research leaders at Maryland, Bluuzone is consulting with a University of Illinois-based team on a water-soluble solution.

Through its Origin Ventures Office of Entrepreneurship, Gies College of Business is supporting entrepreneurial activities of both on-campus and online learners. The Origin Ventures Office fosters knowledge creation and dissemination from top faculty in the field, and it designs and offers the curriculum needed to bring that knowledge to the classroom. The office houses iVenture, an accelerator for top student startups at the University of Illinois, and co-sponsors the Cozad New Venture Challenge.

“After Cozad, we’re ready to jump right into research,” Pine said. “We do have a potential licensing opportunity with somebody that is research heavy. Once we have a prototype, we will make sure everything is FDA approved.”

The summer will also mean refining Bluuzone’s business component. Even though he lives in California, Perez says that mentors and instructors at Gies have used Discord to advise him on technical aspects of the operation.

“Rudy’s role is a lot of logistics and helping with that process,” Pine said. “That is a piece we don’t have a lot of experience in. He’ll do well with taking us beyond just the product.”

Perez plans to fly in for the April 17 Cozad final round.

“I feel really lucky to be a part of an established team,” Perez said. “My goal is to grow myself personally. I’m doing that through Bluuzone and with help at the University of Illinois, I have been able to refine my pitching skills. My short-term goal with Bluuzone is to move toward commerciality, convincing people to test it out and getting their feedback.”