• Three teenagers in New York designed a cardboard, called Kiriboard, to replace plastic packaging.
• They got the idea when a box of motors for their robotics hobby arrived damaged.
• Their invention won the $12,500 Earth Prize. Now they plan to buy a machine to make more Kiriboards.

Three teenage boys in New York City have invented a clever packaging material that they hope will replace toxic plastics and make plastic-free shipping a reality.

Zhi Han (Anthony) Yao, Flint Mueller, and James Clare are planning to pursue a patent and eventually pitch their product to Home Depot, as well as traditional shippers like Amazon, FedEx, and the US Postal Service.

They call their geometric, cardboard invention Kiriboard, since it's inspired by Japanese kirigami, which is the art of cutting and folding paper.

"Something like this is the wave of the future," Jerry Citron, the teenagers' environmental-science teacher, told Business Insider.

Yao, Mueller, and Clare won the Earth Prize on April 8, making them one of seven winning environmental projects by teenagers across the globe. The award comes with $12,500, which they plan to use to buy a cutting machine, called a CNC router, and test more prototypes.

Plastic-free shipping could change the world

Just like any plastic, Styrofoam and other plastic packaging can shed microscopic bits of plastic into homes and the environment.

Microplastics have been detected from the oceans to the top of Mount Everest, in animals' and humans' body tissues and blood, and even in rain all over the planet. They're associated with heart attack and stroke risk. Some researchers suspect they could even be contributing to the recent rise in colon cancers in young people.

"I didn't realize it was as big of an issue as it was," Yao told BI. "I mean, companies have made sustainable initiatives and greener initiatives, but they haven't really fully replaced plastic packaging."

Enter the Kiriboard: Kiriboard is cut into lattice-like shapes so that it can bend to fill the space between an item and the wall of its box. The cuts give the cardboard a three-dimensional structure that makes it sturdy and allows it to bend and absorb impact, protecting what's inside, similar to bubble wrap but without the plastic.

Once perfected, the three teens hope their design can help ship packages of sensitive or heavy equipment even more securely, at a competitive price.

Broken motors and crumple zones

Clare, Mueller, and Yao are all on the same robotics team at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Clare is a junior, and Mueller and Yao are seniors.

The idea for Kiriboard started when they opened a shipment of Kraken X60 motors, which are about $200 a pop. They found that the brass pins, which connect the motors to a robot, were damaged and unusable. They assumed the pins had been damaged in transit.

"We're like, well, we should do something about this packaging, because clearly the packaging wasn't good enough," Mueller said.

Clare thought about how cars are engineered with crumple zones, meant to absorb the energy of impacts to protect the people inside.

Similarly, he said, "you can make strategic weak points in your packaging so that the package warps and deforms," sparing the package's contents.

With help from the Earth Prize program and Citron, they built and tested their first Kiriboard prototypes.

The matrix

It was a scrappy effort, with cardboard scavenged from their school.

After some research and consulting various teachers, Yao said they drew up eight or nine different designs, and narrowed down to four to build and test. Then, came the fun part: dropping heavy stuff on their creations.

To test their prototypes' durability, the teens slammed them with a roll of tape, a stapler, a can of soda, and a metal water bottle — "which did the most damage, but not as much as we thought it would," Clare said.

They dropped each item onto the Kiriboard prototypes from various heights, so that they could calculate and study the physical forces of each impact.

"Basically, we want to see what's the most amount of force it can take before it snaps," Yao said.

The results were promising, the trio said. The Kiriboard prototypes sustained very little damage, which they judged by checking the cardboard for dents. They plan to move forward with all four designs, which they hope will be useful for different types of shipping.

In the design pictured above, four triangular "legs" hold the Kiriboard in place inside a box.

"This middle section, we call it the matrix. This is supposed to be flexible," Yao said. Once you place an item for shipping inside the box, the matrix "is supposed to form to the product."

Once they've purchased a CNC router to automate cutting the cardboard, they plan to test prototypes by actually shipping them in boxes.

"Right now, we want to perfect our product," Yao said.

When it's ready, they said they might also pitch it to the electronics company AndyMark, which shipped them the robotic motors that arrived broken.

"No shade to them," Clare said, adding that their robotics team frequently orders from AndyMark with no problems.

"We're on the brink of, like, this could become a reality, and it's just up to us to put in that final effort," Mueller said. Clare chimed in: "All from a broken package."

• Kin is an Idaho prix fixe restaurant with a work culture rooted in collaboration and equality.
• The business, owned by Kris Komori and Remi McManus, offers salaries to all full-time staff.
• This article is part of "Made to Order," a series highlighting the business strategies driving today's food industry.

At Kin's prix fixe restaurant, the menu changes every five weeks, and it's always a group project.

Having five or more staff members work together to brainstorm a tasting menu, divide up the cooking, and gather ingredients may seem like a recipe for disaster, but Kris Komori and Remi McManus, the co-owners of Kin, don't mind the challenge. Collaboration is integral to their restaurant, even if it requires some trial and error.

"We don't necessarily have general managers and things like that," McManus said. "We all work as an entity and as a unit."

This mindset even extends to how Komori and McManus tackle payroll and prioritize pay equality. The owners offer all full-time staff a salary with benefits like paid time off and health insurance. This differs from the typical restaurant model in which some staff receive the minimum wage for tipped workers, while mainly relying on optional gratuities.

In a rapidly changing industry known for burnout and top-down management, Kin's approach to work culture might be less common. But Komori, who's also Kin's head chef, said the Boise restaurant had always been an outlier.

"We're not trying to change an entire restaurant industry or even Boise itself, but we did know that we could create something a little bit different," Komori said.

Their efforts have paid off. In 2023, Komori won a James Beard Award, and in 2024, Food & Wine listed the restaurant as one of the top 20 restaurants in the country.

On separate calls, Komori and McManus spoke with Business Insider about how they foster employee well-being at Kin — and how other restaurants can adopt a better workplace culture, too.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Business Insider: Tell me a bit about Kin's work environment. How do you try to set yourself apart when it comes to employee well-being?

Remi McManus: For years in the restaurant industry, there's been a big discrepancy in pay, especially from the front and back of the house. We try to develop equality through equal pay for all staff members. Our goals have been to develop more professionalism in the industry in Idaho and provide for our staff and our community more than we used to at my previous restaurant, State & Lemp.

Kris Komori: Part of the core competency of the business is connecting to our guests and community, but it's mostly about connecting with our crew. It's still long hours and stressful at times, but if we can have people be excited to come to work instead of dreading it, it's just a happier place to be.

How have you developed a sustainable business model that can account for having staff on salary?

McManus: It's important for employees to take ownership of their duties. This means engaging them in different responsibilities that play to their strengths and discussing things they would like to see done in the restaurant. We have a graphic designer who is a service staff member and helps us to do social media posts and graphic design for menus. We've had a bartender who moved on to be our full-time bookkeeper. We have individuals who have experiences outside the restaurant that we can utilize to change the dynamic of what this space really is. While most people see us as a restaurant, we see ourselves more as a community engagement center with food and beverage as the vehicle.

Komori: Since our tasting room is reservation-only, we know how many people are coming in and what their allergies or dietary restrictions are. Based on our capacity, we also know how much to order and prep. We can be efficient on the cost of goods and then put that into the payroll.

Why do you think a community-focused work culture is a less common approach in most kitchens and restaurants?

McManus: It's very expensive. Restaurants are fairly transient, and other owners don't potentially have the time or desire to invest as much into their employees. We're called Kin for many reasons, but one is because 100% of the staff that was with us at State & Lemp came over to Kin. It felt like we were a family creating a new establishment.

Komori: One reason why a lot of places don't do it is because you have to also get a lot of buy-in from the team in terms of rotating schedules, knowing that everyone deserves the time off. Sometimes that requires stepping in. If someone's on vacation, then everyone's got to pull a little bit more, but then you yourself go on vacation and the other people do that for you.

It's a compromise to staff saying you can have a career, sustainable finances, and days off in a restaurant. Because we have more people on staff, we can rotate schedules. As long as everyone has buy-in and supports each other, it works really well.

How does prioritizing collaboration and creativity help foster a more welcoming workplace?

McManus: Any employee wants to feel like they're valued at work. Because we are a small staff, we're able to engage with them on a day-to-day basis. Whether it be collaboration on a dish or activities outside the workplace, developing these intimate relationships is baked into our ethos.

When we come up with menu ideas, it's not necessarily just Kris or myself. Being able to rely on the individuals that have been here for years and also some of the new individuals for ideas is probably the best thing that we can do. People who have been doing something over and over and over again for years — they need new ideas. The collaboration process is probably one of the most effective things that we have in the restaurant right now.

Komori: Everyone that comes in here wants to create. What's cool about our tasting room is that it starts with one dish, but over time, the staff is creating dozens of dishes, and they start to notice their own style. They're also learning how to plan, order at a cost, and write a prep schedule. It's really important because probably a quarter of the kitchen will want to have their own place, or at least become a chef with their own team. It's a lot to change the menu, but it's also fun.

How can other chefs and owners adopt this workplace culture and sustain these practices?

McManus: We accept gratuities, but we use them to fund the salaries. I believe, in some larger cities, there are restaurants that have gone away from optional gratuities and just added them to the bill or increased the pricing so they can have a similar pay structure.

Komori: We're always wondering if the way that we're doing things is the best way to do it. You just have to be wanting to change. You ask your staff, "Hey, we want to try something to benefit the business and to benefit you. Are you willing to experiment with it?" And then you course-correct.

We have good retention, and our guests are happy to support a place trying to healthily and sustainably support its crew. So we get loyalty from customers, which stabilizes the revenue and helps sustain the system.

How do you think restaurants can be more than just places to eat and places to work for guests and staff?

McManus: It just comes down to culture. If you take the time and energy to learn more about the staff, have those conversations, communicate, and give ownership, then that shows in the staff members and that shows to the guests and community.

Komori: Partly the reason we're named Kin is not only because we try to be like a loose-knit group of people that really align with each other, but also we want to have a feel like we're inviting people into our home. Because of that, we know a lot about our regulars. Sometimes we feel like a restaurant, but other times, we're more than a restaurant — we just happen to have our product be food and beverage. If we're going to work so hard, we want to feel good about it, and just cooking for someone over and over and over behind a wall, you lose that connection.