31 January 2025
From Battlefields to Peaks: The Rawthey Project’s Climb for Change

From Battlefields to Peaks:
Florence Mitchell's Journey with Olly the Octopus
27 January 2025
Florence Mitchell, the latest addition to Shoplight’s lighting design team, graduated from Falmouth University last year with a degree in Sustainable Product Design. This course strongly emphasises and encourages students to ‘design for good’ which is why Shoplight is such a good post-university fit for Florence.
In December, Florence was invited to speak about her third-year project live on the radio with BBC Cornwall!
During the interview, Florence discussed how she discovered a love for medical design in her second year of university. This worked out well for Florence as Falmouth University had a connection with the Royal Cornwall Hospital, which creates blocks of Sterimelt – a material made on-site from melted-down polypropylene gowns.
Seeking a meaningful use for the Sterimelt, Royal Cornwall tasked Florence with developing a circular system within the hospital. They wanted to produce a useful product from the Sterimelt which was being created without a clear purpose.
To create a product, Florence needed a problem. With her investigative hat on, Florence interviewed hospital staff and learned that broken IV poles are discarded and end up in landfills (a familiar concept to the Shoplight team). This led to the creation of Olly the Octopus, a child friendly IV pole.
Olly was developed as a sustainable alternative to existing metal IV poles. Key features of the design include the ability for it to be fully disassembled and repaired in the hospital, user-friendly functionality for staff, and the capacity to hold three times more weight than current IV hooks.
However, Olly offers even more! Florence brought him to life by developing an app that allows patients to interact with him. The app includes features for tracking mood, medication reminders, and even playing games with the colourful character. Additionally, Florence added an element for parents to log in and see how their child is feeling, providing reassurance as they monitored their child’s treatment progress.
The decision to make Olly an octopus wasn’t an accident. Florence chose this sea creature for several reasons.
Cornwall’s proximity to the sea and each tentacle represent a core value of the NHS along with the two sustainability goals she aimed to achieve – Industry, innovation and infrastructure and Responsible consumption and production, inspired by the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
And because octopuses have three hearts – who knew?!! Olly made a fitting mascot for the hospital, sharing the same heart for their patients.
Since joining Shoplight, Florence has immersed herself in the world of lighting design and has been learning about the 3D printing methods and circular design used in our biopolymer retail lighting range.
Currently, Olly is made from approximately 80 melted-down polypropylene gowns mixed with 50% virgin plastic, a composition Florence aims to improve.
We hope that the experience and knowledge Florence is learning at Shoplight will help her continue to enhance Olly the Octopus’s design and manufacturing methods, ultimately bringing him to more hospitals for people and the planet to benefit from.
31 January 2025
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27 January 2025
From University to Innovation:
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