Quinn Labs · the unfinished list
The Unfinished List
This is not a failure page. It is a research archive.
Every entry is a question we tried to answer and could not — yet. The work is written down so the next person doesn't start from zero.
We stopped calling it impossible. Impossible is often just a material, a process or an idea that hasn't arrived yet. The Romans couldn't build an electric vehicle, but they did invent the hypocaust, because they asked a practical question about heat.
Not impossible. Just unfinished.
Materials · Cold chain
ResearchGreenFreeze
Can a reusable, compostable, vegan cold pack replace today's plastic gel packs?
Millions of reusable gel packs are used every year in sports, physiotherapy, food delivery, medicine and veterinary care. Most are plastic-based and eventually discarded. A compostable alternative would reduce material waste across several industries at once.
Why it's difficult
- The ideal product must be compostable, reusable, vegan, leak-proof, flexible, able to freeze repeatedly and commercially affordable — all at once.
- Compostable barrier materials are often porous enough to let moisture escape over repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
- Repeated freezing and thawing degrades most bio-based films faster than conventional plastics.
- Current materials cannot satisfy every required property simultaneously without unacceptable cost or performance trade-offs.
What was attempted
- Early concepts using bio-based films and natural gelling agents.
- Pouch prototypes tested for repeated freeze-thaw durability.
- Barrier-layer experiments to reduce moisture loss while retaining flexibility.
What's still missing
- A compostable barrier material with low moisture transmission across many freeze-thaw cycles.
- A bio-based elastomer or membrane that stays flexible and sealed after months of use.
- Manufacturing processes that can produce the pack at a cost competitive with conventional gel packs.
Who could help
What we learned
Achieving all of the desired properties at once — reusable, compostable, vegan, leak-proof, durable and low-cost — was the real challenge, not any single property in isolation. The experiment highlighted a materials-science problem rather than a product-design problem. The path forward is almost certainly a new barrier material or multi-layer biodegradable membrane, not a different pouch shape.
Materials · Packaging
Research pausedGreenserve
Can a compostable tennis ball tube maintain internal pressure?
Pressurised tennis ball tubes are steel-lidded, multi-layer plastic and effectively unrecyclable. Millions are thrown away every year to protect a product that only needs its pressure for a few months on a shelf.
Why it's difficult
- Tournament-standard balls need roughly 2 bar of internal pressure held for months.
- Compostable polymers are generally poor gas barriers, and worse as humidity rises.
- A barrier coating good enough to hold pressure usually stops the tube composting.
- Whatever replaces it has to run on existing tube-filling and seaming lines at a comparable cost.
What was attempted
- Paper-board tube bodies with a range of biodegradable liners.
- Coated moulded pulp bodies with a crimped compostable seal.
- Reduced-pressure formats that rely on the ball rather than the tube.
What's still missing
- A compostable barrier film with a gas transmission rate close to conventional multilayer.
- A seal design that survives handling and stays compostable.
- Cost evidence at real production volumes.
Who could help
What we learned
The pressure requirement and the compostability requirement fight each other directly. The gas barrier needed for 2 bar over months is exactly the property that makes most compostable films fail. The real breakthrough is likely a material, not a geometry.
Water
ResearchShower water recovery
Can a home recycle its own shower water without anyone thinking about it?
A typical shower sends 50–80 litres of nearly clean, warm water straight to the drain. Recovering even part of it changes household water and energy use without asking anyone to change behaviour.
Why it's difficult
- Greywater carries soap, skin, hair and biofilm — treatment can't be a filter you forget about.
- Retrofitting a loop into existing plumbing is invasive and expensive.
- Regulation and public trust are as hard as the engineering.
What was attempted
- Bench rig with heat exchange only, no reuse — recovered most of the heat, none of the water.
- Cartridge filtration for toilet-fill reuse; fouled quickly with real household use.
What's still missing
- A self-cleaning treatment stage with a service interval measured in years.
- A retrofit path that doesn't require lifting floors.
Who could help
What we learned
Heat recovery is straightforward; water reuse is not. The blocker is biological fouling in real households, not pump efficiency or tank size. Any viable system needs a maintenance story a homeowner will actually follow.
Learning · Sport
ResearchInstrumented racket
Can a racket teach a beginner without a coach in the room?
Coaching is the biggest barrier to sport as an adult. If the equipment could explain what just happened, the first year of learning gets far less discouraging.
Why it's difficult
- Useful feedback isn't swing data, it's cause — and cause needs context the sensor doesn't have.
- Any electronics change the balance of the racket, which changes the stroke you're trying to measure.
- Feedback during play is a distraction; feedback afterwards is usually ignored.
What was attempted
- Handle-mounted IMU logging strike location and swing path.
- Post-session summaries against a reference stroke.
What's still missing
- A way to say why a shot went wrong in one sentence a beginner can act on.
- Instrumentation with no perceptible effect on the racket.
Who could help
What we learned
Players don't want data; they want a one-sentence diagnosis they can act on. The hardware is easy compared to building a model that understands cause, not just correlation.
Materials · Manufacturing
Not YetPackaging-free logistics
Can goods move through a supply chain without single-use packaging?
Most transit packaging exists for one journey and is destroyed on arrival. The protection is real; the disposability is a habit of accounting, not physics.
Why it's difficult
- Returnable systems need reverse logistics that nobody owns.
- Damage liability sits with whoever removes the packaging, so nobody wants to be first.
- Cleaning and tracking reusable containers can cost more than making new ones.
What was attempted
- Tagged returnable crates on a two-site loop; loss rate made the economics impossible.
- Damage modelling to size protection to actual measured handling, not worst case.
What's still missing
- Cheap, durable identity on every container — this is where WasteProof overlaps.
- A neutral operator for the return leg.
Who could help
What we learned
The economics are dominated by reverse logistics and container loss, not the cost of the container itself. Without a neutral operator or a shared standard, even a perfect reusable box can't win.
We don't measure success by the number of ideas we have. We measure it by the number of important questions we help move closer to an answer.