North America 2019 Finalists

Alex Paullin

Music to unite and fight for earth

We are building a global network of musicians and youth volunteers to deliver environmental education through the catalytic power of music. The neuroscience is clear: music activates more regions of the brain than even language does. This power can and must be used for the good of the earth and its people, especially in times of great division like those we are experiencing. We foster a global community in which the memorable, emotional, and unifying power of music contributes to the balance between humankind, nature, and society. We produce media, develop classroom resources, and lead live events and workshops. Our content reaches millions over radio, TV, online and also face-to-face, in nationally relevant genres and languages. Our music is composed to deliver a message while holding attention and inspiring an emotional response, without only preaching to the choir. To sustain this global movement at the national level, we identify talented youth leaders and empower them with structures, resources, and strategies to lead eco-musical revolutions. They maintain relationships with artists and broadcasters, offer solar-powered video screenings and activations like tree planting and waste clean-ups, produce local songs and videos.

Anna Tari

Uniting to build a Circular Economy movement

The Circular Economy Club is the non-profit international network of over 3,500 circular economy professionals and organizations from over 100 countries. Our vision is to live in an era where all cities function through a circular model, setting the end of an age of waste. The Club’s mission is to bring the circular economy to cities from Accra to Delhi, Quito to Amsterdam - by building strong local networks to design and implement circular local strategies, embed the circular economy in the education system and help circular solutions scale. The Club is managed voluntarily by a team of 37 worldwide volunteers and supported by 50 mentor, who have given 130 hours of free mentoring to start-ups and students, and by 200 organizers who voluntarily bring people together to design and implement local circular economy strategies in their cities. The circular economy is an alternative to the linear economy, where all products and services are designed with the intention to avoid waste, and used materials flow back into the system by being resold, shared, refurbished or recycled. When Organizers sign up to the program, they receive toolkits and communications materials, exchange knowledge with the rest of organizers globally, and they are able to coordinate their local communities.

Jenna Nicholas

Driving investment for more resilient communities

Impact Experience focuses on retraining former coal miners in Appalachia; sustainable agriculture and racial equity in rural Georgia and inclusive rebuilding in Puerto Rico, Sonoma, New Orleans and Houston. We have long observed how the disconnect across sectors in investing, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and community leadership, lack of diversity and inclusivity, lack of trust, and lack of empathy - limit the possibilities to drive effective solutions to support climate resilient communities. Our mission is to deepen relationships between investors, community leaders, philanthropists, artists and entrepreneurs to build trust, co-ideate solutions, and leverage strategic alignment to drive sustainable impact in underserved communities. Our big idea is to bring together impact investors, philanthropists, policy makers, entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, artists and community leaders to focus on sharing lessons learned and co-develop solutions on community resiliency from diverse high-risk area communities in the Southeast Corridor and the Gulf region including Savannah (Georgia), Houston (Texas), and New Orleans (Louisiana).

Molly Burhans

Catholic land for socio-ecological good

GoodLands is working to bring nature conservation to the scale and impact of Catholic healthcare and education, as the largest global network of its kind. They are bringing the most powerful technology for large-scale property planning and sustainability - Geographic Information Systems - to the Catholic Church.

Xiangkun Elvis Cao

Converting harmful emissions into commodities

The extraction and consumption of fossil carbon to run our daily lives accounts for over 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, driving climate change. By not viewing fossil fuels and feedstocks through a “circular economy” lens, companies “throw away” approximately US$50 billion each year in potential profit from what could be made with waste carbon dioxide such as methanol. HI-Light is a solar-thermal chemical reactor technology for converting carbon dioxide into fuels like syngas or methanol. The technology seeks to achieve a kind of artificial photosynthesis inside a factory or a power plant – combining sunlight, carbon dioxide and chemicals to photo-catalytically produce renewable fuel. Our technique makes carbon dioxide capture and conversion more economical. The current conversion of carbon dioxide into useful chemicals by weight is a very small percent of the close to two billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by power plants in the United States alone. HI-Light’s “reverse combustion” technology converts carbon dioxide into high-value hydrocarbons, increasing its value as a commodity. The unique design feature of our reactor is the optimized light delivery coupled with opto-thermal heating to reach elevated temperatures where reaction rates are higher.