Asia & the Pacific 2020 Finalists

Ann Dumaliang

Saving Masungi - a Karst Landscape & Arc of Biodiversity

The Philippines which is both a mega-diverse country and a biodiversity hotspot has an 80% funding gap for conservation. Down the line, the implications are huge - an average of four forest rangers man protected areas spanning thousands of hectares. Though biodiverse locations may be labelled as protected on paper, it is hard to realise effective conservation because of these resource gaps

Masungi Georeserve, launched in 2015, is a privately-led conservation and sustainable development project focused on a karst landscape about an hour and a half away from the capital of Metro Manila. These unique limestone formations and the forests on them, serve as refuge to wildlife and site-endemic species in a rapidly urbanising area.

Building on two decades of restoration work, we aim to achieve conservation using the holistic three-pronged approach of protection, education, and sustainable development - primarily through geo-tourism. By doing so, we wish to keep Masungi and other landscapes/habitats alive for generations to come.

Jayeshkumar Mevada

River revival through enzymes

In India, water pollution adversely affects more than 50% of the population, most of which depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Every day, almost 13,500 million liters of industrial wastewater enters rivers and other water bodies with only a fraction of it adequately treated. Our combined approach of technology & community-level interventions has been adopted to address this. Worldwide, enzymatic processes are replacing many of the harsh and toxic chemicals in textile, paper, pharma and other chemical manufacturing. The major drawback is the cost of enzyme production. Working since 2015, we devised an affordable method to obtain enzymes, which would eliminate chemicals and significantly reduce loads on industries for effluent treatment. Our process reduces the cost of biocatalysts by five-fold, making biological processes an affordable alternative to toxic chemical processes, thereby significantly reducing water pollution at source and making river water more accessible and usable for other purposes.

In parallel through my project with Kesar Seva, we plant medicinal plants and produce organic fertilizer helping more than 1000 farmers revive the fertility of their land. This program aims to impact one million farmers in the future with a vision to replicate this model throughout the nation.

Jiannan Zhu

ORCA-TECH - guardian of global waters

Nowadays, marine and freshwater ecosystems have become increasingly fragile due to various kinds of pollution. In China, around 1.32 to 3.53 million tons of garbage is discharged at sea annually, primarily originating from cities. This waste eventually converges into the growing 3.5 million square kilometers of garbage currently accumulating in the Pacific Ocean trash vortex.

To resolve this issue, I founded ORCA-TECH in 2017 and have developed a series of autonomous electric boats adaptable to different water conditions to clean trash from freshwater surfaces at origin - before it reaches the sea. Water health status data is also collected by these artificial-intelligence boats.

To date our boats have been deployed and have serviced aquatic ecosystems in more than 30 regions around the world producing thousands of HD maps and water status data for analysis. Over one million people benefit from our technology and our ability to clean and monitor aquatic ecosystems smartly, economically and safely.

Nidhi Pant

S4S Technologies - Science For Society - Solar Powered Dehydrator for Food Wastage

Small holder (SH) farmers, comprising 80% of India’s farming community and some of the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, lose crops worth approximately US$ 19.4 mn ( ~ 40% in the entire supply chain) on a daily basis due to post-harvest losses caused by lack of infrastructure for storage, limited technical know-how on good agricultural practices, inadequate markets and poor logistics.

S4S deploys Solar Conduction Dryers (SCD) to SH farmers to process fruits and vegetables and buys back processed produce from them. Our SCD is an electricity-free solar-powered food dehydrator that reduces moisture content in agro-produce so that farmers can preserve their produce for up to 1 year without using any chemicals, thereby preventing significant food waste, contributing to overcoming malnutrition and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. S4S trains landless female farmers to become agri-entrepreneurs, equipping them with the right combination of training, technology, access to finance, and market linkages.

S4S is currently working with over 3000 farmers and has 270 installations in 3 states to date. Dehydrated S4S products made by the farmers, are serving over 700 food industry clients like Sodexo, Marico, Indian Railways, Capital Foods, Nestle, Unilever and others and is supported by the Government of India.

Purav Desai

Recube Circular Solutions - smart packaging from crop waste

Recube Circular Solutions is a social enterprise that seeks to revolutionize the way we consume every day. We aim to eradicate single-use disposables in the food and beverage (F&B), fast moving consumer goods, entertainment & e-commerce industries through our reusable systems. We provide a 360 degree service and have partnered with over 150 brands (including inter alia: Burger King, Starbucks, Bacardi) and 75 events (including: the Cricket World Cup 2019, U2 Mumbai Concert, VH1 Supersonic to name a few.)

In the F&B sector we manufacture durable packaging made out of crop waste which is usually burnt and a major cause of air pollution. At events we set up unique collection points to collect back packaging, sterilise it and put it back into the circular economy. We also set up water refill points to provide unlimited free water to eliminate the usage of plastic bottles. The pandemic has successfully helped people understand the importance of health and hygiene but it has also accelerated an increase in the consumption of single use plastic bottles. Therefore we have started Refillable which is a service where home & hygiene care liquids are packed into reusable and refillable aluminium and rice husk bottles and together with a mobile refill truck, affordably delivers products to the consumer's doorstep. We have already diverted over 5 million disposables from the landfill by helping 150 companies go zero waste in 1 year.

Ranitya Nurlita

Waste Solution Hub: a technology-based integrated waste management system

Indonesia is estimated to generate over 64 million tons of waste annually, and at least 20 percent of plastic waste ends up in the ocean. Moreover, an excessive number of waste scavengers exist across the nation. Their income varies between US$ 50-100 monthly, which is considered low as compared to the national level.

Wastehub.id connects the user to an effective and responsible local waste collection area, to efficiently buy and sell recyclable waste. We began in 2019 at Jurangmangu, Tangerang and have to date have educated more than 23,247 visitors, including volunteers and scavengers. The amount of waste managed is currently 2,437 kilograms in total. Our work is divided into several programmes such as waste management consultation (providing knowledge of best practices, managing the entire cradle-to-cradle waste process); scavenger development (providing soft skills to improve their lives); event waste management, and more recently, we are developing an integrated recycling platform with a technological approach.

Vania Santoso

heySTARTIC - redefining corporate’s waste

We mobilize upcycled innovations through heySTARTIC with a focus on accelerating corporate’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and consumer behavior-change. heySTARTIC collects used and rejected packaging in partnership with corporations and stakeholders at the grassroots level and upcycles this waste into beautiful highly saleable products - with many corporations buying finished products back from our handicrafters to be used as their dedicated line of corporate gifts/merchandise. To date we have sold more than 5,000 products and art installations made of waste packaging. Examples include turning cement sacks into artificial leather, sachet packaging into woven textile, milk carton cardboard into lining material, plastic bags into crochet, amongst many other applications. These sustainable fashion products are also available for sale to end-users, along with public workshops to raise people’s awareness. To date heySTARTIC has held over 50 workshops, training over 1000 people in waste issues and has empowered 11 pioneers from underprivileged communities to be crafts (wo)men, resellers or independent sellers, and even facilitators of these workshops - all while more than doubling their monthly income.

Vidyut Mohan

Takachar: Harvesting value from agricultural waste

Takachar’s goal is to increase the amount of waste biomass transformed into marketable products around the world, and reduce the pollution associated with open-air biomass burning. Takachar enables rural farmers to earn 40% more by converting their crop residues into fuels, fertilizers and value-added chemicals like activated carbon (AC) on-site. By choosing activated carbon (AC) as the starting market, Takachar brings this value chain to the doorstep of farmers and hence reduces air pollution associated with crop residue burning.

Xiaoyuan Ren

MyH2O - a data platform for clean water

MyH2O Water Information Network was established to tackle inaccess to clean drinking water in rural China. Through a nationwide collaborative youth volunteer network MyH2O collects clean water data and diagnoses water problems on a case-by-case basis, with the goal to connect data-driven water resources and solutions to the underprivileged communities in need and improve their overall health. The network has grown to over 100 field teams covering 3800+ datasets in close to 1000 villages across 26 provinces and has successfully delivered clean water stations to tens of thousands of villagers in China.

Zahin Rohan Razeen

Quantum Polychemics Biotechnology

Zahin’s venture, Quantum Polychemics Biotechnology produces non-toxic, organic polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) based biopolymers which are fully programmable and translational. Formed in alignment with UN SDG 9 & 14 with the vision of redefining traditional material science approaches in tackling plastic pollution, this initiative aims to be an impetus for kickstarting the era of a bio-based circular economy in Bangladesh. The project currently uses jute dust, the discarded by-product of jute plants from the factory mills, to synthesise bioplastics using precision nano-engineering in a bioreactor. The polymer product dissolves in liquid in 10 mins and degrades in the soil in just under a month and is used for the production of polybags, bio-bins and bio-packaging which has eliminated jute going to landfills in the region. Robust waste collection practises have been adopted for maximising yield while assisting in uplifting numerous unemployed men and women in the factory areas, since commercialisation has taken place. Furthermore, the economic status of over 100 jute farmers has been improved.