Winners by region

Geed Beer, Rejo Beer (“Plant a Tree, Plant Hope”) is a youth-led campaign to restore hope in Somaliland. My country is suffering from an extreme drought, exacerbated by climate change. Famine is now widespread. Severe deforestation, primarily for the production of charcoal, is rapidly diminishing the small patches of forest that still remain. The need for action is urgent and so I have decided to lead the change. My big idea is to plant trees in cities while educating youth in schools and universities about the importance of forests and mobilizing them to participate in a nationwide reforestation programme. This will build on work that I have already undertaken to promote tree-planting at weddings, graduation ceremonies, and schools. My goal is to bring back the forests of Somaliland and foster a national culture in which caring for the environment is recognized by everyone as their moral responsibility.

BioCellection is tackling the plastic crisis by developing an economical recycling solution for currently unrecyclable plastic waste. The team has developed a chemical process that transforms plastics into renewable chemicals for sustainable virgin-quality materials. The  team aspires to process seventeen metric tons of plastic waste in California per year. At commercial scale, BioCellection fabricates modular process skids to treat plastic waste on a regional level around the world. Products from these regions are centralized and purified in chemical facilities.

Kids’ Corner is an inclusive digital classroom inspiring children and educators to participate in wildlife and environmental conservation and sciences through a range of curriculum-approved learning technologies, games and programs. Kids’ Corner offers a suite of educational resources for children, including workshop-based environmental programs, animation videos, fact sheets, infographics, reading materials, teachers-notes, games and home activities. Kids’ Corner provides children with an enjoyable and creative way of learning about wildlife and the environment. Kids’ Corner breaks down complex issues into easy, fun, positive and actionable concepts that can be used in any setting. Kids’ Corner is dedicated to inclusive learning, and will be available online and offline, as well as in homes, schools and hospitals.

In Ghana, the two major religious bodies are: Christianity, forming 71.2%; and Islam, with 17.6% of the population. Apparently, there is no community leader who comes anywhere close to being able to influence their members as the religious leaders do on a weekly basis. My project aims to build sustainable partnerships with these religious societies in Ghana through an action campaign dubbed, “Total Cleanliness: A Prerequisite to Worship”, which will constantly call on the attention of members of these religious groups to relevant everyday practices that can enhance and increase fullness of life. Regional meetings and workshops will be held with these religious leaders across all the 10 regions in Ghana, to officially launch the campaign and as well; train, engage and establish with them routine sessions of the campaign during worship hours and as well, persistently advocate for its adoption as a national policy in the country.

Shady’s  dream is to bring together children who are working as garbage collectors in Luxor and teach them how to make musical instruments from trash, and play music as a band. The project empowers children through the innovative use of waste, and uses art and music as a medium to nurture relationships between communities and families. Rabab Luxor Art Collective provides free weekly classes to a stigmatized group of 70 children in Luxor who work as waste collectors. They play together as the “Garbage Conservatoire Band”.

The triple problems of open defecation, plastic waste littering and street youth menace beset many communities in Ghana. An estimated 6 million Ghanaians defecate outside everyday because they have no access to toilet facilities. This exposes the public to 1000 tons of untreated feces left out in the open. Each year this untreated excreta kills thousands of Ghanaians. 3T is a for impact social enterprise that trains street youth and people with disabilities to rescue and up-cycle plastic bottles creating serious environmental havoc to build affordable micro-flush toilet facilities and roadside waterless urinals to help address the lack of adequate and accessible toilet facilities which are the major causes of open defecation in Ghana. Every toilet facility and urinal built by 3T reduces land pollution, creates employment and serves as a very visible reminder that plastic waste can often be put to good use long after its initial purpose has expired.

I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, which like other nearby countries, is suffering from the worst drought the region has seen in over 45 years. When my family and I were driving to the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, I was shocked to pass empty reservoirs that had previously always been full of water. This was the first of many times I witnessed the impact of drought on my community, and after further research, I learned about the devastating effects drought had on food and water security. I have developed a unique super-absorbent polymer that holds hundreds of times its weight in water when stored in soil. It is biodegradable, inexpensive and free of harmful chemicals, unlike the manmade materials currently used. The polymer, made entirely from waste products, improves the environment, increases the chance for plants to sustain growth by 84% during a drought and can increase food security by 73% in disaster-struck areas. 

As the saying goes: where there's a will, there is a way. Ideas drive human behaviour. Thus, in 2013, I proposed the idea of an “intentional community” to address social and ecological issues. An intentional community enables people with common ideas to live together, which is unusual in China where most people don’t even know their neighbours! An intentional community of people sharing ideas, values and beliefs, can together to pursue non-material, spiritual goals. In the absence of profit-motives, they will redirect their energy towards the goal of increasing public welfare. An eco-community is also a kind of intentional community. For construction, energy, food, and other daily necessities, the community utilizes sustainable and environmentally friendly technologies. This voluntary and autonomous action is the most powerful approach to sustainable development.

Ecofunopoly is an interactive board game that promotes environmental sustainability. This game was created by Ecofun Indonesia, a social enterprise that focuses on environmental education and science communication through gamification. “Ecofun Go! Action” is a green campaign which uses Ecofunopoly board game and the Ecofun App to develop games, facilitate creative learning, and monitor green behavior. In this project, we will develop an updated game, run several playing experiments with children and build Ecofun Mobile App. The app will be our new innovation in a mission to reduce carbon emissions using our board game. These two tools will help the players to learn and monitor their carbon footprint at the same time. Combining the board game and mobile app will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of tracking and measuring environmental impacts, especially carbon footprint. For more information visit http://ecofun.id/ or Instagram @ecofunopoly.

Better Blue is a global network consisting of divers and diving centres. It aims to build an eco-evaluation system to redefine the diving industry and empower every diver to become advocates and practitioners in marine conservation. Within one year Better Blue built a reliable community of active divers in over 10 cities and supported them to conduct more than 180 offline events in over 30 cities. Better Blue provides consulting services to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) in Greater China and its global charity partner, Project AWARE, to help them better integrate Chinese divers’ resource and motivate action for ocean conservation.

Chakr Innovation has devised a new technique to control emissions from diesel generators. The Chakr Shield is a technology that causes minimum backpressure on the diesel generator. The device is able to control up to 90% of particulate matter from diesel engines, with no impact on the engine’s efficiency. The carbon produced is used to create ink pigment. This pigment is non-toxic and is of same quality as the ink used in industries. Chakr in Hindi means cycle, and Chakr innovation are completing the cycle of carbon.

India is a country of 1.2 billion people where over 15,000 tons of plastic waste is generated everyday. Daily users of plastic are increasing exponentially and hence, the consumption. Over 40 billion plastic utensils are produced each year, only to end up in landfills and oceans. The hundreds of years that plastic takes to decompose, further aggravates the toxic impact it has on the environment and its carcinogenic and non-biodegradable nature, makes it one of the most dangerous threats to all life on earth. Plastic takes more than four hundred years to decompose. We saw this as an opportunity to create a larger impact in society by targeting the untouched issue of disposable utensils and came up with "bio-edible" bowls. In order to add on the beneficiaries, we chose a community of Afghan refugee women to manufacture these bowls and hence provide them with a sustainable and dignified livelihood.

Biteback is an Insect Bio-refinery company aiming to meet an increasing global demand for palm oil by creating a healthier and more sustainable alternative. We have developed a processing technology that allows us to extract more than 90% of fats of insect body mass and refine them into various desirable products like cooking oil, butter, fatty alcohol, and biofuel. Darkling beetle larvae (Zophobas morio) reproduce so rapidly that they out-do palm oil in yield by up to 40 times within the same area of land, can be scaled vertically, and fed by using biomass from agro-industry waste streams. The fatty acid properties posses an advantageous combination of rich unsaturated fats and healthy fats including omega 3, 6, and 9.

Qube is a social enterprise whose mission is to change the world, one brick at a time (www.plastiqube.com). The company is currently developing construction bricks made out of plastic waste called "Plastiqube", thus addressing the issue of plastic waste disposal and also empowering the workers subjected to abysmal working condition in the traditional burnt-clay brick sector in India. Our vision is to set up a sustainable, profitable and eco-friendly social enterprise aimed at protecting the environment from plastic pollution and changing the way the world thinks about building materials and recycling of plastic waste. 

In places experiencing large and rapid influxes of displaced people, housing shortages are faced. More than 100 million people were estimated homeless in 2005 and in Pakistan alone, there is a shortage of more than 9 million housing units today. As a result, displaced people are forced to live in shelters and camps with inadequate living conditions, exposing them to social and health problems. This project aims to solve these problems through an innovative low-cost house that can be assembled in as little as three hours. To achieve the objective, modular flat-packed houses were designed with inbuilt utilities, in accordance with international standards of living. The prototype utilizes a sustainable, highly energy-efficient design with a low carbon footprint. Using which, it is possible to build large cost-effective housing colonies within a month. The project is targeted towards humanitarian organizations, providing benefit to people living in adverse conditions.

The project ‘Anantara’ addresses the dual challenges of forest degradation and limited economic opportunities in the Western Ghats in India by helping indigenous forest communities create luxury designer furniture from a rapidly invasive plant (Lantana Camara). Anantara is a collective of award winning designers who work closely with the indigenous communities. We provide the training, marketing and partnerships that ultimately leads to livelihood creation and the restoration of the degraded forest areas. By leveraging the power of design to transform a threatening plant species into luxury furniture, it incentivizes the forest communities to harvest lantana and check its rapid spread. Our solution addresses the issue of endemic poverty by increasing the income of forest communities. We convert collector-only economies into craftsmen communities whose culturally rich, value-added activities positively reinforce forest ecosystems.

Evocco’s smartphone app helps the consumer to align their purchasing behavior with their ethics. Users take a photo of their food shopping receipt to receive instant information on the environmental impact of their purchases. The app then allows them to track their impact over time, and offers personalized advice on how to reduce their impact the next time they shop. Evocco also collaborates with several universities to explore the psychological motivations behind lasting behavioral change.

My big idea is to have a dynamic network of sensors that can relay real-time data for the evaluation of changes in the environment. This type of system relies on static sensors as well as mobile aerial platforms such as drones and high-altitude balloons, which can provide extensive area coverage. The decentralized and dynamic nature of the system proposed enables its deployment in target regions in specific time-windows when there are forecasts of increased fire risk. Once validated, this type of system is especially intended for deployment in rural environments for assistance in wildfire detection and monitoring. By providing real-time data to decision makers, it has the potential to enable a better optimization of resource allocation in preparedness, emergency response and post-fire stages.

In Indonesia, most detergent is sold in small-size individual packaging, known as 'sachets'. Sachets cannot be recycled and are thus bound to leak into the environment. An estimated 5.5 million sachets of detergent are wasted daily. Hepi Circle is Indonesia’s first refill delivery network that offers detergent in reusable bottles. Customers buy a bottle of detergent at their local store, pay a deposit and with their next purchase, customers return their clean and empty bottles. The reuse habit is rewarded with a ‘hepi point’, that can go towards food or reusable products. The refill and distribution to local stores is powered by women on bikes. I co-developed the Hepi Circle with Kumala, a social entrepreneur in Surabaya. The pilot project has demonstrated financial feasibility and long-term potential impact. My vision is to reduce single-use sachets and enable to make reuse a habit again.

The construction industry’s conventional approaches to building are failing to meet the needs of rapidly growing cities with widespread housing crises, unhealthy buildings and a devastating impact on the environment. Biohm is a research and development led company that aims to revolutionise the construction industry by allowing nature to lead innovation. Placing biological systems at the heart of our inspiration, we combine ideologies of the circular economy and human-centred design with future-tech to create a step-change in building technologies, materials and manufacturing methods. Triagomy, our interlocking construction system, can achieve drastic reductions in buildings’ environmental impact (120%), build-times (95%) and costs (70%) when compared to conventional methods. It uses our 100% natural, biodegradable and vegan bio-based materials; including Mycelium (the vegetative part of mushrooms) insulation, Orb (Organic Refuse Biocompound) and a plant-based concrete. We aim to lead the global construction industry towards a healthier and more sustainable biomimetic (nature-inspired) future.

Finance for a Sustainable Future aims to change the way capital flows help shape our societies by addressing the knowledge gap of junior investment analysts on sustainability. Finance for a Sustainable Future promotes skills to assess sustainability exposures of potential investments as core competencies for the new generation of finance executives, and raises awareness about the importance of engaging young finance professionals in the debate about the future of finance. A core project of the initiative is an educational programme for 30 finance students and young professionals from across Europe with 2 days of lectures and workshops led by industry experts. Currently in its first year, the programme has garnered support from leading international companies and financial firms and will take place in August 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic. 

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, when bananas are harvested, significant plant waste is generated (stem, rachis, leaves). These wastes can be used to create an effective biofilter that can remove pollutants from water, including toxic hydrocarbons released by the extractive industry. Thus,  clean water can be recovered to improve the lives of local people. The banana plant waste can also be used as a substrate on which to cultivate edible fungi to enhance food security. The banana is cultivated in several parts of the world, so this idea can be replicated elsewhere. Further more it will generate employment and economic opportunities. I am currently working on the physical and chemical characterization of banana crop residues, specifically the Dominico harton type. I am also isolating strains of edible fungi of the genus Pleurotus as part of my initial investigation.

The Ekomuro H2O + project is an innovative rainwater harvesting system, modularly developed using 54 reused 3l plastic bottles which, interconnected, create a vertical pressure resistant water tank occupying a minimum space. We intend to change of attitudes and promote a culture of water saving. By preserving water, people will recognize it as a strategic natural resource that strengthens resilience, reduces water-related risks and vulnerabilities and supports climate change adaptation. In addition, with the reuse of plastic bottles, we will help to raise awareness about the proper disposal of plastic waste in order to mitigate the environmental impacts that they have on our planet.

Coral Vita is created a global network of innovative land-based coral farms, using breakthrough methods developed at the Mote Marine Lab and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology to grow corals up to fifty times faster while strengthening their resiliency to climate change. The land-based farms are scalable, allowing Coral Vita to grow millions of corals from a single site. Coral Vita’s business model supports restoration efforts, and by taking a community-based approach we integrate local actors to promote long-term reef stewardship.

ChimpFace uses chimpanzee facial recognition and mapping technologies to investigate when and where wildlife trafficking occurs. ChimpFace works with researchers, investigators, and citizen scientists through a free cell phone app to collect photos of chimps in the wild, for sale online, and in captivity. The app examines chimp photos for recognition and determines when and where we have seen an individual chimp before, alerting authorities of potential criminal movements. This tool will be especially useful in three primary situations: 1) surveying the internet for photographic evidence of live chimp trafficking; 2) monitoring the trade in live captive chimps; and 3) studying wild chimp populations. We’ve built a prototype, have seen preliminary success identifying two chimps seized in Nepal, and already have plans to expand this technology to include more animal species.

Majik Water uses novel technology combined with locally-adapted design to harvest clean drinking water from the atmosphere and deliver it to people and communities in our world’s driest places, starting in Kenya. Our technology uses solar thermal energy and sponge-like desiccant materials making it possible to get water in a low cost, energy efficient way. Desiccants are materials that adsorb water from air, and release water when heated. The desiccant we use is a material which is safe, non-toxic and abundantly available. How it works: i) Air is pulled into the device using solar powered fan; ii) Desiccant material absorbs water droplets from air; iii) Desiccant is exposed to heat (generated by solar), releasing the moisture as water vapour; iv) This water vapour is condensed into water and filtered with activated carbon; v) The clean water is stored in a tank and accessed via a gravity fed tap system which does not require a motor.

With wild tiger populations nearly wiped out, traffickers are now slaughtering jaguars to falsely sell their parts as tiger on the Asian market – and the world has no idea. My documentary, MADIDI, will follow three individuals who are investigating this new jaguar trade sweeping South America, uncovering the powerful forces responsible for it all. After MADIDI reveals this little-known issue to the public, the film’s impact campaign will bring NGOs, journalists, celebrities, and government officials together to fight against jaguar trafficking before this iconic animal is gone forever.

Atmospheric CO2 must decrease to 350ppm. Some Governments and Businesses are tackling climate change but not fast enough, leaving it to non-profits, often small underfunded groups fighting David vs. Goliath battles that I’ve experienced through Plastic Tides. Businesses drive our economy and society, and must work collaboratively doing ‘more good’, not just ‘less bad’. Regenerative perennial agriculture, Tropical forests, educating girls, plant rich diets and renewables are the best approaches to reversing climate change. We must integrate these into the food we eat, the materials we use, and the products we put on our bodies. The body care industry is 135-Billion-dollars. ANATO educates about regenerative agriculture and ocean conservation via consumer products that are healthy and affordable. Our body care’s ingredients— tree-crops— sequester carbon and provide ecosystem services. Rooted in multifunctionality and minimalism, we offer tools for the Zero Waste Voyage making sustainability, practical. Our enterprise is regenerative by design.