On Sunday night, Prince William has announced the five winners of this year’s Earthshot Prize. The award ceremony, launched by William himself and Sir David Attenborough, was hosted at London’s Alexandra Palace where celebrities have been parading down in eco-friendly attire.
The annual event celebrates innovations with scaleable solutions to environmental problems; the prize awards its 5 winners with £1 million each.
This year’s contestants included a solution to deforestation, a plan to tackle air pollution, and a masterclass to tackle hunger and food waste. Each contestant submitted not just great ideas but a vision for a future where humans start to take responsibility for their own actions. The winners were chosen by the potential to scale up worldwide and by their innovative solutions. Sir David Attenborough highlighted how the winner’s solutions were raising optimism as they are finding brilliant solutions to the planet’s greatest challenges.
He also added: “The natural world on which we entirely depend is declining at a rate faster than at any time since the end of the dinosaurs. We know where this story is heading, and we must now write a different ending. This is what the Earth shot Prize was created to achieve.”
Here the winners;
AEM Electrolyser: winner, fix our climate category
The AEM Electrolyser is a solution that could potentially reinvent the way that we power homes and businesses, it uses renewable electricity and turns it into emission-free hydrogen, which can then be used to power energy-intensive business and factories.
Enapter, who is the company behind the solution, claimed that the Prize will be able to help the technology enter mass production and they aim to produce 10 percent of the world’s hydrogen by 2050.
Milan: winner, waste-free world category
Milan Food Waste Hubs programme is an initiative that recovers food from supermarkets and distributes it to people in need. This programme is the first city programme of its proportion as it works alongside public agencies, food banks charities, private businesses, universities and NGOs (non-governmental Organization). Each Food Hub recovers over 350kg of food per day or 130 tonnes per year equivalent translates to about 260,000 meals.
The representative for this solution has said that the money from the prize will allow other cities to adhere to the programme and extend it nationally.
Coral Vita: winner, revive our oceans category
Coral Vita aims at restoring Coral Life and become more resilient to climate change. This Bahamas conservation organisation cultivates coral on land and then replants it in the ocean, their process is 50 x faster than the traditional method which means a much bigger impact on Coral life. Coral Vita also promotes jobs in the environmental sector and works alongside local communities and public officials. Their solution aims at growing over a billion corals annually and at establishing Coral farms around the world to tackle this problem globally.
Takachar: winner, clean our air category
Takachar has developed a portable technology that can attach to tractors and converts crop residues into fuel and fertiliser. This could be a massive improvement in the practice of burning agricultural waste which has been linked with air pollution and life reduction too.
The New-Delhi based company said that the prize will help expand their solution to reach rural communities around the world.
Costa Rica: winner, protect and restore nature category
Costa Rica has done an outstanding job at protecting the ecosystem and reversing decades of deforestation by involving indigenous communities in restoration projects and promoting jobs in the environmental sector.
Since 1997, when the project started, Costa Rica’s forests have doubled in size which has had a positive impact on the Country’s economy by contributing over £2.91 bn.
Costa Rica will use the money to help other countries use the same model of the project and expand their programme to oceans too.
