There is no shortage of environmental problems that need to be solved and two days ago, in Boston, Massachusetts, Prince William through his 2022 Earthshot Award has distributed over $6 million to help speed up five solutions to deal with problems storage, air quality, oceans, waste and climate changeall in a ceremony marked by celebrity appearances and calls to action from around the world.
The Earthshot Award 2022 is an annual anniversary, ed is an independent charity founded by Prince William and the Royal Foundation in 2020awards $1.2 million each to winners in five categories, and the initiative aims to bring the same level of urgency and ambition to today’s environmental challenges as John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” space challenge (Marc and Lynne Benioff, owners and co-chairs of TIME, were among the philanthropic supporters of the effort.).
Among the judging panel selecting this year’s high-profile awards are naturalist Sir David Attenborough, actress Cate Blanchett, musician Shakira and Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The winners were selected from a group of 15 finalists from 10 different countries and included grassroots organizations dedicated to forest protection and biodiversity conservation, among others, along with start-ups exploring clean battery technology and the alternative leather derived from waste.
This year’s winning solutions “demonstrate that we can overcome our planet’s biggest challenges,” the Prince of Wales said at the ceremony. “And by supporting and scaling them we can change our future”, but now let’s go and see who the winners of the 2022 Earthshot Award are.
The 2022 Earthshot Air Quality Award: Mukuru Clean Stoves and the clean air issue in Kenya
The “first” Earthshot Award 2022 Mukuru Clean Stoves is a women founded company, mainly staffed by women, aiming to bring cleaner stoves to women in Kenya. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 950 million people rely on heavily polluting wood and charcoal for cooking, a number estimated to grow to 1.67 billion by 2050. The startup was founded in 2017 by Charlot Magayi , who was selling coal for fuel in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s biggest slums, and whose daughter was badly burned by a coal stove, prompting a search for a better solution.
According to the company, Mukuru’s stove emits 90% less pollution than cooking over an open fire and 70% less pollution than using a traditional stove. Costing just $10, the stove is powered by biomass created from coal, wood and sugar cane, and fuel costs are half those of traditional sources.
The 2022 Earthshot Conservation Award: Kheyti is protecting and restoring nature in India
There Kheyti startups has developed a “greenhouse in a box” to help the world’s estimated 570 million smallholder farmers protect their crops from adverse and unpredictable weather and pests, two challenges exacerbated by climate change.
According to the company, its modular greenhouses cost 90% less than standard greenhousesemploy drip irrigation to help use 98% less water compared to outdoor cultivation and can increase crop yields sevenfold compared to typical agricultural methods. Coupled with the training Kheyti provides, farmers are able to double their incomes, the company said, and as many as 1,000 farms are using greenhouses, while by 2027, the company hopes to reach 50,000 farmers.
The 2022 Earthshot Ocean Award: iThe Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network to revive Australia’s oceans
Indigenous rangers in Australia work to protect the Great Barrier Reef from storms and ocean acidification, as well as terrestrial environments from bushfires and degradation, yet in Queensland, Australia, only 20% of these rangers are women. Over the past four years, the Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network has helped train over 60 women to combine modern conservation techniques, such as the use of drones, with traditional knowledge sharing.
The data collected by this network provides vital information about ecosystems to better protect them, all with the organization hoping to gain enough support to help expand these conservation methods around the world.
The 2022 Earthshot Waste Award: la circular solution by Notpla in the UK
Are you looking for an alternative to fossil fuel based plastics? There London start-up Notpla (short for “not plastic”) was launched in 2019 by Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo Carcia Gonzalez, who both studied in an Innovation Design Engineering program jointly run by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.
Together, they created seaweed-based biodegradable packaging for everything from liquids to food. Notpla tackles environmental issues on two fronts: firstly, its eco-friendly alternative to plastic can help dent the estimated 6.3 tonnes of plastic waste currently clogging roads and seas around the world, and secondly , the algae on which the product is based can capture carbon 20 times faster than trees. To date, Notpla has supplied more than 1 million take-out containers to JustEatTakeaway.com, a global online food delivery marketplace.
The 2022 Earthshot Climate Award: iThe 44.01 project in Oman is turning CO2 into rock
Grabbing the latest Earthshot 2022 Award is this Oman-based start-up named after the molecular weight of carbon dioxide: 44.01 grams per mole.
In an effort to reduce the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, 44.01 it sucks in CO2 from the atmosphere using direct air capture technology, dissolves it in water, and then pumps the resulting carbonated water into subterranean seams of peridotite—an igneous rock formed from the Earth’s mantle, where it is stored in a process known as mineralization.
Their system is powered by energy derived from heat, solar and biofuels. Founded by Talal Hasan, 44.01’s first project in Oman, home to the world’s largest concentration of peridotite, will mineralize 1,000 tonnes of CO2 each year through 2024, emissions equal to driving 215 gas-powered cars for one year. It also hopes to expand internationally and store 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2040.
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