Words by Abi Scaife
The winners of the second ever Earthshot prize have been announced.
Great! But … what’s the Earthshot prize?
The Earthshot Prize is part of a global challenge to encourage innovative ideas to help repair, restore and protect our environment.
Five winners are selected, one for each category; Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Air, Revive our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Fix our Climate.
All receive £1m each in funding.
Sounds great! So who are the winners?
Mukuru Clean Stoves in Kenya has won the Clean our Air prize for designing and selling a type of stove that produces 90% less pollution than traditional ones.
Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef have won the Revive our Oceans prize for their work training the next generation of indigenous women as rangers to protect the ocean and the life within it.
44.01 has won the Fix our Climate prize. They have discovered a way to safely, quickly and cheaply remove carbon from the atmosphere forever by mineralising CO2 in peridotite. This is a permanent removal, rather than temporarily storing carbon in nature as trees and soil do.
Kheyti, based in India, has won the Protect and Restore Nature prize by creating a ‘Greenhouse-in-a-Box’ to help small-hold farmers to protect their crops and turn unpredictable farming into dependable income. The greenhouses grow 7 times more food with 90% less water, making it a more sustainable option.
London-based start-up Notpla have been awarded the Build a Waste-Free World award for creating a plastic alternative from seaweed. While it is grown for harvesting, the seaweed farms trap carbon, and create a healthy environment for under-water wildlife to thrive in.
Amazing! What do they get?
The Earthshot prize will be ongoing for a decade, meaning there will never be more than 50 winners. Each year for the next decade, five solutions will be awarded £1million to help support their quest to save our planet.
As of Monday December 5 2022 applications for the Earthshot prize 2023 are open.
