London, Nov 4 (EFE).- The names of the 15 finalists who will compete in 2022 for the Earthshot award to offer solutions to a major environmental challenge were announced this Friday by the awards organization.
The names of the five award winners set up by Prince William, heir to the British throne, in 2020 and endowed with one million pounds (1.1 million euros) each, will be announced at a ceremony to be held next December in Boston (United States of America). ).
According to the organizers in a statement, the project aims to address the problems posed by the environment through five goals/categories: protecting and restoring nature, cleaning the air, reviving the oceans, building a world without waste and improving the climate.
Regarding the first objective (protecting and restoring nature), the projects aspired to this year’s award are: the “Kheyti Greenhouse In A Box” (India) project, which presents India’s small start-up solutions to reduce the costs of smallholders and their crops, provide protection from the elements and destructive pests, and train farmers to make their greenhouses as effective as possible.
Also wanting this award are “Forest” (Malaysia), a conservation model for the protection of orangutans; and “Desert Agricultural Transformation” (China), which proposes to turn deserted areas green.
In the second main goal of “cleaning our air”, applicants are the project “Ampd Entertainer” (Hong Kong), an electric battery system, emission-free, to supply energy for construction and reduce pollution; “Mukuru Clean Stoves” (Kenya), with stoves that reduce indoor pollution and provide a safe environment for cooking and “Roam” (Kenya), an organization that makes low-emission vehicles accessible to urban areas in Africa.
The third category finalist “Revive our oceans”, notes, “The Great Bubble Barrier” (Netherlands), with a technique that cuts through plastic before it reaches the oceans, creating a bubble curtain; “Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef” (Australia), a program that combines indigenous knowledge with digital technology to protect land and sea; and “SeaForever” (Portugal), a pioneering technique in seaweed cultivation that can restore forgotten marine forests.
An award-winning project in the category “Building a waste-free world” is the “City of Amsterdam Circular Economy” (Netherlands), an initiative to build a circular economy by 2050 without wasting and recycling everything, “Fleather” (India), to make leather from flower waste and “Notpla” (UK), which proposes a circular solution to create an alternative to plastic packaging from algae.
Finalists for the “Fix Our Climate” category were the “LanzaTech” project (USA and New Zealand), to recycle waste carbon into sustainable fuels and everyday products, “Low Carbon Materials” (UK) which featured material innovators using plastic waste which cannot be recycled to make traditional zero-emission concrete blocks; and “44.01” (Oman), a technique for converting CO2 to rock and storing it permanently underground.
(c) EFE Agency
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