Winners by region

As more of us live in increasingly urbanised locations, we have found ourselves yearning to spend time surrounded by soil and plants, while breathing fresh air.

Mykor is an innovative biocomposite material developed to reconnect humans to their ecosystem. Mykor materials recreate the feeling of being in nature from within your house as they translate into homeware products, furniture and lighting. Mycelium, the "root" of mushrooms, has been used to bind wood waste with natural dyes. The mushroom strains will bind the waste material, grow in the span of four weeks in the right environmental conditions, involve minimum use of water and air-dry naturally. These materials are fire retardant, insulating and sound-absorbing and are available in a range of attractive colours. As an application for these materials, I have designed sound-absorbing tiles and also worked with an architect, to develop mycelium insulation for architecture. For the last few months, I have been designing and prototyping a commercial range of everyday products, from vases, wine chillers and lighting to furniture. Produced with local waste and inherently carbon-neutral, these products can be grown wherever needed and are easily decomposed back into the soil.

As recognised by Goal 17, we need new forms of collaboration to face the challenges of our time. Beyond fighting the symptoms, there is an urgent need for approaches that address root causes. Founded in 2017, collaboratio helvetica is an initiative that catalyses systemic change towards the societal transformation of Switzerland. We cultivate a cross-sectoral innovation ecosystem, run different capacity-building programs and enable others with our knowledge and resources. With our partners, we convene actors from all sectors in Social Innovation Laboratories around the complex challenges contained in Agenda 2030 to co-create solutions. Building on Switzerland’s heritage of dialogue and democracy, we seek to activate its unique potential to contribute to a change towards a more sustainable and ethical future. Beyond contributing to the transformation of our country, we are part of a global movement and a laboratory that can inspire and support other social innovators across the globe.

The organization Enaleia created the Mediterranean cleanup. Mediterranean fish stocks have been steadily declining with fisherman pulling up plastic in their nets instead. Using a network of fishermen and ensuring responsible management of the collected waste into the circular economy, Enaleia trains, empowers and incentivizes old and new fishermen to collect plastic from the sea. This allows fish stocks and the ecosystem to recover, while providing a source of income from plastic brought to shore. They are currently removing more than 1.5 tonnes of marine plastic weekly, and 10 tonnes of discarded fishing gear per year.

My company CLEAPL has developed edible and biodegradable straws, cups, laminate and wrapping films from plant by-product materials at the cheapest available market price of 3 €/kg. We have developed the Russian national standard for biodegradable goods and patented and improved the exploitation of native polymers by bio-modifying proteins and polysaccharides with enzymes. Our material is one hundred percent biodegradable under normal environmental conditions, strong, resistant, transparent and has all the properties normally required of plastic. The use of our product reduces a consumer’s carbon footprint by more than 12 times when compared to using plastics of fossil-fuel origin. CLEAPL has received accolades from the Global Food Summit, GenerationS, StartUpBootCamp, FoodTech (Rome) and the Global Innovators Summit (Dubai) amongst many others and has received support and funding from EXPO 2020. Currently, we are organizing the production of straws in Russia and are engaged in the certification of our products from Technischer Überwachungsverein (TÜV).

AirCare, a web and mobile app, was started in 2015, and aimed to help people 'know what they breathe'. It is currently the highest rated air pollution app in the Google Play Store. Since Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, is known to have air that is polluted up to 20 times over the EU limits, it was very important to help citizens understand the severity of the problem. By using open data from government, volunteer and satellite measuring stations, AirCare displays this in a very simple and understandable way. Once people became more aware, this new knowledge triggered massive nationwide protests, with people blocking streets in many cities in North Macedonia, demanding that the government take serious action for protecting our health. Since then, AirCare has expanded to 12 countries in Europe, reaching over 200,000 users in 6 languages - informing them, connecting them to local events and NGOs, and empowering them to fight for a pollution free future. After all, breathing clean air is a human right!

The “Plant the Forest” project aims to engage more people in reforestation efforts through their website. The “Plant the forest” educational gaming project turns actions in virtual reality to tree restoration in real life. You can grow your own virtual forest and, in parallel, new forests planted by our volunteers will emerge.

Enaleia is a social enterprise with a vision to revolutionize the fishing sector by tackling the twin problems of overfishing and plastic pollution in the sea. In the last decades, Europe’s fish stocks have declined by 30 percent, while 8 million metric tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually. During our first project, we established Greece’s first professional fishing school, creating 30 jobs and motivating 10 new fishing boats to work with us. Our e-learning training program aims to attract and train more people in professional fishing, and Enaleia has also educated more than 130 fishermen in sustainable fishing. More than 60 participants have so far collected 2.5 tons of marine plastic monthly, which has been upcycled to create new products. We aim to incentivise fishermen to catch less fish and collect more plastic, and our goal is to collect 100 tons of plastic from the sea per year.

Noor Medical’s fundamental vision is to ensure that a reduction in post-surgical infections becomes a reality for the hundreds of millions of patients affected by health-care associated infections and surgical site infections. In African countries, infection is the most frequent complication in surgery and up to 20 percent of women who have a caesarean section develop a postoperative infection. Our pioneering product, the Hybriclave, is a hybrid solar thermal-electric autoclave which can utilize a multitude of energy inputs to achieve medical instrument sterilization conditions - independent of the electricity grid or polluting costly backup generators. Our current product development cycle is focused on integrating second life e-bike batteries with low-cost solar PV panels to provide even more flexibility for medical staff to operate our efficient unit at night in full independence of other thermal energy inputs traditionally used with off-grid autoclave devices, including those that use charcoal or cooking gas.

We face a severe plastic problem today - thousands of marine animals are dying and if we continue in this way, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Our solution is a complete biodegradable bioplastic made by a very special bacterium. We work based on three principles: First, we produce bioplastics using bacteria. Bacteria use bioplastic is an energy reserve – so, we make them produce it constantly. Then, we extract the bioplastic from the bacteria and transform it into biodegradable bioplastic resin, with a multitude of applications. Third, we feed the bacteria with organic waste such as food waste, animal waste or sewage sludge. In this way, at VEnvirotech we move from waste to value for a cleaner world.

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. 

Used cooking oil (UCO) pollutes the environment when disposed of improperly. It is one of the least recycled waste products in households, mainly because UCO collection from individuals is not yet well developed in most countries. Most commonly it is poured down sinks, clogging drainage systems and adding substantial costs for cleaning pipes and treating wastewater. My idea is to develop a green business model based on making soap and detergents from used cooking oil, aiming to: 1) increase UCO recycling rate; 2) produce environmentally friendly cleaning products; and 3) help create sustainable communities and circular economies (local material, local produce and local use). Once validated and established, this model can be adopted and implemented by municipalities with benefits for the local communities. Moreover, the project has the potential to stimulate people’s involvement in UCO collection by offering them an end product that can be used directly in their households.

The "Smart SolarWind Tree" is a smart installation that simultaneously generates the energy of the sun and wind in an urban environment. We have developed for this project a clever anti-vandal self-cleaning solar panel made of impact-resistant polycarbonate and a new type of modular wind generator Savonius with air pockets. Recently we made a 6-meter sample in the form birch tree with our partners. At night, the installation illuminates the place around the tree with energy-saving LED lamps, in the absence of people, multi-coloured energy-saving LED ribbons are used to decorate the city at night. In the winter, a smart tree warms benches so that people can sit comfortably and it can heat the sidewalks around the tree so that people do not fall during the glaze ice.

My project, “La Tricyclerie” (Tri-cycling), has been running for two years and is based on three elements: waste sorting, the food cycle and a tricycle (pushbike). The idea is to use a bicycle trailer to collect organic waste from restaurants and offices in the city (Nantes). This waste is then composted locally to benefit urban and peri-urban agriculture (and farmers). The project combines several environmental objectives that support a sustainable, less polluted, more autonomous city, and better soil protection. It’s an easy and previously untapped solution for managing organic waste in densely populated areas at the community level. My aim is to strengthen the links between urban and rural areas, and between people and their plates, in order to promote responsible consumption. The project creates jobs, benefits citizens, businesses and institutions alike, and can be replicated elsewhere. It has quickly proven its worth and has united the community by addressing several important issues: food and nutrition, waste, urbanism and transport.