Miranda Wang wins Rolex Award for Enterprise

The Rolex Awards for Enterprise winners are out—and Miranda Wang, Young Champion of the Earth for North America, is the youngest of them.

Twenty-five-year-old Wang, who grew up in Vancouver, and her co-founder and high-school friend Jeanny Yao are transforming plastic into valuable chemicals which can then be used to make durable materials for everyday products.

Determined to solve the global waste challenge, Wang and Yao founded BioCellection in Silicon Valley to upcycle previously unrecyclable plastics like polyethylene into quality chemicals with a high market value.

After winning the Young Champions of the Earth Award in September 2018, Wang and her team have forged ahead with a list of achievements, the latest of which is the Rolex Award for Enterprise. 

She is also listed among the Forbes 30 under 30 list of social entrepreneurs, and in 2018 won the Pritzker Award for young environmental innovators.

“Our process is an accelerated composting method for plastics,” says Wang. “We’ve validated this process, demonstrated proof of concept at the lab scale and we’re now working with engineering firms to scale up.”

Wang is among pioneering doctors and scientists who walked away with roughly US$200,000, in-kind support and chronometers at a marquee event in collaboration with the National Geographic Explorers Festival.

The Festival is a multiday symposium featuring speaker forums, documentaries and research presentations on subjects regarding the world around us, from endangered species to space exploration. 

Wang and her team now plan to develop a fully commercial processing plant and recycle 45,500 tonnes of plastic waste by 2023.

Others among the five winners are Brazilian conservationist Joao Campos-Silva and Gregoire Countine, a French neuroscientist who implants pacemaker-like devices into patients with spinal cord injuries.

Brian Gitta is a 26-year-old Ugandan technologist who developed a device that uses light and magnets to detect the presence of malaria parasites and does not require drawing a patient’s blood, and Krithi Karanth, an Indian biologist, helps farmers receive government compensation when their crops or livestock are destroyed by wildlife.

Follow Miranda Wang’s journey here.
 

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Young Champion of the Earth for North America, Miranda Wang, has won the Rolex Awards.