UK’s Royal couple hand plastic-alternative developers, Earthshot Prize, worth £1m
Scientists are among those who will be rewarded £1m prize by the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot fund for their innovative solution that has helped climate crisis.
Scientists are among those who will be rewarded £1m prize by the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot fund as their innovative solution to replace plastic packaging with seaweed has helped in the climate crisis. The UK’s Prince and Princess of Wales have visited Boston this week to mark their first trip to the US after a decade.
The royal couple has planned to give £1m prize to those who have provided innovative solutions to tackle climate problems and biodiversity emergencies. The prize is named after former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot challenge in the 1960s which had united millions of people around the goal of putting a person on the moon within a decade.
Earthshot fund for the climate crisis
The ceremony of the award function was held in Boston where Prince William announced the five winners of his award that was launched in the year 2020. Celebrities including Billie Eilish, Ellie Goulding, David Beckham, Rami Malek, and Annie Lennox also participated in the event actively.
While addressing the event UK’s prince said, “I believe that the Earthshot solutions you have seen this evening prove we can overcome our planet’s greatest challenges. And by supporting and scaling them we can change our future. Alongside tonight’s winners and finalists, and those to be discovered over the years to come, it’s my hope the Earthshot legacy will continue to grow, helping our communities and our planet to thrive.”
Among the winners, one of them was a group of native women who have been noting the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They have trained at least 60 women and have found ways to protect sites of great cultural and spiritual significance with 60,000 years of indigenous knowledge with digital technologies. Another winner was an Oman-based company that has researched techniques to turn CO2 into rock and permanently store it underground and aims to mineralise one thousand tonnes of locally captured CO2 every year until 2024.
UK-based company Notpla was also among the five winners for creating an alternative to plastic packaging from seaweed. So far the startup has manufactured more than one million takeaway food boxes for the delivery website named Just Eat.
They have been creating a range of packing products that are natural and biodegradable such as a coating for food containers, paper for the cosmetic and fashion industry, and a bubble to hold liquids. The co-founder of the UK-based startup Notpla, Pierre Paslier said “No one wants to live in a world full of plastic waste but it’s not too late to act.” Further, he added that there has never been a greater time to use Natural solutions to resolve the plastic challenge.
