Seaweed Packaging Maker Awarded $1 Million Earthshot Prize

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Meals corporations are extensively implicated within the international downside of plastic waste, and as single-use plastic serves as the most typical type of this non-biodegradable packaging, every meal, snack or drink turns into an add-on to the tens of millions of tons of discarded plastic that goes on to a landfill.

However there are companies on the market that refuse to take a seat idly by and settle for the established order: enter Notpla, an organization that lately gained the eye of the committee behind the celebrated Earthshot Prize. 

Earthshot is a world environmental prize that was based by the UK’s Royal Basis and Prince William. The group, established in 2020, calls this time interval a “important decade for the planet” and has got down to award tens of millions of prizes every year between now and 2030, to assist revolutionary corporations scale options for environmental issues.

In early December, the Basis introduced its 5 award winners, which included UK-based Notpla, a reputation that’s derived from “Not Plastic” as a result of what it’s developed can serve the identical functions however with out the waste.

Notpla has created a mess of packaging kind components made out of considered one of nature’s extra renewable assets: seaweed. The corporate calls the ocean vegetable “considered one of our best weapons towards local weather change,” citing its capability to soak up carbon and scale back acidification in oceans. 

However what Notpla actually units out to do is create single-use packaging that naturally disappears by changing plastics with seaweed-derived formulation. The corporate produces every thing from edible drink pods to movies, papers, and inflexible containers that break down when discarded in a matter of 4 to 6 weeks. The product replaces conventional fossil fuel-based supplies and leaves nothing behind.

Notpla was in good firm this 12 months, with awards going to improvements in different classes, together with an Oman firm that developed a method to mineralize C02 into rock and retailer it beneath floor. One other prize was awarded to a Kenya-based startup that’s created a strategy to substitute charcoal-burning stoves with cheaper and cleaner choices, decreasing air air pollution and minimizing security dangers.

The million-dollar awards given to 5 corporations are designed to assist these innovators convey them to market sooner. Earthshot says its objective is that, by 2030, it will possibly assist “put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a steady local weather” the place “communities, oceans, and biodiversity can thrive in concord.”

Picture Credit score: TIU

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