‘Sustainable initiative of the Year’ award
With a huge positive uptake of climate consciousness around the world, this prize seeks to reward the best example of a sustainable initiative – provide evidence to show how working in environmentally friendly ways does not have to sacrifice economic productivity.
Award ceremony sponsored by:
PAST WINNERS:
2024 Winner – Unbox and United Nations UNRWA launch UNLitter Gaza
The UNLitter Gaza initiative is a transformative collaboration between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Belgian community-tech company Unbox. It is an impactful initiative that addresses multiple SDGs through technological innovation, community engagement, and sustainable practices. It shows how digital inclusion and environmental sustainability can be integrated to improve quality of life, particularly in economically challenged regions.
2023 Winner – H. Nizam Din & Sons Private Limited (NIZAM)
In 2022, H. Nizam Din & Sons Private Limited (NIZAM) initiated a 2-years long collaborative research and development initiative aimed to improving the environmental impact of the production of high thermal relief blankets used in international human relief efforts by turning the wasteful nature of current available disaster relief blankets and their packaging into a more circular and environmentally compliant value chain.
This initiative aims to pioneer and reset industry standards and practices to reduce the humanitarian aid manufacturers and purchasing aid groups’ greenhouse gas emissions and their production waste simultaneously. This will showcase the efficacy of resource and system management in practical footprint reduction for the sectors.
The existing, informal waste trading market for post-industrial textile waste in Pakistan is unregulated and lacking an actual collecting and sorting infrastructure that targets value creation by moving from downcycling to recycling and further possibilities for reutilization through network collaboration. To increase the value of textile waste and to achieve more efficient reutilization of waste at a higher value, the implementation of standardised Textile Waste Management Systems at NIZAM and the project partner factories was an essential part of the project: Improved, regulated, and standardized waste management practices will enable closed-loop material cycles (mechanically recycled textile fibres are currently rated as the most sustainable fibre option) and the identification of material reutilization possibilities and new business services. The collected textile waste has been recycled into material feedstock applied in the production of new humanitarian relief high-thermal blankets.
2022 Winner – Morija Association
Morija Association conducted the first phase of a rural development project from 2015 to 2020 in the Centre-South region, Zoudwéogo province, in the commune of Nobéré. It involves the establishment of Bocage Family Fields (BFF) cultivated in agroecology. A BFF is an agro-ecological ecosystem that takes into account the fundamental elements of a sustainable agricultural system – soil, water and plants – and their interactions. A field is about 1 ha in size and benefits one family. It is divided into 2 to 4 plots allowing for a multi-annual crop rotation. The structural arrangements of the field restore the soil, increase yields and preserve biodiversity. Agroecology is a set of environmentally friendly agricultural production methods. Through simple and accessible farming practices. We teach farmers agroforestry, green cover, low tillage, land management with fallow and crop rotations. All of these practices enrich the soil and protect crops for sustainable and resilient production to face the climate change.
2021 Winner – GENAQ TECHNOLOGIES SL
GENAQ has been able to solve problems related to drinking water through a process that replicates rainwater. GENAQ atmospheric water generators take in air from outside, filter it and extract its humidity. Once the water is condensed, it follows a specialized treatment to obtain the highest quality of water at the lowest energy cost. All this procedure is carried out through an energy source that can come from the electrical network, generator set, solar or wind energy. In the last two cases, generators are completely autonomous and sustainable, and what is more, they can be placed in locations without access to power supply and with no operating cost. Likewise, another essential factor is the high quality of water achieved through a six-stage process of air and water filtration, preservation through ultraviolet technology and mineralization.