18 July 2024: BSI is partnering with The Earthshot Prize to support proposed solutions to some of society’s most intractable environmental challenges, including around plastic pollution, carbon emissions and water security. The business standards and improvement company has become a Collective Member of The Earthshot Prize and is working with a group of finalists to help enhance their solutions so they can be scaled up and achieve greater impact in the future.
Founded by Prince William, The Earthshot Prize is a global environmental prize and platform designed to discover, accelerate and scale ground-breaking solutions to repair and regenerate the planet. The Earthshot Prize aims to catalyse an Earthshot challenge to urgently encourage and scale innovative solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate, where communities, oceans and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030. The five challenges are: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix Our Climate.
In the initial phase, BSI will work with three finalists out of 30 from the 2021 and 2022 cohorts, including:
- Notpla – a UK company making sustainable packaging to replace single-use plastics from a natural blend of seaweed and plants.
- Low carbon materials – a UK start-up making low carbon aggregates for construction.
- WOTA (portable water treatment units) – Japanese company WOTA’s unique water recycling system turns more than 98 per cent of wastewater into fresh water.
As this partnership develops, BSI will continue to assess new finalists each year and identify ways to support their goals. The partnership will be focused on bringing trust to these innovative products by bolstering the credibility of their products through certification, validation and/or verification, gain easier access to and understanding of standards that apply to them, and feed into the development of relevant new standards or the update of existing ones.
Ghinwa Chammas, Director of Group Sustainability, BSI, said: “Time is of the essence as we look to solve seemingly intractable challenges affecting people and planet, from climate change to ocean protection. The Earthshot Prize is a fantastic scheme to encourage creativity and innovation alongside practical solutions in response.
At BSI, we are extremely proud to be partnering with The Earthshot Prize to support and empower prize finalists so they can scale up with confidence. We are excited to play our part in turning ambition into action in order to accelerate progress towards a sustainable world.”
Hoa Doan, Head of Impact and Sustainability, NotPla, said: “By leveraging BSI's comprehensive expertise, Notpla has been able to navigate the complexities of industry benchmarks, which are essential for fostering innovation and promoting sustainability within the packaging sector.”
Chris Large, Director of Portfolio & Prize, The Earthshot Prize, said: “BSI’s commitment to finalists within The Earthshot ecosystem is both inspiring and deeply impactful. If we are to discover and scale groundbreaking solutions to repair our planet by 2030, specialized support is critical and we are grateful to BSI for their commitment and expertise.”
