According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation the Challenge, run in collaboration with OpenIDEO, is part of the $2 million New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize launched with The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit in May, funded by Wendy Schmidt. The Challenge focused on the 30% of plastic packaging items that are either too small or too complex to be recycled such as shampoo sachets, wrappers, and coffee cup lids. More than 600 innovators from over 60 countries from across the world participated.
Winners will join a 12-month accelerator programme to refine their design prototypes and scale them to become marketable solutions.
The six Circular Design Challenge winners covered three categories:
Rethinking Grocery Shopping
Today’s supermarkets are full of single-use plastic packaging to keep groceries safe and fresh. Yet by rethinking the way we get products to people, innovators can design out waste. Winners: MIWA & Algramo
Redesigning sachets
Hundreds of billions of sachets are sold each year to get small quantities of personal care and food products, such as shampoo and soy sauce, to people mostly in emerging markets. Winners: Evoware & Delta
Reinventing coffee-to-go
More than 100 billion disposable coffee cups are sold globally every year, yet today almost no cups or lids are recycled. Winners: CupClub & TrioCup
