Earthshot Prize: Prince William announces five winners

Image source, PA Media

The five winners of the Prince of Wales's prestigious Earthshot Prize are childhood friends who figured out how to turn carbon dioxide into rocks.

Prince William created the awards to help save the planet.

Each winner will get a million dollars to develop their innovation.

The winners were announced on Friday by Prince William.

Prince William said that the Earthshot solutions prove that we can overcome our planet's greatest challenges.

We can change our future by supporting and scaling them.

The UK, India, Australia, and India are where the winning projects are located.

The first set of prizes was awarded last year. The "Moonshot" ambition of 1960s America is what inspired the prize's name.

The Earthshot Prizes will be awarded every year until the year 2030. There will be nominations for the prize on December 5th.

The winners of this year's awards were chosen by a panel that included Prince William and Sir David Attenborough.

The five winners were presented with awards by William and Catherine at a star-filled ceremony in Boston on Friday.

• Mukuru Clean Stoves, Kenya: Kenya's Mukuru Clean Stoves is a female-founded business with mostly female staff. They produce stoves that are fired by processed biomass made from charcoal, wood and sugarcane instead of solid fuels, which can lead to air pollution and accidents that claim four million lives each year, the Earthshot Prize said.

It is important to protect and restore nature.

• Kheyti, India: In India, Kaushik Kappagantulu's Greenhouse-in-a-Box helps small-hold farmers protect their crops from extreme weather and pests, in a country that has been severely impacted by climate change.

There is a need to build a waste-free world.

• Notpla, United Kingdom: A waste-free solution from the UK was also among the winners, where Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez have been able to create natural, bio-degradable plastic made out of seaweed. The company made more than one million takeaway food boxes for the food delivery platform Just Eat this year. More on the UK winner here

• Australia: The Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia were chosen for a programme that has trained over 60 women in both traditional and digital ocean conservation methods.

• 44.01, Oman: In Oman, Talal Hasan's project 44.01 promises to turn carbon dioxide into peridotite, a rock that is found in abundance both in Oman and globally, including the US, Europe and Asia. It offers a low-cost and safe alternative to traditional methods of storing carbon, which include burying it underground in disused oil wells.

Talal Hasan is the founder of 44.01.

He said that they started 44.01.

The Earthshot Prize will allow us to scale our solution around the world and eliminate billions of tonnes of CO2. Climate change is the greatest challenge we have ever faced, but being a part of this amazing group of finalist gives us hope.

200,000 households in Kenya have access to the product of the CEO of the company.

She said that the Earthshot Prize would help reach one million households.

When the project began eight years ago in a student kitchen, Pierre said they would have never imagined they would be here today.

He said no one wants to live in a world full of plastic waste but it's not too late to act.

The ceremony will be broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday and on Monday in the US.

Prince William met US President Joe Biden as part of the royal couple's visit to the US. Since the death of the Queen, Prince William and Catherine have not been seen outside of their home country.

The high-profile trip has been overshadowed by a racism row involving William's godmother, Lady Susan Hussey, a key member of the Royal Household.

The spokesman for Prince William said thatracism has no place in our society.