London, November 4
A floral waste project which converts flowers dispersed into the river Ganga into sustainable leather called Fleather and a greenhouse-in-a-box solution for small farmers are among this year’s finalists from India for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, dubbed the Eco Oscars.
Phool and Kheyti are among 15 worldwide projects in the running to receive a GBP 1 million award at the second annual Earthshot Prize awards ceremony next month.
The 2022 shortlist, which covers groundbreaking solutions to the biggest environmental challenges, follows last year’s winning project from Delhi – Vidyut Mohan led Takachar, which won the prize in the “Clean our Air” category for its cheap technology innovation to convert crop residues into sellable bio-products.
“The innovators, leaders, and visionaries that make up our 2022 Earthshot finalists prove there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future of our planet,” said Prince William on Thursday.
“They are directing their time, energy, and talent towards bold solutions with the power to not only solve our planet’s greatest environmental challenges, but to create healthier, more prosperous, and more sustainable communities for generations to come,” he said.
Phool was born in Uttar Pradesh soon after the festival of Makar Sankranti in 2015 when Founder and CEO Ankit Agarwal saw local temples dumping used flowers into the water, their pesticide coating poisoning the Ganga River.
“We began life with a simple idea: to clean up India’s holiest river. In the process, we’ve discovered a material growing on our factory floor that could one day replace animal leather for good. Sometimes ground-breaking ideas come from unlikely situations, and we want to thank the Earthshot Prize for recognising ours,” said Agarwal.
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