The Prince of Wales, 40, kicked off Friday’s ceremony in Boston with a short film that was presented to the audience, which included his wife Kate Middleton, at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway.
“Of the many wonders of the natural world that surround each of us every day, it is only from space that we can fully comprehend the gift that is our home,” he says in the film, which takes him from the moon to the earth. “Earth holds such splendor and gives us many things – beauty, curiosity, joy, and most importantly, Earth gives us life.”
“Together we can achieve a sustainable future for generations to come. Together, we will change the future of our planet,” he said.
William, 40, chose Boston as the host city for the second annual Earthshot Prize Awards ceremony in tribute to President Kennedy. Inspired by President Kennedy’s famed 10-year goal of landing on the moon (known as Moonshot), the Earthshot Prize aims to promote impactful approaches to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges over the next decade.
William and Kate were joined by celebrity performers and presenters, including David Beckham, Shailene Woodley Rami Malek and Ellie Goulding on Friday as the winners of the 2022 Earthshot Prize were announced.
The ceremony followed a nine-month search to find the most innovative solutions to the greatest environmental challenges facing the planet. The selection process received 1,000 applications that were narrowed down to a final 15 before the five winners across five categories were announced on Friday in Boston.
The Clean Our Air prize went to Mukuru Clean Stoves from Kenya. The women-founded start-up use processed biomass made from charcoal, wood and sugarcane, rather than dangerous solid fuels to power stoves. This burns cleaner, creating 90 percent less pollution than an open fire and 70 percent less than a traditional cookstove.
The Protect and Restore Nature category went to Kheyti in India. The start-up has come up with a solution for local smallholder farmers in a country on the frontlines of climate change. Their “Greenhouse-in-a-Box” offers shelter from unpredictable elements and destructive pests. Plants in the greenhouses require 98 percent less water than those outdoors and yields are seven times higher and the solution is more than doubling farmers’ incomes.
The Revive Our Oceans prize went to Australia’s Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef. The women-led program combines 60,000 years of indigenous knowledge with digital technologies to protect the land and the sea. They’ve trained around 60 women, encouraging conservation approaches by sharing knowledge and telling stories.
The Build a Waste Free World category was won by Notpla from London in the U.K. They believe the future of packaging is not plastic, but seaweed. Notpla is a natural and bio-degradable plastic alternative made from seaweed and plants and can be used to create a range of packaging products, such as a bubble to hold liquids and a coating for food.
And the Fix Our Climate award went to 44.01 in Oman. Childhood friends have developed an innovative technique to turn CO2 into rock and permanently store it underground. They remove the CO2 from the atmosphere safely, efficiently, and permanently by mineralizing it in peridotite, a rock found in abundance around the world
One of last year’s winners was Coral Vita — based in the Bahamas. Co-founder Sam Teicher told PEOPLE on Friday how the prize has helped them scale up to hire six new people, search for a chief operating officer and create a new system to help spawn coral babies all year round.
