Solutions to Pollution

In 2017, India’s air pollution has surpassed China’s and continues to worsen steadily with rapid industrialization. Air pollution in the country has caused 1.1 million premature deaths each year.

Graviky’s retrofit KAALINK technology is a device installed on vehicle tailpipes and captures 95% of carbon emissions and pollutants (like soot), to help improve air quality by reducing the amount of toxic air coming from vehicles or chimneys. The pollutants that are captured in the device are recycled into ink, which is used to write, draw and paint. To date, the invention has cleaned over a whopping 1.6 trillion liters of air!

In order to build modern cities with tall skyscrapers, sprawling neighborhoods, and other stores, builders need materials. Unfortunately, most of those materials come from destroying the land. From 2000-2010, industrial activities like mining and logging contributed to nearly 45 percent of total forest land lost in Indonesia.

Mycotech has pioneered the use of mushroom technology to create sustainable buildings. Sustainable means that it can be done for a long time with little harm to the environment. Their environmentally-friendly building materials are made from recycled vegetable waste (unused parts of vegetables) that uses mushroom mycelia much like we use glue - as a binding agent. Mycotech’s philosophy is that building materials should be useful and attractive without harming the planet.

Their holistic solution is helping farmers to reduce their negative impacts on the environment and create affordable housing for local communities. Mycotech buys waste crops (the unused parts of the plant) from farmers, which would have otherwise been burned (i.e. slash-and-burn farming) and turns them into affordable bio-composite boards that are used to build low-cost housing.

The owner and innovator of the company, David found that the manufacturing of may plastics is carbon-intensive (that's bad) and contributes heavily to air pollution. Moreover, plastic waste is hard to dispose of, filling up landfills and polluting the seas, where they contaminate - and often kill - marine life. Indonesia is the world’s second-largest contributor to ocean plastic waste!

EvowareWorld aims to address the problem of plastic waste through developing edible, biodegradable (breaks down easily) and eco-friendly bioplastics (bioplastics are made from natural materials). His solution involves developing biodegradable plastics made of sustainably-harvested seaweed, which is cheap and abundant (there's a lot of seaweed) in Indonesia’s seas.

Kruosar Solar (“Solar Family”), an energy service network that provides solar energy access to the more than 10 million (10,000,000) Cambodians living off-the-grid - with out electricity. More than 76% of Cambodians don't have access to electricity. Instead many people use kerosene lamps or rechargeable batteries, but those options come with many problems. The fumes from kerosene lamps are unhealthy and dangerous, especially in the small huts most people live in. The batteries are costly and time consuming to charge.

The company teams builds close relationships with these communities by first understanding their problems and challenges. The company educates and raises awareness in these rural communities to make sure they are able to make educated decisions about the future of clean energy in their area. Then, they work to offer them solutions to their needs, from solar lanterns to solar pumps, or a community based solution. Their main product is a range of Solar Home Systems (SHS) which can power lights, fans and other small appliances for household use.

Elrhino produces high quality paper products from up-cycled elephant and rhino dung (poop). Up-cycled means its not just recycled into the same thing, but it recycled into something better, thus upcycled. In case you were wondering, it does NOT smell. The paper is made of hand-pressed fiber pulp that is passed out in their poo. Their mission is to save the protect the forests, so they can protect the animals and people that live there. Instead of cutting down forests and using wood from trees, this process consumes 44% less energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less emission, 50% less waste, and 100% less wood.