Covestro honours ideas for climate protection

A team from Indonesia have won the Covestro Carbon Footprint Challenge 2019, with an idea and concept of edible coatings to preserve fresh fruit and vegetables.

Together with leading companies from different industries, including Bühler, Evonik, and Oracle, as well as nine top European universities, Covestro enables the challenge to support students and young professional sin developing business ideas for climate action.

The 350 ideas pitched at the event represented a mixture of technologies and approaches to achieving a climate positive impact, with innovations ranging from gamification through digital applications to educate and change behaviours, to the winning ideas, coatings for fruit and vegetables with the purpose of decreasing food waste.

David Ward, Secretary General of UNITECH International, the uniting organisation of the contest, said: “The Challenge provides a global space in which young people from around the world with innovative ideas can develop their concepts under high-pressure, professionally supported conditions.”

Jens Peter Joschek, Head of Innovation Excellence at Covestro, said: “All teams provide the broad variety of perspectives needed to solve the global issue of climate change and bring inspiration from their local environment, from farming in Ireland to water scarcity in India.”

“This links perfectly with the open innovation culture of the companies supporting the challenge.”