An Earthshot Prize winner’s products are being used to serve match-day food at Aston Villa Football Club – thanks to fan the Prince of Wales.
William founded the prize to recognise and scale-up ideas to help “repair” the planet and was instrumental in helping sustainable packaging company Notpla trial its cartons at the West Midlands club he supports
Since the start of Aston Villa’s season, pie and mash, burgers and hotdogs have been served up in cardboard containers featuring a seaweed-derived coating – not a plastic film – that means cartons can be recycled, and trials have also taken place at fellow Premier League club Tottenham.
Pierre Paslier, co-founder and chief executive of Notpla, which in 2022 won the Build a Waste-Free World Earthshot category, said about William’s role in the trial at Villa: “He connected us, he made that connection happen.”
He said about Villa and Tottenham: “Two very first, significant trials that brought us to the attention of the catering companies that we could actually do something about reducing the production of their plastic waste.
Among the 2023 finalists are ENSO, a British-based company that has created a more efficient electric vehicle tyre that sheds fewer particles, while Sea Forest from Australia has developed a seaweed-based livestock feed to reduce the planet-warming methane emissions from cattle and sheep.
