MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Grand Prize Winner of 2011 Katerva Awards announced at the Lincoln Center in New York

“If the Nobel Society had an award for sustainability, it would resemble the Katerva Awards, a new international prize for the most promising ideas and efforts to advance the planet toward sustainability.” (Reuters *)

At a well attended international media event at the Lincoln Center in New York City, Katerva announced Sanergy to be the grand prize winner of the 2011 Katerva Awards. This prize represents the pinnacle recognition in global sustainability excellence.

 

Sanergy was selected from among 8 sustainability category winners which represented the best sustainability ideas on the planet. These category winners are the Nissan LEAF (Transportation), The China Study (Food Security), 350.org (Behavioral Change), Ebay’s WorldofGood.com (Economy), Barefoot Power (Energy & Power), Solarclave (Human Development), and Freshkills Park (Urban Design). Sanergy is Katerva’s 2011 Materials & Resources category winner.

Sanergy is an effort to build a network of low-cost, sustainable sanitation centers across Kenya. Founded by MIT alumni, Sanergy incorporates fuel and fertilizer production from human waste as a way to make the effort financially stable, socially responsible, and environmentally conscious.
 

Katerva is a UK-registered charity organization which serves to identify, award, and accelerate ingenious ideas that will enable the global community to live sustainably with the planet.

The Katerva Awards, (Katerva.org), are the pinnacle of global sustainability recognition. The name Katerva, (Ca-tair-vah), is derived from the Latin word caterva - meaning “crowd.” Katerva serves to harness the wisdom and passion of the crowd to make necessary global change. Great initiatives around the world are put through a rigorous year-long nomination and review process involving roughly 500 experts, researchers, business and thought leaders across 50 countries. The evaluation process is an all-inclusive review of each nominee’s marketability, scalability, feasibility, originality, and impact. Winners are granted global visibility and an acceleration package of services designed to increase their impact on the world as quickly as possible. Winners are announced the fourth quarter of each year and a gala is held in their honor the first quarter of the following year.

Sanergy was chosen as the grand prize winner of the 2011 Katerva Awards by a panel of global sustainability luminaries and gurus. This panel is made up of Jeremy Rifkin (President of the Foundation on Economic Trends), Marina Silva (Acclaimed Environmentalist and Politician), Gunter Pauli (Director of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative), Jean-Michel Cousteau (Explorer, Environmentalist, and Educator), Mary Robinson (Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), Lord St. John of Bletso (Member of the House of Lords and Clean Tech Advocate), Dr. J. Craig Venter (American Biologist known for sequencing the human genome), and John Elkington (Executive Chairman of Volans and Founder of SustainAbility). Additional information about Sanergy can be found at http://saner.gy.

This announcement occurred at the Lincoln Center Institute in New York City. In addition to receiving global recognition, Sanergy will be introduced to a number of partner organizations as well as renowned business thought leaders Ken Blanchard and Marshall Goldsmith.

These partners and individuals will assist Sanergy in intelligently growing, accelerating, and amplifying their impact on the world.

* Source: Reuters Environment Forum

By David Michaels - MercoPress Bureau Chief NY, and First Vice President of the Foreign Press Association