The HandyHeroes Project leverages the idea of “small repairs, big impact” through three key innovations: activating community-based talent (technician training), integrating community service with market mechanisms, and standardizing carbon reduction. These innovations address challenges such as service shortages in older residential communities, the lack of transparency in market-based repair services, and difficulties in managing household products without warranties. Currently, the HandyHeroes project provides services to over 450 residential communities across eight main districts of Xi’an, China. The model has also been adopted in 10 cities covering 100 communities nationwide, creating a low-cost, low-barrier, and sustainable approach to community micro-renewal and senior services. The Project’s achievement is reflected not only in carbon reduction metrics and tangible improvements to neighborhoods but also in raising public awareness that “repairing products is a form of environmental protection.”

Biomatrix specialises in water restoration. Our Floating Ecosystems are engineered to improve water quality within rivers, lakes, ponds and canals as they increase aquatic life, leading to a balanced and revitalised waterscape.

Floating Ecosystems inject life into an area, as the islands provide an opportunity for nature and wildlife to take hold. Islands break up open water surfaces and provide shade under water. Plant roots provide habitat for Microbes to break down pollution and nutrients, and are a shelter and feeding ground for small fish. Mechanical aeration can further improve water quality. Birds can find an undisturbed nesting and resting space in areas where there is often little safety.

The Biomatrix floating ecosystem structure is designed to make wetland creation and water restoration possible, even in locations with waves, changing water levels, hard edges and fast currents. The structural floating technology allows thriving wetland communities to be created in challenging and dynamic waterbodies.

In South Africa almost 90% of South Africa’s marine plastic pollution originates from its own river systems.​The Litterboom Project (TLP) uses a large pipe that is anchored across the river, which acts as a catchment for all surface-level plastics- which are predominantly HDPE and PET. This preventative measure is set up strategically where it can collect the most rubbish and where the team collects, sorts, and sends the plastic off for recycling.

TONTOTON connects businesses to environmental impact via a certified plastic credit system. We prevent post consumer non-recyclable plastic we call orphan plastic, from reaching the oceans and create a new market for them.

Together with local communities, we identify the locations with immense environmental leakage. Local waste pickers are then employed to collect these orphan plastics, providing them new sources of income and better working conditions. Majority of our waste pickers are women.

Later, plastic waste collected are coverted into energy by co-processing. Everything is certified by the Ocean-Bound Neutrality standard and audited by a third-party control body. Businesses that support our projects are not only able to neutralize portion of the plastic in their products that they cannot immediately remove from their supply chain. More importantly, they support the social and environmental activities involved towards the creation of the plastic credits.

For the project titled “Community Water Stewardship:Replenishing Groundwater Resources in Lahore”, one of the identified replenishment methods included treatment of wastewater through Floating Treatment Wetland (FTW). For its installation, Manak village was found to have large sewage wastewater and rain fed ponds along with musty odor creating nuisance and posing a significant health risk to the community.

FTW was created by using floating mats that provide foundation for plants to grow. The aligned mats float on the surface of the water and allow plants’ roots to spread throughout creating a vast activated surface area for microbes to live. These plants then uptake pollutants as nutrients from the inland water body. The microorganisms growing on the plant root systems break down and consume organic matter in the water through microbial decomposition, hence, effectively removing the pollutants from the water body.

The community of West End, Roatán, is located in the Mesoamerican Reef and is one of the hubs for the tourism industry that is essential to the Honduran economy. Over a million tourists visit the island of Roatán in the Bay Islands each year, drawn to its colorful reefs, white-sand beaches, and clear waters.  

To ensure the protection of the Roatan reefscape, The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) has been leading efforts to improve marine water quality in Honduras since 2012, the same year when the community of West End had its activated sludge wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) built. The plant is currently managed and operated by Polo’s Water Board with support from CORAL and the Mesoamerican Reef Fund (MARFUND).  Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic created a significant loss of operating revenue for the plant due to Roatán’s tourism-dependent economy. 

In South Africa almost 90% of South Africa’s marine plastic pollution originates from its own river systems.​The Litterboom Project (TLP) uses a large pipe that is anchored across the river, which acts as a catchment for all surface-level plastics- which are predominantly HDPE and PET. This preventative measure is set up strategically where it can collect the most rubbish and where the team collects, sorts, and sends the plastic off for recycling.

The Centre for Environmental Justice and Development (CEJAD)aims to combat plastic and waste pollution by promoting sustainable solid management through public education on impacts of plastics to the environment and demonstration of BATs/BEPs such as source separation of waste, reuse, recycling and recovery as well value chain efficiency.

The project seeks to conduct the following activities:

• Equipping the women artisans with machinery, tools, and equipment for making sculptures and items out of plastic waste.
• Training women artisans on product development and packaging.
• Establishing a pilot waste segregation at source and management system for recovery, reuse, and recycle of plastic and other waste.
• Training women artisans on marketing and how to maintain market linkages.
• Undertaking a market research for their products.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a key concept for ‘closing the loop’ in the packaging value chain. 

The EPR Toolbox, developed by the PREVENT Waste Alliance, is a collection of internationally relevant knowledge on the topic of EPR for packaging. Its aim is to promote knowledge exchange and enhance development of EPR systems worldwide. It contains detailed training materials on EPR and provides an introduction to a number of distinct issues, such as roles and responsibilities, finance, or collection and recycling of packaging waste. 

Practical country examples and a set of FAQs offer a more in-depth understanding on the complex issue of EPR. The EPR Toolbox is therefore a collection of building blocks that can be adapted and applied to different contexts. It will be available in Vietnamese, Bahasa, Thai and Chinese. 

The Beach Cooperative (Co-op) began in 2015 when a group of volunteers started meeting every new moon to collect marine debris at our local surf break – the rocky shore at Surfers Corner in Muizenberg, Western Cape, Cape Town. The Dirty Dozen + Program offers a simple way to contribute useful data while also making a difference in terms of cleaning beaches. The Dirty Dozen are 12 types of litter selected to track different sources of marine litter. The protocol is led by a leader of the beach clean-up who must brief scribes on how to capture the data and the people involved in the clean-up must be aware of the 12 types of plastics. The collectors must call out and bag any of the 12 items as espoused in the methodology. The leadership provides general information about the beach i.e. the length of the beach (GPRs) as well as total items of the number collected. The totals are collated and the impact shared after the clean-up. The methodology also accommodates other items that are not the dozen list.

The Plastic Recycling and Youth Empowerment Organisation – PREYO TZ- is  registered Tanzania’s youth startup aiming to reduce the plastic pollution problem in Tanzania and Africa at large. We are driven by the urge to end the waste pollution problems in cities by turning waste into valuable commodities. We have managed to reap the benefit out of waste by turning them into refillable block pavement (building materials), home decoration (flowers), and furniture. PREYO’s mission is to restore, protect and enhance the environment, to ensure public health, environmental quality, and economic vitality. We plan to turn every trace and remains of plastics into precious reusable items.  Economically, we will harness the benefit of waste and plastic trash where after the installation of the plastic recycling industry more than 2,000 individuals will get direct and indirect employment.

La microcuenca de San Pablo, como bosque protector de nacimientos de agua, constituye una zona estratégica para el Municipio, el cual ha debido arbitrar medios necesarios para su protección a raíz de un nuevo escenario de producción: el cultivo de aguacate y sus consecuencias ambientales como la contaminación hídrica por los pesticidas y fertilizantes utilizados, la disminución de vegetación y bosques y la consecuente pérdida de conectividad ecológica con las demás microcuencas.
Entre las principales acciones de conservación implementadas se encuentran el aislamiento de los sitios de recarga hídrica para el control de daños por ingreso de ganado, la reforestación con especies nativas y la firma de acuerdos entre cultivadores de aguacate e instituciones del Estado en todos sus niveles, a fin de  reducir la presión sobre el recurso hídrico.

The Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces (HHRT), covering 16,603 hectares in Southern Yunnan, was inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2013 under criteria (iii) and (v). The cultivation of traditional rice has deeply moulded the landscape and shaped the farming culture of Hani people which have sustained these terraces for centuries. However, deep social changes make the sustainability of the terraces uncertain. Ecological challenges combined with loss of traditional knowledge menace the conservation of this spectacular landscape. In order to address these challenges, before the inscription of the site, Honghe prefecture developed a strategy which focuses on the recovery of the traditional water management system based on the water-wood concept and the restoration of traditional leadership. Through participatory research and a multi-level partnership, this initiative has ensured water supply to villages and sustain terraces while recovering ancient cultural practices.

CurieuzeNeuzen is a Flemish wordplay that is difficult to translate but refers to someone who is curious to learn. It is the largest ever citizen science project to monitor air quality throughout the Flanders region of Belgium. Over 53,000 candidates registered, from which 20,000 citizens, but also organisations, schools and companies were selected to participate. They each received a user-friendly toolkit that enabled them to measure their street’s NO2 concentration which is primarily released from the burning of fossil fuels. Participants attached a V-shaped billboard onto their first-floor window on the street side. Two passive NO2 samplers attached within collected data from April 28 until May 26 in 2018. Participants were eager to know their results as more than 99% returned their tubes for processing. Internationally, this was the first time that citizens were actively involved on such a large scale in a scientific project on air quality which yielded incredibly detailed results.

We are testing biotech nano 500 biodigesters in conservation zones to prevent people from systematically using trees and plants in protected areas to produce energy for cooking and other necessities. This method prevent them from using fuels that are harmful to health and the environment within the protected areas.

We are collecting agricultural residues such as rice husks, groundnut shells, maize cobs and maize stalks from farmers. We add value to them and produce Charcoal briquettes to curtail the cutting down of trees for firewood. Charcoal Briquette is a sustainable and reliable source of energy that helps replace the use of firewood,

By adopting charcoal briquettes made from agricultural residues, fragile forests are protected, the natural habitats for animal species are preserved while still meeting the energy and income needs of the growing populations.

Women and the youth that used to be involved in cutting down trees from the forests are now employed either at production facilities or as retailers of charcoal briquettes.  32,000 hectares of forest cover which Malawi loses every year is left to regenerate preserving natural habitat for different animal and plants species.