Sachiko Hirosue
Osaka Namari-Suzu Seirensho Co., Ltd. President and CEO
Sachiko Hirosue was born in 1970, amid Japan’s economic transformation, and embodies the fusion of art and science. She advocates for the environment’s role in human health while orchestrating global engagement through DIY Open Science. She holds a BS from The Johns Hopkins University and an Sc.D. from MIT/Harvard HST MEMP in biomedical engineering and chemical engineering. She delved into gene therapy at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and vaccine development at EPFL, Switzerland, with a biomaterials emphasis. Now, she leads ONS Ltd., an Osaka-based lead refining company, where she steers responsible metal recycling as a 4th-gen President of the company.
Judge’s selections
Collective Building
ReLink —Platform for Building Materials Reuse DX—
Meiji University
Connecting demolition pieces and surplus supplies to designers provides a direct path for materials to find a new life in the circular economy. The team aims to make a sharing community, the next step being, convincing individual stakeholders to join their vision. Very exciting project, would love to see this happen. The project would benefit from support on the business development and marketing or rather, community development.
Preventative Protection of the Oceans Prize
The material from the sea「amuca®」
amu inc.
This project contributes to the biocircular economy by preventing the plastic fishing nets from entering the oceans by collecting unwanted fishing nets directly from fishermen, and thus indirectly keeping sea inhabitants from getting tangled in these abandoned nets. By focusing on a specific category of ocean plastics, they are able to focus their recycling process, and their re-use market. We cannot stop using plastics without replacement materials in all applications. Ocean plastic waste cannot be described as a monolith. This is a relevant and preventative solution, and would love for it to roll out to all parts of the world. The project ensures the appeal to a greater mass using traceability tags, with a message to the next consumer. If collections networks are considered, then how to scale-up? Will it be to centralize or decentralize the process? Collecting nets that have sunk into the oceans would be wonderful if possible to consider.
clothing to hydrogen
All Waste into Renewable Energy [ZERO WASTE PROJECT BIOTECHWORKS-H2]
BIOTECHWORKS-H2, Inc.
Time is passing by without action, and just waiting for “reduce” “reuse” is no longer an excuse. With that mindset, there were no takers, so they went abroad and worked on the technology - and now, are actively working on setting up a pilot plant in Japan - this is an interesting and dynamic turn of events in the circular economy of degrading organic matter into hydrogen. They are now collecting clothing, to enter the waste from fast fashion.
when tires change color
White tires for road bikes are available for early bird sale, 700 28C, carbon black free.
LIPPER K.K.
Many of the automobile technologies are reaching 100 years old. This project aims to replace the carbon-black for cellulose derived nanofibers. This is an exciting prospect, with carbon black being an important resource that can be used for other applications. This is a pro-spective technological solution to possible upcoming EU regulations. Now that technology can do it, it is whether we can achieve a design challenge - to get society and consumers to accept the 100 year old notion that tires are black. It would be important (and also on the company timeline) to determine the degradability, and what the health effects are of the new material tire dust.
wrap us in wool
Woola
Woola OÜ
Reducing the world's bubble wrap in half by 2030 is an achievable goal. Recyclable, with raw materials available, now is the time for this product to be known. It is impressive to have fair trade and fair work condition practices declared and transparent in the beginning. I can imagine sheep farmers from around the world being happy.