CSR Press Release

- March 25, 2009 - The Foundation for a Sustainable Future (FSF) is pleased to announce winners for Sustainable Business competitions it sponsored for 2009.

The Global Sustainability Prize of the McGinnis Venture Competition held March 12-14, 2009 at the Tepper Business School at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh PA drew entries from teams representing top graduate business schools from around the world. Feeder Competitions held at IIFT - New Delhi and Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay drew entries from about 2,000 teams from around Asia, with the winners moving up to compete at CMU. The global winners are:

• 1st Prize - Husk Insulation is a business-to-business company using proprietary technology to convert agricultural waste into high-grade vacuum-insulation panels.


• 2nd Prize - Green Gold de-contaminates tailings from abandoned gold mines with a centrifuge and leaching process to recover residual gold and heavy metal deposits.


• 3rd Prize - Clean India recycles industrial wastewater using algae, with a network of water purification plants targeting paper pulp, textiles, steel and engineering industries.

The Richard Heinberg Prize for Sustainability, sponsored by FSF, is administered by the William James Foundation based in Washington DC. More than 100 teams from 15 countries and 25 US states competed. The Heinberg prize honors Richard Heinberg, a leading thinker on Peak Oil, Ecology and Sustainability.

• 1st Place: Black Oak Capital Partners acquires California real estate for conservation and then earns and sells environmental credits gained from rehabilitating these properties.


• 2nd Place: PowerMundo in Peru connects people in developing countries with affordable sustainable technology like solar flashlights, wind-up radios, and biomass cook stoves.


• 3rd Place: GoCars connects commuters with shared transportation providers in real time via a mobile/PDA based platform. It is based in Hyderabad, India.

The Foundation for a Sustainable Future uses business and profits as the mechanisms to spread scalable and replicable projects to create sustainability on the planet. Says President Sarosh Kumana, "Humans have been consuming renewable resources unsustainably, depleting nature's capital account rather than living off the interest. In order to choose an alternate future, we need several paradigm shifts to reduce humanity's Ecological Footprint, our impact on the planet's biosphere.  The choices we make now will determine whether we have acceptable options far into the future."

The Foundation for a Sustainable Future awards the prizes to stimulate for-profit business start-ups that profitably accomplish sustainability benefits, such as climate change mitigation, energy efficiency, clean-tech, and water security. For purposes of these prizes, "sustainable" is defined as products or services that enhance the usability or effectiveness of natural resources, reduce costs and waste, or reduce adverse environmental impacts. The judges examined expected sustainability results and the metrics by which these benefits were quantified to evaluate how well the projects achieved these objectives. Judges provided constructive feedback to all of the entrants. In addition to the cash prizes, each team received substantial feedback and suggestions from investors and subject matter experts.

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