Last week saw our second Feeder Event of the Summer as we look to address our latest Challenge, seeking to Tackle Climate Change whilst kick-starting the country’s economic recovery from Covid-19.

The opening keynote from Green Alliance UK’s Libby Peake set the tone for the three days, with a probing discussion on theme of the Circular Economy. With research showing that 60% of people were willing to drastically change their lifestyles to bring about a more resource-efficient economy, Libby laid out a vision for change for local economies, backed by a clear public mandate.

University of Nottingham Sustainability Director, Andy Nolan, continued this progressive theme with a talk on the University’s efforts to move towards a carbon-free campus, working in tandem with the City-wide initiatives to be carbon-free by 2028.

“How do you change attitudes and then change behaviours?” was the rallying cry, a statement our participants took into their group ideation sessions to work on the Ingenuity Process.

Entrepreneurial inspiration came in the form of a talk from Tessa Clarke, who founded the surplus food sharing app OLIO, who couldn’t believe there wasn’t an app already in place to address the fact that one third of all the world’s food goes to waste.

The team who won first place was a cross-University union of Debbie Smith (University of Warwick), Lewis Hughes (University of Nottingham), Jowi McMillan (Warwick Enterprise) and Brenda Pulido Munguia (University of Nottingham) , whose idea for transforming our future towns and cities through sustainable agriculture for the circular economy netted them the top prize of £3,000.

“Our idea was to tackle climate change by creating a self-sufficient and agriculturally resilient community by re-purposing under-utilised buildings (and space) to cultivate crops in order to feed members of local communities that currently live in food poverty, whilst seeking to reduce food waste”, said Debbie Smith, a Geography graduate from the University of Warwick.

Second place was awarded to Aditya Chauhan (Nottingham) and Dominik Bondicov (Birmingham City University) for their fascinating “GreenArea” idea.

“GreenArea is a Smart City system that will capture Carbon and emissions without a need for their storage”, explained Dominik. “It will produce Oxygen and cool its close environment. The capture process is completely natural and the most efficient capture process in nature, photosynthesis.”

If you’re interested in tackling climate change, don’t forget to register your interest for the full Ingenuity Programme. Launching in September, we’ll be looking to invest over £400,000 in bold new ideas that make a difference to the world we live in.