Using slaughterhouse waste to generate electricity. Text messaging to alert people to fake drugs. Creating new nutrient-rich rice. These are some of the winners at the Tech Awards, where innovators are celebrated for solving far-reaching problems.
Every year, the Tech Awards are given to 15 entrepreneurs who are committed to helping solve some of the most significant problems in the world. In the 2009 awards, the California-based Tech Awards recently honoured its “Laureates” who have dabbled in biodiversity, health, environmental science, education and equality.
What stood out? The Cows to Kilowatts out of Nigeria took home the Intel Environment Award (and $50,000) for its far-reaching idea — turn slaughterhouse waste into energy. This solution uses a powerful anaerobic reactor to process animal waste into biogas. Basically, feces becomes energy.
Cows to Kilowatts also diverts harmful waste to a useful source. Right now, waste sullies water supplies with E.coli, salmonella, and Rift Valley fever virus. Also it emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Nigerian project, led by Dr. Joseph Adelegan, can reportedly reduce slaughterhouse waste by 90 per cent.
A magazine run by the World Intellectual Property Organization goes into detail about the program’s plans, writing:
The project is designed to be commercially viable and plans to sell its household cooking gas at a quarter of current market prices, i.e. US$7.50 per 25 liters. By producing around 270 cubic meters of compressed biogas a month, the plant would generate returns on investment after two years.
Several other notable winners at the Tech Awards have created viable solutions to pressing problems.
Drip irrigation may not sound sexy, but small-plot farmers in developing countries rely on managable irrigation systems. Driptech won an award for its technology — it uses laser technology to drill holes in one main line, reducing the number of parts and the cost of a drip irrigation system. The website claims: “After buying this system, farmers can recoup their initial investment in less than 6 months, with significant increases in income over the next 3-5 years — the lifespan of the product.”
Ultra Rice isn’t something Uncle Ben is going to put on shelves anytime soon. Created by nonprofit organization PATH, this fortified rice includes micronutrients ideal for the billions of people who rely on the staple food. One variation of rice contains vitamin A and the other can carry iron, thiamin, folic acid, and zinc. PATH has already supplied several schools in central idea with their fortified rice. A press releases states:
Lunches made iron rich by Ultra Rice are served six times per week to approximately 60,000 school children each day. Still underway, this program’s nutrient-packed lunches provide school children 50 percent of their daily requirement for iron—bolstering the children’s immune systems and helping them to learn and grow.
Handicraft workers around the world are often paid low hourly rates for their efforts. A new software program can find out if a worker is being paid fairly compared to other wages databased from similar sources. The World of Good Development Organization’s Fair Wage Guide Software “provides localized pricing evaluation of handmade goods to improve wages of informal workers,” the Tech Awards state. The site says “this web tool generates a localized price analysis of wages paid to artisans in comparison to international living wage standards.” Anyone can try out the “wage test” to see if an artisan in a certain area is getting compensated fairly.
Finally, we all know text-messaging has taken off around the world. Ghanaian start-up mPedigree asks, “What if a mother caring for her sick child who needs a prescription drug in rural Ghana, could determine by a quick SMS/text-message via her cellphone that the prescription drug she intends to purchase is safe for her child and not a fake?” This company has created a useful technology — send a text of a medicine’s alphabetic code and find out if the drug is counterfeit. Soon to be available in Africa, mPedigree is looking for partnerships outside the continent to spread its idea to all regions.
For more info this year’s winners of the Tech Awards, click here.
