Environmental challenge spurs young entrepreneurs’ creative thinking  

MfE had the opportunity to sponsor an environmental challenge for young entrepreneurs in year 12 and 13 in August 2021. The event was part of Entrepreneurs in Action run by the Young Enterprise Trust.  

 

young enterprise 2021

“Rangatahi are our future leaders and innovators. Having the opportunity to engage and support their creativity through an environmentally-themed challenge in Entrepreneurs in Action was a real privilege," says Anne Haira, MfE  Deputy Secretary.  

Anna Ririnui, MfE’s Strategic Partnerships Manager, says “We challenged the young entrepreneurs to ‘redesign business’ and were blown away at the creative and innovative solutions they came up with, putting the environment at the heart of their business ideas. We hope this is something they take forward into their future careers.”  

The environmental challenge 

Participants were asked to identify an environmental issue and use te ao Māori to develop a sustainable business solution to support and accelerate Aotearoa’s transition to a more climate resilient, low emission, circular economy. 

The competition was fierce and the ideas were inspiring.

They included: 

  • using agave offcuts from tequila manufacture to make biodegradable hay bale twine 
  • frozen supermarket meals made from rescued food waste  
  • upcycling old coats into sleeping bags  
  • an independent sustainability WOF-type rating for farmers.   

 The winning team tackled food waste

The winning team’s pitch looked at preserving the quality of the soil by returning nutrients to it in a circular and chemical-free way. The solution was a food waste collection using fungi to speed up the composting process.  One of the fungi can breakdown polyurethane plastic and reduce the need for plastic contamination sorting.  

The team set out a plan to pilot the solution with marae and community gardens.

This included: 

  • redistributing the compost back to marae and community gardens 
  • scaling up to supermarkets, households and councils  
  • providing the fungi for purchase for home composting. 
Young enterprise environmental challenge winning team

About the Young Enterprise Trust 

The Young Enterprise Trust builds capability and capacity amongst our future leaders and company founders through its Young Enterprise Scheme. The annual ‘Entrepreneurs in Action’ event is for year 12 and 13 students. We sponsored the environment challenge for 2021 with support from Pare Kora and Circularity.  

Congratulations to all of the teams. Nōu te ao - the world is yours. 

Find out more about Young Enterprise