South Africa's promising young sustainable designers announced

Bronwen Smith and Rudolph Jordaan took first place for their S.A.S. Integrated Sustainability Awareness System.  This clever concept aims to activate a large community, such as Cape Town, to be environmentally conscious through an online points based system, that incentivizes citizens to be more ‘green’ by measuring households’ impacts through collating data related to their sustainable consumption habits, such as electricity savings, or environmentally-friendly purchases or chosing to take communal transport. The system is useful for individuals and households, while also offering a valuable data collating service to municipalities.

Second place went to Colin Tomas from Cape Town for his Seeding Guide. This instructional guide has seeds embedded in biodegradable paper that dissolves quickly and allows the seeds to germinate. The guide features indigenous (regional) medicinal and food plants and will be produced in South Africa’s national languages.

In third place was Gaironesa Clayton and Chad Atkins, also from Cape Town, for their design titled R3. Their prototype is a mechanism that uses old newspaper and turns it into a briquette which replaces firewood, promotes recycling and helps solve the problem of deforestation.

The competition commenced in September 2012 with a call from Shift to young creatives to submit proposals and designs that addressed the issues of sustainability under the brief Small Change, A World of Difference. The project aims to raise awareness amongst young South Africans about the role that design can play in developing practical and sustainable solutions to every day challenges.

In addition to their title and prize money, the lucky winners will go on a knowledge exchange trip to the City of Malmö in Sweden in August 2013 to learn more about ways of urban sustainability and integrated design.

A surprise came for Port Elizabeth resident Ryan Allan as Shift announced him as their Wild Card winner, earning him a place among the group who will be traveling to Sweden.  His concept, titled RE: H2O works to recycle and filter bath and laundry water so that households can channel water into productive systems such as food gardens, providing opportunities for economic activity and environmental rehabilitation within low-income and impoverished communities. 

Janine Johnston, CEO of Shift said: “We want to congratulate all this year’s winners and finalists on their outstanding final submissions. The competition saw finalists thinking outside the box, making sure that their concepts are designed simply, improving on existing products, systems and services, while addressing key environmental, social and economic sustainability issues. Their concepts have developed and have been refined since the initial submissions and we are very pleased with the selection of winners.”

Shift aims to support these Fresh Talent winners in developing their concepts' business models and prototypes; as well as offer entrepreneurial support and coaching, through mobilizing its global network into positive action.

For more information visit www.theshift.org.za, or email info@theshift.org.za or watch our latest videos on http://vimeo.com/theshift.