The sustainability prize you can throw in the compost

The world’s leading sustainability award, WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award, is today awarding outstanding contributions towards a more sustainable future within Biodiversity – with an entirely biodegradable prize cube made by Marcin Rusak. 

As the world’s leading sustainability award, WIN WIN Award recognizes and supports outstanding sustainable contributions worldwide. The prize has been presented in Gothenburg since 2000, aiming to stimulate creativity and achieve lasting synergies between ecological, environmental, and social needs. Previous winners include Al Gore, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and Kofi Annan. 

– One million of planet Earth’s eight million different species are threatened with extinction. This fact also jeopardizes humanity’s survival as a species. Despite scientists’ insight that the Biodiversity of the Earth is crucial for our existence, the issue tends to fall between decision-makers’ areas of responsibility. It does not receive the same attention as, for example, climate change, says Emma Dalväg, Chair of the WIN WIN Award jury. 

Branding agency Happy F&B has worked with the award since 2017. The award itself is a radical departure from the usual trophies and gongs. 

– The basic shape is a cube, but each year it is made of a different sustainable material – connecting to its specific theme. In this way, the prize cube itself highlights and represents innovative and sustainable materials, techniques, and its creators, says Maria Glansén, Design Director at Happy F&B. 

– Connecting to the theme Biodiversity, we have collaborated with artist Marcin Rusak to create this year’s prize cubes. It is entirely biodegradable and made from organic binders and flowers. Everything – from flower collection to processing the organic matter, mold making, and the physical material creation – is made by hand, says Anna Ahnborg, Design Director at Happy F&B. 

The organic material, Perishable Material, that Marcin has invented and composed enables us to reflect on the contemporary consumerism culture, exposing and embracing the processes of decay, destruction, renewal, and reconstruction through these perishable and transient objects. Perishable objects may, over time, perish to the lack of serviceability. This prize cube is made on that basis and intends to have a brief lifespan to mirror features occurring in nature. 

– Like the veins in marble or cavities in fossilized stones, the cube’s beauty lies in imperfections and the meticulous detail of floral cross-sections. Sourced from the excess accumulated by florists, the discarded flowers are given a new life cycle by becoming a part of the material, says Marcin Rusak. 

For more information and questions, contact Anna Wallhult: anna.wallhult@happy.fb.se

This year's winners

This year’s WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award winner is The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – IPBES. As the world’s first and only intergovernmental platform for Biodiversity, IPBES provides knowledge and tools to protect and sustainably access nature’s vital resources. The organization brings people of knowledge and experience together with stakeholders and decision-makers from all world regions. Together, they are laying the groundwork for a new agenda. 

he winner of the WIN WIN Youth Award is Ariana Yuen, with the project Forested Foods from Ethiopia. Forested Foods is an Ethiopian organization that fights to preserve forests and creates justice for forest-based communities.