The Switzerland-based Earth Foundation awards the annual Earth Prize, now in its fifth year, to 13-to-19-year-olds working on solutions to environmental challenges.“The problem of air pollution was very personal to us, and that is why we started thinking about coming up with a solution,” Fredrick Njoroge Kariuki, one-half of the winning team for the Africa region, told Mongabay. “It was a passion before it became a project.”The HewaSafi exhaust filtration system uses filters made from locally sourced materials like coconut shells, maize cobs, steel mesh, copper and recycled materials from old batteries.The HewaSafi team is now a contender for the global prize, for which public voting opens on May 18 and closes on May 27.
NAIROBI — Two 17-year-old students from Kiambu county in Kenya were declared winners of the Africa region Earth Prize on May 12, for a low-cost maize- and coconut-based vehicle exhaust filtration system they developed.
Fredrick Njoroge Kariuki and Miron Onsarigo, students at M-PESA Foundation Academy, developed the system, HewaSafi, meaning “clean air” in Swahili, after watching friends and family suffer from diseases linked to air pollution.
The Switzerland-based Earth Foundation grants the annual Earth Prize, now in its fifth year, to 13-to-19-year-olds working on solutions to environmental challenges.
