Keep Martin Beautiful Invites You to Take a Shot at Healing the Planet

How can we solve our environmental challenges and help our planet heal? Each year, the Earthshot Prize Council, a global team of influencers, asks this question of innovators and environmentalists around the world, discovers the best of the best and brings them to an award ceremony.

This year’s winners came up with truly world-changing projects.

• One team developed a cookstove widely used in Africa that uses less charcoal and produces 70% less pollution than traditional charcoal stoves.
• Another team is using a natural process to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and capture it in peridotite, an abundant rock found around the world.
• A team from India created a Greenhouse-in-a-Box to help small farmers increase their plant yields using less water and fewer pesticides.
• The 2022 grand prize winner is a team that is developing a sustainable way to use seaweed and plant-based materials as an alternative to the plastic that is clogging our seas and endangering our environment.

These are amazing projects. They show what human ingenuity can do when faced with a task as monumental as saving the planet.

Not many of us are in a position to create global solutions and scale them up to where they affect the entire planet, but Keep Martin Beautiful knows the power of local efforts to protect our environment and an “act locally, think globally” attitude.

At our Environmental Stewardship Awards ceremony last year, for example, we honored local efforts like the House of Hope Traveling Nutrition Garden that teaches adults and children where their food comes from and how to grow it. The City of Stuart won an award for installing a canopy of native trees in Shepherd’s Park. Project LIFT got the judges’ attention for using recycled vehicles to teach young people a useful trade and keep unwanted vehicles out of the landfill.

Every week in Martin County, residents pick up litter along our roadsides in our Adopt-A-Road program. And we’re already gearing up for the annual Great American Cleanup, which is set to take place over three months from March 20 through June 20.

We each have a shot at taking actions that make a difference. Keep Martin Beautiful urges you to be aware, look for opportunities to protect the environment, and work together to heal our planet.

To learn more about the Earthshot Prize projects, visit earthshotprize.org.

To learn more about Keep Martin Beautiful and how you can get involved in the Great American Cleanup and other volunteer opportunities please go to keepmartinbeautiful.org, email info@keepmartinbeautiful.org or call 772-781-1222.