Alaska Airlines’ Environmental Innovation Challenge: Sponsoring Innovation
The RyeStrategy team is excited to have been a sponsor this year for the University of Washington’s Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge, hosted by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship! The Environmental Innovation Challenge was concluded at the beginning of April, providing an opportunity for innovative and entrepreneurial students across the pacific northwest region to present their solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. Since its outset 13 years ago, the EIC has attracted 752 students (140 teams) from Pacific Northwest colleges and universities, awarding $416,000 in prototype funding, over $170,000 in prize money, and connecting 750+ judges, mentors, and coaches with the teams, tapping into the passion, smarts, and motivation that university students have for solving environmental and cleantech problems.
16 teams competed in the final round of the competition, with Puget Buoy (an organization focused on reducing the environmental damages of ocean fishing) taking first place, GreenLoop (a University of Washington team working to reduce plastic pollution in India’s farming communities) taking second, and Scrapless (a University of British Columbia team developing a platform to enable surplus food redistribution) taking third. Additionally, Clear Ascent pitched a clean aerospace technology idea that tackles the aviation industries’ contribution to the climate crisis, including a detailed carbon footprint, winning the Climate Challenge Prize.
The RyeStrategy team provided a seminar for competing groups that covered the basics on what a carbon footprint is, how to calculate a carbon footprint, and methods for identifying areas for potential carbon reduction within an industry. This seminar was accompanied by a detailed guidance package, ensuring that teams had access to all the basics of carbon footprinting. Following the seminar, the team put on a series of office hours for groups to ask more specific questions about their business’ carbon output. The opportunity as a sponsor to help other student-run organizations quantify and communicate their environmental solutions was a great one -- we are always happy to help students create more sustainable and less carbon intensive solutions!
Although the competition has concluded for this year, you can read more about the winners here and watch the awards ceremony here. We want to give a huge thank you to Lauren Brohawn for working so closely with us, as well as the rest of the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship team for putting on such an enjoyable and impactful event. We also want to congratulate all the competing teams for your incredible work! With our roots firmly planted at the University of Washington, we look forward to continued collaboration with the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, and the great organizations which it supports.
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About RyeStrategy
Based in Seattle, RyeStrategy is a CDP-accredited, mission-oriented company specialized in carbon accounting, mitigation coaching, and climate disclosure solutions for organizations at any point in their sustainability journey. Learn how RyeStrategy helped Salesforce, Ideascale, and Wazoku achieve their sustainability goals.
From exhaustive carbon footprinting and mitigation coaching, to setting science-based targets and reporting climate data to CDP, SBTi or custom reporting platforms, RyeStrategy acts as a hands-on extension of the team, custom-tailoring services to fulfill climate disclosure requirements easily and accurately.
Meet with a sustainability specialist to learn more about RyeStrategy solutions.
