Prince William Visits Earthshot Prize Winner Notpla to See How Business Scaled to Size
The Prince of Wales got to see the first prototype of a Notpla product that will be used by his prestigious environmental prize
Prince William is checking in on an Earthshot Prize Award winner.
On Tuesday morning, the Prince of Wales, 40, visited Notpla in Hackney Wick, London. The sustainable packaging startup won the Build a Waste-Free World category at the environmental awards in November 2022, and Prince William came to see how the Earthshot platform has helped the startup accelerate its progress.
Notpla is a seaweed and plant-based alternative to single-use plastic packaging designed to reduce landfill and ocean waste. The Earthshot honor has enabled the London-based business to scale, expand its team and invest in machinery for research and development.
Shortly after his arrival, Prince William toured the headquarters with co-founders Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez and Pierre Paslier, checking out Notpla's product portfolio and learning more about the startup's reach. In an exciting milestone, Notpla has replaced nearly 3 million units of single-use plastics to date.
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The Prince of Wales moved to the in-house lab and tried his hand at making material from leftovers from seaweed production. The so-called "Notpla Rigid material" can comprise products from luxury packaging boxes to disposable cutlery.
William then walked to the production hub to get a glimpse at how Notpla products are made — including something with a truly special connection! The Prince of Wales got to see a prototype of takeaway boxes branded with the Earthshot Prize logo, which will go into production next month.
When previously speaking with PEOPLE about what it meant to win an Earthshot, Paslier said the platform's support was a game-changer.
"Most importantly, the Earthshot Prize team is offering us some tailored support and will introduce us to a vast network of businesses, philanthropists and investors, that should boost scaling our commercialization," he said in December.
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On the new buzz from the Earthshot attention, he added, "The past 24 hours have been an absolute whirlwind, major groups have reached out and so many restaurants up and down the country have been buying our plastic-free takeaway boxes from our website!"
Since the Eartshot recognition, Notpla has partnered with Just Eat, Takeaway.com, Bidfood, global paper distributor, G. F. Smith and more. Earlier this month, the sustainable startup quenched runners' thirst at the Göteborgsvarvet half-marathon in Sweden with its plastic-free edible bubble. Notpla's Oohno water pods remarkably replaced over 20,000 single-use plastic cups at the race, organizers said in a statement.
Prince William launched the Earthshot Prize in 2020 to promote impactful approaches to the world's most pressing environmental challenges, with plans to award the prizes until 2030. Winners receive £1 million ($1.2 million) and support to scale their solutions, focused on reviving and repairing the land, air or sea, to size. The inaugural awards ceremony was held in London in October 2021, followed by a glittering second cycle in Boston in December 2022.
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Last week, the Earthshot Prize announced that the third annual awards ceremony will be held in Singapore on Nov. 7. Hannah Jones, CEO of the Earthshot Prize, exclusively spoke with PEOPLE about how the Prince of Wales and the larger Earthshot team are revving up momentum to make this year more impactful than ever.
"I think he and we are all very excited to be in Asia. We think it's a real opportunity to spotlight what countries around the region are doing, what people are doing," Jones tells PEOPLE of spotlighting optimism in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
With just six months to go, she adds that the Prince of Wales "doesn't stay still. His ambition continues to grow, and rightly so. The focus is still completely, 'What are we doing to impact? What is our impact? How do we scale our impact? How can we go faster?' "
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