Governors Island Offers Five Figures for Ideas on How to Upcycle Urban Waste
The Trust for Governors Island has announced its second annual Climate Solutions Challenge, which is offering a prize of up to $10,000 (plus a supplemental grant of up to $20,000) to the winning entrant with an implementable idea that answers this question: “How can circular economy products and solutions drive down the climate impact of the urban waste stream and extend resource recovery to our businesses and neighborhoods?”
This year’s challenge is catalyzed by the fact that New York produces nearly four million tons of residential waste and another four million tons of commercial waste every year. More than half of the solid waste generated in the five boroughs comes from construction and demolition.
The City has committed to sending zero waste to landfills by 2030. The magic bullet for addressing this problem is the “circular economy” model, in which waste materials are “upcycled” into products that have economic use or value.
This year’s Climate Solutions Challenge focuses on four innovation tracks: Low-carbon and circular construction products; products based on resources recovered from the urban waste stream; reducing construction and demolition waste by extending the useful life of existing systems; and measurement tools and services that accelerate diversion from landfill and reduce solid waste.
In addition to prize money, winners are also eligible to be given a site on Governors Island to demonstrate their projects. Applications are due by December 5. For more information, please browse govisland.org/challenge.
Last year, the Trust designated six competition winners who devised projects utilizing water to help power climate solutions, grow eco-employment, and incubate healthier communities. The Climate Solutions Challenge is one of several climate initiatives on Governors Island. Another is the New York Climate Exchange, $700-million project that will combine interdisciplinary research on climate change with education in a single physical hub. In April 2023, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams announced that a partnership led by the State University of New York at Stony Brook had won a years-long competition to build the facility.
The 400,000-square-foot campus of the Climate Exchange will include classrooms, laboratories, research labs, public exhibition space, student and faculty housing, university hotel rooms, and an auditorium space, and will additionally feature the restoration of more than 170,000 square feet of space within existing, historic structures, such as Liggett Hall and the Fort Jay Theater. The project is slated to begin construction next year, with a projected opening date of 2028.