'Inspiring' Eton students to represent UK in Earth Prize competition

Two teams of pupils from Eton College are among ten groups in this year’s Earth Prize final.

Started by The Earth Foundation, this is the world’s largest environmental competition for teenagers, attracting nearly 10,000 pupils from over 2,000 schools across the world.

Eton is the only school with two groups in this year’s final, and the only school in the UK remaining in the competition.

Co-director of environmental education at Eton College Pauline Herbommez said: “For years, we have been incredibly inspired by the energy and positivity poured into this prize.

“Although I wish them to be rewarded for such commitment, I want them to remember that the Earth Prize is not the end, it is only the start.

“They believe in the positive impact their idea can have on the world, so I hope they find the resilience to see it to completion. Prizes or not.”

Teams Pebble and Mycoflo from Eton College both pitched environmental projects that caught the attention of the Earth Prize adjudicating panel, and the winning team will be announced on Earth Day on April 22.

Team Pebble consists of duo Orlando White and Koza Kurumlu and Team Mycoflo consists of Rajas Nanda, Michael Wu, Wen Q Zhao, Zimo Shi and Christopher Whitfeld.

If successful, the winning team will be awarded a $50,000 prize from the Earth Foundation and supported in implementing their environmental project.

Half of the prize goes to the team’s school to fund an environmental sustainability project, and the remaining half is an educational scholarship grant for the team members to deliver their project.

Team Mycoflo has proposed a method to efficiently and affordably filter water using fungi to tackle the severe water pollution that endangers the health of communities in the Niger Delta.

Their solution, called Mycofiltration, uses fungi through MycoSacks and an AI-equipped automated robot, MycoBot, and has seen a 60 per cent concentration reduction in testing.

Michael Wu from Team Mycoflo said: “We are honoured to have been selected as one of 10 finalists for the Earth Prize. Our innovative solution integrates the filtration properties of mycelial technology with machine learning to diagnose and cure areas with high levels of water contamination.”

Team Pebble, whose youngest member is 14 years old, has pioneered a platform that pools computer power to reduce overall consumption.

The team hopes to tackle the environmental impact of more than 120 million idle consumer graphics cards by combining them into a network.

Their proposal would allow contributors to rent out their computers to optimise resource usage, reduce carbon usage and rare earth metal consumption, and save 8.76 billion kWh annually.

Team Pebble’s Orlando White and Koza Kurumlu said: “When we use and train AI models, our only option is to rent out GPUs from big tech cloud providers, knowing the incredible environmental pollution it generates for lack of an alternative option. Therefore, our project provides an environmentally friendly option for renting GPUs, aiming to cut the impact of these large centres, especially in the age of a large AI revolution, where this issue will exponentially worsen.

“We are doing this by connecting underutilized computers to a wider network, putting into use the valuable physical devices that have a large carbon output in the manufacturing process and contain rare earth elements. Further, we are putting into use any idle power when the computer is not in use.”