As the global community prepares to mark World Environment Day on 5 June under the theme of Climate Action, Mr Price Foundation is demonstrating how South Africa’s bright minds can contribute to environmental sustainability, and economic growth.
Through the Waste Innovation Challenge, delivered in partnership with the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) programme, the Foundation is moving beyond traditional cleanup campaigns. Instead, it is shifting the narrative by framing plastic waste not merely as an environmental crisis, but as an untapped economic opportunity, by mobilising South Africa’s youth to reimagine waste as a driver of economic opportunities.
South Africa generates over 122 million tons of waste annually, with plastic accounting for nearly 18%, yet only 10% of that plastic is currently recycled. At the same time, millions of young people remain disconnected from the economy. The Waste Innovation Challenge acts as a forward-looking intervention that addresses these dual crises simultaneously. By inviting university students and alumni (aged 18–34) from all 26 public universities across South Africa to transform plastic waste into commercially viable business ventures, the initiative treats environmental urgency as a catalyst for sustainable economic resilience and a pathway into new industries.
Unlike generic environmental awareness drives, this initiative operates as a structured, multi-stage green entrepreneurship pipeline that uses development to take students and recent graduates from early-stage ideation to commercially viable, market-centric solutions. It provides a platform to identify, validate and refine innovations in plastic waste recycling, contributing to South Africa’s circular economy. The programme combines capacity building, intensive development, and competitive screening to identify solutions that can be supported to full realization.
Participants have recently completed a six-week series of intensive online workshops to help refine their innovations. Over the month of June, the students will be submitting proposals detailing their innovations, which will undergo rigorous evaluation to shortlist the top 20 finalist. These finalists will progress into an intensive bootcamp where they will further refine their solutions in preparation for the showcase. They are competing for a total prize pool of R255,000, which includes a first-place grant of R100,000 in seed capital to scale their waste-to-wealth businesses.
While South African youth possess immense scientific and entrepreneurial ambition, scaling a green startup within the local ecosystem presents unique challenges.
“True climate action requires that we transition our thinking from a consumer mindset to a creator mindset, one that focuses on building sustainable commercial ecosystems,” says Duduzile Mathabela, Entrepreneurship Development Programme Manager at the Mr Price Foundation.
“Our interactions with young innovators during the challenge revealed that the primary hurdle isn’t a lack of ecological passion or technical innovation. Rather, the bottleneck lies in the developmental support to enter new markets and industries. Many brilliant, student-led concepts struggle to scale due to limited exposure and knowledge on the practical realities of building a sustainable business. By embedding practical development support into the programme, we ensure our youth are equipped with the tools to turn ideas into viable enterprises.”
For the Mr Price Foundation, this R1.3 million collective investment into the green economy pipeline is not a standalone competition. It serves as a vital blueprint feeding into the Foundation’s macro goal: empowering 500,000 young South Africans to become economically resilient, self-sustaining business owners by 2035.
By collaborating across higher education and the entrepreneurship ecosystem, the challenge demonstrates that the next generation need not be passive bystanders or mere beneficiaries of climate action. Equipped with the right support, they are emerging as pragmatic Africa’s green entrepreneurs who will actively turn South Africa’s waste crisis into economic prosperity.
