CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Prince William wore white biodegradable sneakers as he walked the “green carpet” at his Earthshot Prize awards ceremony in Cape Town on Wednesday, the centerpiece of a four-day environment-focused trip to South Africa by the heir to the British throne. The Prince of Wales set up the Earthshot Prize in 2020 to help entrepreneurs develop their climate-friendly businesses and he took the annual awards ceremony to Africa — the continent where he conceived the idea — for the first time this week. “We want to make this the decade in which we transform the world for good, one solution at a time, from the ground up,” William said in a speech on stage in a giant reusable dome that was put up for the ceremony near Cape Town’s harbor.
The Earthshot Prize, which William set up through his Royal Foundation, awarded $1.2 million in grants to five businesses for their sustainable, eco-friendly innovations. The winners included an American company that developed technology to use heat waste from heavy industries to generate electricity, a Ghanaian organization that trains people to collect and manage waste, and a Kazakhstan conservation group that is protecting a vast grassland and saving the Saiga antelope from extinction.
William, wearing his no-plastic sneakers and a classic double-breasted gray blazer, said his Earthshot Prize was created “to champion the dreamers, the thinkers and the innovators from every walk of life who share an ambiti.
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