1,200+ New Ideas for a More Sustainable Future

When it comes to making a real difference on environmental issues—and indeed beyond that in delivering business contributions to the SDGs—I firmly believe that the greatest impact we can have is by mobilizing our people, our clients, our suppliers and our ecosystem partners to innovate for a more sustainable future. 

In that spirit—and in honour of World Environment Day—I'm proud to announce the winners of Accenture’s 2021 Eco Innovation Challenge.

This past December, we asked our people for their ideas on how to address seven of the greatest environmental challenges our planet is facing today. More than 2,300 Accenture social innovators from 38 countries stepped up and put together teams, generating over 1,200 new ideas.

They came together from every corner of our business... tech innovators, digital marketers, business strategists and so many more.

Ultimately, 100 finalists from 11 countries pitched their ideas to Accenture leaders and judges representing our 40 innovation partners, including clients, ecosystem partners, NGOs and start-ups. Hearing their ideas and seeing how they go about problem-solving together gives me hope.

Let’s meet the winners:

• Circular Packaging - LCA.I.: An AI platform that provides options for new and greener packaging solutions by leveraging the results of lifecycle assessments.
• Clean Energy at Home - Scaling Our Reach: A universal and accessible point-of-sale smartphone app to scale last-mile distribution of clean energy solutions for entrepreneurs with low literacy and technology skills.
• Climate Resilience - Coral-ation: Integrating global coral reef monitoring efforts into a unified AI-powered platform to foster collaboration between scientists, governments, communities and the private sector.
• Future of Food - AgXelerator: A set of advanced data-driven tools to speed up the development of indoor farming to meet the food demand of the 9.7 billion people projected to live on the planet by 2050.
• Green(er) Supply Chains - Aquichain: Enabling more sustainable water governance by using aquifer geo-tagging and blockchain to trace water usage throughout supply chains.
• Rewilding Land - Reimagine, Rewild: An augmented reality app enabling users to reimagine their local environments, boosting awareness, support and crowdfunding for rewilding.
• Sustainable Cloud - Sustainable AI in the Cloud: Reducing the environmental impact of AI through a carbon-smart, cloud-based machine learning framework to optimize energy use and leverage renewable energy when and where it’s available.

The seven winning teams will receive funding and coaching from our Social Innovators Accelerator to further develop their ideas.

A major congratulations to all participants, and a tremendous thank you to our innovation partners—your creativity and commitment are inspiring. I can’t wait to see how you will create a more sustainable future for us all.