Over 70 students tackle sustainability challenge at third econext clean growth Ideathon

For Immediate Release
September 25, 2024

Between September 20-22, 2024, the third econext Clean Growth Ideathon took place at Memorial University’s St. John’s campus, challenging over 70 students to create the best solution for utilizing Newfoundland and Labrador’s organic waste to generate clean energy.

“We are seeing new opportunities emerge in our province for finding value in our organic waste streams,” said Alex Rumbolt, econext’s Business Sustainability Lead. “What we are sending to our landfills actually has value in helping support of energy systems. Our challenge to MUN students this weekend was to come up with the best, most promising idea to achieve this.”

The students, from various disciplines and levels of university education, formed 16 teams. Each team worked to develop their ideas and pitch them to a panel of expert judges. The students participated in workshop events throughout the weekend, in addition to ongoing mentorship opportunities to help teams build their ideas from the ground up. The top three teams earned a combined $6,000 in prizes for their innovative solutions.

“The energy and innovation displayed by the 70 plus students who attended the econext ideathon exceeded all expectations.” said Chelsea Linfield, Special Projects Coordinator with econext. “This next generation of leaders and thinkers gives us great hope for the future of our province, and we’re excited to see the impact they will have on the clean growth industry in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

First Place Winners

The first-place prize, sponsored by Hatch, was awarded to Team Chemisphere (William Church, Abdelrahman Mohamed, Mohammed Furqan and Farhan Turjo) who pitched utilizing waste water separation to produce both clean water and biogas capable of powering homes.

Second Place Winners

The second-place prize went to Team BiogeNL (Jake Clarke, Ethan Clarke,Ted Etchegary and Andrew Harris) who presented the idea of using small installable anaerobic digesters to collect organic food waste from residential and commercial locations to generate biogas.

Third-Place Winners

The third-place prize was presented to CleaNL (Asif Patel, Shuvas Khanal, Rajalakshmi Madhusudanan Nair and Mohammad Fahim Inteser Alam) who proposed using targeted collection zones to gather food waste from large commercial operations to process into biogas.

In addition to the first place prize sponsor, econext would like to thank its opening ceremonies sponsor, Entr part of Aker Solutions, and meal sponsors, takeCHARGE and the Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union.

The econext Ideathon was made possible through partnership with the Business + Higher Education Roundtable, and with support from the Government of Canada.

If you are interested in partnering on a future event, please contact Chelsea Linfield at chelsea@econext.ca or Alex Rumbolt at alex@econext.ca.

econext is an association that accelerates clean growth in Newfoundland and Labrador and works on behalf of over 200 members to foster environmentally sustainable economic development. More information can be found at https://econext.ca.

The Business + Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization bringing together some of Canada’s largest companies and leading post-secondary institutions. Since 2015, BHER has worked to harness the strengths of Canada’s business and post-secondary education sectors to build opportunities for young Canadians, boost innovation and drive collaboration. Learn more at www.bher.ca. Visit our WIL Hub for ways to explore, invest in and create quality WIL opportunities.