Submissions open for Wege Prize 2024

Participants contend for $65,000 (USD) in total cash prizes, all while learning—and helping to show the world—what the future of problem solving looks like.

The Challenge

• The challenge for Wege prize participants is to:
  • Build a strong and diverse transdisciplinary team of five
  • Identify a complex, “wicked” problem to address
  • Develop a compelling solution to the problem that is built on the three core principles of the circular economy:
    • Eliminate Waste and Pollution
      • They need to consider waste and pollution as design flaws rather than inevitable by-products of the things they make.
    • Keep Products and Materials in Use
      • They need to design products to be reused, repaired, re-manufactured, or, better yet: kept in circulation and out of the landfill.
    • Regenerate the Natural Systems
      • They need to return nutrients to the soil and other systems to enhance the natural resources and ensure their prosperity.
• Possible solutions include, but are not limited to:
  • Products
  • Services
  • Business models
• Over the course of nine months, from the opening of the application period through the final presentation and awards event, teams will compete to advance through up to four distinct phases, growing their ideas from an informal proposal into a robust and feasible solution informed by research, market analysis, and real-world prototyping and testing. Each step of the way, they will be guided by direct feedback from a panel of expert judges who will help them strengthen their ideas, push the limits of possibility, and support bringing their plans into fruition.

Prize Details

Winning teams will split the following awards evenly between their five members:

• First Place: $30,000 (USD)
• Second Place: $20,000 (USD)
• Third Place: $10,000 (USD)
• Finalist Awards (2): $2,500 (USD)

Wege prize is looking for solutions that are

• Circular – helping accelerate the transition to a circular economy and a shift towards renewables
• Innovative – providing unique value and exploring untapped potential
• Viable – demonstrating marketability, profitability, and financial sustainability
• Scaleable – moving effectively from local to global impact
• Systemic – accounting for the way in which parts of a system both influence each other and work as a whole.

Wege prize is not looking for solutions that are

• Recycling/upcycling-focused – these approaches accept waste as inevitable—truly circular solutions design out waste entirely.
• Reliant on assumed behavioral change – if behavioral change is needed for your solution to work, how will you help drive it?
• Exclusively app-based – while an app can be one component of a circular solution, it cannot be the only component.

Eligibility Criteria

• To be eligible to join a team, individuals must:
  • Attend a college, university, or equivalent institution of higher education anywhere in the world.
  • Be a student enrolled in a full-time (or equivalent) undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate program, for the entire duration of the competition.
  • Note: Teams can be composed of a mix of undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students if they so choose.

For more information, visit Wege Foundation.