Seattle, May 02, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The winners of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced today, honoring sustainable designs, innovative products, bold social initiatives, and other creative projects that are changing the way we work, live, and interact with the world.
Lithos Carbon, a one year old carbon removal company scaling Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), was named the winner of the General Excellence Category and finalist in the Climate Category of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards for its work, titled ‘Using rock dust to remove carbon’. The company was also named honouree in the Agriculture and North America categories. This recognition comes only a few months after Lithos Carbon was honored on Fast Company's 2023 World’s Most Innovative Companies list — alongside names like Disney, OpenAI, NASA, SpaceX, and more — and made the Top 10 in the Social Good category.
Founded in 2022, Lithos Carbon uses high-quality, organic basalt from U.S. soil, to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The basalt is spread over croplands, where it reacts with rainwater, converting atmospheric CO2 to dissolved bicarbonate. Not only does this process naturally and powerfully capture carbon, it releases macro and micronutrients into the soil, reducing the amount of fertilizer needed to keep farms flourishing. The dissolved bicarbonate travels to the ocean through rivers and streams where it is permanently sequestered. This revolutionary carbon removal solution is permanent and highly measurable while tackling two critical issues at once. Within seven months of launch, Lithos Carbon’s solution was on track to capture more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon. This year, the company will capture 20,000 tonnes of carbon with its deployments.
“We are honored to receive this recognition from Fast Company, an outlet that has historically championed innovation across many sectors, including climate and decarbonization,” says Lithos Carbon CEO, Mary Yap. “The climate crisis is one of the greatest threats facing our planet today and we are humbled to have been given this platform to share our science-based carbon capture and soil-enhancement solution with the world. It is our mission to permanently, measurably, equitably, and affordably remove excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere to mitigate climate change — we’re grateful to the support of the ecosystem working alongside us to scale this solution, including our farming and quarry partners, our customers, our research collaborators, our investors, and of course, Fast Company.”
This year’s World Changing Ideas Awards showcases 45 winners, 216 finalists, and more than 300 honorable mentions—with health, climate, energy, and AI among the most popular categories. A panel of Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 2,200 entries across urban design, education, nature, politics, technology, corporate social responsibility, and more. Several new categories were added this year including rapid response, crypto and blockchain, agriculture, and workplace. The 2023 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Italy to Singapore to New Zealand.
“It’s thrilling to see the creativity and innovation that are so abundant among this year’s honorees,” says Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan. “While it’s easy to feel discouraged by the state of the world, the entrepreneurs, companies, and nonprofits featured in this package show the limitless potential to address society’s most urgent problems. Our journalists have highlighted some of the most exciting and impactful work being done today—from housing to equity to sustainability—and we look forward to seeing not only how these projects evolve but how they inspire others to develop solutions of their own.”
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About Lithos Carbon
Lithos’ mission is to transform farmland into carbon capture centers — removing a billion tons of atmospheric CO2 this decade while improving crop yields. Founded in March 2022 by repeat entrepreneurs and the world’s leading experts in atmospheric geochemistry, Lithos’ technology offers an optimization platform that permanently removes CO2 from the atmosphere in a matter of human seasons rather than geologic millennia. Cost effective, immediately scalable, and empirically measured, Lithos’ deployments are custom designed on a field-by-field and crop-by-crop basis to improve yield, protect crops, and enhance soil conditions. To learn more, visit www.lithoscarbon.com.
About the World Changing Ideas Awards: World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.
