Announcing Sustainability450, in partnership with the Harrow Family of Schools

8billionideas, in collaboration with the Harrow Family of Schools, are inviting students from Pre-Prep through Sixth Form to participate in ‘Sustainability450’, an exciting entrepreneurial competition that nurtures creativity and innovation.

To mark the 450th anniversary of Harrow School in the UK, as well as the 25th anniversary of the AISL education group, we’re asking students from all Harrow-branded schools, across all age groups, to come up with 450 unique ideas and solutions addressing a specific problem pertaining to sustainability.
This is a fantastic opportunity for students with entrepreneurial minds to utilise their problem-solving skills, articulate their creative vision, and to identify and overcome the challenges of achieving their vision. 

Every participating student will develop the skills and mindset to change the world with a single idea. Working individually or in groups, students will choose one specific problem from our list and propose a unique and ingenious solution. The problems were set in partnership with Universities across the world.

So what problems will students solve?

Fly Me to the Moon in partnership with Imperial College London

Students will consider what human life on the moon could entail, thinking about how we could sustainably deliver or gather the resources for human life outside Earth.

Eat to Save the Planet in partnership with University of Southampton

Diet and food production is a huge part of our impact on the planet, so students will explore different future food sources and ways of sustaining humans on Earth.

Unboxing Sustainably in partnership with The University of Bath

On Sustainability450, students will think about the impact packaging and shipping has on our planet, and build new types of packaging that could make shipping more sustainable and efficient.

Building Better in partnership with King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang

Students will consider our built environment and think about how new materials and building methods might enable a more green and resilient future. 

The Green, Green Grass of Home in partnership with Asia Institute of Technology

Students will think about urban greening, the process of making our cities, and our planet, greener, more sustainable places to live and work in.

Students can present their ideas and solutions through drawings, experiments, designs, programming, robotics or any other media and platform. The goal is to bring as many innovative and creative solutions to the table as possible! A hybrid finals day will be held in Harrow School in the UK on 10 March, with UK schools joining on site, and the international schools attending virtually.

Commenting on the partnership, 8billionideas CEO David Harkin said: 

'As you can imagine, we're beyond excited to be working with all of the Harrow-branded schools across the world to run the Sustainability450 competition. For the first time in 450 years, every student in the Harrow Family of Schools has been given the opportunity to work on real issues that some of the top Universities in the world are trying to solve. We can't wait to see how the students tackle these challenges and help the planet in the coming months. It's a fantastic collaboration between 8billionideas and the Harrow Family of Schools. It's also wonderful to build on our strategic work that we've been delivering at Harrow International School Hong Kong and Harrow International School Bangkok for a number of years.'