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Three entrepreneurs from India, Kenya and the United States have been awarded the UN Environment Programme’s 2025 Young Champions of the Earth prize.
Their ventures offer sustainable leather from banana waste, biodegradable packaging from invasive plants and compact water reuse systems.
Three young entrepreneurs from India, Kenya and the United States have been named winners of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2025 Young Champions of the Earth award, announced in Nairobi, Kenya on September 23, 2025.
The annual prize recognises individuals under 30 for pioneering solutions to the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges. Each winner receives $20,000 in seed funding, mentoring and access to a global platform to scale their ideas.
This year’s awardees are:
Jinali Mody (28, India), founder of Banofi Leather, which produces leather alternatives from banana crop waste. The women-led company aims to reduce the fast fashion industry’s environmental footprint by cutting water use, toxic waste and carbon emissions compared with conventional leather.
Joseph Nguthiru (27, Kenya), whose company HyaPak transforms the invasive water hyacinth in Lake Naivasha into biodegradable packaging bags and seedling wrappers, replacing single-use plastics.
Noemi Florea (24, US), founder of Cycleau, a compact greywater reuse system that retrofits under sinks, showers and laundry units to convert wastewater into drinking water, with significantly lower energy use than existing systems.
Inger Andersen, UNEP’s executive director, in a statement praised the winners’ contributions to tackling what she described as the “triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste”.
The Young Champions programme, launched in 2017, was relaunched this year in partnership with American cleantech executive Chris Kemper, who also co-founded Planet A, a YouTube channel to drive environmental awareness. The three winners will compete on September 24, 2025 in the first-ever Planet A pitch competition, with the chance to win an additional $100,000 business growth grant and a potential $1 million seed investment.
Since its inception, the Young Champions award has honoured 30 innovators worldwide. “These three leaders stood out for their passion, drive, execution and innovation,” said Kemper in the statement.
