GOLD
Just a Drop & Africa Sand Dam Foundation – Sand Dams in Kenya: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience
Just a Drop is challenging climate change in Kenya through an ingenious nature-based solution: sand dams. By capturing water subsurface, these dams create decentralised green belts in arid landscapes, effectively reversing desertification. Our programme has reached and benefited almost 70,000 people, transforming ‘brown’ degraded land into localised carbon sinks that sequester up to 740 tonnes of carbon per dam.
Unlike traditional reservoirs, sand dams eliminate potent methane emissions and preserve Soil Organic Carbon by mitigating flash floods. This environmental restoration is matched by profound social co-benefits: an 88% increase in safe water access, a 400% rise in irrigated land, and the liberation of women from time poverty. Our community-led model ensures 100% sustainability. We don’t just provide safe water, we build 100-year, zero-maintenance climate engines that empower communities to thrive on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
GOLD
The Global FoodBanking Network – From Waste to Impact: Transforming Food Losses into Climate Gains
Across supply chains, half of global food loss occurs postharvest with the agriculture sector accounting for the highest rates of loss. To tackle the significant food loss occurring in the agricultural sector, The Global FoodBanking Network initiated From Waste to Impact in 2024 that equips food banks worldwide with skills and training to advance on-farm and postharvest surplus recovery while applying verified reporting to measure methane mitigated. The program brings together organic waste reduction efforts alongside robust methane measurement systems to create a comprehensive climate solution. In 2025 alone, the 11 implementing food banks recovered 193,000 tons of total food, served over 3.4 million people and avoided more than 188,000 metric tons of CO2e. This solution creates a virtuous cycle: more food recovered means more emissions avoided. Together, it nourishes people and the planet, offering a replicable model for climate-smart food recovery that delivers measurable environmental and social benefits globally.
SILVER
Hubbub & Co-Op – The Community Fridge Network
What began as a single fridge in 2016 has grown into a nationwide movement simultaneously tackling food waste and food insecurity. The Community Fridge Network (CFN), developed by Hubbub in partnership with Co-op, now operates 700+ community fridges across the UK – redistributing over 11,000 tonnes of surplus food in 2025 alone, equivalent to 25 million meals and 40,000 tonnes of CO₂e prevented.
Unlike food banks community fridges are open to all, avoiding means testing and stigma, making climate-friendly behaviour genuinely inclusive. Over 800,000 people benefit annually, with fridges evolving into warm spaces, community kitchens, and social hubs that tackle loneliness alongside food poverty.
With a 10:1 return on investment in some locations and evidence feeding into national food waste policy discussions, the CFN proves that community-led infrastructure can deliver environmental impact at scale, while building more resilient communities in the process.
BRONZE
DelAgua – Live Well Clean Cookstove Project
Cooking shouldn’t cost lives but across sub-Saharan Africa, it does. Nearly 900 million people still cook over open fires, burning wood that fuels deforestation, fills homes with toxic smoke, and women and girls bear the biggest burden of this. DelAgua’s Live Well programme tackles this head on. We have distributed over 2 million high quality, energy efficient cookstoves across Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, reaching more than 9.5 million people. Each stove cuts household wood use by 71%, slashing emissions and protecting forests. Women reclaim hours once spent gathering firewood. Children attend school more regularly and have more time to do homework and play. Over 10,000 community-based workers get an opportunity to earn extra income and gain skills. Fully funded by carbon finance and delivered in partnership with governments, Live Well proves that climate solutions can also be engines for gender equality, public health, and economic development and progress.
ONE-TO-WATCH
Digit-all – Digital Education for All
The climate crisis won’t be solved by this generation alone — it needs the next one, equipped with the digital and green skills that those most in need are missing out on.
But thanks to Digit<all>, there are ten-year-olds in Birmingham programming devices to track their youth club’s energy use, coding an alert system telling people to turn off lights. In Bradford, students built a wildfire risk alarm, sharing the process in a video that received 10,000 views. In Oxford, young girls gather air quality data and use it to campaign for traffic changes near their school. And in Wales, there are Scout leaders leading coding sessions in Welsh, using resources downloaded for free.
None of these people are climate activists. They’re examples of some of Digit<all>’s one million beneficiaries: ordinary people learning to code through our accessible, hands-on programmes — and building real environmental tools in the process.