Creating a waste-free future: Mexican social enterprise wins Nestlé Creating Shared Value Prize

Promesa, a Mexico City-based social enterprise focusing on the education of youth to combat the global waste challenge, is the overall winner of Nestlé’s 2021 Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize.

The CSV Prize has been running for over 10 years and has identified multiple initiatives for some of today’s most critical environmental and social issues around the world. This year’s competition, conducted in partnership with the non-profit organization, Ashoka, was entitled ’How do we create a waste-free future?’. It aimed to identify and award innovative solutions with a system-change approach and a strong growth potential, or a replicable model for other social, cultural or geographical settings. These initiatives will help accelerate Nestlé’s vision of creating a waste-free future, closing the loop on packaging waste and finding alternative packaging solutions.

“Nestlé announced last year that it would intensify its sustainable packaging journey,” said Rob Cameron, Nestlé’s Global Head of Public Affairs. “Since then, we have rolled out many new recyclable materials, scaled up reuse and refill options and sought out ways to raise awareness of and support consumers in the appropriate handling of waste. Promesa is a great example of how educating consumers and providing them with simple ways to recycle can have a big impact on reducing waste.”

With its network of 168,000 active students in 500 schools, Promesa has recycled over 3,000 metric tons of waste in the last two years, preventing the release of over 5.5 million metric tons of CO2 that would have come from landfills. Nestlé Mexico will now partner with Promesa to include it in its coffee capsule collection strategy and amplify its capsule recycling campaign from Promesa’s web portal.

“Education is the engine to solve the environmental challenges of today and of the future,” said Promesa co-founder Julio Alvarez. “The CSV Prize is a great way for responsible companies and global changemakers to co-create.”

There were nearly 200 initiatives from over 60 countries who entered this year’s competition. Nestlé employees as well as Ashoka representatives were involved in assessing the projects and selecting the ten finalists. These finalists have benefitted from Ashoka’s online resources, mentoring program as well as from workshops with Nestlé employees to explore collaboration and co-creation opportunities with Nestlé.

The five winners, who were selected by the Nestlé CSV Council based on their innovativeness and potential to make a positive impact, have additionally received a cash prize to help them amplify their impact and scale up their solutions. This year’s other four specially commended winners included:

• DreamRider of Canada, a digital education platform for kids to learn about protecting the environment from superheroes
• Kudoti of South Africa, a digital network of recycling stakeholders facilitating the profitable and traceable buying and selling of recovered waste resources
• RecyGlo of Singapore, a business-to-business closed loop platform that facilitates refill stations, door-to-door delivery and waste collection services
• Ricron of India, a manufacturing start-up converting hard-to-recycle plastic waste into sustainable building materials

Find more information on the projects.