Design and build a technology that improves access to clean water somewhere on the globe.
As a team, choose a clean water issue to address either in Vermont or somewhere around the world, and build a prototype or a full scale model that addresses that problem, without fossil fuels. Your technology must be powered by solar energy and improve human health, ecosystem stability, agriculture or climate change resilience through increasing access to clean water. (We provide the solar panel.)
Contact Email: challenge@greenwayinstitute.org
Possible projects could
- Prevent farm waste from polluting and eutrifying a freshwater body
- Expand clean water access in a community to improve health and sanitation
- Design a solar-powered water system for an off-grid camp
- Design a system around hydroelectric dams to minimize disturbance of aquatic ecosystems
- Filter and reuse greywater, to mitigate the impacts of water shortage
- Or, solve any other clean water issue
Challenge Timeline
- December 1: Announcement of Challenge, Greenway Team available to consult with student teams.
- December 20: Deadline for teams to submit a letter of intent to participate. Greenway and teams may confer on the proposal by phone or zoom (to be scheduled).
- December 20: Early bird deadline: Teams will submit a design proposal. Greenway appreciates early proposals and will respond in the order they are received.
- January 17, 2022: Final deadline for proposals.
- February 7: Deadline by which Greenway will respond to all teams and work with teams to schedule pick up of panels and notification of funding for budgets.
- From January to May, teams can consult, as needed, with a Greenway-provided mentor, typically once a month. (Note: participants may also want to participate in the VT SBDC’s 2022 Virtual Entrepreneurship Day.)
- March 28: Submit a brief progress report to Greenway, updating on progress and identifying any engineering challenges to be resolved, if any.
- May 1: Sustainability Challenge: Demonstration Day with panels of experts. (At Windsor Technology Park or Norwich Technologies site in Windsor or Hartland, TBD).