COJK is pleased to have been a sponsor of the University of Washington’s annual Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge. The competition, which challenges interdisciplinary student teams to identify significant environmental problems and to develop practical and innovative solutions, concluded on March 31, 2022. Each team designed and built a prototype directed to their solution and created a business plan demonstrating commercial viability. The business plans and prototypes were pitched to a group of judges to compete for seed money for implementing the plan. COJK attorneys Mark Bailey, Taylor Fairchild, Leron Vandsburger, and Kyle Yarberry participated as judges.

Winners included team Catalytic Carbon, who won the $15,000 Grand Prize for their new recycling process that transforms plastic waste into carbon nanotubes and reusable hydrogen gas. Catalytic Carbon also took home the Clean Energy Prize of $5,000, which is sponsored by the UW Clean Energy Institute. The $10,000 Second Place Prize went to team Just Right Bite for their suite of pet food products that uses insects as a sustainable protein base. The Third Place Prize of $5,000 went to team Arctic Biotech Oath for their “biomining” process that aims to sustainably extract rare earth elements using microorganisms.

To learn more about the winners, please click here.