Elena Baturina Announces the Winner of the Founder's Choice Award in an International Student Competition in Support of the UN's Sustainable Goals

"I chose to support PackZero because of their system multi-aspect approach to the immense problem of packaging waste. I believe the more aspects of an issue are taken on by the solution, the more efficient it is going to be. Yet I find the ambition and the thinking behind each of the finalist entries remarkable, and am deeply impressed with them. I am hoping that this competition will help drive more engagement with young designers from the SDG-focused businesses, state and public bodies. I am very excited to see how far these projects will evolve." - Elena Baturina, BE OPEN Founder.

In 2019, BE OPEN and Cumulus joined forces to hold an international competition to support the UN's SDG programme. Students of arts, design and architecture-related courses submitted works that demonstrate a design-oriented take on the problems of sustainability, wiser production and consumption called for in one of the SDGs. The project accumulated a total of 683 submissions from 44 countries.

The competition offered 4 more prizes: three main winners were selected by the international jury and awarded with €10,000, €6,000, €4,000 jointly by BE OPEN and Cumulus; online voting selected the winner of the Public Vote Award of €2,000. All the winners will attend the awards ceremony to present their ideas to a panel of academics, design professionals, sustainability experts.