Kaika Energy team members Sophia Taing, Regan Gilchrist, Kate Shaw, Deanna Teremoana, Jo Hall and Paige Gilder snapped up the Unitec Award for Enterprising Technology, as well as the Xero Award for Thinking Big, at the national awards ceremony in Wellington last night.
Team supervisor and Kaikorai Valley College teacher Peter Dodds said they were delighted with the success.
For the past year, they have been collecting and converting food waste such as rotten apples, mouldy bread and stinky yoghurt into biofuel and liquid fertiliser using an anaerobic digester.
The idea was inspired by research that shows almost $900million worth of food waste was thrown away in New Zealand each year, and the Kaika Energy team came up with a better use for it.
Success came in the form of fertiliser sales at farmers' markets in the local community, and it is hoped the biofuel can be used to help generate electricity and heat at Kaikorai Valley College in the future.
Earlier this year, Kaika Energy won the Otago Young Enterprise Scheme regional excellence in business award, and was named a finalist in the Young New Zealand Innovator of the Year category at the New Zealand Innovators Awards.
Young Enterprise Trust chief executive Terry Shubkin said the team ‘‘wowed'' the judges from both the Young Enterprise Scheme and the New Zealand Innovators awards panels with their innovation, initiative and commitment.
‘‘The work that Kaika Energy have done this year is truly outstanding in multiple ways.
‘‘Not only does their business model address the very real and increasing issue of what needs to be done with food waste and resources, but they also display the thinking and motivation that this country needs, to continue to be innovative with these types of issues.
‘‘Kaika Energy have demonstrated that age is no barrier to helping solve the environmental issues of today.''
Kaika Energy was one of more 600 companies (more than 3000 pupils) to participate in this year's Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme.
It has been running in New Zealand schools for nearly 35 years.
