NASA, Partners Announce Launch: Beyond Waste Innovators

July 20, 2012

Joshua Buck
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
jbuck@nasa.gov

Priscilla Vega
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-1357
priscilla.r.vega@jpl.nasa.gov


RELEASE: 12-244

NASA, PARTNERS ANNOUNCE LAUNCH: BEYOND WASTE INNOVATORS



PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), the State Department and Nike Inc. opened the
fourth installment of the LAUNCH initiative Friday.

This year's forum, which is being held at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is called LAUNCH: Beyond Waste. It
aims to identify and accelerate solutions in waste management, an
immediate issue for astronauts aboard the International Space
Station, as well as people around the world. The forum runs through
Sunday, July 22.

The LAUNCH program identifies innovations poised to create
transformational change in critical sustainability issues, connects
LAUNCH innovators to leaders and advisors, and provides resources and
guidance to accelerate the implementation of the technologies,
businesses and programs.

For NASA, LAUNCH draws parallels between resource challenges humans
face aboard the space station and on Earth. With no natural resources
in the hostile environment of space, astronauts must generate,
collect, store, conserve, recycle and manage their resources wisely.
LAUNCH offers NASA's problem-solving expertise to crucial
conversations on sustainability-related topics with innovative
problem solvers from around the world. It enables the agency to
promote emerging, transformative technology to sustain and enrich the
quality of life on Earth. The engineering approaches needed to solve
many of the development challenges facing Earth are similar to those
needed to overcome the challenges of long-duration human missions
beyond low Earth orbit.

The innovators were chosen for this forum because of their
groundbreaking technologies and programs that address a broad range
of waste issues, including waste-to-energy; eWaste, which includes
discarded electrical or electronic devices; upcycling, the process of
using waste to create new materials; recycling; agricultural waste
and conservation; medical waste; sustainable chemicals and materials;
and improved sanitation.

The LAUNCH innovator organizations are listed below.
-- Attero Recycling (India): Nitin Gupta - India's leading provider of
end-to-end electronic and electrical goods e-Waste management
services.
-- Goonj (India): Anshu Goonj - A grassroots Indian non-governmental
organization focused on transforming and revaluing clothing and
textiles waste by working on these issues directly at the community
level.
-- Kiverdi (US): Lisa Dyson - Provider of a bioprocess that recycles
waste carbon into sustainable oils and chemicals for a wide variety
of applications such as biomaterials, detergents, and fuel additives.

-- Pylantis (US/Japan) Jeff Toolan - An advanced biomaterials
manufacturing company whose non-toxic, biomass-based materials
replace traditional plastics in a variety of applications.
-- re:char (US/Kenya): Jason Aramburu - A leading developer and
provider of biochar, a carbon-negative charcoal that can be used as a
charcoal substitute and as a powerful soil amendment which boosts
crop yields.
-- Recyclematch (US): Brooke Farrell - An online global marketplace
for recyclables and waste byproducts for the more than $500 billion
market in materials trading.
-- Sanergy (US/Kenya): Joseph Atnafu - A provider of sanitation
infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya, and of fertilizer and electricity
from its byproducts.
-- SeAB (United Kingdom): Sandra Sassow - A renewable energy and
waste-to-energy company that provides compact, easy to install
anaerobic digesters, a scalable solution for addressing food waste
and other bio wastes directly at the site.
-- SIRUM (US): Kiah Williams - Provider of a technology platform that
manages donations of surplus medicines, with the ultimate goal of
zero medical waste.

During the 3-day forum, LAUNCH innovators will discuss their most
pressing business and program issues with LAUNCH Council members, who
represent the business, waste management, investment, international
development, policy, engineering, science, communications and
sustainability sectors. The sessions are designed to identify key
challenges and opportunities for the entrepreneurs' innovations in an
effort to accelerate more rapidly their solutions toward even greater
real world impact.
NASA, USAID, Nike Inc. and the State Department are LAUNCH founding
partners. Additional partners for LAUNCH: Beyond Waste include are
the Office of Naval Research, Vestergaard Frandsen, IDEO, a design
and innovation consulting firm, and Architecture for Humanity.

The partners all contributed to planning the forum, selecting
innovators and recruiting other event participants. A list of the
innovators and innovations will be available online before the forum
at:

http://www.launch.org

The public may access and engage in the Launch: Beyond Waste
conversation online through MindMapr at:

http://mindmapr.nasa.gov

A link to live video of the conference will be on UStream at 10 a.m.
PDT (1 p.m. EDT) July 20 at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-educational

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov


-end-



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