Wege Prize winners in the past few years included African students with a charcoal-cooling concept that slashes post-harvest losses for vegetable farmers, U.S. students with an innovative wastewater treatment technique to extract raw materials for reuse and Canadian students addressing the issue of e-waste by extracting valuable rare-earth elements.

About Wege Prize 2025

Organized by the Wege Center for Sustainable Design at the Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, Wege Prize is an annual competition that ignites game-changing solutions for the future by inspiring college and university students worldwide to collaborate in teams across institutional, disciplinary and cultural boundaries to redesign products and systems for a more circular economy.

With the support of The Wege Foundation, Wege Prize has advanced students’ work worldwide for a more sustainable future since 2013. The competition’s multidisciplinary, five-person teams identify a “wicked problem” to address and develop a compelling solution — products, services, systems and more — that builds on core principles of the circular economy by:

• Helping to accelerate the transition to a circular economy and a shift towards renewables.
• Providing unique value and exploring untapped potential through innovation.
• Demonstrating the potential for marketability, profitability and financial sustainability.
• Exhibiting research, user consideration and affected communities in all aspects of the solution’s design.

During the nine-month process, five-person teams compete to advance through the competition’s four phases, growing their ideas from informal proposals into real-world solutions informed by research, market analysis, prototyping and testing. At each phase, direct feedback from experts in sustainable business, design, the circular economy, materials and more help the teams strengthen their ideas for real-world applications. Then, five selected finalist teams will present their game-changing ideas next May, with each of the winning teams sharing in the competition’s $65,000 prize pool.

Last year, Wege Prize encompassed an initial pool of 58 competing teams in varied academic disciplines representing 38 countries across five continents. Apply at www.wegeprize.org/apply.

By collaborating, designing, planning and testing, the teams’ winning solutions earn wide attention in the news media and are recognized by their institutions.