(L-R): Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; Gamal Albinsaid, Award Winner; HRH The Prince of Wales; Paul Polman, CEO Unilever

Gamal Albinsaid, the founder of waste-as-health insurance initiative, Garbage Clinical Insurance (GIC), has won the Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize.

HRH The Prince of Wales announced the winner of the award, which forms part of the inaugural Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepeneurs Awards 2013, at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Thursday (30 January), alongside Unilever CEO Paul Polman and Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

As the winner, 24-year old Albinsaid received €50,000 (£42,000) in financial support and a package of individually tailored mentoring (worth a reported €25,000).

Project details

Albinsaid was first chosen as one of seven finalists in November 2013, after judges recognised him for creating a ‘practical, tangible solution to help make sustainable living commonplace’.

Under the GIC programme, residents of Malang, Indonesia, can take organic and non-organic waste to a collection point near a health clinic to be processed and sold in return for healthcare.

Speaking at the dinner on Thursday, HRH The Prince of Wales commented: "I would like to give my warmest congratulations to Gamal Albinsaid for his marvellous initiative.

"This young leader has developed an initiative with the potential to disrupt the way in which community services are provided for the benefit of the area’s poorest people. Genuinely innovative, it tackles two problems at one time: the management and reuse of waste, and the provision of health insurance and health services to poor communities."

The other six finalists were also recognised for “applying their imagination to move away from the ‘take, make and dispose’ economic model and towards this much more circular, sustainable approach”, and for beating off competition from 500 applications across 90 countries.

They are:

• Anu Sridharan, 26 (India) for NextDrop - Water use optimisation and leakage tracking via a real-time data and messaging system;
• Blessing Mene, 26 (Nigeria) for Unfire - ‘Low-cost chicken-feed’ (using waste mango seed) for smallholder farmers;
• Surya Karki, 23 (Nepal) for Maya Universe Academy - Sustainable collective farming for rural Nepalese communities, with farm profits use to fund free schools;
• Isabel Medem, 28 (Peru) for X Runner - Waterless toilets in slums that converts waste into saleable compost'
• Curt Bowen, 26 (Guatemala) for Pigeonpea - Smallholder farmer crop solution for ‘natural, sustainable soil enrichment and greater income’; and
• Manuel Wichers, 26 (Mexico) for Ilumexico - Carbon-free renewable energy from solar lamp network plus micro-loans.

They each received cash prizes of €10,000 (£8,400) along with mentoring support worth an estimated €10,000.

Launched in partnership with Cambridge University, the international competition was designed to ‘inspire young people around the world to tackle environmental, social and health issues’.

The new programme will be launched ‘early in the summer of 2014’, with registration hosted on the Ashoka Changemakers platform.

Find out more about the Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepeneurs Awards.