Prince Charles joins forces with iPhone designer to solve climate problems like burping cows
The Prince of Wales has joined forces with the designer of the iPhone in a bid to create innovative solutions to climate problems such as burping cows.
He said “we will all need to play our part” as he announced a new competition for students of the Royal College of Art to create ideas that will provide “credible and sustainable solutions” to the climate crisis.
The project is part of Prince Charles’s Terra Carta initiative, which is targeted at business investment in climate solutions, and is in collaboration with Sir Jony Ive, the RCA chancellor, and former chief design officer at Apple, where he was responsible for the development of the iPhone.
RCA students will be invited to submit their designs in the run up to the international climate conference Cop26, where a shortlist will be announced.
The project is intended to speed up what can often be long lead times between innovation and a readily available product.
The Prince of Wales said: “Small ideas can have a big impact if they are supported with the right design, science and engineering and that is the key idea behind today’s Terra Carta Design Lab.
“We only have 100 days until COP26, the big UN conference in Glasgow to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis, and we will all need to play our part, old and young, if we are to change how we look after the Earth, making it sustainable for Nature, People and Planet.”
Previous inventions by RCA graduates have included the Zelp, a device worn over the nose of a cow which neutralises the methane emissions from their burps, a major contributor to greenhouse gases.
Sir Jony Ive, Chancellor of the Royal College of Art, said: “I’m incredibly proud to be part of the Terra Carta Design Lab founded by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales.
“It's a visionary and imaginative way of helping address the world's increasingly urgent environmental problems.”
