E-Idea

E-idea is an innovative programme co-developed and launched in 2011 by the British Council and Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) that funds and mentors young eco-entrepreneurs in Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Chosen through a competition, the eco-entrepreneurs receive technical, marketing, and financial support as well as international training, networking opportunities and access to LRQA’s global business network of 60,000 clients to gain the leadership, business, project management, fundraising and communications skills they will need to bring their E-ideas to fruition.

Their creative projects address some of the biggest environmental challenges in the region. These include mitigating the ecological damage caused by mining in Indonesia, improving water quality in Vietnam and speeding up the growth of mangrove forests in Thailand.

In Tokyo, an E-idea winner is commercialising sleek hand-cranked power generators for mobile devices while in Shanghai a counterpart is reducing heat, smog and energy consumption by installing gardens, solar panels and rainwater collection systems on rooftops in her concrete-laden metropolis.

In October 2011, the E-idea winners joined representatives from government, NGOs, academia and the private sector at an E-idea summit in Indonesia, where they received training, staged a public event and launched the E-idea Network, which promotes entrepreneurial solutions to real-life sustainability challenges and encourages practising and aspiring eco-entrepreneurs to share ideas and success stories with the general public.