3 November 2010: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced the winners of the 2010 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development.

The SEED Award is the flagship programme of the SEED Initiative, a partnership founded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UNEP and IUCN. The international award recognizes innovation in local, environmentally-responsible and sustainable entrepreneurship. The 2010 SEED Awards focused on initiatives from South Africa, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal. The 30 winning local initiatives include: Manufacture and Popularization of Biomass Briquettes in Burkina Faso; SolSource, a satellite dish-shaped solar device with removable modules that turns its own waste heat into electricity or stores it for later use in China; Bosque Humedo Biodiverso in Columbia that uses fruit and pulp as ingredients for the local cosmetics and food industries, to avoid deforestation; production and distribution of pressurized biogas in gas cylinders in Rwanda; and micro-power economy for rural electrification for off-grid renewable resources in Senegal. [UNEP Press Release]