NASA, USAID, Department of State, and NIKE joined together to form LAUNCH in an effort to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to global challenges through a series of forums.
LAUNCH is a global initiative to identify and support the innovative work poised to contribute to a sustainable future and accelerate solutions to meet urgent challenges facing our society. It searches for visionaries, whose world-class ideas, technologies or programs show great promise for making tangible impacts on society.
In March of 2012, IEE Executive Director Edward Church was invited to participate in the LAUNCH Big Think on processes, projects and products to help us move Beyond Waste. Some of Ed’s comments were posted by LAUNCH on their website. The goal of the LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Challenge is to identify “game changing” innovations that have the potential to transform the current waste management systems and practices to ones focused on minimizing waste and/or transforming waste into new products. Ed Church was also invited to participate as a Council member at the Forum for Beyond Waste in which the innovations were presented July 20-22 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.