In a bid to improve healthcare accessibility and energy disparity, four students from India have been named the Asia Winners of The Earth Prize 2025. Dhruv Chaudhary, Mithran Ladhania and Mridul Jain’s solution is a first-of-its-kind electricity-free refrigeration unit for medical supply transport, called ‘Thermavault’.
Aged 16 to 17, the students were inspired by their surroundings to create Thermavault. Coming from families with medical backgrounds, they witnessed firsthand the challenges of transporting vaccines to rural areas in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, conventional plastic-based insulation units generate significant waste, taking years to decompose.
To solve this, the team designed Thermavault - an electricity-free cooling unit for safely transporting medical supplies. Users simply add a reusable salt packet to water, triggering a cooling reaction that keeps supplies at the right temperature for up to 12 hours - something no other electricity-free system has achieved before. The design is both practical and sustainable: the reaction can be reused by boiling the water to recover the salts, and the outer casing is made from recyclable plastic.
Prototype design in production
Encouraged by positive feedback from hospitals, the team is using The Earth Prize funding to produce 200 units for testing and expand to 120 hospitals in their vicinity. With approximately 1.2 billion people worldwide lacking reliable electricity - severely limiting healthcare access - their solution holds significant potential to scale and benefit rural communities globally.
The team impressed The Earth Prize’s expert jury with their final pitch, having excelled in the programme’s incubation and mentorship phases, and will now receive $12.5K to scale up their solution further.
16-year-old Dhruv Chaudhary commented:
"We’re thrilled to receive The Earth Prize 2025 for Asia! Our electricity-free cooling solution was inspired by the challenges of delivering vaccines to rural areas, but we quickly realized it can be used for medical supplies in general. Backed by The Earth Prize, and armed with positive feedback from experts at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore and doctors alike, we’re excited to use the new funding to begin production and expand use in hospitals. Our goal is to save lives where electricity is scarce, no matter the location.”
The Earth Prize aims to empower the next generation with all the tools they need to develop their eco solutions for real life impact, including one-to-one mentoring, learning resources and funding of $100K for the winning teams to scale their solutions. Since 2021, The Earth Prize has reached over 15,000 young people across 160 countries and territories, and awarded $500K to the top teams.
Previous applicants have garnered global media attention in outlets such as Forbes, Business Insider, EuroNews, Positive.News and UN Today, and continue to scale their solutions after the competition has ended. For instance, team Delavo (Winners of The Earth Prize 2023), who invented a cutting-edge filter that recycles up to 90% of toxic laundry waste water, partnered with a national manufacturer and applied for a patent to make their solution a reality.
The Earth Prize was started by The Earth Foundation, a Swiss non-profit organization based in Geneva, as a way to empower and educate young people to tackle environmental challenges. As young people live through and observe extreme weather events such as the LA wildfires, many are mobilized to act - choosing to create solutions for our planet.
A recent study showed that 59% of youth and young adults are very or extremely worried about climate change, and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.
Peter McGarry, Founder of The Earth Foundation, commented on this year’s competition:
“The 2025 winners of The Earth Prize are a true testament to the boundless creativity and passion of today's youth. Their bold solutions tackle the most urgent environmental challenges with the power to transform our world. I invite everyone to engage with these remarkable ideas, support their implementation, and be inspired to take action in their own communities. Together, we can turn these promising innovations into global environmental solutions.”
Public voting for the Global Winner is now open! Cast your vote on The Earth Prize website until Tuesday, April 22 (Earth Day):
https://www.theearthprize.org/vote
