Earthshot Prize winner's products used to serve match-day food at Villa Park

An Earthshot Prize winner's products are being used to serve match-day grub at Aston Villa Football club, all thanks to the Prince of Wales.

Prince William founded the prize to recognise sustainable projects, such as Notpla - a green packaging start-up founded in 2014.

Since the start of Aston Villa's season, burgers, hotdogs, and even chicken balti pies have been served up in cardboard containers featuring a seaweed derived coating, not a plastic film.

It means that the food packaging, which has also featured at fellow Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, can be recycled.

Pierre Paslier, co-founder and chief executive of Notpla, which in 2022 won the Build a Waste-Free World Earthshot category, said about William’s role in the trial at Villa: “He connected us, he made that connection happen.”

He said about Villa and Tottenham: “Two very first, significant trials that brought us to the attention of the catering companies that we could actually do something about reducing the production of their plastic waste.

“That’s been really exciting, to have a chance of being around the table and present for what we do, and now what’s really exciting is how do we turn those three, four stadiums into 40, 50 and this is what we’re hopefully announcing in the coming quarter".

William held his first Earthshot Prize awards ceremony at London's Alexandra Palace in 2021, with Boston hosting the event last year- an ambitious project which each year presents five category winners with £1 million each to scale up their environmental ideas.

This years Earthshot prize will be held in Singapore and aims to tackle illegal trade in animal parts. The Prince of Wales will be hoping that this years winner has as much of an impact as that seen at Villa Park this season.

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