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Lush Spring Prize

Zicä Pires Silva - founder of AAQ Agentes Agroflorestais Quilombolas, Brazil
Zicä Pires Silva - founder of 2018 winners AAQ Agentes Agroflorestais Quilombolas, Brazil.

The Lush Spring Prize comprises of a biennial £200,000+ prize fund and other support activities, to build capacity for those repairing the earth’s damaged systems.

It is for groups, organisations, enterprises or networks that are working to revive damaged social and natural environments, and who want to share what they are doing to inspire and inform others. This process of reviving or healing is often referred to as regeneration.

Lush Spring Prize 2025 winners

58 projects from around the world were shortlisted for the £250,000 Lush Spring Prize for environmental and social regeneration.

The 2025 Lush Spring Prize received over 600 applications, almost double the amount of the 2023 prize cycle. These have been whittled down to a shortlist of 58 individual applications that cover the following categories, based on either the age or focus of the organisation:

  • Intentional Award; part supported by the Dixon Foundation
  • Young and Established Awards
  • The Permaculture Magazine Award; run in partnership with the Permaculture Magazine
  • Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom Award; run in partnership with Be The Earth Foundation and The Savitri Trust.

2025 Award winners

19 recipients were announced during a celebratory event held in Dorset (UK) where the Lush Cosmetics company is headquartered. The event was attended by prize recipients, Spring Prize judges, Lush staff, press, funders and other regenerative practitioners.

The winning projects can be explored on the Spring Prize website.

The award ceremony can be watched on Lush's YouTube channel.

Diversity and common themes in Lush Spring Prize shortlist 2025

The shortlist was diverse, covering multiple bioregions and demonstrating many different approaches to regenerative design and work. Over 30 countries were represented in the final shortlist with applications from every continent (except Antarctica), and some countries, such as Japan, Zambia, and Myanmar, being represented on the shortlist for the first time. All shortlisted projects can be explored on the Spring Prize website.

Many shortlisted projects operate from the grassroots, are community-led and, in many cases, women-led. Despite many working on a relatively small scale, as a whole they respond to global challenges and their ripple effects, e.g. the climate and wider ecological emergency, international conflicts, and an exploitative and unstable global economy.

Applicants in Palestine, Lebanon, and Ukraine are directly impacted and responding to extreme violence, occupation, and invasion, and many others are impacted by internal conflicts within their countries or regions. The Russian war in Ukraine continues to have devastating impacts on the food security of communities across Africa, particularly those already experiencing displacement and climate impacts.

Indigenous groups living across the Amazon bioregion are on the frontlines defending rainforests from fossil fuel and other extractive industries, while many organisations across the world are using regenerative practices to build health and resilience in the face of the climate crises and the impacts that are already being felt.

Despite these huge challenges every project on the shortlist is demonstrating an alternative to climate disaster, to ecological breakdown, to conflict, and to inequality. Together they offer a story of courage, hope, and holistic practical action. They highlight how the regenerative movement continues to cultivate long-term future goals whilst also stepping up to meet urgent frontline needs.

Lush Spring Prize review

Imag of candle burning and words '5 year review Lush Spring Prize'

As a partner of the Lush Spring Prize, Ethical Consumer has just published a five year review of the project. This shares key learnings from a global community of prize recipients and reflects on how the Spring Prize has progressed its original five aims and evolved in the process.

The report also suggests key recommendations for other funders and the spring prize going forwards, to increase the flow of money, other resources, and support into regenerative projects and ways of working.

Read the review on the Spring Prize website. 

If you are interested in learning more or collaborating around the development of the Spring Prize and any of review's recommendations, please email the Spring Prize coordination team at: lushspringprize@gmail.com 

Information about Spring Prize recipients can be found on the Spring Prize website.

What does the Lush Spring Prize have to do with regeneration?

People all over the world are developing ways to live in harmony with nature and each other. They are generating renewable resources, restoring ecosystems, nurturing solidarity and building health, wholeness and resilience. They are bringing life back to damaged land and oceans.

The Lush Spring Prize is here to support these regeneration movements.

Regeneration can mean a lot of different things to different people. By regeneration we mean systems and practices that take a ‘holistic’ approach to solving environmental, social and economic problems; aiming to restore health, wholeness and resilience.

The Lush Spring Prize looks for projects that are actively contributing to the health of all the systems they are part of.

As well as helping to restore the natural systems in the place the project is based, projects should be nurturing the wellbeing of all their workers, the capacity of the community around them, and the networks they are connected to.

The Lush Spring Prize seeks projects that are aware of the challenges they face, that are building the capacity of their own organisation to address these challenges, improve and evolve.

Finally, projects should be sharing their experience so that others can learn from their work, adapt the knowledge to their own situations in doing so, support the wider regenerative movement.

What is regeneration?

What is the Lush Spring Prize?

Launched in 2017, the Lush Spring Prize celebrates groups working toward eco-social regeneration. It is a joint venture between LUSH Cosmetics and Ethical Consumer, and has distributed more than £1 million to date.

The LUSH Spring Prize was set up to support ‘regenerative’ projects – those that go beyond sustainability by taking holistic approaches to building the health of ecology, economy and social systems. It seeks to support those who are leaving the world lusher than they found it, and are actively restoring all the systems they are part of.

By supporting regenerative projects the Spring Prize hopes to raise the profile of the movement as a whole to inspire more individuals, groups, communities, funders, media platforms and businesses to start engaging with regenerative processes. 

People all over the world are developing and remembering ways to live in cooperation with nature and each other. They are resisting further damage, restoring ecosystems, generating renewable resources, nurturing solidarity and building health, wholeness and resilience.

The Lush Spring Prize supports and celebrates their work through:

  • A biennial £200,000+ prize fund. This is open to communities, organisations and businesses from the Intentional stage, through to Young and Established organisations, and Influencers.     
  • Events that bring people together to share their skills and experience.
  • Publicity to raise awareness of regeneration and its potential to heal damaged systems.

Previous Spring Prize winners are listed on the Spring Prize website alongside shortlisted projects. They demonstrate the variety of approaches that can be taken to create a more regenerative society, from restoring degraded landscapes to creating platforms that give a voice to marginalised communities.

Four people in garden
Education for Climate Action for Peace (E4CAP), winner of the Young Project 2021

Podcasts by Untelevised

A partnership between Lush Spring Prize and Untelevised has led to a podcast series of interviews with Spring Prize judges, projects, shortlisted projects etc.

These podcasts were broadcast from November 2021 - find out more from their list of podcast links.

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