Ethical Consumer
  1. You are in:
  2. Home
  3. Campaigns & Boycotts
  4. Lush Spring Prize

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.

Shortlist for LUSH Spring Prize 2023

73 projects from around the world have been shortlisted for the £236,000 Lush Spring Prize for environmental and social regeneration.

The 2023 Lush Spring Prize received over 350 applications. These were whittled down to a shortlist of 73 during midwinter 2022. Over 40 countries are represented in the final shortlist with applications from every continent except Antarctica.

The shortlist is diverse, covering multiple bioregions and demonstrating many different approaches to regenerative design and work. These can all be explored on the Spring Prize website.

2023 Prize categories

The 2023 Lush Spring Prize will award prizes across 4 different Spring Prize categories, plus two additional collaborative prizes:

  • Intentional award
  • Young award
  • Established award
  • Influence award
  • Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award (collaborative) (Run in partnership with Be The Earth Foundation)
  • Permaculture Magazine Award (collaborative) (Run in partnership with Permaculture Magazine)

The Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award and the Permaculture Magazine Award are separately funded and have their own judging panels. For each of these two awards, prize recipients share a prize fund of at least £10,000.

What is regeneration?

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 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 £820,000 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.

The 2021 Spring Prize Awards

The 2021 LUSH Spring Prize received over 400 applications. The prize saw a 61% increase in reach, with applications being submitted by inspiring projects spanning 81 different countries and every continent except Antarctica.

In October 2021, 20 prizes were awarded during a week long programme of online events, celebrating the work of regenerative practitioners all over the world.

You can watch the opening awards ceremony on YouTube on the Ethical Consumer channel.

The 20 prize recipients of the 2021 LUSH Spring Prize can be found on the Spring Prize website.

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 are being broadcast from 17th November 2021 - find out more from their website and also the podcast link.

Also in this section

Also of interest

We always check the ethics of our advertisers