Slovak student Anna Podmanická from the Juraj Hronec Gymnasium in Bratislava and Czech student Tomáš Čermák from the Biskupské Gymnasium Hradec Králové succeeded in the prestigious The Earth Prize ,,Europe” 2025 the prestigious award for their innovative project – a water purification plant that uses the power of light and plasma to remove pollutants. In addition to purifying water, the project also offers new solutions in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Young secondary school students have scored a European success in the prestigious The Earth Prize ,,Europe” 2025 competition with an original invention – a filtering device they called PURA. Their innovative approach was hailed as pioneering by the jury. This project aims to bring clean and safe water to as much of the world as possible.

The pioneering water purification solution is a combination of two different approaches – Tomas’s work with cold plasma aimed at destroying pollutants and antibiotic-resistant bacteria and Annka’s research into water purification by photocatalysis. The effectiveness of plasma in water purification has already been demonstrated, and photocatalysis has potential. The use of light energy, such as sunlight, stimulates reactions that break down harmful organic pollutants and damage the cell walls of micro-organisms such as bacteria. Young high school students are the first to combine these two types of research into one product.

As part of the prestigious award, the students also received $12,500 (more than €11,400) to continue developing the project, through which they will be able to work on a larger prototype that will be able to filter more water. According to Tomáš, they can currently process millilitres to litres of water and would like to get to the tens of litres level. In the future, they would like to be able to use their technology in wastewater treatment plants.

Kontext

The Earth Prize is the world’s largest environmental competition for young people, aiming to inspire and empower the next generation of environmental leaders and innovators, and to create a global platform to share their solutions. The competition has seven regional winners – from Oceania, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, North America and Central and South America. On Earth Day, April 22, the global winners of The Earth Prize will be announced. They will be decided by the public and voting will be open on the website from 13 to 22 April.

More information and resources:

• Euronews: Meet the teen duo that won this year’s Earth Prize Europe with their groundbreaking clean water tech
• The Earth prize 2025 Scholars
• Európske noviny: Mladá Slovenka a Čech získali európsku cenu za čistiareň vody
• JOJ: Súťaž The Earth Prize ovládla Slovenka a Čech. Zvíťazili s revolučnou čističkou vody
• Dobré noviny: Mladá Slovenka a Čech získali prestížnu cenu. Prišli na to, ako vyčistiť vodu od antibiotík a baktérií