Placing a spotlight on a key issue each year, the Challenge provides an important opportunity for students, designers, engineers, and innovators to look across broad sectors – across government, research, NGO, business and education to conceptualise, develop and test ideas that demonstrate the value of design, while tangibly addressing a pressing social need.

For 2018, the NGV set the theme "Waste Challenge" and invited design professionals and students to tackle one of the great challenges of our time – waste.

The winner of the professional category is Studio Periscope for Rollie, a hamster wheel-like playground structure that uses a ‘hot’ composting system to convert food waste into a resource and reduces the release of methane. Maddison Ryder is the winner of the tertiary category with Lettuce Eat, a series of single-use plates made from waste Iceberg Lettuce that are immediately biodegradable. The student category winner is the Mill Park Library Makers Club with Robot Walking School Bus, a robot designed to pick up students from their homes and take them to school, as well as carry organic waste that the children bring out from their homes.