Spotted: Since Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced new packaging legislation in 2023, which banned the use of virgin PVC plastic for online retailers, e-commerce companies have been searching for alternative, sustainable solutions.
Taiwanese startup PackAge+ aims to fill this gap in the market with its circular packaging offering. In hopes of tackling the massive waste generated by e-commerce, the company rents out reusable and recyclable packaging to retailers, enabling them to reuse containers over 50 times. Instead of continually using virgin plastics, companies can rent out Package+’s boxes and bags, which are made from recycled plastic bottles. PackAge+ already works with over 70 e-commerce partners, including companies such as Aveda and Shopee.
After consumers from participating retailers receive their delivery, they return the containers, each of which has a unique ID that can be tracked, to dedicated return points across Taiwan for cleaning. These sites are located at FamilyMart stores and certain Carrefour and Watsons locations, along with various community residences.
Once returned, customers receive reward coupons and can track past returns on their dedicated LINE account, incentivising them to continue returning containers and facilitating a circular packaging economy. Because of the tech-enabled traceability, companies can also track the reusable packaging they use, and understand the emissions reductions they’ve achieved by transitioning to a circular model.
In a pre-series A funding round, the award-winning startup raised NT$52 million (around €1.5 million), with investments from Chinatrust Startup Investment Corporation, Chang Hwa Bank Startup Investment Corporation, and National Development Fund, among others. With this funding, PackAge+ aims to expand its services to food delivery, in-store pickup, and technology park material deliveries while using machine learning to create and inform its plans for an ‘optimal circular model’.
Springwise has spotted other innovations looking to make circular packaging more accessible, including a tracking app for takeaway food boxes and decentralised packaging cleaning hubs.
Written By: Lauryn Berry and Matilda Cox
Spotted: Agriculture production is both the largest user of water worldwide, and a major water polluter. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, climate-change-induced water shortages are expected to become more frequent. In addition, farmers in many regions are facing increasing competition for water due to rising urban population density and rapid growth of the energy and industry sectors.
One way to help farmers reduce water use, as well as water pollution, is to use only as much water as each plant needs, avoiding runoff and excess usage. To make this a reality, startup Treetoscope has developed a platform that integrates AI, weather data, satellite imagery, and other remote sensing technologies to provide real-time sap and water uptake data.
Treetoscope’s sensor uses a heat dissipation model to measure the movement of water (sap flow) within the xylem of trees and vines. The sensor detects the distortion of the heat field around the probe, which is directly related to the velocity of water movement. The irrigation management platform is unique and integrates with other weather data to provide growers with insights into irrigation management.
In September last year, the company announced additional investments to its latest seed funding round, bringing the total raised in this round to over $7 million (around €6.5 million), and total investments of $10 million (around €9.3 million), including grants from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Bird Foundation. The funds will be used for research and development and speeding up the expansion across North America and beyond.
Reducing water use in agriculture is also the subject of innovations such as seeds that are more resilient to water scarcity and AI-driven irrigation.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: Today, producing ammonia accounts for around 1.3 per cent of CO2 emissions from the world’s energy system, because the catalytic process requires extremely high temperatures and pressures that are normally achieved using fossil fuels. The vast majority of ammonia is used to create nitrogen fertilisers, making it a vitally important compound in global food production. Hoping to make it easier for farmers to produce ammonia cleanly is Danish startup NitroVolt.
The company has created a patent-pending “Nitrolyzer” that allows a previously carbon-producing process to become entirely carbon neutral and fossil free, with the only necessary inputs being green energy, water, and air. Within the Nitrolyzer, lithium salt is reduced to lithium metal, which then reacts with nitrogen to form nitrides. Hydrogen (which is produced by hydrolysis) can then react with nitrides to form ammonia. To make the process even more sustainable, the lithium can be reused again and again in the continuous reaction process.
Crucially, the Nitrolyzer was created to tackle the logistical challenges that farmers may face in accessing ammonia. The technology is modular and can therefore be installed wherever ammonia is needed, say on a farm or in a greenhouse. This means that farmers and growers can tailor production depending on their needs, and eliminate the costs and emissions associated with transporting fertiliser.
Recently, NitroVolt raised €750,000 in a pre-seed funding, which will be used to expand the team and help to scale the technology.
Fertilisers play an essential role in growing healthy crops and boosting food security, but currently industrial production methods are highly unsustainable. Luckily innovators are searching for alternatives, including the use of dog waste and seed coatings that reduce the need for fertilisers in the first place.
Written By: Archie Cox
Spotted: Almost 25 per cent of the energy produced worldwide is used to heat and cool homes and commercial buildings. And the process of generating this energy is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. District heating and cooling systems are one potential solution. These generate heat centrally and distribute it across a network of buildings in the same neighbourhood, which is more efficient than heating or cooling buildings individually. Usually, such systems use water to transfer heat, but now, Swiss cleantech startup ExerGo is using CO2 as an energy transfer fluid for its closed-loop system.
The CO2 is the basis of a thermal network powered by renewable resources and waste heat. By using liquid and vapour CO2 as a working fluid, the system increases energy transport efficiency over conventional water-based systems. This greater efficiency, in turn, allows for the use of small and more flexible piping, which can save up to 60 per cent in installation costs and time, while reducing noise and air pollution. ExerGo claims that its compact network can save up to 80 per cent in primary energy consumption over comparable fossil fuel-based systems.
In October last year, ExerGo won the European Heat Pump Association‘s Heat Pump City of the Year Award for the successful implementation of its technology in Sion, Switzerland.
Springwise has spotted other technologies that are helping to decarbonise the energy-intensive cooling and heating systems used around the world, including a heat pump that is powered by sound and affordable geothermal heating and cooling systems.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: Construction and demolition is responsible for more than a third of overall waste in the European Union. But now, British company Biohm is reducing this waste by helping the construction industry shift to a circular model.
The startup’s first product is insulation made from mycelium, the thread-like roots of fungi. The material is not only biodegradable, but outperforms typical foam insulation, having less thermal conductivity. It is also slower to burn than other types of insulation and, importantly, it can be composted at the end of its life and used to grow more insulation.
Biohm grows its mycelium by feeding it agricultural and food waste, making the final product carbon negative. The insulation is grown in the shape of a standard panel, then cured to form a strong and rigid material. This approach completely avoids the use of toxic chemicals and fossil fuels and the panels do not produce harmful dust when cut.
Springwise has spotted mycelium being used to replace other materials, including in fireproof building cladding, packaging, and even clothes.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: Shoppers are likely to become increasingly carbon-aware as climate change begins to bite. Already, one study has found that 69 per cent of global consumers feel that sustainability is more important to them than it was two years ago.
Dutch startup Greenswapp has developed an API that aggregates peer-reviewed Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) conducted by research institutes, universities, and think tanks, to display the carbon impact of individual products.
To do this, the company uses a machine learning algorithm to automatically match a product based on its barcode or product name to one of the thousands of product types in its database. It then further analyses the factors along the product lifecycle that cause carbon emissions to differ between versions of the same product made by different suppliers. It can even differentiate between different products made by the same supplier. For processed food, the technology separates out the ingredients it has in its database, calculates the carbon footprint for each, and then adds up the total.
Greenswapp’s technology can be used by supermarkets like Waitrose in several ways. First, it can be used to inform procurement decisions through integration with procurement and inventory management software. Second, it can be integrated into PoS systems to provide customers with the option to carbon offset their purchases.
Finally, it can be used in merchandising to create ‘carbon labels’ that nudge shoppers towards higher-margin sustainable products. At CES 2024, GreenSwapp demonstrated new technology to display climate impact through electronic shelf labels and PoS displays.
Springwise has spotted other companies that are empowering customers with transparent climate data for products, including traceable climate-positive t-shirts and an ESG product rating system.
Written By: Matthew Hempstead
Spotted: Small improvements in workplace productivity can have major financial implications for businesses. For example, one study by McKinsey found that the top-performing B2B sales organisations generate around 2.6 times more sales ROI than the worst-performing companies.
The question for businesses seeking improvement is how to identify the processes that make such a big difference. Capturing those lessons and making them replicable for use by other teams offers tantalising opportunities for productivity gains in a rapidly evolving workplace environment.
With all the attention it has received over the past 18 months, it is no surprise to find that AI is helping businesses with this challenge. Rhythms is a productivity startup that has created an AI model that identifies the working patterns of top-performing teams, both within an organisation and among the world’s high-flying companies. This model then informs an intelligent agent that enables users to adapt and personalise the identified ‘rhythms’ for use in their own teams.
The startup defines ‘internal rhythms’ as the underlying processes that drive every aspect of an organisation, arguing that these patterns are poorly understood and managed today, leading to uneven and unpredictable business performance and employee frustration.
The technology, which is due to launch this year, integrates with a business’s existing platforms and apps, analysing regular group activities such as retrospectives, business reviews, and meetings between business functions with the goal of uncovering data-driven insights into what is effective.
Springwise has spotted other ways to boost workplace productivity, including through smart office greening and an AI tool to speed up employee response times.
Written By: Keely Khoury
Spotted: How does a brand know what consumers want – the product that will be the ‘next big thing’? It is a question that has faced companies since the beginning of marketing. However, the advent of AI is leading to new opportunities for companies to get a much clearer idea of what customers will want next, and startup Ai Palette is making this even easier with its consumer packaged goods (CPG) platform.
Ai Palette claims its platform can figure out what snacks, drinks, beauty, and personal care products people will love before they even know it themselves. The technology blends predictive analytics, natural language processing, and computer vision to analyse more than 61 billion data points each month, including text, images, and emojis.
The company’s multilingual NLP engine can understand data in 18 different languages. Once a relevant trend has been spotted, brands can use the generative AI-led analysis to create product and marketing concepts and evaluate the concepts in near-real time to find the one that presents the best chance of being a best-seller.
To date, Ai Palette has raised $5.8 million in funding, including a recent Series A1 round. The funding will be used, in part, to further expand in the beauty and personal care and nutraceuticals markets. The company has also recently launched two new product lines — Concept Genie, which assists brands in swiftly generating new product concepts, and FoodGPT, an intuitive Gen AI conversational tool designed specifically for the food industry.
Finding new ideas for consumer packaged goods is just one of the many innovative uses for AI we have seen recently, along with making climate forecasts and detecting cancer.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: Aside from walking and cycling, sustainable transportation isn’t accessible for everyone. Hurdles like upfront costs, infrastructure, and availability can make eco-friendly mobility exclusive and difficult. Enter Bako Motors, a pioneering solar car startup that is looking to change this with its first model of e-tricycle.
The Bako B1 marks the company’s bold step into sustainable mobility, revolutionising urban transport as we know it. Tailored for last-mile delivery and small business needs, this electric tricycle boasts a built-in photovoltaic panel, granting up to 50 kilometres of emission-free travel daily.
The B1 showcases remarkable cost-efficiency, with operating expenses as low as $0.50 per 100 kilometres, and a substantial 150-kilometre range on a single charge, easily replenished via standard outlets. Boasting a sizeable cargo capacity of 2433 litres, capable of carrying up to 350 kilogrammes, the vehicle is an ideal choice for businesses. Boubaker Siala, CEO of Bako Motors, highlights its affordability, priced at just €4000, offering a compelling sustainable alternative to fossil-fuel vehicles.
To further advance its commitment to clean transportation, Bako Motors is set to release its second model, a four-wheeled EV targeted for last-mile deliveries.
Springwise has previously spotted other innovators using tricycles as a sustainable, last-mile delivery solution, including a mobility scooter that can be both pedal-driven or motorised and a startup providing solar-powered 3-wheelers to rural communities.
Written By: Georgia King
Spotted: Researchers predict that increased temperatures from climate change make it likely that some of the world’s most contagious viruses, such as Zika and dengue, will spread rapidly and widely, with one article highlighting that, “within the next century, nearly a billion people could face their first exposure to viral transmission in the worst-case scenario, mainly in Europe and high-elevation tropical and subtropical regions.”
The Wellcome Trust is providing £22.7 million in funding to 24 projects around the world in order to better prepare policymakers and governments for future scenarios of danger to public health. One of those projects is the University of Liverpool’s CLIMate SEnsitive DISease Forecasting Tool (CLIMSEDIS), which is being tested in the Horn of Africa. Led by Dr Louise Kelly-Hope from the University’s Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, the digital forecasting tool identifies climate combinations that are particularly risky for the spread of mosquito-borne disease.
Once a risk has been identified, the tool alerts users to the location and level of risk, allowing partner agencies and organisations to begin collaborating on the swiftest, most efficient means of containing the spread. The university team is working closely with partners from Ethiopia, Italy, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda to make the tool as easy as possible to use and to design the digital forecasts to be timely enough to be truly helpful in creating targeted rapid response interventions to halt the spread of a disease.
CLIMSEDIS is free to use and designed specifically to better represent the environmental health risks facing the often under-represented global south. Before the start of the project, Wellcome research found that only 37 tools were available worldwide “for climate-sensitive infectious disease (CSID) modelling” and most focused only on Europe and North America.
The projects will run for five years, with tool development an early focus of the project, which will be followed by scale up and use across communities and finally evaluation of effectiveness. All software will be open source to allow for future development needs and improvements.
From needle-free immunizations to 3D-printed vaccines, innovations in Springwise’s library highlight the diversity of efforts bringing healthcare to some of the world’s most at-risk environments and communities.
Written By: Keely Khoury