Spotted: Through creating, accepting and completing challenges, Applinka aims to bring young people together while simultaneously making the world a healthier place.
Through the Applinka app, users can challenge their friends to engage in environmental-friendly activities. The main idea is to help reduce air pollution in addition to promoting healthier, more active lifestyles. Challenges include riding a bike to work or school, planting trees, recycling and using public transportation.
After joining or creating a challenge, users are given a limited amount of time to complete a challenge. If the challenge is completed within the set time, the winner receives the bet’s reward from the other user.
The idea of the Applinka emerged during a Hackathon for the Balkans European Fund. One of the categories in the competition was “Go green”. Since then, Applinka has also won prizes from two different competitions.
Applinka’s founder, Endrit Rushiti, told Springwise that protecting the environment should also be fun. Rushiti further explained how Applinka “solves 3 big different problems in one mobile app: Saving the environment, making you healthier, and socialising you with people around the world.”
Spotted: A small herd of dairy cows is currently residing off-land along the banks of the Nieuwe Maas, a distributary of the Rhine River. Their home is a waterborne vessel in Rotterdam, Holland, that cost roughly €24 million to create.
The purpose of The Floating Farm is to promote a sustainable food cycle. The cows who live on the vessel are milked by robots, each producing up to 25 litres a day. The cows are fed with local vegetation that is recycled and delivered to the island via electric cars. Other robots clean up manure and recycle the waste into fertilizer.
The Floating Farm was developed by Minke and Peter van Wingerden after noticing how most urban areas devastated by natural disasters have trouble getting fresh food for days after the event. As storms become more severe, and drought becomes more common in agricultural zones, these moveable floating farms can expand production areas to lakes, rivers, and ports.
The milk produced by The Floating Farm can be found in about 23 Rotterdam retail markets. Production is underway to increase the number of cows each vessel can hold. Minke van Wingerden’s next step is to develop floating poultry and food plants. A few cities in Asia have inquired about the possibility of adapting this model to their own dairy industries.
Spotted: Automobiles that emit unhealthy exhaust fumes could soon be uncovered by an unmanned sensor that is currently in production. It is being developed by a team at Austria’s Graz University of Technology in conjunction with the European City Air Remote Emission Sensing (CARES) project.
When placed on the roadside, the sensor measures emission levels from each vehicle that passes by. The goal is to reduce emissions in cities and environmental zones in real-time without disrupting the flow of traffic.
The sensor looks like a tuning fork with two tines. The tines vibrate when exhaust particles from a vehicle pass between the tines. The particles in the exhaust create a vibration that leads to a sound. The higher the number of particles in the exhaust, the louder the sound will be, indicating higher unhealthy emissions.
The production team seeks to have the sensors available by the end of 2022. They will be installed in cities that are affiliated with CARES such as Milan, Prague, and Kraków. If combined with a camera that records the vehicle license plate information, owners that are found in violation of the emissions regulations could receive a ticket, have their vehicle seized, or be prohibited from entering the area.
Springwise has spotted other innovations in working to reduce automobile emissions, such as a smart tire that reduces air pollution and a subscription service that offers sustainable mobility options.