You’ve probably heard of refurbished product marketplace Back Market and vertical farming superstar Infarm, which last year raised €110m and $170m respectively — but there are plenty more sustainability startups with high potential out there. New sustainable business models are slowly making a difference. From climate tech to micromobility to sustainable agriculture, these are the stories affecting all humankind.
Here’s a glimpse of the market 👀
🚀 Market Trends
TREND #1: Companies led the way with bold new climate commitments [Source]
TREND #2: Global investors adopting green investments [Source]
TREND #3: Water Action Takes Precedence [Source]
TREND #4: Climate risk gets real [Source]
TREND #5: Carbon zero is the economies’ new imperative [Source]
TREND #6: Supply chain action goes mainstream [Source]
TREND #7: Circular economy - moving from buzz to business [Source]
TREND #8: 5 sustainability trends impacting food retail [Source]
📊 Key metrics
The world of venture capital has seen huge changes over the past decade. Ten years ago, there were fewer than 20 known unicorns in the US; there are now over 2006. Annual investment of global venture capital has increased more than fivefold over the same period, rising to $264 billion by 2019. This investment has been dominated by the tech sector harnessing digital frontiers to disrupt traditional industries – including cloud computing, mobile apps, marketplaces, data platforms, machine learning and deep tech. It is an ecosystem that acts as the birthplace for innovation and brands that can shape the future of consumerism, sectors and markets.
🚗 The global micromobility market revenue was estimated to have a total size of over 2.55 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Approximately half of the revenue was generated from North America, the region which has seen the most growth and hence the biggest market among all the regions.
🍔 The worldwide food innovation platform ranges drastically. By 2022 the standard growths of food modernization promote are over $250.43 billion.
🌱 The Global agricultural industry market is estimated to be about $8.7 trillion according to the Plunkett Research estimate.
🏅 The demand for B Corp certification rose by 23 percent FY2020, signalling a global shift in business priorities.
🌋 Problem
🍔 Food production is ripping the living world apart. Fishing and farming are, by a long way, the greatest cause of extinction and loss of the diversity and abundance of wildlife. Farming is a major cause of climate breakdown, the biggest cause of river pollution, and a hefty source of air pollution (📺 You should watch the new Netflix documentary about Seaspiracy)
☀️ Climate continues to be a looming risk as global cooperation weakens. Climate change—to which no one is immune—continues to be a catastrophic risk. Although lockdowns worldwide caused global emissions to fall in the first half of 2020. [Source]
💧 Even though water isn't food, it's the most important nutrient that we put into our bodies. We could live 3 weeks without food, but we couldn't go more than 3 days without water. Our bodies are between 50 and 65% water. We need water to bathe, to grow our food, and simple survive. Just like the food we eat, we need to ask ourselves, the hard questions about the water we drink. What's the source of our water? (📺 You should watch the Netflix documentary Down to Earth by Zac Effron)
🙌 (Not-all of the) Top actors
🎁 Future Tech Lab 🎁
🚗 The electric vehicle company, plans to go public soon at a valuation of $13bn. Battery manufacturer Northvolt is rumoured to be next, after recently announcing a huge 10-year partnership with Volkswagen, which made a $14bn battery cell order.
🥛 Oatly’s offbeat marketing turned boring alt-milk into a $10-billion business, vegan, uses less land, and produces fewer emissions than dairy milk.
🏗 011h is out to clean up the construction industry — which is responsible for a whopping 39% of global carbon emissions. Through digitization and constructing high-tech, wooden ‘smart’ buildings, it’s hit a critical niche in the global industry worth 13% of global GDP.
⚡️ Alpha 311 is all about local energy production, but it’s also changing the face of wind energy. Instead of those majestic wind turbines atop hillsides and alongside motorways, its vertical axis turbines are blending into lampposts, railway and road signs. Extraordinarily, it produces power even with a slight breeze, but motorways are an ideal spot due to the airstreams created by traffic.
🥤 Beworm is brand new, but it’s got big ambitions — and they involve plastic-eating worms. The worms (as well as fungi and bacteria) are capable of degrading polyethylene — a polymer found in many plastics — which can then be reused for new petrochemical products or plastics.
🏞 For the past few years, the world’s largest forests have been devastated by wildfires — both increasing in frequency due to climate change, and contributing to it too, producing almost 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. Just months after major wildfires in Australia, Dryad Networks got launched — and the startup believes there aren’t many better ways to use IoT than to predict, prevent and analyse wildfires. The company uses ’Silvanet’, a network of sensors that can be used by the public sector to evacuate the public, as it can detect wildfires 60 minutes before they break out — even in super-remote areas where 4G networks aren’t available. **
🐾 Pets account for a whopping 25% of global meat consumption. Funcifur, which produces pet food using mainly insects, claims to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% compared to traditional pet food. It’s also committed to manufacture all of its products in Europe and use organic ingredients and recyclable materials, wherever it’s possible.
🔩 Steel is one of the most environmentally destructive resources in an industry which is responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions. One-year-old H2 Green Steel is building a gigascale green hydrogen plant in northern Sweden to produce fossil-free ‘green’ steel — as well as provide 10k jobs. Production will begin by 2024 and by 2030 it plans to produce 5m tonnes of steel. Vanilla Steel, though low on its sustainability messaging — is tackling the steel industry head on.
✋🏻 Partnered with Greentech Alliance and Innovation Norway, amongst others, Material Mapper is also tackling the construction industry. Using building information datasets, corporate information datasets and a forecasting tool, it aims to reduce construction waste by sharing this information with construction companies — allowing them to share resources that would otherwise be wasted.
🌾 Biomede, the recognized expert in the phytoremediation (Phytoremediation at the service of your land) of agricultural soils for the removal of copper and other heavy metals.
🍷 Fruition Sciences - Cultivate knowledge in viticulture
📱 Founded by two recent graduates, the Sojo app connects its users with a local network of teamsters based on their postcode — supporting not only local business but the emerging movement in fashion to repair clothes and items for lifelong use, reducing waste.
💨 Carbon offsets are getting a lot of flack — perhaps fairly in some cases. But Sylvera’s web application breaks down the initiatives, their solutions and real-time data on each. Think Which! for carbon offsets.
🔋 If you measure success by association, Verkor’s already big news — the startup’s partnered with EIT InnoEnergy and Schneider Electric, and backed by the IDEC Group. It’s focused on locally produced, low-carbon batteries to support a move toward electric vehicles in particular.
🔥 The Leaders of Tomorrow
Xavier Niel launches Hectar, a free agricultural school
Startups have about $1 trillion worth of reasons to love the Biden infrastructure plan
Bill Gates Wants Rich Countries To Move To 100% Synthetic Beef, But Here’s The Opportunity Behind This Trend
Oxford University set to launch up to 20 sustainability startups in two year
Founders Future's Marc Menasé Talks Impact Investing
Clean tech 2.0: Silicon Valley’s new bet on start-ups fighting climate change
Alastair Davis, CEO of Social Investment Scotland
French bank Helios is exclusively financing companies that make genuine contributions to fighting climate change and promises never to finance industries that inhibit that mission: fossil fuel industries, companies reliant on or facilitating intensive farming, or those that use chemical pesticides.
🍳 Straight from the oven
From Y Combinator to Product Hunt
How Many Plants - A growing plant care resource and community
Planty - Keep track of your plants and remember to water them
PictureThis - Instantly identify your plants
ProductBio - Automatic sustainability compliance
Changeletter - A bite-sized, actionable, sustainability newsletter
🔮 Predictions
Farm free food could create astonishing possibilities to save both people and the planet. Farm free food will allow us to hand back vast areas of land and sea to nature, permitting rewilding and carbon drawdown on a massive scale. It means an end to the exploitation of animals, an end to most deforestation, a massive reduction in the use of pesticides and fertilizer, the end of trawlers and longlines.
The future of food might be all about robot farmers and electrocuting weeds
‘Tech for good’ for everyone: Tech with a purpose, including more environmentally friendly innovation, is gearing up to be the most popular trend of 2021, based on predictions by entrepreneurs. The Covid-19 pandemic has boosted support for a greener, fairer and more equal society, says Back Market founder Thibaud Hug de Larauze.
Agriculture is the next hot tech trend: Agriculture is one of the sectors that will see significant innovation this year. Technologies for “agricultural precision” and leaps in the kinds of equipment used for production as well as product control — for organic products for instance — will get a lot of attention, says Bpifrance’s Paul François Fournier.
After greenwashing, “diversity-washing”: Just like greenwashing — in short, making eco-friendly announcements and investments only for show, not as a reflection of a sincere, deeper change — “diversity-washing” just isn’t going to cut it.
The year of the very visible hand: Entrepreneurs expect that the role of governments and regulators will become more important in the coming months. Part of that comes from the need to cope with the fallout from Covid-19, for which governments are doing a lot of the heavy lifting with stimulus plans of all sorts. But it’s true beyond Covid-19 too.
Data localization and sovereignty gain ground: In recent years, data storage has become critical for companies’ business imperatives and costs, as well as managing risks related to compliance, says OVH’s Michel Paulin. “Data is the new goldmine, as it allows organizations to improve operations with predictive analytics, to build new added value services or products,” he says. As a result, in 2021, data localization and sovereignty will become a major strategic factor for businesses, feeding into the demand for a trusted and sovereign European cloud, says Paulin.
🤩 GO or NOGO?
GO, GO, GO!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know sustainability is the future of any industry or investment strategy. The impact of sustainability has well and truly hit the World startup ecosystem, and climate techs, GreenTech and clean techs are getting just as mega as the rest.
🏃🏻♂️ Your extra mile - for the curious ones
Our database FOR FREE
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Audrey Enjoli writes about sustainability, food, and entertainment.