Freegle is an online platform for exchanging stuff. The platform pair speople who have stuff they don't need with people who need stuff they don't have. This promotes reuse and keeps things out of landfills and incinerators. Freegle has over 2.7 million members across the UK.
- digital platforms
- marketplaces
GreenWave has trained and supported over 120 farmers and hatchery technicians throughout New England, California, New York, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. GreenWave works with farmers to launch and scale their businesses through services that mix training with innovation. Their high-and-low touch training ranges from an online seed-to-sale Ocean Farming Toolkit and region-specific workshops to hands-on internships and participation in our farmer support network. GreenWave's innovation program works to scale markets in four shovel-ready sectors - food, agriculture, bioplastics and Blue Carbon - as well as disseminate the latest farm, hatchery and blue tech design throughout their farmer network.
- agricultural tech
- coastal wetland protection
- coastal wetland restoration
- conservation agriculture
- edtech
- education
- nature tech
BackMarket’s digital marketplace for refurbished electronics helps coordinate stakeholders to close the loop on e-waste and open up access to reliable tech for all. The platform connects buyers and sellers of smartphones, laptops, TVs, wearables, gaming, e-mobility, and countless other devices from all the leading manufacturers. Promising “better than new,” it partners with certified refurbishers to repair electronics for resale, at a ~70% lower price than new. The digital platform helps coordinate discovery, customer service, payment, logistics, tracking, a 25+ point quality assurance verification of authenticity, functionality, security, data erasure, battery, testing, cleaning, and more; and manages partners to refurbish products. Refurbished devices reduce an average of ~90% raw material extraction, emissions, water use, and waste relative to new devices.
- circular economy
- digital platforms
- e-waste
- electronics
- mobile devices
- refurbishment
The Buy Nothing Project is a global network of hyper-local gift economies, founded in 2013. It uses a digital platform and mobile app to enable people to give away for free unwanted items and skills within local communities, fostering connections, circulating value, and reducing waste. The network transacts around 2.5 million gifts per month over 230,000 communities, 10 million neighbors with 13,000 volunteers.
- circular economy
- community
- localization
- mutual aid
Plastic Bank is a for-profit social enterprise whose model is designed to reduce plastic pollution and alleviate poverty in developing countries. It does this by establishing plastic collection centers where communities exchange plastic waste as currency for income and life-improving benefits such as income, zero-interest loans, education, or other social benefits. Exchanges are recorded through their proprietary blockchain-secured platform, enabling traceable collection, secured income, and verified reporting. The collected material is processed into Social Plastic® feedstock for reuse in products and packaging. The company re-invests the majority of its profits into collection benefits, development and maintenance of recycling infrastructure, and technology development for material traceability for a greater social, environmental, and economic impact.
- blockchain
- community
- credits
- digital platforms
- digital wallets
- fintech
- plastics
- pollution
Coral Vita is a company that works on restoring coral reefs by growing resilient corals and transplanting them to degraded reefs. They operate commercial land-based coral farms, using microfragmentation techniques to cultivate a diverse range of coral fragments which accelerates coral growth up to 50 times faster than natural rates and and assisted evolution, which trains corals to be resistant to the effects of climate change such as ocean acidification. Along with cultivatation of coral, Coral Vita also partners with local communities, eco-tourism operators, corporations, foundations, governments, mitigation banking, and other restoration organizations to design and accelerate projects supporting the restoration of vital marine ecosystems.
- agricultural tech
- coastal wetland restoration
- conservation agriculture
- coral
UrbanFootprint is a web-based software platform specifically designed for urban planning and climate resilience. It provides access to comprehensive data on land use, environmental factors, pollution, mobility patterns, buildings, economic patterns, and demographics across the United States. UrbanFootprint allows planners to analyze trends and create simulations of future development projects, analyzing potential impacts on areas like housing costs, energy use, and transportation. This helps urban planners, designers, and decision-makers make informed choices about city development, growth, sustainability and community.
- artificial intelligence
- data
- digital assets
- digital platforms
- satellite image analytics
- software as a service
- urban planning
Energy Web is a nonprofit organization using blockchain technology to accelearte the global energy transition through a open source decentralized digital infrastructure that connects grid operators, customers, and energy assets (like solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles) to create a more flexible and efficient energy system. Energy Web is focused on developing an ecosystem of users and application developers and infrastructure providers to work jointly to identify and assess blockchain use cases in energy across security, transparency, and efficiency. It has build an open source IT infrastructure upon which these use cases can be implemented and used to educate regulators and other stakeholders.
- blockchain
- cloud
- digital assets
- digital ledgers
- digital platforms
- edge computing
- marketplaces
OCN unites the world's ocean data sets and creates products and technology to encourage and incentivize practical citizen data collection. Their Ocean AI and BlueSense platfors use machine learning to centralize, visualize, translate, and provide insights on ocean data from all over the planet in one dashboard. Some use cases for the data include discovery of anomalies and danger zones, holding entities accountable, encouraging healthier business practices, engaging coastal communities, improving conservation efficiencies, and informing policy design. Beyond just creating ways to combine and collect more data, OCN designs products, systems and communities to collect the data necessary to interpret overall ocean health and restore marine ecosystems.
- artificial intelligence
- bioremediation
- citizen science
- conservation
- crypto/ complementary currencies
- data
- nature tech
- oceans
Tent Partnership for Refugees, or Tent.org, is a global network of over 400 major companies working together to integrate refugees into new communities. Businesses from various sectors like consumer goods, hospitality, and technology join Tent.org to hire refugees, support refugee entrepreneurs, and provide essential services through job prep & employment. Their goal is to empower refugees economically and create a more welcoming and inclusive world for those displaced by war or persecution.
- digital platforms
- human resources
- marketplaces
- social media / community
Hunome is a digital platform designed to help people understand complex issues by bring together diverse perspectives for multidisciplinary sensemaking. Its platform is designed to bridge fragmented information and siloed perspectives into clarity, and supports environments for people to spend the time in dialogue developing perspective, openness, accountability, and collective sensing around complex topics. It uses data to transparently show interactions, "thinking paths," and how decisions are informed. Hunome recognises 16 different "knowtypes." These encompass knowledge derived from experience, research, observation, intuition, aesthetics, and creative exploration. Exposure to diverse ideas can spark creativity and lead to new solutions for global challenges.
- city planning
- collective
- decision-making
- digital platforms
- market research
- sense-making
Twelve is an bioengineering company using deep tech in carbon transformation to make electrochemical-based materials and products. Their Opus Carbon Transformation System converts air into hydrocarbons, the building blocks for chemicals, materials and fuels, which require zero fossil fuels, zero net new emissions and no trade-offs in quality and performance. Focused on sustainable aviation and jet fuels, their currrent products tout 90% lower lifecycle emissions than conventional jet fuel.
- bioremediation
- biotech
- computational biology & chemistry
- renewable technologies