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
Earth Blox provides climate and nature analytics from satellite imagery to help businesses accelerate their sustainability transition. The software maps and analyses key metrics for biodiversity, water and carbon across forestry, agriculture, and financed and insured assets worldwide
- artificial intelligence
- building automation systems
- cloud
- data
- digital assets
- edge computing
- nature tech
- satellite image analytics
Biohm is a research and development company working on broader applications of biotechnology that harmonize cultural and natural systems. Driven by the simple philosophy of allowing nature to lead innovation, Biohm's biotechnologies, which are patented in almost 60 countries, combine mycelium technology, organic refuse biocompounds, bioremediation and triagomy into high-performance materials, products and systems designed for local contextualization, social connection, and global scale.
- biopolymers
- biotech
- circular economy
- construction
- green chemistry
- material science
- open source
- plastics
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
Commonplace is a digital platform for citizen/community engagement and co-design. Commonplace's enables communty leaders, organizations, and projects to reach their communities, engage them around ideas, suggestions, concerns, analyse their feedback, and collaborate on future ideas. Its tools support surveys, communications, geolocated sentiment mapping, translating diverse voices into key themes, dashboards and reporting capabilities. The platform aims to promote dialogue also speeds up projects by getting local buy-in faster. Commonplace has supported over 3500 projects across 8 million visitors and 60+ themes, from development consultations, to wind and solar farms, community services, infrastructure, local planning, transport, and many other areas.
- civic engagement
- community consultation
- development
- participatory governance
Loliware is the world’s first seaweed resin company providing products to replace single-use plastics. Loliware is a woman-owned firm partnering with experts in regenerative aquaculture from Maine to New Zealand to expand the ‘blue economy’ with its proprietary SEA Technology® resins. Made from compostable seaweed, Loliware’s Ocean Blue straws, utensils and other products are currently used by famous chefs, restaurant chains and eco-chic hotels. Their new category of materials are “Designed to Disappear”, offered to help advance our planet to a plastic-free, decarbonized future.
Olio a free app to reduce household and food waste by fostering a hyper-local sharing economy. People can list unwanted but usable items, including surplus food, as well as clothes, books, and furniture. Neighbors can browse listings and arrange free pickup, giving unwanted items a second life and saving it from landfills. This approach combats waste, promotes sustainability, and fosters a sense of community by encouraging people to share and connect with those around them. Because it diverts far more greenhouse gasses across the 49 countries it operates in than it produces, Olio is a carbon-negative company.
- circular economy
- digital platforms
- marketplaces
- reduced food waste
- sharing economy
- social media / community
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
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
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
CivicAI explores how AI can enhance collective intelligence in relation to climate crisis mitigation and adaptation. CivicAI sees opportunities in several key areas, which have been illustrated in more detail through 3 distinct use cases. To address the climate crisis, CIVICAI works to increase the capacity for communities to organise and adapt to a new reality. This requires better tools and methods for mobilising large groups of people to take action, reducing associated costs, and advancing the value of collaboration.
- artificial intelligence
- cloud
- data
- digital assets
- edge computing
- social media / community
Hylo is a community-led, prosocial coordination platform for purpose-driven groups. It is open-source, non-profit, and driven by participatory design with real-world groups at the forefront of regenerative agriculture, community resilience, peer learning, equity, inclusive capital, and place-based organizing. Hylo features a resilient constellation of relationships marked by trust and accountability, with clear agreements including protocols for decision making, distributing resources, and handling conflict. The platform has many unique aspects such as nested groups and cross-group posting, which lead to emergent cooperation between groups, generating broader coalitions with more power to address common goals. Hylo's community leaders and facilitators help guide member groups on best practices in community stewardship. Hylo is built through relationship-driven development, involving collaboration with the community to co-design tools to amplify their work.
- cloud
- community
- data
- digital platforms
