With COP27 underway in Egypt, the entire world’s focus is once again on the effects of climate change on our planet.
Representatives from all over the world will spend the next two weeks listening to scientists, policy makers, politicians, environmentalists, activists, businesses – the list is endless – in an attempt to reduce global temperatures & avoid a catastrophic outcome.
Businesses across the globe have the spotlight well & truly upon them to reduce their emissions levels & in doing so do their part in reducing the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Millions of companies across the globe have taken up the climate action torch & are reducing emissions & waste & finding ways to be more sustainable & reduce their impact on dwindling biodiversity.
One area where businesses are transforming their vision of how a business should be run to combat impacting the climate, is through the upsurge of the Ecopreneur.
An Ecopreneur represents a new era of entrepreneur, whose focus is on creating & selling environmentally-friendly products & services.
One of the greatest challenges facing businesses today is to find ways to reduce their climate impact, reduce harmful emission & pollutants, become more sustainable & yet still remain financially viable.
However, there are a new breed of entrepreneurs who are generating new business models which are sustainable & make a positive impact from their inception, whilst also making a profit. These climate conscious entrepreneurs are known as Ecopreneurs.
Virtually Smart Ltd have thrown the spotlight on three such Ecopreneurs to highlight how their business ideals differ & how they are striving for sustainability, whilst also turning a profit.
Arborea – BioSolar Leaf
Growing plants above our heads can reduce what is known as the urban heat island effect in big cities, keep air temperatures down, & cut energy use for cooling. Vegetated roofs can also absorb rainwater, & attract birds and bees. (1)
With the prospect of London & City Hall promoting the use of vertical planting & people being encouraged to plant as much ‘greenery’ as they can, one new start up Arborea in collaboration with Imperial College London, are spearheading their ‘BioSolar Leaf’ technology to improve air quality.
The technology, which is the first of its kind in the world, purifies the air through the photosynthesis of microscopic plants, removing greenhouse gases from the environment whilst generating breathable oxygen.
Arborea have developed an innovative cultivation system which facilitates the growth of tiny plant-life – such as microalgae, diatoms and phytoplankton – on large solar panel-like structures. These can then be installed on land, buildings and other developments to improve surrounding air quality.
In addition, Arborea have now developed a new technology using the BioSolar Leaf blueprint & are using it to grow organic, healthy food ingredients with the smallest environmental impact.
Arborea’s breakthrough cultivation technology mimics the functioning mechanisms of a real leaf to self-maintain the ideal growth conditions homogeneously at different scales and with the smallest energy inputs. Furthermore, it uniquely sequesters CO2 from most exhaust gasses, even with very low CO2 concentration and at atmospheric pressure. (1)
The Arborea food ingredients & proteins are wholly vegan, NO-GMO, hormone-free & mostly carbon neutral. The unique functioning mechanisms of the BioSolar Leaf impedes contamination to produce the safest and purest ingredients. (1)
Choose HP Packaging
James Longcroft, original Founder & Managing Director of CHOOSE, began the company as a profitable business venture. Although he began his business selling water in single use plastic bottles, he quickly evolved to a business committed to removing plastics from the economy and out of the eco-system.
“We created our bottle to minimise plastic pollution and begin the journey towards zero impact living. The products we offer utilise our patented paper bottle technology – a paper casing lined with a plant-based waterproof PET free liner. All the materials used to make our bottles are 100% natural, sustainable and vegan-friendly which will take less than a year, instead of a few centuries to degrade.” (2)
HP acquired CHOOSE packaging in February 2022 with the vision to disrupt the $10 billion fiber-based sustainable packaging market.
With the integration of Choose into its Personalization & 3D Printing business, HP will focus on scaling its technology & customer footprint to expand the addressable market.
There are more than 150 million tons of single-use plastics produced each year and HP intends to disrupt this market with fiber-based, 100% plastic-free packaging. (3)
Freight Farms
Freight Farms was started in 2010 by Ecopreneurs Brad McNamara & Jon Friedman with a brand of rooftop greenhouses. They quickly saw a gap in the food production sector & realised that to meet their goals they would need to invest in a modular & scalable solution.
Shipping containers being readily available, offered a readily available & affordable option for Brad & Jon to build their new technology inside & in doing so, could enable farms to exist in areas traditional farming could not support with traditional agriculture.
Freight Farms have emerged as one of the first leading Ag Tech companies & by 2019 they had launched ‘Greenery’, the first hydroponics farm built inside a shipping container.
With the need for sustainable food for an ever-growing planetary population, the ‘Greenery S’ hydroponics container farm, can offer farming solutions on so very many levels. Not only can the ‘Greenery S’ be installed where space is of a premium, but it can also be stacked to optimise productivity. (4)
The options for countries affected by climate change weather extremes, which are perpetually disrupting biodiversity & impacting on the land means that the ‘Greenery S’ can also be installed in arid deserts & where extreme weather is destroying crops.
Ecopreneurs are a vital resource in the disruption of traditional business methodology, tackling the effects of climate change from within their own business ethos & modelling.
- http://arborea.io/
- https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2022/hp-inc-acquires-choose-packaging.html
- https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2022/hp-inc-acquires-choose-packaging.html
- https://www.freightfarms.com/
Written & cited by Katy-Jane Mason for & on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd
