7 British startups shortlisted for Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge

by Startacus Admin

The shortlist for this year’s Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge, a global annual sustainability competition is out, with 7 British startups in the 25 shortlisted.

This year’s shortlist for one of the world’s largest annual competitions in sustainability, Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge, has been officially revealed today. The international top 25 organisations now edge closer to being crowned the overall Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge winner and receiving €500,000.

Among this year’s shortlist are a record number of exciting and innovative British startups that are combining creativity and science to solve a variety of environmental challenges, from plastic pollution and toxic waste to overfishing.

The shortlisted British startups are:

AirEx: automatically regulating indoor air flow to make our homes warmer, healthier and more energy efficient, slashing up to 15 per cent off heating bills.

Colorifix:  developing a revolutionary nature-based dyeing process to help the textile industry dramatically reduce its environmental impact.

Jiva Materials: manufacturing the world’s first fully recyclable printed circuit board to easily and safely recover precious metals.

Naturbeads: producing natural and biodegradable microbeads from renewable and sustainable resources to replace polluting fossil-fuel based microbeads in many everyday products.

Safety Net Technologies: designing, building, and testing light-emitting devices to increase the sustainability of commercial fishing, lowering bycatch by up to 90%.

SoluBlue: providing a plant-based, non-toxic alternative to plastic packaging that can transform the shelf life of food.

Spintex: artificially spinning the highest performance silk fibres available, through a spider inspired process to create 1000x more energy efficient fibres than synthetic plastic fibres.

Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge rewards British, Dutch, German, Norwegian and Swedish startups that successfully combine sustainability, entrepreneurship and creativity to help tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

Since it began in 2007, the competition has rewarded a variety of businesses tackling a range of environmental issues, including bio-bean,  a UK company that recycles coffee for consumer and industrial markets and won the competition in 2014. 

The shortlist applicants must now wait until August when the five finalists will be announced ahead of the Grand Final in Amsterdam (health and travel regulation permitting) in September, where the overall winner will be crowned. 

The competition awards €500,000 to the overall winner while the runner-up receives €200,000 and the three other finalists receive €100,000 each. All the finalists have the chance to participate in a bespoke accelerator programme to identify the biggest challenges they face and provide mentorship and valuable connections to tackle them.

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Published on: 30th June 2020