Customers are sending a clear message – consumption patterns are changing, and changing quickly. But in order to truly shape a circular society, we need to mainstream these inspiring efforts. This year, LAUNCH has found 9 Innovators whose inspiring ideas are already moving communities across the world towards more circular and sustainable ways of living. Curious?
At LAUNCH we imagine a world where renting, leasing or subscribing to a service gives you access to better experiences, more customized products, or even saves you money. This has been at the core of this year’s LAUNCH Circular Innovation Challenge. We set out on a journey to find pioneering Innovators around the world that are engaging customers in the circular economy, and we received 125 amazing innovations from around the world representing 36 different countries.
Today, we are thrilled to announce the 2018 selected LAUNCH Circular Innovators:
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- CIRCULARISE by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos – Open, distributed and secure communications protocol for the circular economy, which allows any stakeholder to add information and communicate about individual physical objects – founded in the Netherlands.
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- DEEMLY by Sara Green Brodersen and Jens Farvig Thomsen – Social verification tool for P2P platforms helping increase trust and activity – founded in Denmark.
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- EACHTHING by Sven Phillipsen – Gives consumers the power to demand insight and transparency into the products they buy – via a mobile application for the consumer and a platform for producers – founded in Denmark.
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- LIBRARY OF THINGS by Emma Shaw, Sophia Wyatt and Rebecca Trevalyan – UK’s first high street offer for user-friendly item rental. The community-led ‘Zipcar for Things’ – founded in United Kingdom.
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- OLIO by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One – Free food sharing app that connects users with unwanted food with neighbours living nearby who would like it – founded in United Kingdom.
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- RECYCLEPOINTS by Alison Ukonu and Chioma Ukonu – Waste recycling and social benefit venture that motivates people to recycle by creating value from their everyday waste – founded in Nigeria.
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- SEAL by Bart Verschoor and Joris Verschoor – Digital twin platform with an untamperable virtual and physical link allows building digital features/apps on top of products. Their system gives products an identity by pairing a virtual counterpart to each unique item, on which digital services can run – founded in the Netherlands.
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- STUFFSTR by John Atchson and Steve Gutmann – Universal Consumer Buy-Back Programme that offers retail customers instant buy-back of every item purchased when they’re done using it – founded in USA.
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- WORN AGAIN TECHNOLOGIES by Cyndi Rhoades, Adam Walker and Nick Ryan – Pioneering polymer recycling technology to eradicate textiles waste and to enable circularity for the global textiles industry – founded in United Kingdom.
“To help and inspire people to live within the limits of one planet and at the same time meet people’s needs and dreams is a main objective for IKEA. Circularity is the future of retailing and our way of fulfilling those objectives. We really look forward to meet this year’s selected creative and inspiring Innovators.”
Håkan Nordkvist, Head of Sustainability Innovation, IKEA Group
The LAUNCH Partners and the team have selected this year’s Innovators following an extensive review conducted by more than 35 professional experts from research organizations, government institutions, and global companies. Thank you to everyone involved in the whole process. It has been an amazing journey and we are honored to have received applications from such an inspiring group of Innovators from around the world.
What’s next for the Innovators?
Ready to help this year’s Innovators are investors, experts, and companies like IKEA, VF Corporation, Walmart, Novozymes, Kvadrat, Nature’s Path, Waste Management, Sympatex, and other leading global organizations. The selected Innovators and organizations will meet at the Forum on December 5-6, 2018 in Bentonville, Arkansas, with two preceding Innovator preparation days that will be jointly hosted by Waste Management and Walmart.
At the Forum, the Innovators will present and discuss their solution and Call to Action with around 35 industry executives, experts, government officials, and investors.
Everybody will be helping scale the innovations by offering expertise, mentorship, guidance to the innovators, access to market partners, and facilitate opportunities for investment. Following the Forum, Innovators will have an accelerator program with commitments that will help them bring their innovations to scale.
“We are witnessing a new generation that is ready to share more. A generation where experience and community play a big part in their life – more than the goods they purchase. We are looking forward to engaging with and helping them do so with this years 10 LAUNCH Innovators.”
Barruch Ben-Zekry, Director – Sustainable Business Value, VF Corporation
Want to connect with the Innovators?
If anyone is interested in connecting with one of the selected Innovators or has inputs and ideas that can help them scale, please do not hesitate to reach out to Toke Sabroe from the LAUNCH Circular team at toke@launch.org
Stay tuned!
This year, we will again be providing live updates from the Forum, so do not miss out! Make sure to connect with us on Facebook for live videos and interviews, and follow us on Twitter #launchcircular for highlights and a live Twitter conversation.
If you are curious about more information about the innovators, you can find more information at their website:
- Circularise by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos
- Deemly by Sara Green Brodersen and Jens Farvig Thomsen
- EachThing by Sven Philipsen
- Library of Things by Emma Shaw, Sophia Wyatt and Rebecca Trevalyan
- OLIO by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One
- RecyclePoints by Alison Ukonu and Chioma Ukonu
- Seal by Bart Verschoor and Joris Verschoor
- Stuffstr by John Atcheson and Steve Gutmann
- Worn Again Technologies by Cyndi Rhoades, Adam Walker and Nick Ryan