We firmly believe that nowadays, sustainability is one of the most important business approaches.
Our environment is in deep crisis and we have to take action in order to maintain a healthy and green planet for future generations. Fortunately, sustainability is becoming more important for all companies, across all industries. Some 62% of executives consider a sustainability strategy necessary to be competitive today, and another 22% think it will be in the future.
At Kassailaw, our goal has always been to create an environmentally friendly office. For example, did you know that we print almost nothing on paper? Basically, all of our office documents are stored in a secure cloud-based system. Furthermore, long before the pandemic started, we worked remotely most of the time, reducing the energy consumption of our office.
As part of the Kassailaw sustainability campaign, we’d like to introduce you to our top 5 favourite green companies who have recognized the need to act on sustainability!
#1 FUERGY
Let’s start the list of our favourite green companies with a special one! This company addresses an issue we all face in our everyday lives: how to save energy in an easy and effective way?
We’re sure that everybody tries to be conscious about their energy usage because it’s a smart way to cut the monthly bills for any household or company. But guess what? Saving energy isn’t just about saving money! Although it may not be obvious, there is a direct connection between your energy use and the environment. With less energy consumption, we can conserve the earth’s natural resources!
You can make an absolutely excellent start by unplugging those devices that you aren’t using or turning off the lights in any rooms that aren’t occupied. It sounds simple right? But we all know how restrictive these tasks can be and how easily we tend to forget about them when we are living our busy lives.
The Slovak startup, Fuergy offers a totally innovative and brilliant solution for saving energy in the proprietary, highly-scalable hardware device and AI-powered software called “brAIn” that it has developed for itself. We absolutely love this company and it’s product because they demonstrate just how brilliantly technology can be used to benefit the environment! Fuergy helps to optimize energy consumption and maximize the efficiency of renewable energy sources. brAin learns about your everyday lifestyle and creates an individual mechanism which is optimally efficient for you, and manages your energy intensive equipment in order to save energy.
With the help of Fuergy we can all protect our environment and save money. It’s a win-win situation, isn’t it?
#2 OVERSTORY
We were absolutely devastated to read the news of the Amazon rainforest that was suffering from fire last year. The same happened in Australia… so many beautiful wild animals and large parts of the rainforest were destroyed by fire.
On the other hand, we are also hopeful because we know that human creativity can find solutions to almost any problem with the help of technology! Let us introduce to you the amazing Amsterdam-based company, Overstory!
Their goal is to help electric utilities, forestry companies and NGOs manage the risk of forest fire posed by the proximity of power lines, trees and vegetation. Overstory has developed machine-learning software that leverages satellite technology to identify the areas of greatest risk, a task which typically requires four years to scan an entire grid and is usually performed manually by helicopters or more recently drones.
The company is already monitoring millions of square kilometers of forest all over the world, including Finland, Sweden, Indonesia, Peru and the USA.
We all know how important it is for humankind to protect our forests in order to save the planet’s biodiversity and fresh air. That’s why we adore Overstory, the company that helps to keep an ‘eye’ on our forests!
We bet that when you are thinking about protecting the environment, algae isn’t the first thing that pops into your head. The proliferation of algae isn’t typically a good sign, environmentally speaking. Algae blooms, which are worsening with climate change, strangle other freshwater organisms and marine life.
However, we were also really surprised to find out how usefully these organisms can be when used with the aid of technology.
The brilliant Swedish Algae Factory is the only company in the world that cultivates the microalgae group diatoms and sells their high-tech silica shells. These shells have unique light manipulating properties unmatched by synthetic materials, and can be utilized to enhance the efficiency of solar panels by at least 4% and increase the effect of Grätzel solar cells by up to 60 %.
Furthermore, the material’s production process is climate-positive because during the process carbon dioxide is absorbed instead of released.
Knowing these facts makes you see algae from a different perspective, and for that we can be grateful to the Swedish Algae Factory!
Did you know that 44% of global waste consists of food and greens, of which a significant portion is food waste? Kind of shocking isn’t it? Each year, around one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets wasted.
Reading these facts, you may agree with us that this problem must be handled somehow…
Luckily the Danish company, Too Good To Go’s aim is to fight food waste in a really creative and smart way. They’ve built an app that connects users with stores and restaurants that have unsold surplus food at the end of the day.
We think their vision is worth paying attention to because they both greatly inspire and empower everyone to take action against food waste. Not only that, they also refuse to stop at the national level, they want to build a global movement to allow them to maximize their impact and achieve greater progress!
We can say that we are particularly proud because there is a Hungarian ”sibling company” of Too Good To Go. This is also an app, called Munch.hu. This app was built by a bunch of Hungarian university students who were brave enough to start their entrepreneur-journey at a really young age. The system used by the app is similar to the one mentioned above and the cherry on the top is that you can get meals through Munch much cheaper, but you still get the same quality!
We all know how relaxing it can be to have a long hot shower after a hard workday… but have you considered how much clean water is used during this? Studies have shown that showers and taps as the second largest indoor consumer of water at 42 liters per capita per day, or 19 percent of total use.
We can’t deny the fact that clean water is essential, but only 3% of the world’s water supply is accessible as freshwater. Even this small amount is rapidly becoming scarce and the availability of water is decreasing.
But don’t worry! You won’t have to give up your in-house spa days in order to be environmentally friendly! Orbital-Systems, an amazing Swedish company has built the revolutionary Shower of the Future. The company has used Space-Certified nano-technology to build a shower that uses only 10% of the water and 20% of the energy required by conventional showers.
The idea came from a space project because they had to find a way to preserve clean water on Mars. Orbital-Systems took this idea and implemented it to everyday life on Earth. The trick is that this shower purifies any water that goes down the drain and sends it straight back to the shower head.
We have to say that the results are fascinating: Cleaner water and greater pressure, giving you a blissful shower experience that saves on water, energy, and cost.
We could never find a better way to summarize this topic than quoting the world famous English natural historian, Sir David Attenborough’s words: “We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet. And never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely, we all have a responsibility to care for our blue planet. The future of humanity and indeed, all life on Earth, now depends on us.”
We hope that the news of our favorite green companies will spread widely, so that together we can do even more to maintain our healthy environment.
