circular-economy
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Kickstart Innovation gets startups to the other side of the corporate door
A stalled pitch, a persistent insider and a deal that finally stuck: the Swiss company’s real business is helping startups find someone ready to put their technology to work.
SHONA Wants Better Businesses, Not Better Pitches
In East Africa's crowded accelerator market, SHONA has built its case around an unfashionable idea: make the company work before polishing the pitch. Its wager combines long-horizon coaching, local networks, and loans designed for the awkward middle between microcredit and venture capital.
Anthropia’s startup factory has a price: show up, keep your shares
In a Duisburg villa, Anthropia helps social and green startups turn good intentions into businesses. Its Impact Factory charges no fees and takes no equity, but founders still have work to do.
Impact Hub Harare is building the business after the bright idea
A promising prototype still needs customers, skills and somewhere to work. In Zimbabwe, Impact Hub Harare has made that awkward next step its business.
Cámara Verde Wants Your Green Business to Meet Its Next Customer
Across Latin America, Cámara Verde de Comercio brings sustainable businesses into the same room as mentors, buyers and investors. Its promise becomes most interesting when you look at what a membership actually includes.
DGA turns public funding into a working proposition
From factory pilots to life after coal, the Polish consultancy organizes the work between an ambitious idea and a useful result. Its accounts reveal why managing millions is a different business from earning them.
Impact Amplifier Makes Good Intentions Investable
From Nando’s pepper farmers to businesses turning waste into products, the South African firm works on the awkward middle of impact investing: getting good ideas ready for money, then checking what the money changes.
SMART GREEN gets climate tech closer to its first customer
The Freiburg startup hub connects researchers, founders, investors and industrial buyers. Its most useful offering may be a chance to prove that a clever technology belongs in somebody’s business.
hub.brussels and the art of a cheaper first mistake
Brussels built an agency that helps entrepreneurs test ideas, find funding and cross borders. Budget cuts are now putting parts of that hands-on model to the test.
Neocrete wants your concrete to cost less. The secret is in the ash.
The Auckland company is turning low-performing ash into a useful cement replacement. In Brunei, its first scale customer reports lower carbon and a US$6 saving on every cubic metre.
Intellecap works on what money alone cannot fix
A ₹1 lakh experiment became an advisory business connecting entrepreneurs, investors and industry. Its work reveals how much has to happen before a good idea becomes a business someone will finance.
Södertälje Science Park and the trouble with making things
A working prototype is only the beginning. In Sweden’s industrial heartland, Södertälje Science Park helps hardware founders meet the people, suppliers and production problems that come next.
ISB Global makes rubbish add up
A collection truck, a weighbridge and an invoice ought to tell the same story. ISB Global has spent decades building software to make that happen - and more than £15 million rebuilding it for bigger ambitions.
Sprout Wants Your Old Servers to Pay for Their Next Act
The company that began with discarded electronics now tracks, repairs, and resells enterprise hardware. Its next bet: giving retired AI infrastructure another working life.
ATG wants a cut of your next great find
The company behind The Saleroom and LiveAuctioneers has moved from auction listings to payments, shipping and an $85 million bet on vintage furniture. Its next test is turning all that activity into better profits.
Recycleye’s £40 treadmill became a business that picks through your rubbish
A camera, an eBay treadmill and some borrowed garage space started Recycleye. Its robots and optical sorters now tackle recycling’s awkward arithmetic: recovering materials has to pay.
REEN UK wants your bin crew to make fewer stops
Derby reported 53% fewer visits to trial street bins after adding fill-level sensors. REEN’s bigger proposition is to turn the humble rubbish bin into a better instruction for the people collecting it.
Shields Wants Telecoms to Stop Buying What They Already Own
From precious metals rescued from the drain to a marketplace for retired network equipment, Shields has built a business around an awkward question: is the next purchase really necessary?
How Apkudo Turned Returned Phones Into a $72 Million Case for Giving Every Device a Passport
The used-phone economy has a trust problem: nobody agrees on what a device is worth, where it has been or whether the repair worked. Apkudo’s answer is equal parts software ledger, diagnostic lab and robot line - with a decade-long carrier case study showing why the plumbing matters.
BioFiltro Put Earthworms on the Wastewater Payroll - Now a $35 Million Bet Is Testing Whether Nature Can Beat the Tank
The Davis company turns manure and process water into a four-hour biology lesson. The memorable part is the worms; the consequential part is a business model built around cleaner water, lower methane, and infrastructure customers do not always have to own.
PlantSwitch Bet $28 Million That Nobody Should Have to Eat With a Sad Paper Fork
The founders began by selling greener restaurant supplies, nearly quit when restaurants closed, and then moved upstream into resin and factories. A $17 million round and a World Cup-sized order have now tested whether compostable packaging can finally behave like the plastic it replaces.
Phoenix Tailings Found a $1 Billion Business Hiding in Mining's Trash
The Massachusetts startup began with buckets of mine waste in a backyard. Seven years later, it has commercial metal shipments, a strategic trading partner, and a conditional $500 million government loan - but the real test is whether a tiny refinery can become industrial infrastructure on schedule.
Plywood Rots. Supersede Extrudes Its Replacement From the Plastic Nobody Wanted.
Sean Petterson sold his last hardware company after raising more than $60 million. Now he is in Phoenix extruding recycled polypropylene into a board that boatbuilders are bolting into 2026 hulls - and he wants a micro-factory in every city with a plastic problem.
The Houston Warehouse That Sells You a Computer Twice
For 35 years, a family-run distributor on Bissonnet Street has made money on both ends of a computer's life - selling the hardware, then hauling it back to shred, wipe, and resell. Here's how the loop actually works.
Signify Turned the Light Bulb Into a Data Business
The company that used to be Philips Lighting bet that a light bulb is really a data point. Here is how a 130-year-old lamp business turned itself into smart homes, connected cities and carbon-neutral factories - and where that bet gets shaky.
The Man Who Built the Keg Empire, Then Built Its Rival
A brewer's cash gets trapped in steel that spends half its life empty. Chris Sapyta helped invent the fix at one company, then spent a decade out-flexing it at his own.
How a Weed From Bangladesh Became a Plastic That Refuses to Cost More
Most green materials ask you to pay more and change everything. Applied Bioplastics bet the opposite - that plant-based plastic only wins if it drops into the machines factories already own, at a price they already pay.
The Factory for Ideas Big Companies Couldn’t Use
Innventure goes hunting in corporate R&D departments for technology that works but has nowhere to go. Then it tries to do the expensive part: turn the orphaned invention into an industrial business.
The Fund Betting That Fashion Gets Fixed in the Factory, Not the Storefront
Karla Mora and Leslie Harwell don't fund T-shirts. They fund the recycling plants, the potato-waste cotton, and the software that reroutes a supply chain - the plumbing every brand quietly runs on.
The Box Is the Business: How JF&I Packages the Global Supply Chain
The Sri Lankan manufacturer does more than print cartons. It engineers the folds, materials and regional supply chains that help global brands move products with less waste.