PolliNation has won the Sustainability LaunchPad Award 2017. The early-stage venture’s looks to address the poblem of declining bee population by renting beehives to farmers to increase farm yields.
The Sustainability Launchpad Awards recognise and showcase collaborative business models that embody the spirit of sustainability and displays innovation in the convergence of social, environmental and economic awareness and entrepreneurship. This type of collaboration will be the future of commercial, environmental and social business models
The shortlisted finalists have completed a 12-week accelerator programme, where entrepreneurs partnered with industry in harnessing academic and research backgrounds to help solve real-world problems.
The 2017 Sustainability LaunchPad was led by UpThink Innovation Agency in partnership with UCD School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering and the Energy Institute.
Mary Cronin, founder, UpThink, said: “A change in mind-set and pace needs to take place at a much wider level to increase awareness of the challenges and opportunities of climate change. Ireland has recently been ranked number 49 out of 59 countries in the 2017 Climate Change Performance Index, dropping 28 places since last year. The focus of UpThink’s Sustainability LaunchPad is to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas and co-create sustainable future business models. We need to work together to become a low-carbon, climate-resilient, and an environmentally sustainable economy.”
Andrew Keane, head of Energy Institute, said: “It is uplifting to see the innovative change being presented by all five Sustainability LaunchPad finalists this year. The depth of talent coming through from our Engineering teams’ is impressive as is their commitment to taking on the big challenges that face society.”
The four semi-finalists were E-Sanity, an ESB and Electric Ireland led team, facilitating the crowd sharing of home-based, electric vehicle charging points; sustainable food hub The Grow Dome; afforable housing effort O’Cualann Housing; and cryptocurrency project Gridbloc.
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