“A glowing red “change” neon on a wall” by Ross Findon on Unsplash

In the past years sustainability has been an a topic with increasing popularity among the web, influencing many of our lifestyles without even giving a second through to it. Zero waste and minimalist movements are growing on daily basis, more young people are reducing meat consumption and more entrepreneurs are searching for sustainable and flexible options for our daily needs. It’s a movement, which can inspire a whole generation to want to reduce, reuse and recycle, as well as find more innovative and convenient ways of doing so.

Which is the main reason I decided to start finding top promising green startups, solving various environmental and sustainability issues and share them piled easily in one place for your convenience. I value the startups on direct effects on environment, relevancy, price, usability, quality and indirect effects on the environment.

If you know a great green startup/scale-up or a project and would like to share it, ping me an email: gerda(at)thecompany.agency or share it in the comments!

Here are the current top 10 green startups:

This startup from Stockholm, Sweden decided to solve our water consumption issue by creating a special nozzle, which when attached to your tap helps to reduce water consumption by as high as 98% by breaking water into millions of tiny dropplets and creating a mist, thus utilizing every single drop of water used. It’s an affordable (31.2euro) product, which will help to heavily cut on water consumption and on your water bill.

Nozzle mist can save from 75% to 95% water depending on the mode used.

Bakeys is an Indian startup which is changing the way we perceive single-use cutlery, by creating a healthy and nutritious alternative to plastic — a tasty and nutritious spoon and other utensils you can eat after you’re done with your meal.

The company was created by agricultural researcher Narayana Peesapaty, whos goal was to reduce the amount of waste we generate. Believing that Bakeys could ultimately solve the disposable cutlery issue he put his own flat up in order to get a loan for his company and pursued this vision. In 2016 Bakeys has received ₹25 lakh (US$38,000) via a crowd-funding campaign.

Currently Bakeys only offers edible spoons of various flavors, but it is planning to expand to other cutlery.

Similar to Nozzle, Cirrus Shower is reducing water consumption in the shower up to 75% by creating a mist from breaking water droplets into tiny pieces. The shower head not only reduces water consumption, but also purifies the water and creates an experience of showering in the clouds. The startup was created in France by Pierre Regnault, who wanted to design a dazzling solution with a little extra spark. He motivates water consumption by adding a spa like experience to your shower with aromatherapy and cloud like relaxing shower. You can buy the Cirrus Shower head for 79euros.

Spa-like relaxing shower head, which is saving our planet.

This company based in Hong Kong created a great solution to carrying your lunch or takeaway food without creating extra plastic waste. I often carry my own lunch to work as well as I do enjoy the occasional takeaway. The main issue I face is having to carry the container whole day with me, which tends to be quite an inconvenience for a person often on the go.

Carry your lunch without the hassle and get takeaway without creating unnecessary waste.

Pokeat is a small pouch, in which you can carry all your food and after you’re done fold it to a size of a matchbox and your worries are done. It is also easily attachable to your bag, in case you need the extra space.

Snact is company from UK which decided to combat food waste by turning undesirable fruits into fruit jerky. The founders of the company realized that every day UK alone wasted 1.4 million bananas and other fruit. With every fruit wasted we also waste the energy and resources required to grow and deliver it to the store shelves. Snact decided to take on the fight with the delicious protest by collecting the unwanted, yet good quality fruit, which otherwise would be thrown away for not looking up to the expected standards and turn it into fruit jerky and bars.

“Discarded pears, ugly strawberries, weird apples… Wasted. Everyday.”

They also use plastic-free, compostable packaging for all of their products!

This groundbreaking 24 year old Swiss company was created by two brothers, who wanted to make a durable, water repellant bag. They got inspiration from the passing multicolored trucks in front of their flat, when they realized that the perfect material was riding right in front of them. They started buying used truck tarpaulins from around Europe and making messenger bags — each unique and hand-made till this very day. From them they expanded their products to various other bags, including travel bags, backpacks, wallets and etc. Till this very day Freitag is against waste, by still creating their bags from used and discarded materials.

]In the years Freitag has introduced a variety of bags for every consumer.

Cora Ball tackles an issue most of us probably don’t even think about — plastic microfibers polluting our water from something as casual as doing laundry. Every time we wash out clothes, tiny pieces of microfibers are washed away into our oceans, which are consumed by sea life and eventually, us humans ourselves. We are literally eating our clothes!

This startup from Vermont, USA is trying to solve this invisible issue with a very simple solution — coral imitating ball created from recycled plastic, to catch all those nasty fibers. Just throw your Cora ball in the washing machine and help to keep our oceans clean!

Just throw the Cora ball in the washing machine and be part of keeping our oceans clean.

This is a pretty cool project literally from the streets of Amsterdam, solving yet another issue, we probably don’t think so much on day to day basis —the colorful, yet not very amusing gum patches stuck on the streets. Gum is the 2nd most common litter, making it a sneaky culprit most of us sometimes innocently just spit out. Gumshoe decided to collect gum from the streets and turn it into shoes. The sole of each shoe will be made entirely of recycled gum from the streets of Amsterdam. The project is still in a very early stage, however it is an interesting project, which could possibly be replicated in other cities around the globe.

The sole of each Gumshoe will be made entirely out of recycled gum.

Food is one of the easiest ways we can create or reduce waste on daily basis and this Finnish startup has decided to combat food industry with a full of protein delicious vegan alternatives — pulled oats. The company started with an idea to create an option for vegan meat replacement, which even imitates meat flavors, from nutritious Finnish oats. Growing animals requires much more water and creates more waste, than creating plant based food, making it a simple way to cut our emissions. These delicious pulled oats were a huge hit in Finland and have recently expanded to Sweden.

Pulled oats are slowly becoming an delicious alternative, imitating meat flavors.

In recent years the wet wipe industry has grown in over 400%, telling the consumer, that the only way to be clean where the sun don’t ever shine is by using disposable and very not biodegradable, “flushable” wipes, which often end up polluting the marine life. This Estonian startup decided, that there should be a greener way to keep the consumer clean and happy with less environmental harm.

Their solution was to replace wet wipes with gel, which you apply onto the toilet paper and wipe your down bellow. The founders of Satu Gel Wipes have estimated, that one bottle of their product could prevent as much as 900 wet wipes being flushed down the toilet and save millions in taxpayers money from water companies cleaning wet wipe blockages.

Flushable” wet wipes costing Canadian taxpayers $250+ million a year. I think this is what we can literally call — flushing money down the drain.

Buying green is not always the answer

To finish with I must mention, that you buying new products, even if they are green solutions, sometimes it is better to hold on to an item you already have, it is is still in a decent condition. With every purchase we should try to evaluate the waste created during production of your good as well as the waste created from throwing it out, instead of trying to repair and reuse first.

I hope you have enjoyed the this pick of top 10 promising green startups and if you have any ideas or companies/projects, you would like to share, you can comment or contact me via email — gerda(at)thecompany.agency.