Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups disrupting smart cities. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. So, let’s take a look at promising waste management startups enabling smart cities.
Heat Map: 5 Top Waste Management Startups Impacting Smart Cities
For our 5 picks of Waste Management startups, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 327 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
ShareWaste – Reducing Home Waste
Reducing home trash can be achieved by reusing, recycling or composting food waste via the decomposition process, by using worm farms or with special composting devices. Sydney-based ShareWaste develops an app that helps people share the work on recycling food scraps within communities. The company presents organic waste not as waste but as an unused resource. Their application and website allow registering as either a host of a compost bin/worm farm or a donor of organic waste. Each individual host can specify what kind of waste they accept for their garden, bin or animals and connect with the donor to discuss arrangements.
Flycatcher Technologies – Zero Waste Home Systems
Zero waste systems offer domestic and commercial decomposter systems that handle waste transforming it into a soil amendment or/and a renewable source of energy. This kind of systems work with almost all types of common waste. Indian Flycatcher Technologies provide a sealed microprocessor controlled waste management system with an integrated feed station for homes and small companies, that convert the trash into energy in the form of biogas and organic fertilizers.
Gringgo – On-Demand Waste Pickup
On-demand services allow booking a truck to collect regular or specific waste types (electronics, debris and other) on customer’s demand, provide additional information about the collection, utilization, and recycling processes for different types of trash. Bali-based Gringgo develops a solution for on-demand waste collection and recycling services offering a web and mobile application. It makes the collection process easier buying, consolidating, and processing recyclable waste and delivering it to recycling factories.
Chomp Energy – Waste-to-Energy
Waste-to-energy or energy-from-waste is an alternative energy source that can replace fossil fuels and recover energy from waste that otherwise ends up on landfills. Incineration, gasification, thermal depolymerization, pyrolysis, plasma gasification process, anaerobic digestion, fermentation, and other new technologies produce energy from waste.
Seattle-based Chomp Energy offers bioenergy systems that convert organic waste materials into energy and fertilizers with zero waste. This is a hybrid high solids batch technology that can quickly process food, landscape, wood, cardboard, biosolids, and manure in a single step. It is tolerant of contaminants and integrates anaerobic digestion and composting in a single tunnel without moving the feedstock.
Recycling Perks – Waste Reward Marketplace
Many companies nowadays develop rewarding or loyalty programs for consumers and organizations by engaging with users and providing benefiting options (points, ranks, special currency, money). The impact of participants is measured by tracking users’ unique identifier. The users receive rewards for the use of reusable products in lieu of single-use disposables, segregating products that require special conditions for processing (electronics, batteries, accumulators, etc) and are encouraged to put out more recyclable waste. US-based Recycling Perks is a recycling rewards company that increases recycling participation, volume and operational efficiencies through an RFID-based solution. The RFID technology and data analysis help find out which households have recycled their waste and how often, as well as allow record the information in the individual household’s profile and change earned points for chosen goods.
What About The Other 322 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 5 waste management startups showcased above are promising examples out of 327 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.