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Executive Summary: Which are the Top 10 Sustainability Startups to Watch?
- Devera (Spain): Provides an AI-powered life cycle assessment platform to calculate carbon footprints and recommend improvement areas.
- Niatsu (Switzerland): Delivers ML-driven carbon accounting for food companies, generating product-level footprints and supply chain insights.
- Omnivat (South Africa): Builds modular minigrids combining solar, hydrogen, and storage to supply power, clean water, refrigeration, and connectivity.
- EVERTA (India): Manufactures DC fast chargers with multi-connector support and smart load management for EV operators and fleets.
- CircKit (UK): Offers an AI SaaS for circular fashion design, integrating LCA, compliance reporting, and digital product passports.
- NPHarvest (Finland): Develops hardware that recovers nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater, converting waste into fertilizer resources.
- Nala Earth (Germany): Creates a biodiversity intelligence platform to measure ecological impacts and support CSRD, TNFD, and GRI compliance.
- Stilae (France): Produces algae-based biodegradable packaging capsules for cosmetics and hospitality, reducing plastic waste.
- Rocchi Technologies (Italy): Designs AI-driven noise pollution control devices using destructive interference for transport hubs.
- SAWT (India): Builds AI-powered waste-sorting bins using YOLO vision models and solar power for sustainable waste management.
Global Startup Heat Map highlights Emerging Sustainability Startups to Watch
Through the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering over 7M+ startups, 20K+ technology trends, plus 150M+ patents, news articles & market reports, we identified the top sustainability startups.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights emerging sustainability solutions you should watch in 2026, as well as the geo-distribution of 4500+ sustainability startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research.
According to our data, we observe high startup activity in the USA and the UK, followed by India. The top 5 Startup Hubs for Sustainability are London, Singapore, Berlin, New York City, and Bangalore.
Discover Emerging Sustainability Startups to Watch in 2026
We hand-picked startups to showcase in this report by filtering for their technology, founding year, location, funding, and other metrics. These emerging sustainability companies work on solutions ranging from circular fashion and agrifood carbon footprint to biodiversity management and life cycle assessment.
1. Devera – Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Platform
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Valencia, Spain
- Funding: USD 676.9K
Spanish startup Devera offers an AI-powered LCA platform for industries like cosmetics, textiles, food, machinery, and more. The platform uses a cradle-to-grave approach to measure carbon footprints.
It automatically extracts data from multiple and unstructured sources. It calculates the environmental impact of each product based on raw materials, manufacturing, transport, packaging, use, and end of life.
It allows users to compare their products against set benchmarks. It recommends improvement areas. It also integrates with e-commerce websites in the form of widgets, enhancing user convenience. This allows small and medium businesses (SMB) brands to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and build consumer trust.
2. Niatsu – Agrifood Carbon Footprint Accounting
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Zurich, Switzerland
- Funding: USD 220K
Swiss startup Niatsu delivers a machine learning (ML)-driven carbon accounting platform for the food industry. It generates product carbon footprints and climate data through its NiatsuDB and application programming interface (API), Rest API.
It features automatic relevant data extraction. The generated reports help food companies track emissions across ingredients and production processes. It also conducts portfolio analysis for multiple products, providing emission intelligence for the entire supply chain.
Moreover, the climate data insights enable users to manage risks, current and future regulations, and brand reputation. This allows consumers and stakeholders to make informed decisions.
3. Omnivat – Modular & Containerised Minigrids
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
- Funding: USD 250K
South African startup Omnivat develops modular and containerised minigrids. It uses solar photovoltaics (PV), hydrogen, and battery hybrid storage to provide electricity, treated drinking water, and refrigeration.
The solution integrates into a single off-grid system. It also provides wi-fi connectivity to remote communities. This way, the startup serves remote clinics and underserved households with essential utilities and digital access.
4. EVERTA – DC Fast Chargers for Electric Vehicles
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Mumbai, India
Indian startup EVERTA manufactures direct current (DC) fast chargers for electric vehicles (EVs). It uses open charge point protocol (OCPP)-compatible charging and digital energy management. This reduces vehicle downtime.
The chargers feature multi-connector support for multi-vehicle charging. They come with smart load management for heavy-utilization environments. They serve charge point operators (CPOs), fleet managers, and businesses integrating EV charging into their infrastructure.
5. CircKit – AI-powered Circular Product Design Platform
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Manchester, UK
- Funding: USD 1.8 million
UK-based startup CircKit offers an AI software as a service (SaaS) for circular product design in fashion, footwear, and textiles. The software provides real-time insights into carbon, water, energy, land, and chemical data, including the 19 product environmental footprint (19xPEF) indicators. This allows brands to assess impacts during the design phase, pre-production.
It unifies LCA, compliance reporting, extended producer responsibility (EPR), ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation), digital product passports (DPP), and circular roadmap planning.
It allows users to compare and evaluate eco-friendly materials for textiles and footwear, optimizing the bill of materials (BOMs). It also recommends an optimal end-of-life strategy, such as resale, repair, or recycling.
This way, the solution helps fashion designers, footwear manufacturers, buyers, merchandisers, and procurement teams reduce waste and meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.
Want to Explore 4500+ Sustainability Startups & Scaleups?
6. NPHarvest – Nutrient Recovery from Wastewater
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Espoo, Finland
- Funding: USD 960.2K
Finnish startup NPHarvest offers the Nutrient Catcher, a hardware unit that recovers useful nutrients from wastewater. It uses a hydrophobic membrane stripping to recover nitrogen and calcium-based precipitation to recover phosphorus from wastewater. Both nitrogen and phosphorus serve as a resource for fertilizer production.
The modular unit extracts nutrients on-site using a physiochemical process. It requires an alkaline and an acid as inputs, and operates with the potential of hydrogen (pH) adjustment.
This eliminates the need for heating, aeration, high pressure, or additional chemicals. The process also handles total suspended solids (TSS), preventing clogging.
The solution enables wastewater treatment plants, biogas facilities, animal farms, and other industrial plants to reduce disposal costs and convert waste into resources.
7. Nala Earth – AI-driven Nature Intelligence Platform
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Berlin, Germany
- Funding: USD 4 million
German startup Nala Earth offers an AI-powered nature intelligence platform. It assesses the location-specific impact of a business’s activities on biodiversity, water, soil, and land use.
The platform supports compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
It enables users to set targets in accordance with the Science-Based Targets Network (SBTN). It also evaluates financial risks to guide corporate strategy.
8. Stilae – Alage-based Sustainable Packaging
- Founding Year: 2024
- Location: Paris, France
French startup Stilae develops biobased packaging using marine algae. The packaging is in the form of biodegradable capsules. The algae membranes encapsulate the product kept inside, such as soap, shower gel, oil, or cream.
The packaging disappears once used, providing a waste-free option. It provides the hospitality and cosmetics industries with a green alternative to disposable plastic packaging. The startup also produces the packaging on demand and locally, further aiding sustainability.
9. Rocchi Technologies – Noise Pollution Control Device
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Chiusi, Italy
Italian startup Rocchi Technologies develops an AI-based device to combat noise pollution. The device leverages destructive interference between sound waves and AI to create silence. This solution suits high-noise-producing areas such as railways, highways, and airports.
Unlike conventional acoustic insulation, the device does not require sound-absorbing panels or concrete structures. This reduces the associated environmental impact as well as large space requirements. The startup also offers an app to remotely monitor the device.
10. SAWT – AI-based Waste Sorting Bins
- Founding Year: 2024
- Location: Gurgaon, India
- Funding: USD 1 million
Indian startup SAWT develops an AI-based waste-sorting trash bin. The bin leverages the proprietary You Only Look Once (YOLO) computer vision model architecture.
Using disposal detection ultrasonic sensors, it sorts the waste into organic and recyclable categories. It utilizes solar power to run and eliminates reliance on the electricity grid. This makes it deployable in remote locations.
Moreover, the bin incorporates wood polymer composite (WPC) weather-resistant material, enabling durability for outdoor usage.
Discover All Emerging Sustainability Startups
The 10 sustainability startups showcased in this report are only a small sample of all startups we identified through our data-driven startup scouting approach. Download our free Industry Innovation Reports for a broad overview of the industry, or get in touch for quick & exhaustive research on the latest technologies & emerging solutions that will impact your company in 2026!
