The world faces systemic challenges, despite our wealth of brilliant ideas, availability of capital and outstanding talent. At Xynteo, we are creating a tribe of remarkable organisations and individuals to scale impact in an unprecedented way.
The intimate and empowering talks featured impact entrepreneurs working on a wide range of issues.
“Recovery of waste in India is driven by its informal labour,” said Siddarth Hande, CEO of Kabadiwalla Connect. “We map the informal supply chain, trace the materials and develop a clean and healthy way of collection to upgrade the supply chain.”
“Nearly 70% of female-owned SME’s in the world are unfinanced. Women in places like Ecuador have less chance to accelerate our businesses and are systematically excluded,” said Ana Monteverde of Mujeres Wow, an application aiming to solve the credit gap suffered by female entrepreneurs, “The strength of our application is the community – there’s nothing more powerful than women empowering another.”
“I’m solving the waste of precious fruit in Botswana. Over two million Marula trees produce fruit that mostly goes to waste,” said Bonolo Beverley Monthe, CEO, Maungo Crafts. “People are not so excited by indigenous fruits in our country! So I wanted to try and change that. We are fuelling the growth of reforestation and sustainable food industries”.
Amongst these stories of entrepreneurs working to break through barriers , it was comforting to hear reflections on creating and working towards change.
Spirituality expert Bob Thurman discussed the value of awareness in helping one find a purpose. “My question to everyone is: how does what you do fit in this context of doing something really meaningful in the next 10 years?” said Thurman. Listen to Greta Thurnberg, who has a connection to what’s actually happening on the planet. Most of us are living in denial!”
Capping it off was some inspiration from Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta’s CEO Kjetil Thorsen, who encouraged bravery when facing immense challenges. “You have to accept that every idea is complex,” observed Thoresen. “As architects, we package complex ideas and requirements, turning them into beautiful structures that contribute to society.”
TrashCon Labs leads a new wave of innovators scaling sustainable solutions
Created in 2018, as an integral part of the Xynteo Exchange/Norway, the Impact Maker Award was presented by Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen to TrashCon Labs, one of our 36 astounding market-based solutions all vying for The Impact Maker Award 2019, working towards solving our Impact Challenges, TrashCon Labs, a startup that segregates unsegregated municipal solid waste automatically and generating value out of it. TrashCon Labs is currently part of the Leadership Vanguard’s acceleration programme.
TrashCon was awarded a cash prize of €50,000 to help bring its solution to the next level.
“No one else was solving the waste epidemic, so I had to. Thank you! Every one of those digits will impact thousands of lives!”
Said TrashCon Labs founder, Nivedah RM accepting the award.
The prize was awarded by awarded by Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry. Isaksen praised TrashCon Labs for leveraging the dynamics of the business community to solve huge social and environmental issues. “Scale is the important thing here!”, said Isaksen, “You can learn a lot from business.”
Congratulations to TrashCon Labs! We look forward to your vision of making future generations ask: “What is trash?”
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