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As people from across the globe come together today to commemorate the World Environment Day by cleaning up beaches, planting trees, and holding marches in an effort to revive what environment advocates say is a planet on the precipice, these startups have taken their businesses a notch upwards with cleaner practices.
While over 150 countries are slated to host environmentally-themed events, environment experts hope for this year's World Environment Day is to encourage a global effort to tackle what they describe as the decline of the natural world. Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said, "we are running against the clock. Today, as we look to a...future of heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, pandemics, dirty air, wars, and plastic-ridden oceans, action is more important than ever."
On World Environment Day, here's a look into five Indian startups that are working across different sectors with the aim to make environmentally conscious decisions and contribute the transition to a greener future.
1. Phool
This is India’s very first biomaterial startup and a fragrance-focussed wellness brand. Phool.co is a flower recycling technology startup and so far it has raised $8 million (Rs60.5 crore) in a Series A round from Sixth Sense Ventures, a consumer-centric venture fund.
Phool.co was founded in 2017 by engineering graduates Ankit Agarwal and Prateek Kumar. The startup company uses floral waste, collected from dumping temple waste in rivers, to make patented organic fertiliser and charcoal-free luxury incense products.
As of now, this Kanpur-based startup accumulates floral waste from three Indian cities, including one of the biggest temples (Kashi Vishwanath), averting 13 tonnes of waste flowers and toxic chemicals from reaching into the river every day.
It is worth noting that self-help women groups handcraft the waste into patented charcoal free incense sticks and essential oils through the ‘flower cycling’ technology. Additionally, it is India’s first direct-to-consumer wellness brand to obtain the coveted Fair for Life-Fairtrade, and Ecocert Organic and Natural certifications. And, there's more, this IIT-backed startup has invented Fleather—‘leather made from flowers’. With this commercially viable, vegan alternative to animal leather, the startup hopes to make the use of animal leather obsolete.
2. Banyan Nation
One of India’s first vertically integrated plastic recycling companies, Banyan Nation is a waste management company that collects plastic wastes from industries and recycles them for further use. The startup utilizes its unique technology platform to integrate thousands of informal workers and produces premium-quality recycled polyolefin plastics (PE and PP) for mainstream and high-quality applications.
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