Technology · Ocean
Seabin V5: the floating rubbish bin that turned marinas into plastic monitoring stations
Wind and currents push floating litter into the corners of every harbour, where it collects against pontoons and sea walls.
Sustainable Cities and Communities
Cities that hold people safely, and can last.
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Tagged with Goal 11
Technology · Space
ICEYE SAR satellite: the Finnish radar microsatellite that sees floods through cloud and darkness
When a river bursts its banks, the sky above is usually full of cloud, and the worst flooding often peaks at night.
Technology · Space
OroraTech wildfire satellites: thermal cameras in orbit that catch fires as small as 4 x 4 metres
In 2025 the EU lost more than a million hectares to fire, the worst season since records began in 2006.
Technology · Water
Hydraloop H600: the Dutch home appliance that recycles shower water for toilets, laundry and gardens
Most homes use drinking-quality water to flush toilets, then pour lightly used shower water straight down the drain.
Energy · CleanTech
Vaillant aroTHERM plus: the propane heat pump built to replace gas boilers in ordinary European homes
Heating buildings is one of Europe's largest sources of carbon emissions, and most homes still burn gas or oil to do it.
Energy · Decarbonization
Heidelberg Materials evoZero: the first cement sold on the back of industrial-scale carbon capture, and why its ramp-up is under scrutiny
Cement is the glue of modern construction, and about 7% of global CO2 emissions, much of it released by the chemistry of limestone itself.
Energy · Decarbonization
Saint-Gobain ORAÉ: the low-carbon flat glass that turns old windows into new ones
Every window, glass facade and balcony panel starts in a furnace burning natural gas at around 1,500°C, melting sand, soda ash and limestone.
Energy · Energy storage
Exponent Energy e^pack and e^pump: the Bengaluru battery that charges an electric auto in 15 minutes
In Indian cities, an auto-rickshaw or cargo three-wheeler earns money only while it is moving. Waiting four hours to recharge, or queuing at a battery swap station, eats directly into a driver's income.
Energy · Energy storage
Polar Night Energy Sand Battery: the Finnish silo of hot soapstone that heats a town on cheap wind power
Finland now has so much wind power that electricity is sometimes almost free, and sometimes very expensive. District heating networks still burn wood chips, gas and oil to keep homes warm through the winter.
Energy · Energy storage
Sunamp Thermino: the Scottish heat battery that replaces a hot water cylinder in a quarter of the space
Millions of European homes keep a large cylinder of hot water in a cupboard, slowly losing heat all day. Switching such homes to heat pumps often means fitting an even bigger tank, and many flats simply have no room.
Energy · Geothermal energy
Eavor-Loop at Geretsried: the closed-loop geothermal radiator that sent its first power into Germany's grid
Conventional geothermal power needs hot rock, natural water and permeable ground in the same place, which is why it is concentrated in volcanic regions such as Iceland, Kenya and Indonesia.
Energy · Geothermal energy
NIBE S1256: the Swedish ground-source heat pump that turns one unit of electricity into six units of heat
Most people picture geothermal energy as steaming volcanic power stations. In Sweden, it is a 200-metre hole in the garden and a fridge-sized box in the utility room.
Energy · Nuclear energy
Posiva ONKALO: the world's first deep repository for spent nuclear fuel is almost ready
Since the 1950s, critics of nuclear power have asked one question: where does the waste go?
Energy · Solar energy
Heliatek HeliaSol: a stick-on organic solar film from Dresden
Most of the surface area of our buildings cannot carry heavy glass solar panels: weak roofs, curved surfaces and tall concrete facades.
Energy · Wind energy
Aeromine: a bladeless rooftop wind unit built to work alongside solar
Warehouses and factories have huge flat roofs, and solar panels cover many of them, but solar goes quiet in the evenings and in winter.
Energy · Wind energy
Kitepower Hawk: a Dutch kite that charges batteries on off-grid building sites
Construction sites, farms and islands still burn diesel because the grid is full, far away or not there at all.
Materials science · Circular materials
Carbon Craft Design: Indian wall tiles made from air pollution and construction waste
India's building boom produces mountains of construction debris and relies on kiln-fired bricks and tiles that add to the country's air pollution.
Materials science · Circular materials
Made of Air: the Berlin façade panels that lock carbon from farm and forest waste into buildings
Building materials such as aluminium, steel and cement are responsible for a large share of the world's emissions before a building is even used.
Materials science · Low carbon industry
Ecocem ACT: the Irish-French cement that cuts clinker by up to 70% using today's plants
Cement is responsible for around 8% of global CO2 emissions, mostly from making clinker in giant kilns.
Materials science · Low carbon industry
Hoffmann Green H-UKR: the French cement made cold, with no clinker at all
Every tonne of ordinary cement releases several hundred kilograms of CO2, mostly from baking limestone into clinker.
Materials science · Reusable products
RECUP and REBOWL: Germany's deposit cup that you can return at 20,000 places
A coffee-to-go cup is used for a few minutes and then thrown away. Germany throws away about 13 billion single-use takeaway packs a year.
Materials science · Reusable products
Vytal: deposit-free reusable bowls and cups tracked by QR code, from Cologne canteens to US ballparks
Most reuse systems ask customers to pay a deposit, which puts many people off. Cologne start-up Vytal lends its bowls and cups for free and uses a QR code on each one to know who has it.
Materials science · Waste management
AMP ONE: the AI-run sorting plant that pulls recyclables out of rubbish bags before they reach landfill
Most rubbish bags still go straight to landfill, even though they contain cans, bottles, card and food that could be recovered.
Materials science · Waste management
Greyparrot Analyzer: the London-built AI camera that shows recycling plants what is really on the belt
Recycling plants sort thousands of tonnes of mixed waste a day, yet most only check what they recover by hand-sampling a tiny share of it.
Materials science · Waste management
Recykal reklaim: the Hyderabad deposit-refund system bringing bottle returns to Himalayan pilgrim trails and Goa's beaches
Europe's bottle-return machines work because every container carries a deposit. India has very few such schemes, and plastic piles up on pilgrim routes and beaches.
Materials science · Waste management
TOMRA R1: the Norwegian reverse vending machine that takes a whole bag of bottles at once
Deposit return systems get people to bring back bottles and cans, but feeding them into a machine one by one is slow and messy.
Materials science · Waste management
ZenRobotics Heavy Picker: the Finnish AI robot that sorts heavy construction waste
Construction and demolition waste is the heaviest waste stream in Europe, full of wood, metal, stone and plastics mixed together.
Green architecture · Green buildings
EcoCocon: prefabricated straw wall panels, now made by robots in Slovakia
EcoCocon takes a waste product from wheat farms, compresses it into a timber frame and ships it as ready-made walls that meet Passive House standards.
Green architecture · Green buildings
Stora Enso CLT: Europe's biggest cross-laminated timber maker hits 1 million m³, then hits the brakes
Stora Enso helped turn cross-laminated timber from an Austrian niche into a mainstream way to build offices, schools and apartment blocks.
Green architecture · Green buildings
Strawcture Eco AgriBioPanel: Indian crop stubble pressed into building boards, now sold in Europe
Every autumn, farmers in north India burn millions of tonnes of rice straw, and Delhi chokes. Strawcture Eco buys that straw and presses it into wall and ceiling boards.
Green architecture · Green buildings
VELUX vacuum glazing: a roof window with triple-glazing insulation in an 11.5 mm pane
VELUX has squeezed the insulation of a triple-glazed window into a pane less than half as thick, by replacing the gas between two sheets of glass with a vacuum.
Green architecture · Green buildings
Viessmann Vitocal 250-A: the propane heat pump built for old radiators, in Germany's new heating rules era
Viessmann's Vitocal 250-A is designed to replace a gas or oil boiler in an existing house without changing the radiators, using propane as a natural refrigerant.
Green architecture · Micro climate systemsAbout Ant Studio
CoolAnt Beehive: a Delhi architect's terracotta wall that cools hot air without refrigerants
Indian households have cooled drinking water in clay pots for centuries. Ant Studio turned the idea inside out, cooling air by blowing it through wet terracotta cones.
Green architecture · Micro climate systems
GAF StreetBond cool pavement: a reflective street coating that cooled a Los Angeles neighbourhood, with a catch
In 2022 roofing giant GAF painted more than 700,000 square feet of streets, schoolyards and car parks in Pacoima, Los Angeles, with a light-coloured reflective coating.
Green architecture · Micro climate systems
Green City Solutions CityTree and EcoBreeze: Berlin's moss air filters get solar power, and a hard look at the evidence
Green City Solutions builds walls of living moss that pull in street air, filter it and blow it back out cooler, sold as a compact alternative to planting trees.
Green architecture · Micro climate systems
Optigrün Retention Roof Flow Control: a green roof that stores rain to cool the city
A normal green roof dries out in a heatwave, just when the city needs its cooling most. Optigrün's retention roof keeps a reservoir of rainwater under the plants.
Green architecture · Micro climate systemsAbout Sempergreen
SemperGreenwall Outdoor: Dutch pre-grown living walls tested for heat and aircraft noise near Schiphol
Sempergreen grows plants into modular panels at its nurseries, so a building can get a fully green facade on the day it is installed.
Green architecture · Resource lifecycle
Kenoteq K-BRIQ: a brick pressed from demolition rubble, with no kiln
A normal clay brick is dug from a quarry and fired in a gas kiln at around 1,000 °C. The K-BRIQ is pressed from crushed old bricks, rubble, mortar and plasterboard, and cured without any firing.
Green architecture · Resource lifecycle
Rhino Machines Silica Plastic Block: pavers and bricks from foundry dust and waste plastic
India's metal foundries throw away fine, dusty sand that is too small to reuse. Its towns are full of plastic too dirty or mixed to recycle. A Gujarat foundry machinery firm melts one into the other and presses the result into paver blocks.
Green architecture · Resource lifecycle
Rotor DC: a Brussels cooperative that turns demolition sites into a building materials shop
Most office strip-outs end in a skip. Rotor DC sends in its own team first, takes out the tiles, stone, timber, doors and lamps that still have value, cleans them and puts them on sale.
Green architecture · Resource lifecycle
Tarkett ReStart: sending old floors back to the factory
Every flooring job leaves off-cuts, and every renovation rips out a floor that was once someone's new purchase. Tarkett's ReStart programme collects both and feeds them back into its own production lines.
Green architecture · Resource lifecycle
TRIQBRIQ: solid timber walls built like brickwork and taken apart block by block
Most mass timber is glued, so at the end of a building's life it can only be shredded or burned. TRIQBRIQ builds load-bearing walls from small wooden blocks held together only by beech dowels.
Green architecture · Sustainable site planning
ACC Permecrete: ready-mix concrete with holes, for Indian car parks that drink the monsoon
Indian cities flood in the monsoon and run dry by summer, often in the same neighbourhood. Much of the rain that could refill the ground hits concrete and runs off into drains.
Green architecture · Sustainable site planning
GreenBlue Urban RootSpace: room for street tree roots under the pavement
Most city street trees are planted in a pit not much bigger than a dustbin, surrounded by compacted ground. They stay small, lift the paving and die young.
Green architecture · Sustainable site planning
Hydrorock: stone wool blocks that hide a sponge under the garden
A wet lawn, a flooded driveway, a downpipe that overloads the sewer: Hydrorock's answer is a block of spun stone that drinks rainwater in minutes and hands it back to the soil over hours.
Green architecture · Sustainable site planning
PURUS ECORASTER: a car park that lets the rain through, made from yellow-bag plastic
Every new car park seals another patch of soil under asphalt. ECORASTER grids give cars a firm surface while leaving the ground open to rain, grass and gravel.
Green architecture · Sustainable site planning
Wavin Q-Bic Plus Low Carbon: an underground rain store made from recycled plastic
When a cloudburst hits a new housing estate, every roof, road and car park sends water into the sewer at once. Wavin's Q-Bic Plus crates build a hidden tank under the site that catches the peak and lets it go slowly or soak away.
Green architecture · Urban eco innovation
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9: a self-watering herb and salad farm for the kitchen counter
Big vertical farms promised to grow salad in city warehouses, and several of them ran out of money. Click & Grow took the idea down to the size of a toaster: a white tub, a lamp on a stalk and nine little seed pods that sprout basil, lettuce or tomatoes on a flat's windowless counter.
Green architecture · Urban eco innovation
Daily Dump Khamba: Bengaluru's terracotta tower for kitchen waste
Indian kitchens throw away a lot of peels, tea leaves and leftovers, and most of it still ends up mixed with plastic at a landfill on the edge of town. Daily Dump's answer is a stack of clay pots on the balcony.
Green architecture · Urban eco innovation
GRAF Platin: the flat rainwater tank that fits under a German garden
Flushing a toilet or watering a garden with drinking water makes little sense in a warming Europe, but storing rain usually means a huge buried cylinder and a deep hole. GRAF's Platin tank is flat instead.
Green architecture · Urban eco innovation
Green&Blue Bee Brick: a nest for solitary bees built into the wall
Modern walls are too well made for bees. Old brickwork had cracks and crumbling mortar where mason bees could lay their eggs; new facades have none. The Bee Brick puts a row of holes back into the wall, on purpose.
Green architecture · Urban eco innovation
Mr. Fill Ultra Fill: the Dutch solar bin that squeezes its own rubbish
A busy shopping street can fill an ordinary litter bin in hours, which means a van, a crew and fuel to empty it several times a day. Mr. Fill's answer is a bin with a solar panel on the lid and a press inside.
Transportation and logistics · Clean mobility
Ather Rizta: the family e-scooter that took a Bengaluru start-up national
India runs on scooters. More than any car, the 110 cc petrol scooter is how families get to work, school and the market, and it is a large source of urban air pollution and oil imports.
Transportation and logistics · Clean mobility
Candela P-12: the Swedish electric ferry that flies above the water
Ferries are slow, thirsty and, for their passenger numbers, some of the dirtiest vehicles in public transport. In Stockholm they produced nearly half of the region's public transport emissions while carrying relatively few people.
Transportation and logistics · Clean mobility
Solaris Urbino 12 electric: the Polish city bus that helped electrify Europe's routes
The city bus is the workhorse of urban transport and, with its diesel engine idling at every stop, one of the most visible sources of street-level pollution. It is also the vehicle that has electrified fastest in Europe.
Transportation and logistics · Clean mobilityAbout myStromer
Stromer ST7: the Swiss 45 km/h e-bike that turns a car commute into a bike ride
An ordinary e-bike stops helping at 25 km/h, which is fine for a 5 km trip into town but slow for a 20 km commute. A speed pedelec keeps pushing up to 45 km/h, close to urban car speeds.
Transportation and logistics · Clean mobility
Urban Arrow Family: the Dutch cargo e-bike built to replace the second car
The school run, the weekly shop and the trip to the swimming pool are short, regular and heavy: exactly the trips that keep a second family car on the drive. Urban Arrow designed a bike for them.
Transportation and logistics · EVs
Kempower Satellite: Finland's modular fast chargers that share power where it is needed
A fast-charging site is expensive, and most of the time its chargers are either idle or waiting for a car that can only take part of their power.
Transportation and logistics · EVs
Renault 5 E-Tech electric: Europe's retro city car that made small EVs sell
For years Europe's electric car market was split between expensive premium models and cheap imports. Affordable, European-made small EVs were rare, which kept many city drivers in petrol hatchbacks.
Transportation and logistics · EVs
SUN Mobility battery swapping: India's swap network that sells energy, not batteries
For India's e-rickshaw drivers and delivery riders, the battery is the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and hours spent charging are hours without income.
Transportation and logistics · EVs
Tata Nexon EV: the made-in-India electric SUV that opened the mass market
When the Nexon EV arrived in January 2020, electric cars in India were rare, expensive or impractical for long trips.
Transportation and logistics · Logistics software
FarEye: the Noida-built software that plans the last mile for global brands
The last mile, from depot to doorstep, is the most expensive and often the most polluting part of a delivery, full of failed drop-offs, half-empty vans and drivers circling for addresses.
Transportation and logistics · Logistics software
Locus: the Bengaluru route planner that IKEA's biggest retailer bought
Every morning, thousands of delivery fleets have to decide which van takes which order, in what sequence and at what time. Done by hand, that puzzle wastes kilometres, fuel and drivers' hours.
Transportation and logistics · Logistics software
Transporeon: the European freight platform that books trucks, dock slots and carbon reports
Every day, thousands of European factories and retailers have to find a truck, agree a price, book a loading slot and later prove what the trip emitted. Much of that still happens by phone, email and spreadsheet.
Transportation and logistics · Supply chain
LivingPackets THE BOX: the Nantes parcel that locks, tracks itself and comes back
Every online order still tends to arrive in a new cardboard box, wrapped in tape and filler, that is used once and thrown away. For valuable goods, the box also gives thieves an easy target.
Eco-restoration · CleanTech
Biomatrix Water: the Scottish floating islands that bring wetlands back to hard-edged rivers and docks
City rivers, canals and docks are often walled in stone and steel, with no shallow edges where plants can root, birds can nest or fish can shelter. The water is busy, but biologically almost empty.
Eco-restoration · CleanTech
The Great Bubble Barrier: a curtain of air that lifts plastic out of rivers before it reaches the sea
Most plastic in the sea starts on land and travels there by river. Booms and nets across rivers can catch some of it, but they block boats and fish, and they miss plastic drifting below the surface.
Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software
7Analytics FloodCube: Norwegian building-by-building flood models that warn of cloudbursts 72 hours ahead
Most flood maps show rivers bursting their banks. But in cities, much of the damage now comes from sudden cloudbursts that overwhelm drains and send water down streets and into basements, often far from any river.
Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software
AIResQ Rain2Resilience: physics-guided AI and Made-in-India sensors that warn Gurugram which streets will flood
Every monsoon, roads in Indian cities vanish under water, trains stall and commutes stretch into hours. Usually the response starts only after the rain: pumping, rerouting and cleaning up.
Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software
Fathom Global Flood Map: the Bristol flood model that maps river, rain and coastal flooding for every place on Earth
Floods cause more damage than almost any other natural hazard, yet for much of the world nobody can say which streets, farms or factories will go under in a 1 in 100 year storm, let alone in a warmer climate.
Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software
Jupiter Intelligence ClimateScore Global: the climate risk platform big banks use to price floods, heat and wildfire into loans
When a bank lends against a warehouse in Houston or a hotel on the Spanish coast, it prices credit risk and market risk in great detail, but until recently it had little hard data on how floods, heat or wildfire might wipe out the value of the collateral.
Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software
Mitiga Solutions EarthScan: Barcelona supercomputing science that tells companies what floods, heat and wildfire will cost their assets
A solar farm in Andalusia, a warehouse near Valencia and a hotel on a Greek island face very different futures as the climate warms, but most companies still judge their sites with weather records from the past.
Eco-restoration · Robotics
Clearbot: India's fleet of AI-guided electric boats that clear plastic and water hyacinth
Small electric workboats, born in a Hong Kong university lab and now built and run from Bengaluru, that pull plastic, temple offerings and invasive weed out of India's ports, rivers and lakes.
Eco-restoration · Robotics
RanMarine WasteShark+: a Rotterdam-built electric drone that skims litter off harbours
A battery-powered aquatic drone, about the size of a small car bonnet, that swims into dock corners and canal edges to scoop up bottles, bags and weed before they drift out to sea.
Eco-restoration · Robotics
The Searial Cleaners BeBot: a solar-assisted robot that sieves litter out of beach sand
A quiet, all-electric beach robot from eastern France that combs the top 10 cm of sand for cigarette butts, bottle caps and plastic shards that rakes and volunteers miss.
Planetary engineering · Atmospheric frontiers
Heirloom: the Californian air capture plant that uses limestone as a carbon sponge
Instead of chemical filters and giant fans, Heirloom bakes limestone, lets the resulting lime soak up CO2 from the air on stacked trays, and repeats the cycle. Its first plant opened in Tracy, California, in 2023.
Planetary engineering · Atmospheric frontiers
Respirer Atmos: the Pune-made sensors mapping India's air, block by rural block
Small, low-power air quality monitors that now sit in every block of Bihar, on Mumbai construction sites and at mines in South Africa, turning the lowest layer of the atmosphere into live data.
Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management
i2Cool: the Hong Kong coating inspired by Saharan silver ants that keeps roofs cool without electricity
A white, paint-like coating that reflects more than 95% of sunlight and sends heat out through the sky. Born in a City University of Hong Kong lab, it has been used on more than 500 projects in about 30 countries, from Hong Kong towers to grain silos and shipping containers.
Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management
SPACECOOL: the Japanese film that sends heat to space, now selling in Europe from Munich
A thin film and fabric that reflect almost all sunlight and radiate heat out through the sky, staying cooler than the surrounding air even at noon. It wrapped an entire pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka and is now marketed in Europe by a Munich subsidiary.
Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management
Thermacool: the IIT Bombay cool roof coating that India's heat policies are making mainstream
A roof coating developed at IIT Bombay and sold by a small New Delhi company, designed to bounce back the near-infrared part of sunlight that heats concrete and tin roofs. As Indian states start to require cool roofs, products like this are moving from pilot projects to building permits.
Advanced technology · Deep space exploration
OHB Hera: the German-built spacecraft checking whether we can knock a dangerous asteroid off course
In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into a small asteroid moon to nudge its orbit. Europe's Hera, built by OHB in Bremen, has now travelled two years to the scene to measure exactly what happened. Its findings will help turn asteroid deflection into a reliable way to protect Earth.