The CB Innovation Awards 2023: Meet the Winners
If entrepreneurs have realized one lesson prior to now yr, it’s that business as traditional doesn’t minimize it in a world destabilized by a pandemic, a world refugee emergency, a local weather disaster and the warfare in Ukraine. Survival requires new concepts. New concepts to repair damaged provide chains. New concepts to forestall—and ideally reverse—environmental harm. New concepts to make companies smarter, extra sustainable and higher at anticipating buyer wants. New concepts that create a greater world.
Canadian Business, supported by the analysis crew on the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, is celebrating firms that excel at innovation. We analyzed information on companies with Canadian headquarters which might be leaders of their subject and—most significantly—prioritize practices which might be sustainable, equitable and inclusive. From that checklist, our panel of judges chosen 25 standouts. They signify one of the best and brightest of their respective industries.
Meet Canada’s most modern firms
Best private finance innovator: Wealthsimple
Founded: 2014
Founders: Rudy Adler, Brett Huneycutt, Michael Katchen
Headquarters: Toronto
It was forward of its time again in 2014 when it launched Canada’s first “roboadviser”—a nifty managed platform that may finally remodel the direct-to-consumer investing house. Wealthsimple democratized investing by making it low-cost and DIY, and its early checklist of firsts is spectacular: first commission-free buying and selling platform, first platform to supply regulated crypto, first to offer customers extra reasonably priced fractional shares.
RELATED: Wealthsimple’s co-founder and CEO on simplifying monetary providers
Now, as the corporate surpasses 3 million shoppers and with $20 billion in belongings beneath its administration, it’s nonetheless breaking new floor. This previous March, Wealthsimple shoppers gained entry to personal credit score, whereby retail buyers can contribute to massive business loans. And the corporate is at present in beta testing to supply choices buying and selling to its customers.
And then there’s this: Wealthsimple is to this point the one monetary group that’s not a financial institution or credit score union to be granted entry by the Bank of Canada to Canada’s forthcoming nationwide real-time-rail cost system. Just the newest factor so as to add to that checklist of firstrate firsts.
Best meals and beverage innovator: Proxies
Founded: 2021
Founders: Devin Campbell, Charlie and Scott Friedmann
Headquarters: Toronto
While non-alcoholic spirits and beers have grown exponentially in reputation over the previous few years, booze-free wine alternate options have lagged behind. That’s as a result of most of them are made by de-alcoholizing wine (often mediocre bulk wine), leading to an finish product that tastes about as advanced as grape juice.
Charlie Friedmann, president of non-alcoholic-wine model Proxies, developed a product that stands up in opposition to its alcoholic counterparts. He makes use of varietal wine grapes from European vineyards, provides verjuice from Ontario’s Niagara area for acidity and physique after which layers in teas for construction, tannin and aromatics, different fruit juices for depth and extra flavour and herbs and spices for aroma and complexity. The purpose was to create a non-alcoholic wine different that pairs properly with meals. The checklist of acclaimed establishments which have Proxies on their beverage menus is a testomony to that—the Four Seasons, the Fairmont and the Ritz-Carlton resort teams are amongst them. The firm can also be in talks with provincial liquor boards and main U.S. grocery chains for launches earlier than the top of the yr.
Proxies’ core merchandise are freed from preservatives—a uncommon exception amongst non-alcoholic wines. And for 2023, it’s creating extra glowing wines that’ll match the complexity of its core line. Another new product coming this yr is canned Proxies (for the park picnickers, weekend cottagers and music-festival goers) in addition to extra limited-edition collaborations, just like the glowing rosé the corporate developed with cooks from Parachute, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago, to pair with its Korean fare. Proxies can also be collaborating with a vineyard in Oregon on a brand new product—an indication that the wine world, which has lengthy frowned upon non-alcoholic merchandise, is warming as much as the concept of booze-free bottles.
Best social media innovator: Pinterest
Founded: 2010
Founders: Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, Ben Silbermann
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
It could also be a California-based firm, however Pinterest has a brand new 430-square-metre workplace in Toronto’s monetary district that’s pure Canadiana: The assembly rooms are designed round plaid, maple syrup and, sure, poutine.
Scaling its Canadian presence—together with nationwide launches of Pinterest TV and Pinterest Academy (an e-learning module to assist manufacturers join with advertisers) in addition to 50 new native hires—has been a prime precedence for the social-media platform. Half of Pinterest’s world shopping-engineering crew is now situated in Canada, they usually’re tasked with constructing the tech that may drive the corporate’s development over the subsequent 10 years.
Best monetary safety innovator: MinervaAI
Founded: 2018
Founders: Jennifer Arnold, Victor Tay, Damian Tran
Headquarters: Toronto
As any nightclub bouncer will let you know, it’s simpler to maintain hassle out than it’s to take away the supply as soon as it’s inside. The stakes are only a bit larger in terms of monetary organizations making an attempt to maintain cash launderers off their shopper lists.
Five years in the past, Jennifer Arnold, who has a protracted historical past in financial-crime roles at main Canadian banks, teamed up with an artificial-intelligence skilled and an information whiz to create MinervaAI. Overnight, their firm supplied a brand new form of anti-laundering course of for monetary establishments—particularly, banks, crypto exchanges and cost platforms—by making use of machine studying and deep studying fashions to the duty.
Before Minerva, anti-money-laundering efforts relied solely on a sequence of handbook searches that may take hours of an analyst’s time. Minerva, alternatively, examines round 4.5 billion information factors in seconds.
In a blink, Minerva ensures there are not any sanctions in opposition to a possible shopper, scans for something fishy within the media—every thing from nationwide newspapers to blogs to bulletin boards—in 147 languages and identifies whether or not they’re a politically uncovered one who might be weak to bribes and corruption. Once a shopper is given the inexperienced mild, the platform will proceed to maintain tabs on them in actual time.
The firm makes compliance with federal rules less expensive, but it surely additionally does one thing much more necessary from a reputational perspective: It extra effectively ensures monetary organizations aren’t doing business with human traffickers, drug lords or arms sellers.
The subsequent growth coming from Minerva will help the potential shopper. Details are scant forward of its launch this summer time, however phrase is that the brand new instrument will permit an individual approaching a monetary establishment to current verified info—suppose membership goer exhibiting his ID—after which, in the event that they wish to transfer on later, put it again of their pocket.
Best point-of-sale innovator: Financeit
Founded: 2011
Founders: Michael Garrity, Casper Wong
Headquarters: Toronto
Making an enormous funding in your house, like a brand new deck or a sizzling tub, can invite loads of stress about prices. One answer: Financeit, a Toronto fintech firm, offers consumers the flexibleness to decide on a low-cost cost plan.
Founded in 2011, Financeit gives a point-of-sale financing platform to home-improvement firms like California Closets, Home Depot and Lennox Furnace. After prospects cross the same old credit score checks, the platform helps the corporate supply an environment friendly and reasonably priced cost plan—with not one of the hidden charges typical of most financing set-ups.
Since launching, the corporate has expanded from home-improvement providers into automobile and different retail choices.
Best well being care innovator: Maple
Founded: 2015
Founders: Brett Belchetz, Stuart Starr, Roxana Zaman
Headquarters: Toronto
Maple’s virtual-health-care platform discovered its massive second throughout Covid, changing into one thing of a family title, however when it launched in 2015, the concept of accessing a physician by way of your laptop was revolutionary.
More than simply an MD on Zoom, the platform will triage your grievance and permit a physician to order lab checks and generate prescriptions for you. (Patients with out provincial or group protection pay a month-to-month payment.) Unlike its essential rivals, which rent medical doctors on shifts, Maple features extra like Uber; when certainly one of its 3,000 medical professionals has a break day from their common job, they’ll hop onto the system to tackle additional work.
Later this yr, Maple will launch a brand new product which may take away from its first one: a platform designed to maintain its 4 million shoppers wholesome. Like a Fitbit instances 10, the platform will take note of your age, intercourse and medical historical past and provides well being and vitamin steering to maintain you in your most optimum observe to keep away from high-risk situations.
Best software program help innovator: AOT Technologies
Founded: 2010
Founders: George Philip, Praveen Ramachandran
Headquarters: Victoria
You have an amazing concept for a brand new business, but it surely’s going to require lots of expertise, which implies hiring net builders and constructing advanced purposes. And in a aggressive job market, it may be difficult to search out the best expertise. But you may simply work with AOT Technologies as a substitute.
The Victoria-based start-up focuses on open-source low-code growth, which will be constructed with 80 per cent much less programming time, liberating up employees to work on high-priority tasks. Making adjustments to a completed system will be as straightforward as utilizing drag-and-drop instruments. This means organizations—together with a number of ministries within the B.C. authorities, which use an AOT software program to streamline workflows—don’t have to speculate as a lot in recruitment or fear about discovering a wizard of a developer.
This yr, AOT is including new functionalities that make it simpler to automate companies end-to-end—placing the ability of coding into shoppers’ fingers.
Best self-care innovator: Nixit
Founded: 2018
Founder: Rachel Newton
Headquarters: Toronto
Any time is an effective time to speak about that point of the month: So goes the guiding philosophy of the period-care firm that’s “nixing” the disgrace round menstrual well being whereas additionally altering the administration of flows. Nixit’s signature BPA-free silicone menstrual disc sits under the cervix, is straightforward to wash and has a five-year lifespan.
The firm estimates that 42 million interval merchandise have been diverted from landfills because it launched in 2018. A 100 per cent natural waterbased lube is Nixit’s newest providing, bought as a companion to the disc or as a standalone product.
Like all issues Nixit, the design and branding are Gen-Z-friendly, clear and useful but additionally stylish sufficient to be displayed in your nightstand—and even your Instagram feed.
Best advertising innovator: Vendasta
Founded: 2008
Founders: Jason Collins, John Fothergill, Ches Hagen, Guy Kelsey, Brendan King, Jeff Tomlin, Allan Wolinski
Headquarters: Saskatoon
For small- and medium-sized companies, the nagging query is at all times: What would we be capable of obtain if we simply had assets like the large gamers?
Vendasta, a tech consultancy headquartered in Saskatoon, delivers simply that to some 5.5 million native companies around the globe. For Anderson Marketing Group, Vendasta overhauled the corporate’s internet advertising and e-commerce choices, resulting in 250 per cent annual development since 2020.
This yr, it looks like each firm desires to maintain up with the wave of AI developments. Vendasta helps its shoppers implement AI instruments that assist write social advertising campaigns in a snap, generate social-media pictures and even reply to buyer evaluations on Facebook and Google. The result’s larger effectivity, extra assets being made obtainable for different tasks and being higher capable of compete in a market dominated by the large guys.
Best funding innovator: Sandpiper Ventures
Founded: 2020
Founders: Cathy Bennett, Rhiannon Davies, Sarah Young
Headquarters: Halifax
When Julia Rivard Dexter was searching for funding for a gamified studying software program, she saved operating into the identical form of resistance: Potential buyers cherished her product, however they felt the corporate would profit from a “different” (learn: male) form of chief. Raising capital was sluggish, and the cheques she was getting had been slight.
A saviour got here within the type of Sandpiper Ventures, which supplied the cash she wanted in addition to the momentum: Sandpiper’s vote of confidence impressed investments from BBC and the Telus Pollinator. Rivard Dexter finally exceeded her $3 million funding goal.
The problem of fundraising whereas feminine is one thing the 9 co-founders of the Halifax-based VC agency—which is dedicated to investing in seed-stage start-ups based and led by ladies—skilled first-hand whereas trying to find the $20 million they wanted to launch their fund.
This is, sadly, a part of a broader sample. While statistics present that companies with ladies founders ship larger income, solely 2.3 per cent of enterprise capital goes of their route. Systemic boundaries begin with the fundamental actuality that persons are extra prone to belief people who’re most like themselves, making a self-perpetuating previous (white) boys membership.
When ladies do get the possibility to pitch their tasks to potential buyers, they’re typically requested about how they are going to mitigate loss, whereas male founders are requested how they are going to stimulate development. The pitch course of itself—a high-octane grill sesh—fits bro-ish persona traits, which is why Sandpiper has opted for a deeper method, centered much less on bravado and extra on mutually helpful partnerships. Atypically, they commit half the time in an preliminary assembly to letting founders ask them questions. When issues transfer ahead, it’s with the understanding that not simply cash however the gathered experience and networks of the co-founders will probably be a part of the bundle.
Three years in, Sandpiper’s rising portfolio contains companies focusing on AI, edtech, well being care, flower supply and extra. The present tech-sector downturn means competitors for capital is fiercer than ever, however Sandpiper co-founder and managing companion Sarah Young sees a silver lining: Women entrepreneurs have not often reaped the advantages of a hovering market or overvaluation. They are used to creating extra from much less.
Best dwelling tech innovator: Ecobee
Founded: 2007
Founder: Stuart Lombard
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
Last September, San Diego skilled a chronic heatwave. Residents who had an Ecobee good thermostat of their dwelling would often get a message: Would they consent to their energy consumption being decreased for a time so as to keep away from a regional blackout? Throughout the state of California, fifty-thousand Ecobee prospects voluntarily participated in this system, saving about 50 megawatts at peak instances and serving to cities like San Diego hold the lights on.
Ecobee invented the primary wifi-connected thermostat in 2009, and its modern thermostats have since developed to trace family vitality use to assist shoppers get monetary savings and use much less energy. Its gadgets additionally function a wise speaker, an air-quality monitor and even a safety system if built-in with the suitable software program.
And having been acquired in 2021 by Generac, an energy-technology firm, Ecobee is now providing integrations with Generac’s line of wifi- and cellular-enabled dwelling standby mills, which can assist householders keep watch over the standing of their backup energy too—which is very helpful when energy outages just like the one confronted by San Diego can’t be averted.
Best inexperienced vitality innovator: Solaires
Founded: 2020
Founders: Fabian de la Fuente, Sahar Sam
Headquarters: Victoria
Despite a pandemic-related supply-chain hiccup, solar energy continues to be one of the best news story in renewable vitality, with costs nonetheless plummeting and adoption on the ascent. Solaires, a Victoria-based cleantech agency, is making photo voltaic much more readily accessible and helpful by means of distinctive perovskite-based photo voltaic “ink” and photo voltaic cells. A perovskite crystal has nice compositional flexibility and, in contrast to typical silicon, can be utilized in photo voltaic cells at a fraction of the manufacturing value and vitality; it can be tuned to exactly match the solar’s spectrum.
Solaires’s patented Solar Ink will be utilized to inflexible or versatile substrates, like skinny movie photo voltaic cells, but additionally to Internet of Things wearables and sensors, and it may be used outdoor or indoors. The firm’s purpose, in reality, is to seize the solar’s vitality actually all over the place; in a decade’s time, it expects, its merchandise will permit each single battery to be charged instantly by means of photo voltaic.
Solaires is simply transferring into the worldwide market now—it not too long ago signed distribution agreements in Korea and Japan—however its future appears very vibrant certainly.
Best inexperienced client product innovator: Tru Earth
Founded: 2019
Founders: Kevin Hinton, Brad Liski, Ryan McKenzie
Headquarters: Port Moody, B.C
A British Columbia trio of dads—Kevin Hinton, Brad Liski and Ryan McKenzie—launched Tru Earth as a laundry-detergent firm. Their hero product—a two-inch-by-four-inch phosphate-free detergent strip packaged in biodegradable cardboard, designed to exchange liquid detergent in a plastic container—has since led to a line of environmentally pleasant family merchandise, similar to toilet-bowl cleaner, dishwasher-detergent tablets, dish sponges, fabric-softener strips and beeswax wraps.
The firm not too long ago expanded into main U.S. grocery and {hardware} chains, similar to Publix and Kroger. As of October 2022, Tru Earth might be discovered in additional than 7,000 retail places, and the founders say the recognition of their merchandise has prevented greater than 107 million plastic containers from being created. If they’ve their means, inexperienced cleansing would be the default in each family.
Best packaging innovator: Eco Guardian
Founded: 2004
Founder: Anil Abrol
Headquarters: Newmarket, Ont.
Southern Ontario firm Eco Guardian has been creating inexperienced product options, like compostable cutlery, cups and food-takeout containers, since lengthy earlier than governments started mandating them. It makes them with rapid-growth crops, like wheat straw, sugar cane and bamboo, partnering with services to make use of post-industrial supplies, which reduces waste and promotes a round financial system.
When the pandemic hit, the corporate expanded with a line of bathroom paper, napkins, facial tissues and paper towels made out of bamboo as a substitute of timber. Bamboo, a grass, produces 10 instances the paper yield of timber and regenerates simply with out replanting.
In the summer time of 2022, the corporate gained Sobeys’ Plastic Waste Challenge with a bamboo- and sugarcane-based design that consists of two trays—one with holes and one strong—with a pad in between. It serves as a inexperienced different to the Styrofoam and plastic trays generally seen in grocery shops right this moment. The new packaging will probably be piloted in Sobeys places in Nova Scotia, with the purpose of being rolled out nationally.
Best actual property innovator: Wahi
Founded: 2022
Founder: Benjy Katchen
Headquarters: Toronto
The actual property sector obtained a shock when this start-up launched an alternative-home-sales platform that offers householders extra choices and extra management when promoting their properties. The management comes within the type of paying solely a one per cent fee (for a house public sale) or a 1.5 per cent fee (to promote with itemizing, showings and negotiation assist from Wahi employees) as a substitute of the same old 2.5 per cent. This interprets to a financial savings of about $10,000 to $15,000 per dwelling, based mostly on the present common Toronto costs.
Home sellers who want to go the normal realtor route may also use Wahi’s search perform—created in partnership with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence—to check the providers and costs of realtors to decide on one of the best one for his or her wants.
While Wahi is at present solely working within the Greater Toronto Area, the corporate plans so as to add extra markets in Ontario—and finally anyplace individuals wish to take management when promoting a house.
Best robotics innovators: Mecademic
Founded: 2013
Founders: Ilian Bonev, Jonathan Coulombe
Headquarters: Montreal
Jonathan Coulombe and Ilian Bonev based Mecademic with a lofty purpose: Make robots smaller and extra reasonably priced. An industrial robotic arm, used to automate manufacturing processes, can value as much as $400,000 and, relying on the applying, be bigger than most human beings. But the Meca500, certainly one of Mecademic’s flagship merchandise, is a few foot tall and will be held in a single hand.
The petite robotic arm is used to do finicky jobs with extra precision than a human, together with meeting, inspection and testing in medical-device manufacturing, lab automation and the making of jewelry and watches. It’s additionally a fraction of the value of its competitors, at round $23,000.
Demand is constructing: In late 2022, Mecademic launched the newest model of Meca500, which has since bought virtually 20,000 models in 40 international locations. This yr, will probably be releasing a brand new mannequin of its different robotic, MCS500, and creating extra new merchandise.
Best social work innovator: CarePros
Founded: 2016
Founder: Charles Wong
Headquarters: Edmonton
While ongoing pandemic fallout and a youth-mental-health epidemic have left many Canadians reeling, CarePros stays a vibrant mild within the gloom. Since 2016, the Albertan youth and child-care group has supplied a battery of badly wanted providers, together with personalised respite care (at dwelling and in any other case), group help and behavioural-development help. It tailors applications with culturally knowledgeable practices for Indigenous kids and helps youth in search of employment. Ultimately, the purpose is to create higher, stronger and safer communities, particularly for kids who’ve skilled important trauma.
Most not too long ago, CarePros launched a brand new mannequin of foster care that treats behaviours as signs reasonably than issues and is implementing new therapies to raised perceive how trauma has affected the brains of the kids and youth it cares for. Next up: {custom} case-management software program that CarePros believes will set a brand new business customary.
Best industrial automobile innovator: Geotab
Founded: 2000
Founder: Neil Cawse
Headquarters: Oakville, Ont.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, all of us turned keenly conscious of how necessary provide chains are—and the way simply they are often disrupted. Geotab is making that total course of smarter. The firm tracks industrial fleets utilizing sensors that present information on every thing from location to automobile efficiency and security. To date, Geotab has linked to three.5 million autos worldwide and processed greater than 55 billion information factors day by day.
MORE: Geotab’s family-first ethos means kid-approved snacks in its cafeteria and flex hours
Companies use that information to plan extra environment friendly routes and make higher decisions about what sorts of autos to make use of. As a end result, Geotab makes an enormous environmental affect. If vehicles and vehicles run extra effectively, they use much less gasoline—so the evaluation the corporate gives is invaluable for making industrial fleets inexperienced.
And a newly introduced partnership with Synop, a platform for electric-vehicle operations, may also give shoppers entry to built-in EV charging and vitality administration. As many truck fleets convert to EVs, this can assist them observe battery-charge instances and the vitality effectivity of every automobile, which in flip helps them make higher planning selections.
Best expertise assets innovator: Staffy
Founded: 2015
Founder: Peter Faist
Headquarters: Toronto
When entrepreneur Peter Faist launched his Staffy start-up, it helped eating places and bars get last-minute servers and cooks. But the second the pandemic hit hospitals, long-term-care properties and medical clinics, resulting in burnt-out and sick employees, the corporate turned a useful useful resource for matching up these establishments with certified nurses, personal-support employees, dietary aides, cleaners and different employees.
Today, there are roughly 20,000 employees obtainable on Staffy, serving to fill staffing shortages at main hospitals and medical clinics in six provinces. On common, these employees fill 21 shifts a yr. Because many health-care establishments nonetheless face a backlog in operations employees, the corporate is including X-ray and CT-scan technicians, amongst different roles, and has its sights set on a U.S. growth by 2024.
Best trend innovator: Folds Wear
Founded: 2021
Founder: Nina Kharey
Headquarters: Calgary
Nina Kharey, the engineer and designer behind on-line retailer Nonie, constructed a popularity for sensible and splendid womenswear that’s a favorite of the likes of Meghan Markle. But in the course of the pandemic, Kharey did an about-face, retrofitting her Calgary manufacturing facility to supply masks for health-care employees. She additionally noticed a possibility to enhance on standard-issue scrubs, which are usually ill-fitting and poorly made. Worse, as a result of most scrubs are made with simply contaminated cloth that incorporates plastics, some 16,000 tonnes find yourself in North American landfills yearly.
Kharey’s answer: Folds Wear, a line of tailor-made scrubs that are available sportier appears with jogger-style pants and crewneck shirts.
The scrubs are comprised of recycled supplies which might be extra sturdy and face up to a number of washes. Folds Wear cloth additionally incorporates silver ions, a topical antimicrobial agent that kills viruses on contact—maintaining wearers secure whereas wanting trendy.
Kharey’s efforts had been justified by the enthusiastic response from health-care employees. Now she’s increasing with a line of lab coats and a lighter cloth for skilled blouses. Her flagship model additionally now makes use of silver-ion expertise and inexperienced fabrication. For Kharey, sustainability is the way forward for trend and performance.
Best 360 tech innovator: Incepta
Founded: 2010
Founder: Ishtiaq Ahmed
Headquarters: Mississauga, Ont.
The variety of software program instruments obtainable to companies right this moment will be dizzying. How to decide on those that may assist run a business effectively, construct prospects, please shoppers and minimize prices?
Incepta take among the guesswork out of the equation. This Mississauga firm helps companies remodel digital operations by providing a full complement of software program choices. Its programs for construction-project and large-building administration optimize operations and vitality use at worksites and in constructed constructions. Other providers, like Incepta HRX, automate and streamline each step of HR recruitment and onboarding.
This yr, the corporate additionally launched two new merchandise for monetary providers: Incepta APx, which streamlines income operations, and Open Finance Readiness Assessment, an advisory service for Canadian monetary establishments. It’s only one extra means Incepta is making it simpler for firms to concentrate on work as a substitute of battling the newest addition to the software program stack.
Best inventive tradition innovator: Wattpad
Founded: 2006
Founders: Allen Lau, Ivan Yuen
Canadian headquarters: Toronto
When Wattpad launched in the course of the early days of social media, it had a purpose of disrupting the normal world of guide publishing: User-generated content material did away with the gatekeepers and meant that anybody with an web connection may share their story.
Now the Canada-based firm (it was acquired in 2019 for an estimated $600 million by Korean tech agency Naver) is making related waves within the leisure world, turning its hottest content material (typically fan fiction with large built-in audiences) into movie and TV variations by way of Wattpad Webtoon Studios. Last summer time’s Through My Window, certainly one of Netflix’s hottest worldwide titles, was based mostly on a steamy Spanish romance that obtained 400 million views on Wattpad earlier than being printed as a paperback. A sequel coming this June is simply one of many 120-plus tasks at present within the pipeline.
Best building innovator: Carbon Upcycling
Founded: 2014
Founder: Apoorv Sinha
Headquarters: Calgary
We’ve all upcycled—turning an previous T-shirt right into a wash rag, as an illustration—however Carbon Upcycling takes that precept to a complete different, planet-saving degree. Its expertise is as elegant as it’s efficient: The firm captures industrial by-products—as much as 42 completely different ones, from coal- and glass-manufacturing crops and extra—and combines them in a reactor with equally captured on-site carbon-dioxide emissions.
The chemical response produces a fabric additive that can be utilized in concrete, cement and industrial plastics. The course of is a double whammy of sustainability—a portion of CO2 is prevented from escaping into the ambiance whereas the brand new materials is made stronger and extra sturdy.
Since 2014, Carbon Upcycling has scaled up by greater than 4 million instances, and already this yr, it has signed offers for 2 new cementitious-material-production and carbon-capture services within the Alberta building sector in addition to one other facility in Mississauga, Ont.
Meanwhile, the corporate’s consumer-facing model, Oco, has been injecting CO2 into every thing from yoga mats to crayons. The prospects will quickly be just about limitless—this previous April, Carbon Upcycling launched a brand new line of carbon-captured 3-D printing filaments.
Best meals waste innovator: Trendi
Founded: 2019
Founders: Carissa Campeotto, Craig McIntosh
Headquarters: Burnaby, B.C.
The title might conjure ideas of fast-fashion fads or culinary flavours of the month, however Trendi is, in reality, all about long-term sustainability within the meals business.
Carissa Campeotto and Craig McIntosh, a marketer/chilly pressed juice pioneer {and professional} chef, respectively, had been in search of methods to dramatically scale back the quantity of meals waste generated in Canada. It’s a colossal drawback: 58 per cent of meals produced is misplaced or wasted, costing the Canadian financial system greater than $49 billion yearly, whereas greater than 800 million individuals worldwide undergo from meals insecurity.
Their answer was to go on to the supply. The firm’s vehicles—kitted out with custom-designed robotic equipment—gather, clear, course of and bundle broken or leftover produce, remodeling that misfit meals into shelf-stable, freeze-dried powdered substances to be used in packaged meals, prescribed drugs, animal feed, cosmetics and extra.
Currently, Trendi has certainly one of its so-called BioTrim models at a B.C. farm and one other on its means in Ecuador. These substances are additionally utilized in Trendi’s Smoothie Machines, candy-coloured merchandising machines that dispense 4 completely different flavours of smoothie 24-7. Five such machines are scattered all through the Vancouver International Airport, and one other 10 are scheduled to seem in different places within the province later this yr.
The firm additionally collaborates with post-secondary establishments; it joined forces with Niagara College’s Canadian Food & Wine Institute on its Food Waste Challenge, inviting college students to create dishes utilizing Trendi’s freeze-dried substances. This previous March, the Alberta arm of start-up incubator Plug and Play chosen Trendi as its first food-and-beverage cohort, a transfer that may speed up the corporate’s growth and join it to massive business gamers. Trends might come and go, however “waste not, want not” will without end be phrases to reside by.
