Accolades for technology driven sustainable solutions

This year, the SEIF Awards celebrated their 10th anniversary and the second edition of the competition focusing on the theme Tech for Impact, which targets European impact entrepreneurs who develop or make innovative use of technologies to tackle social and environmental challenges. The solutions also contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The competition attracted close to 365 applications from 34 countries spanning across various impact and tech. Ten startups that made it to the final round presented their solution to the audience during the first virtual award ceremony. The jury announced a winner of each of the four award categories that received a CHF 10'000 prize.

The winners are:

Oxara: UBS social innovation
The Zurich based startup is developing a patented, cement-free admixture technology that transforms waste into an environmentally friendly and cost-effective building material. With the development of their solution, Oxara speaks to the needs of industry, the environment and local communities. An essential part of their strategy is teaching and knowledge transfer to local builders, architects and stakeholders.

DePoly: Seif Award for Scalable solutions
Based in Sion, DePoly chemically recycles post-consumer PET plastic back to its primary raw materials. These virgin quality raw materials are sold to industry, to make new items. By recycling post-consumer PET plastic waste, including the waste the current recycling system cannot deal with, DePoly can increase recycling rates which in turn would result in less plastic ending up in landfills, oceans or incineration centres. The urgency of such a solution to current challenges convinced all jury members.

Carbo Culture (FI): Julius Bär Award for Future Impact Frend
The startup creates functional biocarbons from waste – they manufacture biocarbon in an entirely new, patented way and produce high quality, consistent biochar for better agricultural performance and soil remediation, in a waste-to-resource, circular model.

Care to Translate (SE): PWC Award for Responsible Business
Care to Translate is a medical translator available 24/7 on all smart devices designed to make healthcare equal. Around 80 000 users in over 120 countries in all types of clinics use the solution. More than 1.5 million translations have been made in the tool so far.

Audience Award goes to Green-Y
Through a public vote, the audience nominated Green-Y from the Canton of Berne for their innovative solution for energy storage. The company revolutionizes the energy sector by building a highly economical, clean and efficient energy storage system combining production and storage of heat, cold and electricity. An affordable and efficient system, which only uses air and water. Green-Y combines electricity, heat and cold in one decentralized device and provides it when and where it is needed, making the integration of renewable energy on a large scale possible.

(Press release / RAN)