According to Statista, Paris is among the greenest capitals in Europe since the tree cover rate in urban areas is about 20%. Although it’s low compared to Oslo, which is the capital of the greenest city in the world, the Netherlands, it is still an improvement for France to be on the green list.
But since France has implemented a set of goals to reach by the end of 2030 (cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% and increasing the share of renewable energy to over 50%), businesses have taken the opportunity to invest in greener practices or recreate their brand to become sustainable. Let’s see what some of the best sustainable start-ups have come to and how they can improve France’s goals.
EcoVadis
EcoVadis is one of the most trusted businesses regarding sustainability ratings. It aims to help companies manage their network by monitoring their performance. They provide solutions on:
- Carbon action module. This feature of the platform is able to rate the carbon emitted by businesses and calculate it considering the energy sources and consumption data. It also provides an E-Learning hub with courses on sustainability tailored to each company;
- Risk and opportunity mapping. This program’s contributions to companies are creating their risk profiles, providing intelligent solutions for optimising assessments and frequently reporting the risk vs opportunity metrics on the business landscape.
- Industry initiatives. EcoVadis offers companies a common platform to monitor performance, provides harmonised standards on social, ethical and environmental criteria and helps boost engagement.
- Sustainability ratings. When creating the sustainable score, EcoVadis takes into consideration the environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement.
The company was founded in 2007 and has helped around 55,000 businesses since, among which Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, L’Oréal, Subway and Nestlé are the biggest ones to collaborate with EcoVadis.
Zenpark
This start-up has been made to optimise the use of parking spaces by operating connected and shared parking services and electric charging points. The business aims to improve sustainable urban mobility and help build smart cities. It has provided people with an app with which they can find, book and pay for car park places at smaller prices.
This is how it works:
- The app will show you a few parking spaces in the area where you want to leave your car.
- You book your place for a few days, and you can even rent it for longer periods.
- After you return to the park station, you have the option to leave the space open for other people.
The app is available in many French cities, but also in Belgium cities of Brussels and Antwerp. You can find places for electric cars as well, and the system has plenty of other features, like:
- Smart parking, where the app anticipates changes in traffic;
- Collaborative parking for companies;
- Shared parking;
EcoTree
The EcoTree project aims to plant more trees by rewarding people with money for buying trees. Tree owners can buy their favourite tree (Sessile Oak, Maple, Sessile Oak and more) and grow it, and then the tree’s sustainable timber will be collected, which will reward owners with 100% of their input. The trees will be planted in real life, and owners will be able to see them and know where their trees are growing.
This is an important approach for small footprint waste solutions in France since companies should adopt better practices for the sake of the environment, considering that even though the country is among the sustainable ones in Europe, the people are concerned with the air quality being polluted and air emissions. But with EcoTree, trees can grow older and produce more oxygen in a few years from now, which means that the quality of the air will improve soon.
Circle Sportswear
Circle Sportswear is an eco-responsible and ethical sports brand that designs high-quality and low-impact clothing for running, yoga and other similar sports from recycled sources. The owners have a vision of creating clothes:
- For sports
- For the technique
- For the planet
- For the community
They also know how to engage with the customers by creating running and yoga clubs and classes where people gather and practice their favourite sports together.
AgreenCulture
AgreenCulture designs, develops and produces autonomous solutions for the agriculture sector. The developers have 13 years of research and development backing up their creation, providing farmers with autonomous agricultural robots. Their team is constantly looking for improvements, having activities where they:
- Reflect on the meaning of the company;
- Examine their choices and decisions;
- Look for partnerships to promote sustainability
One of their most known technologies is the AGC BOX which assists farmers throughout the whole harvesting process. It visualises the field and the crop plots that are later added to a map inside the robot’s system. It can also take field measurements and draw a virtual fence around the work area so you can benefit from the centimetric position. At the same time, the ergonomic interface simplifies your work as a farmer.
The robot is equipped with:
- Wireless
- Bluetooth
- A hardened power supply resistant to energy cuts
- LEDs
- Aluminium casing
- UV resistant interface
Lablaco
Lastly, Lablaco is a unique sustainability project, a blockchain fashion ecosystem aiming to create a more digitised and connected circular system for clothes. In other words, it uses blockchain to trace second-hand clothes. Their app allows users to tokenize their products at different levels of the supply chain so they can identify what retailers do to be more sustainable. Also, people can see who wore that piece of clothing before, making it easier and faster for clothes to be shared, lent and traded.
This start-up has two main projects:
- Spin, the app where you can track digital property through circular models;
- LPLUS, the program that traces the origin clothing, allowing to its environmental impact;
This project can significantly influence the path of clothes since 1,92 million tonnes of textiles waste are produced each year, which makes the fashion industry contribute to pollution with 20% of global waste.
France can achieve its goals with so many green businesses taking the lead to a more sustainable life for its citizens. This way, the country can become among the leading sustainable cities worldwide and contribute to a better climate.
