The world is more and more concerned about the sustainability of our wonderful world, and that is great! 2015, the United Nations came up with an initiative, named The Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as Transforming our world. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is a set of seventeen aspirational “Global Goals”. Not only the UN are actively contributing to these SDG’s, all around the world organizations feel committed to these goals. There are five start-ups in particular which stand out by their actions and therefore earn some extra attention.
Landit
The first one is Landit – A technology platform and service that helps women proceed along their career paths by providing expert coaches and other sources of advice, as well as access to various tools and resources. Landit helps women create a “personal professional playbook”. That aims to “increase the success and involvement of women in the workplace”. Further they want to enable enterprises to attract, develop, and retain promissing diverse talent.
No Food Wasted
The second one is No Food Wasted – An application named ‘Afgeprijsd’ (‘Discounted’), where customers can see in one glance which products in the neighborhood are for sale because of their expiration date. Nowadays, supermarkets dispose large amounts of products because of this every day. By using this app, it’s not only easy for customers to contribute to the environment by wasting less food, but it’s also cheaper for them. One plus one is two, right?!
Yoni
Thirdly, there is the company of two powerful women who came up with the slogan ‘Chemicals are not for pussies’. Together with their start-up called Yoni they want to change the world of female period products. Regular tampons and sanitary pads consist of synthetic materials and contain super absorbent chemicals, bleach and pesticides. Research shows that 60% of the women coping with vaginal infections remain asymptomatic after they started using cotton products. Therefore, the owners of the Yoni Brand started developing alternative products containing eco cotton, leaving out all the chemicals. You go girls! to
42Education.com
Kids dream big, no matter where they come from. Unfortunately, where they come from makes a big difference to whether or not they can realize those dreams. 250 million children all around the world cannot read, write or do basic arithmetic. Many live in developing countries, without regular access to schools and teachers. The normal model of education is no longer sustainable to meet the need. But what if technology could help? The next of our start-ups 42Education.com is developing a software solution for that. Increasing access to mobile phones, internet access and affordable IT hardware should be able to provide technology-based education to children across the developing nations. They believe that education should be a human right, by giving every child the opportunity to get higher education.
Dick Moby
The owners of Dick Moby decided that there was need for some action because they were highly irritated by all the plastic waste in the Dutch seas. They gave this pollution a positive spin by deciding to develop new ways to use plastic as a recyclable resource. They design fashionable and sustainable sunglasses, making sure the sunglasses are made from bio-plastic acetate and contain quality lenses. In order to sweep seas and oceans clean, Dick Moby donates 10% of their revenue to the project of the Surfers Foundation. Their slogan is “Quality is key, sustainability is king”, and we couldn’t agree more!
This post was written by AIESEC in the Netherlands. We offer international voluntary projects and professional internships with the aim of developing leadership in youth.
