AI helps to decarbonise energy-intensive businesses 
CategoriesSustainable News

AI helps to decarbonise energy-intensive businesses 

Spotted: Together, heavy industry and transportation produce 40.4 per cent of the world’s annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Each sector has its own particular challenges in reducing pollution, and every manufacturing plant has its own individual machinery and processes. That complexity makes it challenging for businesses in sectors like steel, cement, telecoms, and automotive to identify ways to reduce emissions, implement changes, and track progress against company goals. 

Using a deep understanding of those conditions, a team of industrial engineers worked together to create QiO Technologies to transform the ability of heavy industry to achieve carbon neutrality. Based on artificial intelligence (AI) analyses, the Foresight Sustainability Suite improves production efficiency, tracks the performance of every machine, and provides service and maintenance support. 

QiO provides the three different parts of the Sustainability Suite separately or together, allowing businesses to focus on the areas they most want to improve. Foresight Optima maximises production efficiency. Foresight Maintenance tracks and predicts machine failures to help reduce operating downtime, and Foresight Service helps businesses better plan the timing and order of fixes and upgrades. 

QiO’s latest product, Foresight Optima DC+, is specifically for data centres – themselves a significant contributor to global GHG emissions. With a recently closed series B round of funding that raised $10 million (around €9.4 million), QiO Technologies plans to focus its expansion into this area of work.  

Manufacturing and chemical production process improvements are reducing pollution in several different ways. Springwise has spotted a new way of recycling plastic and hazardous chemical waste, and a new wood-fibre building material that produces almost zero waste.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Collecting and recycling electronic waste from homes and businesses
CategoriesSustainable News

Collecting and recycling electronic waste from homes and businesses

Spotted: Electronic waste, or e-waste, refers to any discarded item that has a plug or a battery – and it is becoming a major problem.

According to a United Nations forecast, we are on track to produce 74 million metric tonnes of e-waste by 2030. And in 2019, each person on earth generated around 7.3 kilogrammes of e-waste – with only 1.7 kilogrammes recycled per person.

In Malaysia 25 per cent of e-waste is recycled, and startup ERTH is looking to improve this rate with a service that pays consumers to recycle their old electronic devices. The service works by employing a network of freelance drivers. When a customer has e-waste that they wish to recycle, the system matches them with the nearest driver – just as ride-hailing apps match users to a taxi driver. This driver then collects the e-waste and the customer receives a cash reward.

Drivers return the e-waste they have collected to a central warehouse on a weekly basis. ERTH’s recovery partner then comes to this warehouse and collects the e-waste for dismantling and segregation. All this e-waste is recycled through the proper, regulated channels, and the company claims it has stopped more than 200,000 kilogrammes of e-waste from ending up in landfill.

ERTH is not the only e-waste recycling service, and customers in Malaysia can also deal with recycling facilities directly. However, ERTH’s service offers several important benefits. First, the company claims that its competitors require a minimum of ten items, whereas ERTH only requires one working device or three non-working devices for free pick up. Second, the startup offers fast and convenient payment through cash, bank transfer, e-wallet, or cheque. Finally, the network of drivers does all the heavy lifting, taking the hassle and inconvenience out of the process.

In addition to its core service, ERTH also offers e-waste collection boxes, secure data destruction, and a B2B recycling programme.

Other e-waste focused innovations spotted by Springwise
include a new
process can efficiently recover metals from electronic waste, and an Indian
startup that takes a collaborative
approach to e-waste.

Written By: Matthew Hempstead

Email: hello@erth.app

Website: erth.app

Reference