The Earth’s Planetary Boundaries are struggling with human activity, our latest investments showcase the need to think about impact beyond a single metric of GHG emissions. Put simply, as the Earth’s Tipping Points approach, there’s no time to waste.

Carbon13 is today announcing new investments into six ventures through its accelerator, the Venture Launchpad. Each venture has demonstrated their potential to reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes per year when at scale – Carbon13’s threshold for investing.

But these ventures are also united by the cross-cutting theme of waste, leveraging technologies such as biochar-based polystyrene alternatives, smart wall HVAC systems, net-negative insect proteins, AI powered circular fashion and food waste management. 

Commenting on the investments and their impact potential, CEO & Co-founder of Carbon13, Dr Nicky Dee, said: “All our ventures contribute to net zero, but tracking emissions tells just part of the story. We can see other key benefits such as health from improving air quality and avoiding ecotoxicity and microplastics when discarded. Other companies will prompt new economic pathways as they disrupt the “normal” way of doing things.”

 Meet the latest ventures to join the Carbon13 portfolio

Eslando is a pioneering startup tackling textile waste within the fashion industry. Their innovative solution leverages digital product passports (DPPs) and AI-powered sorting to empower fashion brands and waste management companies to efficiently recover materials at scale.

Carbon Cell is on a mission to make polystyrene trash a thing of the past, with a patent pending, non-toxic, compostable foam material made from carbon-negative biochar and natural binders.

Future By Insects combines microalgae and insect production to create a world-first carbon net-negative insect protein for animal feed, tackling the industry’s annual 2.5bn CO2e global emissions and pushing to a greener future.

Fermtech are a climate biotech company from Oxford meeting the demand for affordable and sustainable protein ingredients. Their novel system converts side streams from the food industry, creating nutritious and flavourful products.

Anzen Climate Wall is a novel ductless indoor climate control system that performs space heating, cooling, and heat recovery ventilation within a single unit. Their decentralised wall-mounted unit reduces energy bills and improves indoor air quality.

Remy (formerly Taste Don’t Waste) leverages AI and automation to support busy households in reducing their food waste by 70%, and drastically improves corporate partners’ Scope 3 emissions reporting, commercial strategies, and waste mitigation efforts.

Each venture has received investment of £120,000, and four of the six teams have at least one female founder. If you are interested in learning more about these ventures, perhaps as an investor, mentor or collaborator from a corporate, please email hello@carbonthirteen.com.

The Venture Launchpad runs in partnership with Barclays Eagle Labs who provide invaluable support to our ventures. We wish to say a huge thank you to Barclays Eagle Labs, your work accelerates our startups’ commercial development, deepens founder expertise, expands stakeholder networks and builds investability. You can read more about our collaboration on Barclays’ website as part of their Cleantech: helping businesses power towards net zero series. 

The global emissions abatement potential of our next six investments is only one part of their impact story.

The simplicity of a greenhouse gas target belies the complexity of planetary systems. This latest raft of investments illustrates this, with a cross cutting theme of waste. The six ventures are not driven solely by their emissions abatement targets: for them, true impact means change that goes beyond that.

In almost all systems, waste is produced: from food and textile waste, to microplastics or excess emissions, these are the result of inefficient processes. The ventures being invested in by Carbon13 in this latest cohort are looking to reduce or utilise that waste. They show that waste can create value (i.e leveraging food waste to create new products), or it can be eliminated by making changes within the system to make it more efficient (i.e replacing polystyrene with a carbon negative alternative).

All the ventures have an impact goal for greenhouse gas emissions as standard, because abatement is the cornerstone of the Carbon13 mission. Emissions reductions are crucial, but these six ventures showcase the importance of looking beyond one single metric of impact.

They tackle other planetary issues which are not captured in a standard life cycle assessment, such as microplastics. A simple target doesn’t illuminate the whole story.

For example, textile waste: According to the European Environment Agency, textile products consumed in the EU generated greenhouse gas emissions of 121 million tonnes.

But their impact goes beyond their emissions: almost half of the textiles are discarded and less than 1% are recycled into new clothes.  Textile production causes 20% of water pollution worldwide, and washing synthetic products contributes more than half a million tonnes of microplastics to the bottom of the oceans every year.

Food waste is a similar story. Wasted edible food and drink in the UK accounted for approximately 18 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021/22. The price isn’t solely paid by the environment: this level of waste costs the UK £19 billion a year.

For the six ventures receiving investment from Carbon13’s latest programme, waste represents an opportunity. Abatement is only part of their impact: by tackling complex systems to reduce waste, create value and refine efficiency these ventures showcase how          climate tech can have legacy beyond emissions. 

Build your startup with Carbon13

Are you working on a startup with the potential to reduce emissions or create impact along one of the Earth’s Planetary Boundaries, including biodiversity, circular economy and water use? Applications for the next Venture Launchpad accelerator open soon. Explore the programme in more detail here.

About the Venture Launchpad
The Carbon13 Venture Launchpad accelerates early stage founders working on the solutions to the climate emergency, as part of the global effort to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The intensive programme supports founders to explore and validate how their commercial growth and carbon impact are interlocked, to maximise their carbon impact to net 10 million tonnes of emissions reduction per year when at scale.

Carbon13 has now invested in 14 ventures in 12 months through the programme, notable alumni include Natural Building Systems, Pattern Project, Hubl and Optimise AI.

Across all our programmes in the UK and EU, Carbon13 has invested in 71 ventures since 2021. In total, the current Carbon13 portfolio is working to tackle over 0.5GtCO2e in potential emissions, which is 1.67% of global annual emissions.