Wildnote Wins Sustainability Award at the 2018 Cleantech Open Regional Showcase
Imaginative people and their cool companies are creating innovative technologies to reshape the harsh reality of our global environmental issues with air, water, food, energy, transportation, waste, and climate change. More than a few of these forward-thinking companies applied to the Cleantech Open (CTO), a national business accelerator program that “finds, funds, and fosters the most promising startups on the planet,” but only 35 were accepted. Wildnote was one, and as a “Cohort,” we attended the 2018 CTO Regional Showcase in Oakland, CA. At the event, Wildnote was honored to receive the Sustainability award. As proud as we are to have this honor, we were equally gratified to be among the innovative thinkers going after the environmental challenges our planet faces.
Yep, cool ideas were everywhere – agricultural waste recycling that produces organic fertilizer, captures methane gas for fuel, and collects water, lots and lots of water, as a byproduct. How about taking your car to a water-free car wash? Or attaching a device to your car manifold that keeps pollution from getting into our air, captures carbon for resale, and, along the way, creates fuel efficiency in the process. Pretty cool, right?
Imagine this sci-fi fans… electromagnetic-radiation engines replacing tons of fuel to launch space rockets, and, once in space, solar power providing the energy to propel the vehicle at maximum speed for, well, forever, theoretically. Suppose a device the size of a shipping container could capture all the heat created at a manufacturing plant and then reuse that heat as energy for use in powering that plant.
The ideas above are but a sample of the genius presented at the event and the company we kept. Okay, so the Wildnote platform will not send a rocket into space with electromagnetic waves or clean your car without water, or at all for that matter, but it does streamline the process of collecting, managing, and reporting environmental data for compliance to regulatory agencies. This includes public/private utilities, the US military, huge construction firms, large-scale, ecological restoration projects, international environmental organizations, federal, state, county, city government, and all sizes of business – just about every dang business in the world.
Wildnote was among some truly bright bulbs at the Showcase and is now an alumnus of the program. We are proud the judges at the event recognized Wildnote with the Sustainability award for its cloud-based platform that makes environmental compliance more efficient, less costly, and allows for more consistent, accurate, and timely reporting of data to regulatory agencies.
Each year, Cleantech Open West calls out members of our annual cohort for specific excellence in an area we work to advance – best investment, sustainability, impact, and transformative tech. The Sustainability Honor calls out and celebrates startups for exceptional integration of sustainability (environment, social, financial) into their business model, supply chain, and organizational processes and systems. Winning this honor is a testament to Wildnote’s exceptional strength in this area. –Ian Foraker, Director, CTO, Western Region
When you think about it, digital technology isn’t that sexy, but neither is turning cow poop into useable fertilizer and clean fuel. It is, however, desperately needed and unstoppable, and the potential impact of this “not-so-glamorous” technology is huge.
Creating efficiencies and saving money when complying with environmental regulations is a big deal, but so is getting more consistent and accurate environmental data into a searchable database, making it accessible to more scientists who can analyze the data. More “smart” eyes on the data means faster progress toward finding answers to the world’s most pressing environmental problems. In a nutshell, Wildnote technology pushes sustainability forward faster. Now, if Wildnote could only capture some carbon for resale …
