Startup solves hair extension plastic problem
Rebundle — a female-led team building the first American-made plant-based hair extensions brand — won the Circularity 23 Accelerate fast-paced competition for circular economy startups in early June.
Rebundle founder and CEO Ciara May was the first of five entrepreneurs to pitch to more than 1,200 professionals building circular economy business models. She won audience votes by highlighting Rebundle’s dual influence, and said from the main stage: [plastic synthetic hair] While it’s a health concern, it’s an environmental justice issue that has been ignored for decades. ”
According to some forecasts, the hair extension market is expected to nearly double by 2030, reaching $11.8 billion. The problem that Rebundle is trying to address is serious. 30 million pounds of plastic hair ends up in landfills every year.
Rebundle’s patent-pending ReGen Hair Fiber is made from naturally extracted banana fiber. This material is 97% bio-based and compostable, making Rebundle the first hair extension company to earn his USDA certification for bio-based product labels. The St. Louis-based startup also has a recycling program that diverts plastic wool from landfills and reuses it in outdoor furniture and decks. Rebundle announced that it has recycled 445 pounds of hair to date with the help of recycling partner 5 Media.
From a health perspective, Prime Minister Theresa May said one in three women experience scalp irritation from plastic artificial hair containing endocrine disrupting chemicals. According to May, Rebundle’s banana fiber extensions eliminate the use of these toxins, improving comfort and health outcomes.
Rebundle was founded in 2019 and has raised $2.5 million, not including the $20,000 it received from GreenBiz Group for its Circularity Accelerate award. The startup sells through its website and plans to sell directly to salons and major retailers.
Other startups participating in Circularity Accelerate include Molg (robot-based circular manufacturing for electronics companies); Fortuna Cools (turning farm waste into insulation and fibers); Samsara Eco (recycling of plastics through enzymatic degradation). Azure Print Homes (his 3D printing of homes using recycled polymers).
This software helps Siemens, Bayer and Mitsubishi manage their net-zero goals
Sinai Technologies, a San Francisco-based software company, sells applications that help companies like Siemens, Mitsubishi and Bayer develop decarbonization strategies that align with science-based target guidelines.
According to the company’s website, Sinai’s software accomplishes this by inventorying and predicting emissions across a company’s operations and value chain.
For example, at Siemens, Sinai moved emissions data collection processes that were cataloged in spreadsheets to a cloud-based platform. This allows Siemens to create a single source of truth for greenhouse gas emissions data. Sinai said this will help the company make actionable decisions to reach its climate neutrality goals by 2025 and 2030.
The company has raised significant capital to expand its mission, including a $22 million Series A round last fall to build software and pursue international partnerships. This investment brings Sinai’s total funding to $37 million.
NEC, a world leader in advanced IT and network technologies, has invested in its latest infusion through its corporate venture capital fund, the NEC Orchestrating Future Fund (NOFF). Sinai has partnered with NEC to deliver a comprehensive platform designed to help companies decarbonize their operations. Through this partnership, NEC will combine its data collection expertise with Sinai’s emissions measurement and reporting capabilities. This will enable partners to make comprehensive recommendations to companies aiming to achieve net zero targets.
There are so many carbon accounting companies on the market, but what sets Sinai apart is our fully integrated carbon accounting and custom strategies for carbon pricing and emissions reduction across your organization. This is a function that allows you to build.
Finance and technology work together to solve flooding
Since 2000, flood costs in the United States have totaled $850 billion, accounting for two-thirds of all natural disaster costs. To make matters worse, most flood damage is not covered by insurance, and 40 percent of small businesses are destroyed as a result of flooding. As climate change makes floods more frequent and widespread, the world needs new tools to predict, track, and respond to floods.
Floodbase is a series of women-founded startups revolutionizing the insurance and flood mapping industry for homeowners, businesses, and governments. Floodbase provides data solutions that expand insurance coverage while allowing policyholders to receive payments in near real-time when a triggering event (such as a natural disaster) occurs. This model is known as parametric insurance. Disaster-affected communities typically receive payments from insurance companies weeks or months after the disaster. This delay prevents rapid access to critical funding during emergency response, for example to provide food and clean water to communities.
Floodbase is also reinventing the flood mapping process. Traditionally, understanding and predicting flood patterns has required large amounts of ground equipment to run simulations. Floodbase flips this model on its head and collects real-time, accurate data. Instead of simulation, Floodbase trains machine learning tools to recognize water in satellite images. AI identifies pixels in images that represent water, captures floods around the world in real time, alerts communities for evacuation purposes, and ultimately provides accurate and fast insurance payments.
In January, Floodbase raised $12 million in Series A funding from Lowercarbon Capital with participation from Collaborative Fund, Floating Point, and Vidavo. Its customers include the United Nations, FEMA, and governments around the world.
Liminal produces EV batteries for charging.
In case you didn’t know, the electric vehicle (EV) revolution is upon us. Legal incentives are encouraging the purchase of EVs and breaking down barriers that previously prevented the development of charging infrastructure across the country. And as the demand for EVs increases, so will the demand for producing EV-compatible batteries. That’s where Liminal comes in.
California-based startup Liminal is a battery cell manufacturing intelligence provider that combines ultrasound technology and machine learning to advance battery manufacturing insights. This is done through EchoStat, a high-speed ultrasound inspection solution designed for use throughout the battery manufacturing process. EchoStat detects and corrects anomalies in real-time to prevent accelerated degradation and system failure once installed in an EV.
CEO and co-founder Andrew Hsieh told Business Insider: “Our products help battery manufacturers meet aggressive production volume and cost targets while ensuring they meet stringent EV safety and performance requirements. It will help,” he said.
Liminal received $17.5 million in a Series A2 round in February led by ArcTern Ventures with support from Northvolt and Ecosystem Integrity Fund. In May, the startup won a $2.75 million grant from the California Energy Commission to further develop EchoStat.
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