Isabella Palmgren of Sweden wins the 2021 Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge
Green start-ups from the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, Norway and Sweden, the countries with a Postcode Lottery, can once again secure a place in the final of the Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge.
Isabella Palmgren of the Swedish green start-up Mimbly has won the 2021 Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge. Five finalists pitched products and services designed to make the world more sustainable to an international jury at the Green Challenge final. The jurors awarded the grand prize of €500,000 to Mimbly for its Mimbox, a technology that recycles washing machine water, saves energy and filters out microplastics from waste streams.
“Starting a hardware start-up is extremely capital-intensive,” Palmgren said. “With 1 per cent of venture capital funding going to companies with female founders, it has been a challenging journey. This prize money will help us to reach commercialisation with our first product and also take us closer to a consumer solution. Saving microplastics and water shouldn’t be a choice; it should automatically be in every appliance that we buy.”
Sigrid van Aken, chair of the jury and CEO of Novamedia/Postcode Lotteries, said, “Isabella is a wonderful winner. Mimbly’s Mimbox is a brilliant solution that can help the world to wash more sustainably. With the international Green Challenge competition, we’ve been putting green start-ups in the spotlight for 15 years. These young entrepreneurs play an important role in facilitating the transition to a sustainable way of living. That’s exactly what our five Postcode Lotteries in the Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany and Norway, together with their 13 million players, work toward every day.”
The jury awarded the runner-up prize of €200,000 to Hanson Cheng of Great Britain. His start-up, the Tyre Collective, is developing a device that can be retrofitted at the wheels of vehicles to prevent tyre wear from entering the ecosystem. The other three finalists, Qazi Sohail Ahmad of ChargeBnB (Norway), Jardo Stammeshaus of Liion Power (the Netherlands) and Oliver Baum of Warmduscher (Germany), received €100,000 euros each.
