Dutch start-ups Pectcof and Plant-e selected for TEDx
Dutch Climate-KIC start-ups Pectcof and Plant-e will present their clean-tech innovations at TEDxBinnenhof 2014.
An expert jury, which included Dutch ESA astronaut André Kuipers, has selected two Climate-KIC start-ups as part of a list of eight winning entries for the event, which is scheduled for 31 March 2014.
The high-profile TEDxBinnenhof event will take place in the Ridderzaal next to the Dutch houses of parliament in The Hague. The site is often used for official royal and parliamentary events.
Pectcof’s Andres Belalcazar
Start-up Pectcof, founded in 2011, offers technology that unlocks the potential of coffee pulp as a source of bio-based materials, while at the same time detoxifying the waste stream produced by the second most traded commodity in the world. Pectcof’s cradle to cradle concept not only adds value to the waste stream of coffee, but will assure sustainability in the coffee supply chain.
Plant-e’s Nanda Schrama and Marjolein Helder
Plant-e, founded in 2009, produces electricity with living plants, without harvesting the plant. This way every wetland or rice paddy field can become an electricity plant, while at the same time nature is conserved or food can be produced.
Both start-ups are enrolled in Climate-KIC’s Acceleration Programme and are currently in the prototyping phase. The companies are scaling-up for large-scale implementation.
Global challenges
In line with the ‘Global Challenges | Dutch Solutions’ theme of TEDxBinnenhof 2014, the jurors have selected the most innovative solutions for challenges such as an ageing population, sustainable agriculture, energy supply systems, scarce raw-materials and cyber-security.
Apart from Kuipers, jury members included TEDx licensee Jim Stolze and Bertholt Leeftink, Director-General Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
TEDxBinnenhof
TEDx is a program of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. TED is a nonprofit organisation devoted to ideas worth spreading. Started as a conference in California, USA, in 1984, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with many initiatives.
TEDxBinnenhof, which is supported by Climate-KIC, says it wants to show the world that “even though The Netherlands is a small country, the Dutch have a lot to offer when it comes to innovation.” In a catwalk-like setting, ten Dutch innovative solutions will be presented that aim to tackle global challenges such as pollution, health care costs, loss of biodiversity, climate change and scarcity of natural resources, food and energy.
TEDxBinnenhof will be web-streamed as well as simulcast to a number of locations in the Netherlands and to participating Dutch embassies worldwide.
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