Green City Solutions is a start-up supported by EIT Climate-KIC. Its CityTree moss-culture technology scrubs pollution from city street air where air flow is poor and pollution is heavy.
The problem
Every day 90 per cent of cities’ inhabitants breathe polluted air which causes every 7th death worldwide. In addition, this leads to a yearly economic damage in the amount of more than 5 trillion US Dollar.
The solution
Green City Solutions is a start-up, supported by EIT Climate-KIC, that has developed the CityTree. Its moss-culture technology scrubs pollution from city street air where air flow is poor and pollution is heavy.
The CityTree is a customised solution for urban spaces designed under the criteria of sustainability and combines a vertical plants’ display with air purification. The vertical flat-panelled device combines moss and wireless technology, controlling humidity around the moss, which then acts as a filter, taking pollution particles out of the air. The plants can be arranged freely on the CityTree to display visual information like colour logos or a QR-Code, which links to additional digital content.
The modular design ensures the stability of the plants while being space-saving, lightweight and air permeable. A digital monitoring and control system optimizes the climatic air effect and plant care.
This urban air purification product serves as a platform for companies to actively improve cities, to mitigate climate change and as an instrument of authentic sustainability communication. Cities benefit from a microclimatic engineering service providing additional possibilities to utilise unused spaces.
The impact
With the help of EIT Climate-KIC, the company has teamed up with Italian city Modena to pilot six CityTrees. The vertical plant filter has been installed already in numerous cities worldwide: London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Budapest, Zurich, Oslo, Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and Hong Kong.
In February 2017 Green City Solutions announced the successful completion of its first round financing with LITTLEROCK GmbH (Düsseldorf), Coparion GmbH & Co. KG (Köln, Berlin) as well as DON Ventures II GmbH & Co. KG (WOLFMAN.ONE GmbH / Prof. Nietzer, Dr. Doll Holding GmbH; Heilbronn) and one smart money investor not mentioned by name.
The role of EIT Climate KIC
Green City Solutions was part of and received support from EIT Climate-KIC, winning the German round of the Venture Competition in 2014.
Green City Solutions then graduated from the EIT Climate-KIC Start-up Accelerator Program in September 2015.
CityTree has been supported as a Scaler Project under EIT Climate-KIC’s Urban Transitions theme since 2016, to show the impact of the innovation on an urban environment and at an urban scale.
For more information visit Green City Solutions.