The Auckland Climathon was hosted by the University of Auckland’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, in partnership with Vector and took place on Friday 27th through to Saturday 28th October.
How can we overcome the climate change issues that we face now and will be facing in the future? To make real progress in reducing our carbon emissions we all need to work together, collaborating within communities, cities, countries and across the globe.
Winding back to Friday 27
th October, in the spirit of collaboration, Auckland was getting ready to participate in its first ever Climathon event. A 24-hour ideas hackathon, across over 200 cities.
In addition, we’ve recently announced our
commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2030, reinforcing our support for this global event.
Seven Vector employees took part, working on solutions which could contribute to a low carbon future.
Friday evening was focused on the identification of the problems faced by Auckland, with individuals pitching their ideas to recruit support, and ultimately attract a team to take the idea forward. On Saturday, with teams formed, ideas were explored in more detail with wider research and idea-testing, as well as discussing the solution with on-hand experts and professionals. By Saturday evening teams had pulled together fully formed presentations ready for a 2.5 minute pitch to the judges, who then led a Q and A session to really test the team’s thinking and final solution.
While it was great to see Vector representation in the two teams that came in as runners up, more importantly it was fantastic to see how many minds from different industries and specialities came together to form a selection of viable and sophisticated solutions.
All-in-all, not a bad 24 hours work!
A snippet of some of the ideas presented:
Trash Tag – A recycling app that helps to educate and increase people’s understanding about recycling. Scan your drinks carton, plastic wrapping or bottle top and find out which coloured bin to put it in!
Good stuff aka the good shit –
turning ‘poop’ into bottled gas – collect all waste at a centralised treatment plant (many houses in NZ still have onsite septic tanks) and then in this one area, go through the process of collecting and bottling the biogas produced for distribution.
Low Carbon Opportunity Fund – Funding, that through a select criteria process, would enable smaller scale start-ups and initiatives focussing on carbon reduction initiatives to grow and take their ideas forward.
Seaweed on the rise – The release of methane gas from livestock (sheep and cattle) amounts to almost a third of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions. Research has shown that using dried seaweed as just a small part of cattle’s diet could reduce the amount of methane produced by up to 99%...
PBCNZ, a battery recycling programme – 2,800 tons of batteries reach the end of life in Auckland annually, less than 0.2% are recycled, the rest will end up as landfill. Recycling them could save up to 70% of CO2 emissions compared to producing new batteries.
See some of the highlights from the weekend: