Axelspace is making access to space – and its data – an everyday reality with smaller, more flexible satellites. Until now, high-resolution satellite imagery has been an expensive and low-frequency service, often left to national governments. But now, with the increasingly low costs of microsatellite technology, it’s possible to provide high-frequency coverage of the entire Earth to private companies or research institutions. This company captures imagery of the entire planet’s surface with human activities once every single day, enabling things like accurate forecasts of the best harvest times and detection of illegal logging.
In eastern India, around 30 million farmers tend to an acre or less of land, where they can’t access most of the available renewable groundwater or reliable agriculture-grade electricity. In a country that will be the world’s most populous in a matter of years, the need is dire for increased agricultural productivity. Khethworks has developed a solar-powered irrigation system that allows these small-plot farmers to affordably cultivate year-round.
Vitargent believes that every person should have the information they need to make informed decisions about the products they purchase and consume. Their technology is not only enabling more widespread access to information, but it’s also pioneering the field of safety testing technology using medaka and zebrafish embryos – making animal testing a thing of the past.
Beijing-based startup Alesca Life is democratizing access to fresh food by creating solutions that enable anyone anywhere to grow the safest, healthiest, and freshest produce in the most efficient way possible. Their automated indoor food production system is currently growing nutrient-dense produce using no pesticides, no soil, no sunlight, 20-25 times less water, fertilizer, and land compared to traditional farming practices.
Did you know that the consumer use of products is the largest contributor to the environmental footprint of almost all the products you buy? A recent study by researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Industrial Ecology Program1 found that consumer’s impact on the environment after the purchase of products such as clothing was responsible for more than 60 percent of that product’s greenhouse gas emissions and up to 80 percent of water use.
Hundreds of millions of people still live in poverty without access to resources that would improve their livelihoods. Often, they have no choice but to rely on sporadic donations from aid agencies that may or may not actually address their needs. What if every household could act as its own factory and personally manufacture exactly what it needed to thrive?