🌈 You Must Have Seen This Brand
An Outdoor Gear Company With a Patchwork Design
Today’s sustainable snapshot👇🏽
You Must Have Seen This Brand
Startup of the Week: Odd.bot
5 Sustainable Brands That You Should Check Out
News That Lifted My Spirits This Week
🌈 You Must Have Seen This Brand
Trippy patchwork of colors stuck together. That’s what defines Cotopaxi — an outdoor gear company.
If you haven’t bought anything from the brand ever (like me), I am assuming you would have seen someone carrying their backpacks or one of those insulated jackets.
If not, the bag below should give you an idea of how its products look.
Now here’s the interesting part. These multicolored patches are often made of deadstock. What is deadstock, you ask?
Think of all the leftovers from garment production. They could be excess fabric rolls, unsold merchandise, or even canceled orders. They mostly end up in landfills or are incinerated.
Cotopaxi uses this deadstock to create its vibrant collection of products!
In 2023, the brand worked with around 101,182 yards of leftover fabric — that’s roughly 1,000 football fields.
This prevents the deadstock from being wasted.
It also reduces the new clothes to be manufactured.
It helps Cotopaxi cut its costs and increase its bottom line.
While being circular and sustainable — a win-win formula!
Note: The brand sells in Australia, the EU, Japan, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.
⌛ Time for the quiz of the week
Answer at the end of the newsletter. No one (including me) can see your response, so feel free to vote. 😉
✨ Startup of the Week: Odd.bot
This bot works autonomously, day and night, to remove weeds — a sustainable alternative to traditional chemical herbicides.
Weeds have been a perennial problem for farmers. To tackle that, they use chemical herbicides. In fact, billions of litres of them are used every year. But these herbicides can contaminate the soil, water, and air. They can even enter the food chain and affect all the species.
Odd.Bot is tackling this problem through its effortless, autonomous bot. It is a chemical-free weeding solution.
🤖 The bot works autonomously, day and night, removing young & small weeds with remarkable precision.
🤖 These bots are fully electric, so they don’t have any emissions.
🤖 The removed weeds can be used as manure, which further improves soil quality.
The brand operates on a pre-order model. So if you are looking to get one for your farm in 2026, you need to place an order now.
✅ 5 Sustainable Brands That You Should Check Out
🇺🇸 Wonderfil: Creating a refill infrastructure to eliminate single-use plastic.
🇬🇧 Circulo: Making clothing repair as convenient & easy as buying new clothes.
🇮🇳 Verthbox: Transforming corporate gifting with memorable, sustainable, and purposeful gifts.
🇺🇸 Evolectric: Converting polluting diesel trucks into electric ones to cut down the pollution.
🇸🇪 Eco Wave Power: Turning the power of the ocean and sea waves into electricity.
😹 News That Lifted My Spirits This Week
🌱 Green Revolution in Fertilizer Production
Talusag, an innovative startup, is transforming the traditional ammonia fertilizer industry with a greener, more cost-effective approach. While conventional fertilizer production relies heavily on fossil fuels and contributes nearly 2% of global CO2 emissions, Talusag is pioneering a solution using renewable energy to produce "green ammonia" from water and air. What makes this particularly exciting is that Talusag's modular systems can be placed closer to farms, reducing transportation costs and providing price stability for farmers. The company has already successfully implemented its technology at a nut farm in Kenya and raised $22 million in Series A funding.
🚗 Chinese EV Maker BYD Revolutionizes Charging Speed
BYD Co. has made a game-changing breakthrough in the electric vehicle industry with its latest innovation. Its new Han L sedan can charge enough in just five minutes to travel 400 kilometers (249 miles), making EV charging as quick as filling up a gas tank. The company is also committed to building over 4,000 charging stations across China to support its EVs. With this technology addressing one of the biggest hurdles to EV adoption — charging speed — BYD is making electric vehicles a more practical choice for everyday drivers.
🍄 From Legos to Sustainable Protein: A Factory's Green Transformation
In an innovative move, Swedish startup Millow is breathing new life into an old Lego factory by transforming it into a cutting-edge food production facility. The company will produce a groundbreaking oat and mycelium protein that boasts 97% lower emissions than beef. Set to be fully operational later this year, the 25,000 square meter facility will churn out up to 500kg of protein daily. What's particularly impressive is that by choosing to repurpose the existing building rather than construct a new one, Millow has prevented approximately 1,400 tonnes of CO2 emissions from being released into the atmosphere.
Give that 💚 a little tap if this edition helped you learn something new about sustainability and climate change. Have a good weekend, and see you next week :)