Anu Pousi, Author at LOOP Circular Economy Ecosystem

A new innovative service from Reima – Monthly subscription model for children’s outerwear

Reima has launched an innovative new service

A new innovative service from Reima - Monthly subscription model for children's outerwear

Reima has launched a new service that makes parenting a little easier by removing the hassle of shopping for children’s outerwear multiple times in a year. Reima Kit service delivers seasonal clothing to your home with a fixed monthly fee or a one-time payment. By partnering up with Emmy, a Nordic online store for pre-owned brand apparel, Reima is organising a convenient and effortless way to recycle the outgrown clothes.

In the beginning of the venturing process, Reima’s venture went from planning to first buyers in just 8 weeks and now a year later the service is fully part of Reima’s business. This was achieved with the work of the cross-functional team, a combination of Reima’s experts and external support including LOOP Venture builders, who all felt that the secret of the exceeded results were good communication and clear goals.

We were honoured to be part of this venture’s journey from the very beginning. Reima Kit is an excellent circular business example from the LOOP ecosystem. If you’re interested in piloting a venture like Reima, contact us and let’s start planning!

Check out other case stories

Circular Nordic venture

Nordic startups showing the way in circular economy

Nordic startups are developing sustainable solutions and spreading them globally in collaboration with corporations. We at the LOOP Ventures team gathered some of the most exciting current circular economy news to show you what is going on in the new materials scene and what achievements can be reached in cooperation between startups and corporations.

Spinnova, a sustainable fiber company developing textile out of FSC-certified wood and waste streams, launched a fully circular textile concept in collaboration with Norwegian outdoor brand Bergans. The collection is fully circular, subscription-based takeback and reuse concept that is revolutionary in the apparel industry. Their collections first prototype is a backpack made of fully natural resources and when the product life cycle comes to an end, Bergans and Spinnova can turn the same fabric into new fibre and product for the consumers. Bergans has done pioneering work on sustainability with redesign, recycling, repair and renting services, so Spinnova’s sustainable fibre is a great match for them.

H&M is also raising awareness about the importance of transition towards circular fashion industry with startup – corporate collaboration. They have invested in re:newcell, that produces a new textile called Circulose by using a technology to recycle used cotton and viscose clothes. Re:newcell is transforming the way fashion is produced and consumed into a never-ending loop in which garments are not ending up in landfills. H&M’s brand Weekday has lately been the first in the world to test and use Infinited Fiber Company’s newly processed denim fiber. Infinited Fiber Company is known for developing a process technology that can turn cotton-rich textile waste, paper and cardboard waste into new, cotton-like fibres.

Every year millions of tons of plastic waste ends up in the environment and a large part of it is from packaging. To solve the plastic waste problem, Paptic has created this renewable, recyclable and reusable packaging material made of wood fibres to replace plastic. Recently Paptic launched a collaboration with Sokos, one of the largest department store chains in Finland, to replace all their plastic bags with reusable multi-use carrier bags made from Paptic Tringa material. Another significant retailer partner for Paptic is French department store chain Galerie Lafaytte.

Sulapac raised an impressive € 15 million in their financial round to support their growth. Luxury house Chanel was one of the investors, just to mention one. Sulapac material is biodegradable and microplastic-free made entirely from renewable sources and certified wood. This December they released the sustainable straw in collaboration with StoraEnso. The straw is a huge step towards micro-plastic free nature as it is made of sustainable raw materials and biogrades fully in marine environment.

After this year’s successes, we look forward to seeing and working with all the great innovations and collaborations next year!

Blue Green Algae Harvester Innovation Call is open

Do you have a solution for blue green algae harvesting?

The company Origin by Ocean is in the marine biomass refinement business and the foundation of Origin by Ocean resides in the idea of creating value from an environmental problem which originates in the eutrophication of our waters.

Origin by Oceans vision is to provide cleaner waters, cleaner seas and cleaner life and the first environmental problem they want to help solve is the eutrophication of our waters. Their way of resolving this environmental problem is based upon a completely new value stream, enabled by the sustainable use of marine biomass as raw-material in their neo-ecology biorefinery plant.

Problem to be solved

The root cause to the eutrophication in our waters is more or less the same regardless of what water system we are looking at. Nutrients such as Phosphorus and Nitrogen are transported to the water systems with rain and floods. Often these excess nutrients come from our agricultural activities and the use of artificial fertilizers. This results in a continuous spiral of an ever-increasing amount of nutrients in our waters and the result is extensive Blue Green algae blooms.

Currently we have extensive algae blooms’ in the Baltic Sea, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans every season. Specifically looking at the Baltic sea, we notice that the native Bladderwrack seaweed amount is decreasing due to turbid waters and increasing amounts of Blue Green algae. This again results in a situation where the Bladderwrack amount yet again is depleted and the Blue Green algae amount increases, year by year. This spiral will continue beyond the tipping point of no return, unless we are able to start collecting some of the surplus nutrients in the water systems.

Origin by Ocean is now in search of systems, solutions or methods that to help them solve this problem and for this purpose they have launched the Blue Green Algae Harvester Innovation Call. Read more here.

Author: Anu Pousi