Christmas makes most of us feel warm and fuzzy inside. But the environmental and social impact of the holiday season can actually be devastating – as hard as that is to hear. We waste £64 million pounds worth of food every Christmas, we throw away ten thousand tonnes of plastic packaging, and we bin enough wrapping paper to wrap around the Island of Jersey.

But the thing is, there’s hope. As ever, startups are leading the charge on creating innovative and groundbreaking ways to tackle these issues in the UK – and through their work, could really transform the way we do Christmas.

Olio

Founders: Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One

A Tech Nation Upscale alumnus, Olio is a community-based app which connects members of the community and local businesses in order to share food and reduce food waste across the UK. For the 8.4 million people in the UK who are living in food poverty, Christmas can be a really difficult time of year. For a lot of us, eating is a central aspect of the holiday season – advent calendars, mince pies, decadent Christmas dinners, mulled wine and bratwurst at the Christmas markets, tubs of Quality Street and Celebrations, the list goes on. In creating channels of community sharing and distribution, Olio is working towards minimising waste and ushering in a more sustainable way of doing the holiday season. In empowering local communities with ‘a free, accessible, and effective solution to reduce waste’, this startup could really revolutionise the way we do Christmas.

Flexi-hex

Founders: Will Boex and Sam Boex

One of the Silicon Gorge Autumn 2022 winners, Flexi-Hex has created a biodegradable, recyclable and plastic-free packaging product designed to protect fragile goods in transit. Started when the two founders wanted a way to transport their surfboards safely without using plastic packaging, their mission statement has always been focussed around protecting the natural world, starting with our marine wildlife. The UK is expected to spend around £25.6 billion on Christmas gifts and a lot of this will be packaged and posted all over the UK; Flexi-hex is offering an innovative way of doing this without excessive plastic waste going to landfill and polluting our oceans. This kind of innovation in recycling and sustainability is going to be instrumental in reducing that ten thousand tonnes of plastic waste every Christmas!

Extracellular

Founder: Will Milligan

Extracellular is ‘the first dedicated manufacturing partner supporting cultivated meat’; and is aiming to create a more ethical and sustainable food market.  We waste an insane 2 million turkeys every Christmas, and that doesn’t even begin to cover any of the other meats which end up on the waste pile.  Extracellular are doing pioneering work in providing efficient and cost-effective cellular agriculture processes which can create sustainable meat. This offers a solution for those who don’t fancy seeing a nut roast or a vegetarian wellington on their Christmas dinner table, but still want to prioritise sustainability in their home. Hopefully in the future we’ll be seeing cultivated meat turkeys entering our homes each holiday season to reduce food waste and work towards food security in the UK.

Gardin

Founder: Sumanta Talukdar

Gardin are an agritech startup working towards more sustainable models of farming in the UK. If you think about it, a huge proportion of your Christmas dinner is vegetables, whatever your preferences are: potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts, parsnips, red cabbage, swede…the list goes on. Gardin have developed novel ways of maximising crop yield: their network of IoT sensors gather data on plant health, and their analytics automatically alert farmers to issues such as drought, disease or heat stress within a matter of hours. In creating these precise diagnostics, Gardin have created a sustainable and ethical way of farming which will inevitably filter all the way down onto your Christmas dinner plate – and help combat that £64 million pounds of food waste that goes down the drain every festive season.

If any of this has inspired you and you feel like getting involved with some Tech for Good startups, head to our Jobs Board to have a look at what roles we have live.

Or if you’re a startup or scaleup founder who think you have something important to contribute, give us a call on 0117 428 0600 to chat about your hiring strategy!