Covestro Start-up Challenge finalists preparing for grand final

The six best international start-up ideas from the Covestro Start-up Challenge are preparing for the final of the competition.

The winner of the contest will be selected at K 2019 in Düsseldorf in October.

Covestro’s objective with the Start-up Challenge is to promote creativity and an entrepreneurial mindset among its almost 17,000 employees and find the best business idea of 2019.

 The founders are then given the chance to put their idea into practice and test whether it is ready for the market.

To enable this, the winners are given leave from work for up to one year and can work as a start-up within the company, and also receive seed funding of up to €1 million.

Dr Markus Steilemann, CEO of Covestro, said: “The ideas of the six finalists all have great potential to drive expansion of the circular economy.”

“Our contest helps encourage everyone in the company to get good ideas ready for the market as quickly as possible and turn them into genuine innovations.”

One of the business ideas involves generating power from plastic waste, to counter plastic pollution in the oceans and also granting electricity for more people in underdeveloped markets.

A sustainable way of providing clean drinking water and safe sanitary facilities is also being researched, with water pollution attempting to be curbed with an innovative polyurethane technology.

Other ideas deal with the subject of resource efficiency, including the shape of recyclable shipment packaging and a more sustainable, CO2 based cleaning agent that can be degraded more easily.