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Danish sustainability startup celebrates first birthday with innovative event

Sustainability startup think.dk celebrates its first birthday with an event in Copenhagen on Saturday.

Published: 21 September 2017 09:10 CEST

Danish sustainability startup celebrates first birthday with innovative event

Photo: think.dk

A year ago, think.dk opened its doors on Copenhagen’s Østerbro, starting an ambitious journey to accelerate change towards a more sustainable society, by providing a location and platform for like-minded people to hold sustainability-related events.

On Saturday 23 September, the project will host a day full of free entertainment, inspiration and alternatives for a better future to celebrate the milestone.

“Together with our members, we have held hundreds of workshops and events during the last year and that deserves a celebration,” Anja Müller, co-founder and moderator at think.dk, said.

The programme for the day includes activities representing think.dk's six focus areas; health, food, technology, environment, education and art. Visitors can learn more about current projects and workgroups through the activities. The day begins at 11am with a yoga class.

Visitors will get the chance to test their own ecological footprint, to join the world’s biggest eye contact experiment, to try 3D printing or watch a reel of short films about the concept.

There will also be a small art exhibition, live music and an open bar to close the event.

Martin Kæstel Nielsen, co-founder and moderator of think.dk, said he was excited about how the startup's first year has gone.

“We experiment. Encourage discussions on new ideas and explore new work and collaboration patterns, because we cannot solve new problems if we stick to our old habits,” Nielsen said.

“We believe that sustainable changes should be anchored in and respectful of the individual and therefore we, the people, must play an active part in providing solutions for the future,” Müller added.

The event is open and free for everyone and further details can be found here.

READ ALSO: These are Denmark's top ten undiscovered startups

Is Malmö's pogo stick e-mobility startup for real?

Adam Mikkelsen (centre) with the rest of the Cangaroo team. Photo: ODD Company

The Malmö company's innovative addition to the last mile e-mobility sector has been covered by the The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Huffpost, CNN, and our sister site The Local France, although from the start sceptical voices were raised.

At the height of its viral coverage in May, the company put out a public statement insisting that the company was not a PR stunt.

“With a lot of initial questions along the line of 'is this for real?', we feel the need to underline that Cangaroo is 100% real,” it said in a statement.

But when The Local spoke to him, Mikkelsen admitted that the initial idea had been to make a stir and get a point across.

“It definitely started as some statement, I wouldn't say against, but in the micro mobility movement,” he said. “And a lot of things we do tend to divide the crowd, with 50 percent saying 'is this real?' and the other half wanting to try them out.”

He said that articles talking about the company dumping tens of thousands pogo sticks in cities across the world as e-scooter companies like Lime and Voi have done, are “delusional”.

“With the Cangaroo, I would definitely see it as a success even if we only managed to put out ten pogo sticks in two cities and then we're out of money,” he admitted.

“But we're not about making a statement by just making something up and not doing it, because then we might as well announce that we're doing flying cars or whatever.”

Adam Mikkelsen (right) with a prototype Cangaroo. Photo: ODD company

If the handful of pogo sticks the company hopes to release in Malmö in August are well received (and that is quite a big 'if'), Mikkelsen claimed he and the PR bureau aim to stick with the company.

“If everything is running smoothly and the demand and feedback is great, then we would absolutely continue to scale and expand like any startup would do,” he said.

The company, like its 2017 'Pause Pod' relaxation tent, have been developed by the company's ODD lab, which it uses for experimental projects that are not for real clients.

The Pause Po d relaxation tent the company released in 2017 raised 960,244 Swedish kronor on Kickstarter and then sold about 2,500 tents before ODD wound the company up. But it got massive media coverage.

In the past the company has created similar viral 'product ideas' for commercial clients, such as the Somersby grass slippers for Carlsberg, or the Hug Trench for the fashion brand Monki.

READ ALSO: Dockless pogo sticks could be joining scooters on streets of Paris

Mikkelsen said that even though both the Pause Pod and Cangaroo were part of the company's ODD Lab, and not for any particular client, the company aimed to use the buzz around Cangaroo to raise the profile of gay, lesbian and transgender charities.

“We are currently in talks with different Pride festivals, so we aims to use the product in the public space to allow people to take stand on something,” he said. “During Pride week our ambition is that if you jump on a pogo stick, you jump for free love.”

“So we're not going to use it as a campaign for a commercial company,” he concluded. “But if you look at charity organizations, they sometimes struggle to get their message out.”

So it it for real? It depends what 'real' means.

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