Shifting their mindsets to functionality over quantity, discover how a small company working with bees was able to grow internationally, develop smart solutions and create impact.
Now, the company focuses on making cities and other areas more sustainable: they help to increase biodiversity, reduce pollution and empower communities. How do they do that?
We all have stories that are responsible for bringing us to the place where we are today.
Could you tell me what inspired you to create the company? How did you meet the other count co-founders?
We all have stories that are responsible for bringing us to the place where we are today.
On my end, my family has a history with entrepreneurship, and my brother was very interested and involved in sustainability. I travelled quite a lot when I was around 30 and saw with my own eyes that saving the environment was a high priority – something that we didn’t realize at that time in Belgium. I came back with the will to work in that topic. I met my associates, and then our story started.
When you started your company, you were focused on honey production in the city. How did that evolve?
We started with a project to solve the bee decline issue. We were focusing on honey production in the city – thinking in a traditional way, we were focused on making the biggest quantity possible.
We quickly realized that we were not making a positive impact. We were in fact making a negative one: the more you make, the more cans or bottles, whatever you need you use. We had to change, so we asked ourselves: what assets do we have and how can we use them to make a positive impact? We decided that we should approach corporates and offer to place bee colonies in their territories and raise awareness on the issue of biodiversity. It was very quick that we realized that those companies also needed data about their areas, for example, water producers needed to protect the area where they produce water. So, we developed a solution based on bees: through pollen collected by the bees we can collect data from large areas without human intervention.
That’s how we monitor biodiversity and pollution. The bees go quite far, visit billions of flowers, take a bit of pollen out of these flowers, and bring them back in the beehive. We developed a device that collects a bit of pollen every day. We analyze it, because it contains the DNA of the plants, and then we can see whatever kind of plant species you have in the area. The method also monitors air and soil pollution: we see agricultural pollution, industrial pollution, and so on.
We developed a device that collects a bit of pollen every day. We analyze it, because it contains the DNA of the plants, and then we can see whatever kind of plant species we have in the area. The method also monitors air and soil pollution: we see agricultural pollution, industrial pollution, and so on.
Picture by BEEODIVERSITY
Are you working with awareness raising as well?
Yes, our work goes beyond this solution. Once we have results, we share those to the clients. But then we share the data with local stakeholders. It means that, for example, when we see issues with agriculture in farming, we share the data to local farmers. We even give them tips where we train them to how change the way they manage their agriculture. We also share the data to local citizens or local municipalities and tell them how they have to act. Now we’re even doing one step further, because we realize that to save biodiversity, you need people to understand the situation in there area and what they can do. We’re developing a platform to enable the stakeholders to have access to a predictive assessment on a very low cost or even for free. That way, everybody could have access to the data and act.
There is a city in Belgium where we increased plant biodiversity by 400 %, reduced the use of pesticides, drastically changed the big local agriculture, changed the management of the ports, and so on. The whole ecosystem can impacted, and now the next step is to make this data available, give it more value so that everybody can act.
It sounds you’ve been through a long journey. Could you tell me a little bit more about where the company is at now?
The company now has evolved. We still have our core activity – working on sites, monitoring to the solution. But now we added other solutions, we are helping our clients to change local agriculture, regenerate biodiversity, and so on. We added more strategic consulting, because we realized that a lot of big companies still don’t understand how to integrate biodiversity in their strategy. It’s also a way to make an impact, because of their big size.
Article by Kotryna Kancleryte.
