Sustainability Landscape 2021

CDTM empowers the innovators of tomorrow to solve pressing real-world problems. We are convinced that climate change is one of the biggest challenges we are currently facing. It thus comes as no surprise that tackling climate change is a topic dear to our hearts as Centerlings. In 2018, the CDTM Climate Club was established to bring climate action to the center. At the Climate Club, we not only aim to make the CDTM a role model in matters of sustainability by deeply embedding sustainable and social responsibility in our education, operations and individual lives at CDTM. We also want to connect with other sustainable organizations to support each other and to share resources.

WHAT IS THE CDTM CLIMATE CLUB?
A student initiative with the mission to empower CDTM to contribute to limiting climate catastrophe. We have set ourselves 4 targets for 2021 to systematically change the CDTM to become a forerunner in climate action. With more than 140 members in our slack channel we share resources & tips, and connect engaged centerlings. Read more about the Climate Club here.

We therefore did not need to be asked twice to join a project with four Munich-based venture capital firms to create a sustainability landscape. Although much is happening in the sustainability space in the DACH region, up to that point there was no comprehensive overview on sustainable organizations operating in this market. We often had a hard time to identify relevant partners in the sustainability space and we had the feeling that many of us were pushing towards the same direction and tackling the same problems without even knowing about each other. Hence, we clearly saw a need for a comprehensive overview from which everyone in and around the sustainability ecosystem – startups, VCs, networks, accelerators, sustainability enthusiasts, and many more – could benefit substantially simply from knowing about each other. In cooperation with HV Capital, Ananda, Acton, and Plug & Play, we thus created a (non-exhaustive) overview on the sustainable organizations headquartered in the DACH region structured by industries.

APPROACH

While this landscape represents our perspective on the scene and is by no means an exhaustive list, we aimed for a balanced view. We included all kinds of organizations, from early startups to established corporates. Out of a pre-selection of over 300 sustainable startups and 50 VCs, networks, accelerators and event formats (which we grouped under the term “ecosystem”) in the sustainability space, we curated the following landscape based on the impact and potential of organizations. Industries and sectors were chosen based on their leverage and crowdedness. Although some startups would fit into more than one category, compared to other approaches such as dividing by SDGs, this appeared to yield the most intuitive visualization.

WHAT´S NEXT?

We believe climate change and sustainability are the most relevant topics of our time and we should all come together to create awareness and support solutions in this space – be it through becoming a paying customer, choosing one of the startups as an employer or investing in them. The sustainability landscape 2021 is intended to help us do so! So, feel free to reach out to organizations on the map and to us. Let this be a starting point for conversations and collaborations to push sustainability initiatives around DACH even further. If you feel you should be mentioned in our 2022 landscape, help us by giving us some information here. Find the full, downloadable list and links to the organization´s websites here. If you have any ideas, feedback or would like to partner with us, please reach out to us on climateclub@cdtm.de. ————————————————- Lisa Oberaigner (Fall 2020) and Christian Wanzek (Fall 2020) on behalf of the CDTM Climate Club