Crowd favourite from Italy
Fanfare please: We have our first finalist! As the winner of our 2022 Public Vote, the Italian startup Agree is one of six businesses that will pitch for the Green Alley award trophy in April.
Agree wins our 2022 Public Vote
Only one startup can win the Green Alley Award…. BUT there is a startup that already is a champion: Congratulations to Agree from Italy for winning the majority of the votes in this year’s Public Voting!
With their business idea, Agree might help to solve the dilemma that some products, especially fresh food, need packaging to be protected – but at the same time contribute to a great amount of plastic packaging waste.
While France has just banned fruit and vegetables from being sold in plastic packaging, also other countries are looking for alternative packaging solutions. And here comes Agree into play: They have developed a plant-based edible coating made of agricultural by-products to protect fruits and vegetables. And they claim that this coating is able to increase shelf life and avoid food waste just as well as the wrapping made of plastics.
Great turnout, great fanbase
We are very happy that so many people participated in the Public Vote and supported our top 20 startups for the circular economy. Overall, we received 6,663 votes (in 2021 we had 3,357 votes) and a third of those votes went to our winner Agree – wow, what a fanbase!
Such support can be one way to success. It definitely shows that this startup knows how to set the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Cycle spinning!
With this victory, Agree is the first of 6 startups to enter the Green Alley Award finals! But don’t worry – the remaining 19 startups are still in the competition. Our selection committee will choose the other five finalists among these 19 at the beginning of March.
A big applause and a big thanks, of course, to all the other startups participating in the public vote!