Excess Materials Exchange: Imaginals Award Winner 2019

Reboot the Future, in partnership with the Katerva Awards, are thrilled to announce our first ever Imaginals Award winner - the Excess Materials Exchange (or EME).

about EME

EME is a digital marketplace where companies can exchange excess materials and products, ranging from steel plates to textile fibers. Using EME will allow businesses to (1) increase their secondary resource use, (2) turn their waste into a revenue stream and (3) achieve their sustainability goals faster.

And they are one of the only marketplaces that facilitate transactions across sectors and industries. The results from their pilot speak for themselves:

• A potential CO2 emissions reduction of 123 kilotonnes of CO2, which equals the emission of all citizens of Amsterdam (862,987) driving from Amsterdam to Milan.
  
• A potential creation of €64m in financial value and a reduction of €54m in environmental damage (eco-cost), resulting in a Total Value creation of €118m.
  
• A water reduction of 2.1 million m3 equal to the content of 860 Olympic-size swimming pools.
  
• An energy saving of 2,883 Terajoule, equal to the energy consumption of the city lights in Paris for at least 5 years.

"We are very honoured to have been recognised with the Imaginals Award," says co-founder Maayke Aimee Damen, "This will help us on our journey to achieve the paradigm shift that we strive for: reinstating waste for the valuable material that it is."

about the Imaginals Award

Katerva is a prestigious, virtual awards programme with a mission to identify, evaluate and accelerate the efforts of the innovators committed to making our world a better place.

Every year, more than six hundred individuals and organisations are reviewed through four filtering stages before two stages of focused review determine one winner from each category.

This year, Reboot the Future’s co-founder and chair Kim Polman joined Katerva's Awards Council and together we added an Imaginals Award to be given to the category winner who best embodies the spirit of Imaginal leadership:

Speaking of our decision, Kim Polman said:

"EME are embodying the definition of Imaginals, their work is ingrained with the spirit and values that can transform our world for the better. Not only are they incredibly innovative but we can see they have a clear heart connection to what they are doing. They are focused on their strong inner compass and this is the conscious manifestation of The Golden Rule."