Five Pitches To Tackle The Globe’s Pressing Environmental & Conservation Challenges
Paul Maguire (Taronga Director of Education) and Danielle Fryday (HATCH Program Manager).
How might we address some of the globe’s most pressing environmental and conservation challenges?
HATCH: Taronga Accelerator Program aims to inspire, support and launch innovative ideas and actions to help address some of the most pressing environmental and conservation challenges currently facing our planet.
HATCH ran as a fully digital program this year, combining 10 of Australia’s top, emerging social entrepreneurs representing 5 innovative initiatives. Impact Boom was the proud delivery partner and was impressed by the founders and delivery team.
Alongside Taronga Conservation Society Australia, we’re proud to share some of the incredible outcomes from the dedicated participants of HATCH. On November 10th, a national audience tuned in to the their online pitch event. Below, you’ll find the pitches presented on the evening and we’d encourage you to get in touch with the entrepreneurs, buy their products and support their campaigns.
We’d like to graciously thank the entire team at Taronga Conservation Society Australia who made this possible, as well as the amazing presenters and program mentors. Without their support, expertise and contagious positivity, creating a program of this calibre would not be possible.
Keep your eyes on these inspiring initiatives as they evolve, develop their projects and maximise their impact.
Watch the pitches from HATCH 2020 participants and learn some of the key insights from the program delivery team, Danielle Fryday and Paul Maguire.
HATCH participants during one of the online workshops.
[Tom Allen] - Can you please tell us more about the HATCH: Taronga Accelerator Program and why Taronga invested in this program to support the community?
[Danielle Fryday and Paul Maguire] - HATCH aims to inspire, support and launch innovative ideas and actions to help address some of the most pressing environmental and conservation challenges currently facing our planet. Taronga believes that innovation is a key part of securing a shared future for people and wildlife, and that brilliant ideas to address these challenges can come from any corner of the community.
HATCH is open to applications from across Australia. The program supports founders to assess, test and validate their early stage ideas and to establish themselves as social enterprise or not-for-profit organisations to drive their initiatives forward. We truly believe in the power of harnessing innovative thinking, collaboration and people’s passion for the natural world to solve the big issues, and HATCH is here to accelerate the changemaker journey and hatch brilliant ideas for the planet.
What have some of the key outcomes been?
We are delighted that we were able to go ahead in spite of COVID-19, successfully delivering the accelerator program 100% online and a virtual pitch event attended by 200 people that was very positively received. Through the program we were able to support ten passionate changemakers to progress their five inspiring sustainability initiatives.
The HATCH Program delivered 40 hours of learning and collaboration time for the participants, and connected them with experienced mentors and subject matter experts from across the start-up, business, and for-purpose arenas who generously provided more than 100 hours of pro bono advice and support. Each team received $2,000 equity free seed funding, and at the pitch event we announced the $50,000 HATCH Grant winner Good-Edi, and $5,000 People’s Choice Award winner PoopLoop.
Most importantly, every team made strong progress on their ventures and saw significant growth in their business and startup knowledge. We are really proud of all of the teams and delighted that they found HATCH to be a very positive and valuable program. We are excited to follow and support the HATCH 2020 teams’ progress to drive positive change.
As the Program Leads, what's one of the main learnings you'd apply to future programs?
The value of relationship building and collaboration for everyone involved. Speaking to many accelerator program managers when we were designing HATCH, they all identified the importance of great mentors and of nurturing cohort relationships. Having now run our program this is absolutely true.
We were blessed with a fantastic group of mentors with a wide range of expertise that greatly enriched the support available to our teams, and the teams highly valued their involvement and guidance. Establishing cohort connections was made more difficult with COVID-19 preventing the group coming together in person, but credit to the participants for making the best of the situation and turning up online every time with a positive mindset and a smile. And a huge thanks to Taronga Director of Education Paul Maguire’s own startup Mixopia for enabling the soundtrack of the HATCH 2020 Program that helped us to all connect from afar.
What advice would you give to other organisations seeking to provide this type of support?
Reach out and connect with the innovation ecosystem – they are such a welcoming, supportive and generous group! I have been blown away by the openness of everyone I connected with – they are all so willing to share their knowledge and experiences to benefit the greater good.
The second piece of advice is to partner with people and organisations whose values and vision align with yours. HATCH’s partnership with Impact Boom is the perfect example of this, and that strong alignment was fundamental to HATCH’s success in 2020. We are so grateful for the support of Tom Allen and the Impact Boom team, and to all the individuals and organisations who supported us this year.
What’s next for Taronga and HATCH?
Despite the challenges of 2020, Taronga continues its work to support native species in the wild through a range of research and breeding programs, rescue and rehabilitate native wildlife, educate the next generation, and inspire our guests to appreciate and protect our natural world.
Recently we announced the very exciting news that the NSW Government will provide partial funding for the development of two brand new wildlife hospitals in Sydney and Dubbo. These facilities will also include a state-of-the-art Reptile and Amphibian Conservation Centre and Platypus Visitor and Education Facility.
As for HATCH, preparations have begun to run the accelerator again in 2021. Hopefully COVID stays at bay and we can run it as originally intended, with group time together at Taronga Zoo as well as online sessions. We look forward to supporting a new group of passionate changemakers to hatch their brilliant ideas for the planet! If you are interested in the HATCH Program, please follow us on LinkedIn or join the HATCH mailing list to keep up to date with program plans and news.
watch the pitches
Every Drop
Our vision is to help communities across Australia engage with and protect their local water resources. We all know how important our water is and, with the escalating impacts of climate change, we are starting to feel the reality of water scarcity and poverty in many of our communities.
We believe that the safest hands our water resources can be in is our own, and so we aim to give you the agency to take charge of your relationship with water by providing you with the tools to accurately monitor and stay informed about your local water resources, connect with your community and advocate for improved local and federal water management. While one short shower won’t end a drought, Every Drop offers you the opportunity to join a growing movement that cares for and protects our communities, improves climate resilience and conserves our most precious resource.
Founder: Samantha Moody
Good-Edi
We are dedicated to solving the disposable cup problem. When we grab that takeaway cup, we are making a big mistake and become part of a huge environmental issue. Disposable cups are lined with plastic so aren’t recyclable or biodegradable. They create 60 tonnes of plastic waste per year in Australia, causing a huge amount of carbon emissions and water pollution.
We have an innovative solution that actually solves the problem, an edible cup that is waste-free. It functions like a takeaway cup without harming the planet or compromising on convenience. Our cups are a healthy snack, plastic and paper-free, and if they end up in the bin they break down naturally in less than two weeks.
Co-founders: Catherine Hutchins and Aniyo Rahebi
Support their crowdfunding campaign.
Pooploop
The PoopLoop is a community-based composting system designed to manage the copious amounts of dog poo produced in parks and green spaces every day.
It will divert the dog poo away from landfill which once processed becomes a safe and productive compost for local parks and gardens. We want to close the waste loop by helping people to see dog poo as a resource, not a waste-product.
Co-founders: James Lyle, Samuel Hughes, James Chan and Sam Quinn
Replated
RePlated wants to make single use history with our thoughtfully designed reusable takeaway food container systems. We manufacture our containers from recycled PET and glass right here in Sydney for distribution globally. As a business that is truly circular; from our philosophy to design and manufacture, we even take containers back at the end of their life for recycling into new products.
Practical solutions to our waste crisis are urgently needed to shift away from single-use. It takes just 15 washes for a reusable food container to be better than even the best compostable container. As we recreate a brighter and more socially and environmentally conscious future post-COVID, RePlated offers Australian businesses and organisations the opportunity to shift away from single-use for good.
Founder: Naomi Tarszisz
TOMBag
TOMbag is on a mission to rid the world of single-use garbage bags with our sustainable and functional reusable alternatives.
Designed from the ground up, we’ve created a reusable garbage bag that is waterproof, durable, washable and is made with recycled plastic. A reusable garbage bag to replace single-use plastics at home and at work.
Co-founders: Johnathan Pestano and Aleksandra Pestano
