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If there's one thing we're really good at, it's not celebrating new ideas until it's too late. Here's 10 groundbreaking New Zealand social enterprises with the courage to tackle everything from industrial manufacturing to how we brush our teeth.
Critical Cleanstone
A Māori-owned company, Critical Cleanstone creates stunning benchtops, chopping boards and interior panels that look and feel like stone - all made from hard-to-recycle plastic that no one else will take. CEO Rui Peng is an architect by training and is also completely hilarious, he's well worth a follow.
Foodprint
An app that helps you get cheap fancy food, by making it easy for cafes and retailers sell surplus, wonky and short-dated food at a discount to reduce waste. It's an app idea that I've seen lots of people float, but Foodprint are pulling it off. The app tells you where the discount food is, and you go and pick it up.
Solid toothpaste
Tooth care uses too much plastic. Solid gives you a toothpaste subscription in refillable glass jars that you apply to your brush with a little paddle - or take a shortcut with toothpaste tablets or powder. It's entirely made right here in Porirua, providing local jobs and saving the planet. Subscribe to their newsletter for a freebie to try it for yourself.
Mynd & Mushrooms by the Sea
Two mushroom operations from my hometown of Raglan. Mynd create drinks and chocolates from native Pekepeke-Kiore mushrooms. They use a special technique that produces some of the same compounds as Lion's Mane, which studies have indicated might repair nerve cells and improve focus, mental clarity and mood. Mushrooms by the Sea sell starter kits to grow your own Pekepeke-Kiore mushrooms at home.
Organic Market Garden (OMG) Box
The OMG Box is a one-box solution to the problem of seed sovereignty, where 3 companies own 60% of the world's seeds and won't let you cultivate them without paying. The OMG Box contains 100+ seeds, propagation equipment, and year-round seasonal support to help you grow them. Turn your lawn into a food forest. You can apply for a free box or preorder to give them support.
IndigiShare
IndigiShare is a Māori Fintech community investment platform focused on enabling Māori communities and businesses to pool capital to create impact-driven investments. An awesome part of this is Te Waharoa, an in-store Paywave provider where all the sky-high contactless payment fees go back to the community instead of to the global credit card companies. This is groundbreaking (and duopoly-breaking) stuff that's totally driven by and for the community. Ka mau te wehi.
KiwiFibre
I saw this one come out of Startmate last year. KiwiFibre are making Harakeke carbonfibre for racecars, snowboards and rockets. Carbonfibre is usually made by heating petroleum-based polymers, which is energy intensive and generates more CO2 than steel (30kg of CO2 to make 1kg of carbonfibre!). A couple of months ago, BMW announced it was replacing some parts of its M series cars with flax-based materials, with a wide application that could reduce the carbon footprint of creating each car by 40%. KiwiFibre's website is scant on details, but if they can ethically source the Harakeke in partnership with the community, I'd love a surfboard please.
CH4
This is an innovation and a local frustration all in one. CH4 are a New Zealand-Australian company who have developed a gamechanging seaweed product that can be added to cow feed to radically slash their methane emissions (farts) - the source of New Zealand's hideously outsized environmental damage. The website says, "Even if adopted for only 10% of cattle worldwide, Methane Tamer would deliver more climate benefit than decommissioning 50-100 million fossil-fueled cars." That's more than the number of cars in the United States AND India. However, there's a regulatory issue where seaweed is classified as an animal medicine rather than food in New Zealand, so they can't sell it here without stringent medical licensing. It's allowed in Australia, so they've moved to focusing their efforts over there instead.
Mushroom Material
I love this. You know how you can't stand it when polystyrene gets posted to you, half because it's an environmental catastrophe and half because YOU CAN'T FIT IT IN THE BIN. Mushroom Material have developed a polystyrene alternative made from totally biodegradable mushroom pellets, used for insulation and packaging. It's as durable as styrofoam. When it arrives in the mail, you can dump it straight in the garden or home compost and it will naturally break down within months.
New Zealand breeds ambitious ideas, but we don't celebrate them locally until they get international recognition. Break the mould - I'm getting a toothpaste subscription and buying a chopping board made from fishing nets for my next gift.
