Green Future Award

Established in 2018, the Greentech Festival has grown from an idea to unite likeminded people seeking new and better ways to create a cleaner, greener future, into an organisation that is actively promoting positive change. The festival features awards, concerts, exhibitions and conferences where speakers from all manner of disciplines put forward ideas and strategies that can help create a better environment for all to live in.

As one of the founders, Audi is of course dedicated to a better future, the release of the brand’s newest all-electric vehicles – the e-tron GT models – a tangible example of what the company is doing for a cleaner tomorrow.

It was fitting then that the launch event for the Audi e-tron GT was the venue for the awarding of the first Green Future award, established as part of the Greentech Festival to recognise the world of businesses or individuals whose work ‘promotes environmentally compatible urbanisation while making an important contribution to improving the quality of life and urban infrastructures at the same time.’ 

Nominees for the award came from fields as diverse as water, mobility, construction, digitisation, security and energy, with a jury comprised of representatives of the WWF, Deutsche Bahn, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), and the fashion label of rap artist Marteria Green Berlin, who are also members of the Green Awards jury of the sustainability platform. Each project was judged and evaluated based on its contribution to environmental protection, scalability, technical innovation, and future viability. 

Amongst the nominees was Strabag and its CIAir project and Sensoneo with its solution for intelligent waste management. The clean asphalt from Strabag reduces noise emissions by up to 35 percent as compared to conventional asphalt. The gritting material used for the asphalt consists of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) mixed with titanium dioxide. When exposed to sunlight, it breaks down nitrogen oxides bound in the air and converts them into harmless nitrates. 

Sensoneo offers intelligent waste disposal solutions for cities and companies, ranging from plant tracking for containers right through to an automated on-demand solution for more efficient collection planning. This way, three solutions for smart waste management are combined to include asset management, waste monitoring, and route planning. 

But it was start-up, Zencity, that received the Green Award from Greentech Festival co-founders Nico Rosberg and Marco Voigt along with CEO Judith Kühn and Henrik Wenders, Senior Vice President Audi Brand. 

Developed by Eyal Feder-Levy and Ido Ivri as an intuitive AI tool for local administrations, it uses an algorithm to find social media posts, websites, local news, and other online sources that contain information referring to the cities in which the people making these posts live. Advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning allow millions of user data points from the defined area, such as within a city’s limits, to be processed and to generate informative findings on this basis. Customers of Zencity include municipal authorities that can use this data as a basis for understanding the needs of their inhabitants and making them a reality. Already being used in 160 cities worldwide, this method conserves resources and replaces expensive and time-consuming face-to- face surveys, citizen hotlines, and committee meetings. The tool essentially helps all inhabitants of a city to gain the attention of political decision-makers and does so in an automated way, without complex reporting processes or bureaucratic obstacles.