And the Young Talent Award goes to …

For Good, the app calculating your ecological footprint, received a prize at the Belgian Business Awards for the Environment. The Antwerp scale-up won the Young Talent Award for the ‘Challenges’ it developed.

The Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB) organises the Belgian Business Awards for the Environment to applaud companies that succeed in combining economic activities and environmental care through green innovations. Janssen Pharmaceutica, Infrabel, Sioen and Lidl were among the twelve nominees. For Good claimed the Young Talent Award at the ceremony. The start-up is part of the accelerator Start it @KBC, that supports innovative ideas and scalable business models.

For Good-founder Maarten Desmet comments: “We don’t combine our economic activities with environmental care, our economic activity is environmental care. We use innovative technologies to make sustainability simple. The For Good app allows people to quickly and easily calculate and reduce their ecological footprint. A must when you realise that Belgium has got the fifth biggest ecological footprint in the whole world.” 

‘Challenges’: employees make their company more sustainable 
For Good won the Young Talent Award for its ‘Challenges’ that were integrated in the app in March 2018. Teams or departments within companies or organisations can compete with each other to determine who has the smallest ecological footprint after six months. They can measure their ecological footprint but also receive missions to reduce their footprint during those six months: cycle instead of drive a certain distance, eat veggie a couple of days per week,…

“We use the element of competition to encourage companies and employees to reduce their ecological footprint and create a more sustainable work environment”, says Maarten Desmet. “Not by measures imposed by management but by the employees’ own efforts. We want to show that small sacrifices, small adjustments in our daily lives, can make a big difference. According to our calculations a company of 50 people can save about 121.875 kg CO2 during a six month Challenge. This equals taking 7,000 cars off the road for one day.”      

This year For Good will be setting up a Challenge for Securex. It will also be working together with the province of Antwerp. the province will invite all its inhabitants to a Challenge called ‘de Klimaatstrijd‘. As of March 30 it will challenge its inhabitants and municipalities in Antwerp to not only fight for our planet but also fight each other. The municipality that makes the most progress, can claim the title ‘Municipality with the Smallest Ecological Footprint“. The Challenge will run for a year. At the end of the year five schools will also kick off their own Challenge. For Good has organised successful Challenges with the Adecco Group (2016) and VKO, a high school in Opwijk (2017).