Climate Solutions Festival kicks off in Montreal

Canadian climate innovators gathered in Montreal Tuesday for the opening of a two-day event dedicated to solving the climate crisis.

The Climate Solutions Festival kicked off at the Grand Quai du Port de Montreal, with an estimated 800 participants.

Finalists for Canada’s first Climate Solutions Prize were on hand. They were selected based on their solutions to tackling some of the world’s more pressing climate issues.

Some of the innovations presented included ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop renewable energy.

One of the finalists is a company from Quebec City called Myni that has developed a collection of cleaners as well as shampoos and shower gels. When the products in concentrate form are mixed with water, they become conventional products.

“The innovation is in the formulation. And with this concentrate, we can reduce CO2 emissions by 90%, eliminate the plastic, and also the toxicities on the planet and in our health,” said Marie-Hélène David, the CEO of Myni.

The entrepreneur adds that the idea to create these products was inspired by one of her children.

“A few years ago my daughter asked me, ‘Mom, how can we prevent the planet from dying?’ And this affected me, so I started to look for a solution for my children, our children and all the planets,” said David. “And I started with this industry because the cleaning and personal care industry is really polluting.”

Myni are one of the ten finalists for the Start-Up Track prize which serves to highlight and support solutions to address climate change that is one of the main themes of the festival.

“We know that if we don’t correct the trajectory on which we are currently on, we’re not heading to where we’d like to be,” Climate Solutions Prize Organization spokesperson Galith Levy told CityNews. “It is gloom and doom and we’d like to think that with the positive attitude, with bringing together and informing investors, entrepreneurs, research, academia, also the not-for-profits and the government, we can really affect change and leave a legacy to our next generation that we can be proud of.

“It’s really about celebrating climate solutions and showing that there’s a positive outcome for the future. If we all put our minds to it and we come together in an efficient and positive way.”

More than $290,000 will be distributed to prize winners, including $100,000 for the recipient of the “Breakthrough Research Prize” and another $100,000 for the “Startups Prize.” There’s also a $90,000 prize for student entrepreneurs.

Businessman Stephen Bronfman, Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette, entrepreneur Danièle Henkel and Lightspeed founder Dax Dasilva were among the nearly 50 speakers at the two-day festival.

“People are coming from all over the world, from the U.S., from Israel, from Europe, to join us to (discuss) investing and really sharing best practices,” said Levy.

“So this festival is a collection of entrepreneurs and investors and the idea more than ever is to connect them, to create synergies and to create opportunities for investment, to really fast track these entrepreneurs, these research inventions and their best creativity to the market, to bring the climate solutions to fruition.”

The Climate Solutions Prize launched in Israel in October, with more than 1,200 participants.