UK disruptive sustainability startup Greener grows to over 100 businesses

Through months of dedicated user acquisition work, the Greener platform has grown at an average rate of 18% a week to grow to over 100 businesses. Greener now includes businesses seeking or providing sustainable solutions in 15 countries, with the majority found in the south west of the UK. Users come from across the food and drink supply chain including farming and agriculture, manufacturing and processing, packaging, retail, hospitality, consultancy and compliance services, and waste management.

“Building a sustainable business is frankly too complicated,” says Greener co-founder and CEO Dan Yates. “If you run a business then your priorities are, understandably, growing your customer base, covering your costs, paying your team etc. Sustainability is seen as complicated, expensive, and added work that people simply don’t have time for. We are changing that.”

Greener is fundamentally a tool to make sustainability work for small businesses, rather than making small businesses work to become sustainable. They do this by connecting people and companies who otherwise would be unlikely to discover one another.

Early feedback from users has been humbling for the small team behind the company. “Our users are confronting these limitations every day, so it is really heartwarming to see that we are responding to a challenge that is shared between us and our early members,” said Mehrnaz Tajmir, Co-Founder and Chief of Science. “The enthusiasm from users who have reached out to tell us they are excited to be part of this journey with us, or to highlight the potential value that it may have on their supply chains, those are the notes that keep us going.”

With a background in sustainable supply chain management, co-founder Mehrnaz Tajmir was all too aware of the strides being made in the area of sustainable food systems and innovation. “These past months have been incredibly educational for us in knowing where some of the innovation trends are and also where they are lacking There is a disconnect between the food industry and other parallel industries which means that a lot of transferable innovation and technology is going unnoticed; potentially game changing ideas,” she said. “We are really hoping that through our platform we can bring that knowledge to the forefront, and help businesses start thinking differently about what’s possible.”

The company was founded in 2019 with the vision of placing sustainability at the core of every supply chain decision in the food and drink industry. Early signs from the past few months have been a huge step in that direction. “Going live felt like testing our hypothesis to see if the market recognised how difficult it currently is to bring sustainability into a viable small business strategy,” said Dan. “We’re thrilled to report that we weren’t totally off base! It’s a long journey though, and we know we’re only getting started. Our focus now is on continuing to build that user base, to keep listening to our community about what solutions we can help them source, and to tackle our seed fundraising round.”

After raising over £140,000 in pre-seed funding, with part coming from the Innovate UK Sustainable Innovation Fund, the team are in the midst of a new seed round that they hope to close in the coming months. Interested parties can reach out to Dan at dan@thisisgreener.com for more information, or take a look at Greener’s Angel Investment Network raise profile here.

Since June, the company has also been earning recognition from industry groups and entrepreneurship organisations, gaining admittance to the Green Tech Alliance and seeing co-founders Dan and Mehrnaz shortlisted for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in the sustainability category.

Registration is now open to food and drink SMEs as well as providers of sustainability solutions who can sign up to join Greener’s early users at www.greener.io.

Founded in August 2019, and fully launched in June 2021, Greener is a B2B sustainability matchmaking platform for food and drink SMEs that helps buyers and suppliers easily build sustainable, tailored supply chains. Through its platform, Greener is working to make sustainability accessible and affordable for all small businesses.