Waste data analytics business, Topolytics has been voted the most disruptive tech start-up in Scotland by its technology industry peers.
The vote came at the Deloitte Disrupt the Enterprise event where six of Scotland’s most promising software and hardware technology companies pitched their proposition to an invited audience and panel of judges. On the night, both Topolytics and legal identity business AmiqusID, won prizes.
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Rich Hurley, partner at Deloitte and judge at Disrupt the Enterprise said:
“The pace at which technology is changing and the extent this is impacting upon the business landscape is staggering. What we have seen is some of Scotland’s most disruptive start-ups demonstrating how they intend to seize these opportunities and solve problems that may not even exist yet, but are inevitable.”
Topolytics described how it is injecting data and analytics into the £500bn global industrial waste management industry in order to increase the value of waste materials and enable the circular economy. A big area of concern is reducing the cost of moving waste material and guaranteeing that it is moved where it can be most effectively processed. Topolytics employs a range of techniques from analytics to sensors and third-party assurance. It has also just completed a project on the use of distributed ledger or blockchain technology to make this process efficient and transparent, working with the Computer Science and Mathematics Department at the University of Stirling. The project created a blockchain based system for tracking organic waste from its generation through to responsible processing and disposal.
Topolytics founder Dr. Michael Groves said:
“We wanted to test if such an approach can reduce the cost and administration of waste management. We learned how the data cannot be tampered with and that waste movement is transparent to all parties in the ‘chain’, including the customer and the regulator. We also saw how it was possible to automatically reward good practice such as waste reduction, efficient collection and use of more environmentally friendly transport or processing techniques.”
In February 2018, Topolytics was invited to join the Circular Economy 100 (CE100), an innovation programme established by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to enable organisations to develop new opportunities and realise their circular economy ambitions faster.
The company continues to grow its meta-map of the creation, movement and fate of industrial waste, in particular food, electronics and construction materials. By applying big data analytics, Topolytics is helping companies to reduce waste, maximise its value and driving more efficient investment in new recycling and waste processing capacity. The company’s flagship product – WasteMap – is a dynamic digital map showing where waste is generated and where it is sent for disposal, recycling and reprocessing. WasteTrack enables customers to use this technology to assure themselves that their waste streams are being handled the way they should be – particularly critical with hazardous and high-value wastes.
Having spent two years developing the platform through proof of concept projects, Topolytics is commercialising through a steadily growing number of commercial customers for its data insights and analysis.
