Context 

Aster Fab is part of a European consortium supporting innovation through the EIC ACCESS+ program. This initiative is designed to help European startups accelerate their growth by providing financial support and access to specialized services.

Who can apply?

• EIC Awardees (Pathfinder, Transition, Accelerator)
• Seal of Excellence holders
• Spin-offs from EIC Awardees

Financial support

• Research package – up to 60,000€
  • Access to infrastructure and R&D support
  • Prototyping and Proof of Concept
• Business acceleration – up to 30,000€
  • Acceleration, Incubation and Venture building
  •  Business Planning
  • Internationalisation
• Skills improvement – up to 10,000€
  • Coaching & Mentoring
  • HR & Talent
• Access funds – up to 30,000€
  • IP & Legal
  • Due Diligence
  • Support fundraising

Key figures

Once unknown, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are now among the most pressing environmental crises. These “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous—from remote ecosystems to human tissues.

France has taken a major step in regulating PFAS, joining a growing list of countries pushing for stricter controls. A new law adopted on the 20th February 2025 aims to curb the use of these persistent pollutants, addressing contamination risks and protecting public health. But what exactly are PFAS, and why are they so concerning?

The Science Behind PFAS

PFAS are a large group of more than 10,000 man-made chemicals that have been used in industries and consumer products since the 1940s. Their most notable feature is that they are extremely persistent, due to their carbon-fluorine bounds, which are the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. This persistence, which maklqe them useful for manufacturing, also causes them to resist natural breakdown, remaining in the environment for hundreds of years.

Adding to the problem, PFAS are highly mobile, detected in rainwater from Tibet to groundwater in industrialized nations. Short-chain and ultrashort-chain PFAS, such as TFA, are particularly troubling due to their ability to infiltrate living cells and bypass most filtration systems.

An investigation by Le Monde and 17 other media identified more than 17,000 contaminated sites across Europe. More than 2,100 of these sites were classified as “hot spots” with pollution levels considered hazardous to human health.

The Devasting Impact of PFAS

Studies have linked exposure to PFAS to severe health conditions, including:

• 57% increased risk of kidney cancer
• 25% reduction in immune function in children
• Elevated cholesterol levels
• Various cancer

Industries Driving PFAS Contamination

The biggest contributors to PFAS pollution are the manufacturers of these chemicals, including large companies such as AGC, Arkema, Daikin, Gore and Syensqo (formerly Solvay). Chermours (formerly DuPont) and 3M are the companies that created these products and contributed to their widespread use. Today, various industries contribute to their further spread:

• Textiles: PFAS are commonly used in raincoats and sportswear to make them waterproof and stain resistant. In 2024, the market for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances in this segment is worth $4.4 billion.
• Food packaging & cookware. Some PFAS are used in cookware (i.e. in Teflon pans), food packaging, and in food processing for their non-stick and grease, oil, and water-resistant properties
• Electronics: PFAS play a crucial role in semiconductor manufacturing, particularly in photolithography and equipment components. Their resistance to heat and low surface tension minimize defects, improve chemical compatibility, and increase equipment lifespan. The size of the market for PFAS in electronics stands at $9.1 billion in 2024.
• Cosmetics: PFAS contributes to the performance of waterproof makeup, long-lasting foundations, and anti-aging skincare products.
• Automotive & aerospace: Known for their heat resistance and non-corrosive properties, PFAS are essential in various automotive and aerospace applications.

Perspectives On Regulation

The European Union has implemented stringent regulations to restrict the use of. Key regulations include:

• Persistent organic pollutants (POP) regulation: In line with the Stockholm Convention, this regulation has banned several PFAS substances, including PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) since 2009, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) since July 2020, and PFHxS (perfluorohexane sulfonic acid) since June 2022.
• Registration, evaluation, authorization & restriction of chemicals (REACH): A REACH proposal aims to ban the manufacture, use, and placing on the market (including imports) of at least 10,000 PFAS substances.
• Drinking water directive: This directive sets a maximum PFAS concentration of less than 0.5 ppt in drinking water effluent to ensure water quality and public safety.

2 Key Figures

Over 10,000

PFAS include more than 10,000 synthetic chemical compounds used in industrial and consumer products.

 €100 Billion

The estimated annual cost of removing even a fraction of short-chain and ultrashort-chain PFAS from the environment and destroying them, surpassing two trillion euros over 20 years.

As businesses increasingly turn to innovative solutions to maintain their competitive edge, ideation plays a crucial role in the development of groundbreaking products and services.

At Aster Fab, we facilitate various types of ideation workshops, leveraging different methodologies depending on your goals. Here are the top 10 ideation techniques, each designed to help you navigate the innovation process effectively.

🎯 Massive idea generation

In situations where you are looking to develop many ideas, these methods help teams to move beyond conventional ways of thinking:

• Brainstorming: Brainstorming is a method teams use to generate ideas to solve well-defined problems. In controlled conditions and a free-thinking environment, teams approach a problem by methods like “How might we” questions.
• Brainwriting: Unlike brainstorming, ideas are written anonymously before being discussed, encouraging participation from all team members.
• Crazy 8’s: Each participant sketches eight ideas in eight minutes, fostering rapid ideation and creativity.
• Reverse brainstorming: Rather than actually solving the problem, groups attempt to come up with the best means of causing your solution to fail. This will reveal things you’ve overlooked and stimulate new ideas.

🔍 Structured exploration

Sometimes, you must examine ideas in a structured way to discover new possibilities or enhance current ideas.

• SCAMPER: Encourages transformation through seven key actions: substituting, combining, adapting, modifying, putting to another use, eliminating, and rearranging. By applying these principles, teams can break out of conventional solutions and explore innovative alternatives

💡 Concept stimulation

To challenge assumptions and stimulate creative thinking, these methods help teams in taking new perspectives:

• Six thinking hats (Edward de Bono): Gives participants six different roles, represented by colored hats. Each role – facts, feelings, risks, optimism, creativity and control- fosters a more disciplined and varied style of problem solving
• Call to a hero: Encourages participants to put themselves in the mind of a celebrity or a hero and imagine how they would tackle the challenge. Placing themselves in someone else’s position, teams come up with creative, outside-the-box solutions that they may not have thought of otherwise.

🖼️ Concept visualization

Concepts can be tricky to grasp. These techniques help teams to visualize their ideas, making them more tangible and actionable:

• Mind mapping: Powerful tool for organizing and connecting ideas in a visual way. Starting from a core idea and expanding, from there, teams can identify how concepts relate to each other and generate new ideas.

👥 User-centered innovation

These practices ensure that ideas align with user needs:

• Rapid prototyping: Refers to the quick creation of prototypes such as sketches, paper models, or digital mockups. This process allows teams to receive early user feedback, identify flaws before heavy investment.
• Design thinking: A human-centered methodology that ensures ideas are desirable, feasible, and viable. Through prioritizing user needs, technical feasibility, and business viability, this approach encourages continuous iteration and refinement throughout the innovation process.

123Fab #104

1 topic, 2 key figures, 3 startups to draw inspiration from

Urban areas face rising temperatures from the combined effects of climate change and the “urban heat island” phenomenon. Concrete and asphalt trap heat, creating hotter cities, escalating energy demands, and endangering vulnerable populations. To mitigate these effects, solutions must address the problem across all scales: city, neighborhood, street, building, and individual levels.

City-Level Strategies

At the city scale, urban planning focuses on creating cooler environments by improving airflow, increasing plant cover, and reducing heat-retaining surfaces:

• Urban Planning and Cool Corridors: Designing open spaces and cool corridors encourages air circulation and reduces heat concentration.
• Increasing Plant Cover: Initiatives like Paris’ Oasis Project transform schoolyards into green spaces, doubling as cool islands and heat refuges.
• Low-Emission Zones (ZFE): Reducing vehicular traffic in cities cuts emissions, indirectly lowering heat retention.
• Urban Water Management: Large-scale rainwater management systems and urban basins help infiltrate water into the soil. This not only prevents flooding but also encourages evaporation, naturally cooling the air during heatwaves.

Neighborhood-Level Strategies

Neighborhood interventions tackle heat through surface treatments, targeted greenery, and smart solutions:

• High-Albedo Materials: Reflective materials reduce heat absorption, like those used in Paris’ “cool islands.” High-albedo materials are surfaces that reflect more sunlight than they absorb, helping to lower surface temperatures.
• Vegetation and Cool Islands: Projects like Urban Canopée integrate vegetation into neighborhoods, while ENGIE Lab Crigen’s Skycooling panels provide shade-based cooling.
• Water Permeation: Soil desilting and localized rainwater infiltration enhance evaporation, which cools the surrounding air naturally. Incorporating small water features like ponds or fountains within neighborhoods can amplify these cooling effects.

Street-Level Strategies

Streets act as heat hotspots, but targeted solutions can reduce their thermal footprint:

• Draining Pavements: Products like Holcim’s concrete, a permeable concrete Hydromedia, allow rainwater to infiltrate the soil, supporting evaporation and natural cooling.
• Green Walls and Photovoltaic Shades: Vegetated walls and shaded walkways lower street temperatures while improving aesthetics and functionality.
• Localized Water Features: Incorporating fountains, small basins, or artificial streams along streets can provide significant localized cooling effects.

Building-Level Strategies

Buildings are central to urban cooling, as they represent a significant proportion of heat storage:

• Green Roofs: Vegetative layers provide natural insulation and cooling, reducing the heat stored by buildings.
• Reflective Paint: Products like Cool Roof reduce heat absorption, keeping interiors cooler.
• Advanced Insulation: Aerogels, a cutting-edge material known for their lightweight properties and high thermal resistance, can significantly reduce heating and cooling costs by providing superior insulation compared to traditional materials.
• Bio-Reactive Facades: Innovations like XTU Architects’ microalgae facades actively regulate temperature by producing oxygen and absorbing heat.
• Rainwater Harvesting: Buildings can integrate systems to collect rainwater, which can then be used for evaporative cooling or irrigation for rooftop and vertical gardens, further reducing heat buildup.

Individual Actions

Individual behaviors also play a vital role in reducing urban heat:

• Soft Mobility: Walking, cycling, and using public transport help reduce vehicular emissions and heat contributions.
• Urban Greening: Individuals can plant greenery at home, install small water features in gardens, or volunteer for local tree-planting initiatives to enhance cooling.
• Water Stewardship: Households can promote cooling by managing rainwater infiltration with permeable garden designs, rain barrels, or bioswales to ensure water is available for natural evaporation processes.

Cooling urban environments requires a multifaceted approach across different scales. From city-wide planning and water management to individual actions like soft mobility, these strategies not only provide immediate relief from heat but also promote the long-term sustainability of urban life. Addressing the urban heat island effect is a pressing necessity as cities prepare for increasingly extreme temperatures in the decades ahead.

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2 Key Figures

4

Temperatures can be 1 to 4°C higher than surrounding rural areas due to the presence of heat-retaining infrastructures like concrete and asphalt.

15%

A 10% increase in tree cover in cities reduces surface temperatures and lower energy consumption needs for cooling by around 15%.

.

3 startups to draw inspiration from

CoolRoof

French-based startup specialized in reflective coatings for rooftops and pavements to reduce heat absorption in cities, lowering temperatures and energy consumption.

SolCold

A materials startup from Israel that creates innovative coatings which cool buildings by converting heat into light, reflecting sunlight to reduce urban temperatures.

Green City Solutions

German startup that develops urban green spaces using “CityTree,” a smart, air-purifying moss wall that cools and cleans the air in densely populated areas through IoT integration.

Please fill out our contact form so that we can get back to you very quickly with our product offer.

123Fab #103

1 topic, 2 key figures, 3 startups to draw inspiration from

Microplastics—plastic fragments smaller than 5 millimeters—originate from two main pathways:

• Primary microplastics are intentionally manufactured at microscopic scales, such as microbeads in cosmetics or fibers from synthetic textiles.
• Secondary microplastics are created when larger plastics break down over time due to environmental factors like sunlight, wind, and water.

Over time, these tiny particles infiltrate ecosystems, contaminating soil, waterways, and even human blood. Recent studies reveal that microplastics have been detected in the bloodstreams of up to 80% of the people tested, raising serious concerns about their long-term health impacts.

Faced with this crisis, companies are taking steps to tackle microplastic pollution. For instance, Nestlé Waters is participating in the Plastic Trace Project (2022–2025), which aims to standardize the tracking of microplastics in water, food, and the environment.

Key industries responsible for microplastics

The variety of consumer and commercial products that are intentionally loaded with microplastics is vast: cosmetics, detergents, paints, medicines, diapers, pesticides, and more. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), identifies seven sources of microplastics in marine environments:

• Synthetic textiles (>50%): Washing synthetic clothes discharges millions of microfibers into wastewater.
• Vehicle tires (10-20%): The EU alone generates around 0.5 million metric tons of microplastics annually from tire wear, and this is expected to increase with the rise of electric vehicles that are typically heavier.
• Urban dust (10-20%): These come out of the sum of several sources that involve artificial turf, building paints, and industrial abrasives.
• Road marking (3-5%): Everything, including the roads’ infrastructure deteriorates. Hot-melt paints used for road markings contain polymer binders that contribute to microplastic pollution.
• Marine coating (4%): The coatings applied to ships’ hulls break down over time, contributing to the load of microplastics in the oceans.
• Personal care products and cosmetics (1-2%): Most skincare and cosmetics products contain microbeads, a well-known source of microplastic pollution. Since 2023, the EU called for a ban for microplastics in consumer products, including cosmetics.
• Plastic pellets (0.3%): Resin pellets, which are used as raw material in producing plastic items, often spill into the environment.

These categories only scratch the surface. Microplastics have countless other sources, many of which remain poorly quantified. Our understanding of the problem is still evolving, but the urgency to act is clear.

Solutions

Efforts to address microplastic pollution focus on two main strategies: reducing pollution at its source and improving filtration systems to capture particles before they reach the environment. Here’s how different industries can contribute:

• Textile industry:
  • Developing alternative fibers: Dutch startup Boldwill produces microplastic-free sports apparel. The company uses hemp, cotton, and fabrics made from eucalyptus and beech trees in its sportswear.
  • Installing filters in washing machines: A variety of filters are being developed capable of catching fibers before they go into the wastewater system. One example is the innovative filtration technology of Matter, originally developed for washing machines. Today, its solutions extend to industrial applications, stopping microplastic entry into sewage sludge.
• Automobile industry:
  • Durable tire materials: Projects like LEON-T are developing and testing airless tires for heavy vehicles. This would reduce friction of rubber material and minimize particulate emissions.
  • Tyre dust catchers: The Tyre Collective has designed a device to capture tire dust directly at the source. This device is placed behind the wheel and uses both a suction system and an electrostatic capture system to capture the plastic microparticles.
• Manufacturing:
  • Industrial filtration solution: Companies like IADYS or ECOFARIO are developing technologies to capture microplastics during industrial processes
  • Alternative materials: For instance, Naturbeads offers cellulose-based microspheres as a viable substitute for microplastics in everyday products.
• Packaging:
  • Plastic-free alternatives: Companies are manufacturing new materials that will replace traditional plastics. For example, Lactips produces water-soluble and biodegradable thermoplastic pellets using casein, a milk protein. The pellets can be used to make all sorts of packaging material.
• Cosmetics:
  • Biodegradable alternatives: Cosmetic products can be reformulated to be microplastic-free. A French company, Dionymer, has developed a 100% biosourced and biodegradable polyester obtained by fermentation for use in make-up and skincare formulas.
• Agriculture:
  • Bio-based fertilizers: BioWeg has developped AgriWeg a biodegradable emulsion for the substitution of coatings from petroleum and acrylic based materials on fertilizers and seeds.

2 Key Figures

51 trillion

According to the UN, there are as many as 51 trillion microplastic particles in the seas, 500 times more than stars in our galaxy.

Between 78,000 and 211,000

The average person eats, drinks, and breathes between 78,000 and 211,000 microplastic particles annually.

3 startups to draw inspiration from

Naturbeads

A UK based-startup commercializing biodegradable, cellulose-based ingredients, offers a sustainable alternative to plastic microbeads used in personal care products, paints and coatings, packaging, adhesive and many other industrial products.

ECOFARIO

The German startup ECOFARIO develops microplastics removal systems for wastewater treatment plants. Its High-G-Separator uses hydrocyclone-based separation technology, eliminating the need for filter media to separate microplastics.

PlanetCare

A Slovenian startup that has developed innovative filters capturing 90% of synthetic fibers that are being released from textile products during each wash.

Please fill out our contact form so that we can get back to you very quickly with our product offer.

Last week, during a discussion with a project leader from a major corporation, we asked a simple question: “How many business models do you know?”His response surprised us: “Uh… 5 or 6?”

This got us thinking about the importance of understanding business models in today’s dynamic landscape.

What is a Business Model? 🧐

A business model is essentially how a company creates, delivers, and captures value. It’s a fundamental concept that we explore using the Business Model Canvas (BMC). For those unfamiliar, there’s even a social version of this tool.

The Variety of Business Models

There are numerous business models out there, and a single company can adopt multiple models simultaneously.Take Google as a prime example:

• 💰 Pay Per Use: Google Cloud
• 🛠️ Self-Service: Clients access services directly
• 🎁 Freemium: Free services with paid options
• 🤝 Revenue Sharing: Partnerships with content creators on YouTube
• 🕵️‍♂️ Hidden Revenue: Monetization of user data
• 🎨 Long Tail: A vast catalog of services

As a transformation consulting firm, our role is to assist our clients in developing new business models.

Want to Go Further? Discover Our Business Model Toolkit

We’ve put together a toolkit to explore the 60+ business model in the format of a card game.

Context 

Our client, a major player in the construction industry, established an intrapreneurship program that led to the creation of a startup gaining traction both internally and externally. The company, that developed a platform for ordering low-carbon concrete, required additional funding to expand further. We mentored the intrapreneur in developing multiple comprehensive business plans and diverse funding scenarios.

Mission

In this context, we supported our client to:

• Team, Market, and Growth Analysis: Evaluate the team’s expertise, commercial robustness, and growth prospects
• Financials: Review the company’s financial health and performance to date, as well as future projections
• Business Plan: Craft a strategic business plan that outlines the company’s vision, objectives, and actionable steps for growth
• Funding Requirements: Assess the amount of funding needed for expansion and how it aligns with the business plan
• Funding Scenarios: Build scenarios to explore different funding options and their potential impact on the company’s future

Key figures