MINI VOICES: A platform for voices with something to say

MINI sets an example for sustainability and social commitment. With MINI VOICES, a platform has been created for personalities and initiatives that have the potential to change the world. In several European countries, MINI is supporting authentic actors and start-ups who are tackling today’s social challenges with their unusual ideas and demonstrating how a sustainable, socially responsible future can be shaped. The starting points for this are as diverse as the nations from which the protagonists come from. On MINI VOICES they and their projects receive international attention. Their presence on MINI’s social media channels gives them the opportunity to provide inspiration worldwide.

Finding unconventional solutions and rethinking the existing is deeply rooted in the tradition of the British premium car brand MINI. With its creative use of space, the classic Mini already became a pioneer for efficient, space- and resource-saving mobility in urban conurbations. Today, the fully-electric MINI Cooper SE (fuel consumption combined: 0.0 l/100 km; electricity consumption combined: 17.6 – 15.2 kWh/100 km according to WLTP, 16.1 – 14.9 kWh/100 km according to NEDC, CO2 emissions combined: 0 g/km) ensures the brand-typical go-kart feeling with locally emission-free locomotion.

Beyond the production of automobiles, MINI pursues a wide range of activities aimed at enhancing the quality of life in urban environments. Since 2016, the MINI Startup Accelerator URBAN-X has worked with more than 60 startups whose innovations are making life in the city better, more pleasant, more comfortable, more sustainable or more experiential.

MINI VOICES is now another opportunity to track down groundbreaking impulses for the world of tomorrow and make them known to a wider audience.

Inventors, founders, scientists, adventurers and other voices with something to say in the fields of sustainability and social responsibility find an international stage at MINI VOICES. Among the first personalities to be featured on this platform is the French architect Clarisse Merlet, who has developed a method for extracting environmentally conscious building materials from clothes that are no longer usable. Her Paris-based start-up, presented by MINI France, is called FabBRICK. Clarisse Merlet and her team have already recycled textile waste weighing more than twelve tonnes and produced around 40,000 bricks from it.

In the Swiss banking metropolis of Zurich, a unique ecosystem for the production of natural food has been created that delights environmentalists and gourmets alike. On the fourth floor of an office building, the team of the start-up UMAMI produces and processes

so-called microgreens. The particularly nutrient-rich and flavour- intensive mini-plants grow in a facility known as aquaponics. There, together with fish and freshwater shrimp, they form a closed cycle working completely without artificial additives. The company founded by Robin Bertschinger, Manuel Vock and Denis Weinberg, presented by MINI Switzerland at MINI VOICES, has thus developed a particularly innovative form of urban farming. In the meantime, its products are delivered to Zurich’s top restaurants, among others – always fresh and in a short distance.