During the past weekend, up to 150 innovators offered Bratislava their ideas for improving life in the city

Over the weekend, the capital city hosted the 5th year of Climathon Bratislava – the largest urban hackathon in Slovakia, at which dozens of enterprising enthusiasts and innovators worked on solutions that can help Bratislava mitigate the effects of climate change and improve the lives of the people of Bratislava. Together, 150 innovators and experts from the city proposed a total of 22 solutions. The winners devised a way to give thousands of books a new life.

The Not a Candy Shop team, which was awarded first place as well as a prize of 5,000 euros, came up with a complex solution to deal with the tens of thousands of old books that KOLO, the Bratislava Centre for Reuse, has thus far collected from citizens. The jury also highly praised a team of secondary school students called InoCrew, which figured out a way to present urban climate data in a comprehensible manner for future generations.

The average age of participants at Climathon Bratislava was 22 years, and the youngest participant was 15 years old. According to the organisers, more secondary school students in the current year, as well as their increased interest in climate topics, is a positive signal. “They often surpassed their older colleagues with their enthusiasm, and during the weekend they showed that for weeks in advance they had been preparing ideas for how to change their city for the better. We are very happy to see this enthusiasm in the young generation,” emphasised Eva Šimeková from the consulting company Civitta, which co-organises the Climathon.

Employees from the municipality as well as city enterprises accompanied the participants in the search for solutions. According to Mária Kostická, head of the municipality’s innovation development department, they ensured that each topic at the Climathon was also assigned experts from city enterprises and municipal departments as owners of individual challenges or mentors: “The city representatives provided the teams with professional expertise and mentoring over the whole weekend, and they were already actively thinking about how they can successfully put the winning ideas into practice.”

The Bratislava Climathon is part of a global initiative and is organised by 140 cities in a total of 56 countries. In Europe, it is sponsored by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT Urban Mobility and EIT Climate KIC). According to Uwe Nagel from the company Swiss Re, which is the main and long-term partner of the event, the quality of the Climathon keeps improving. “The Climathon has developed into an institution that is noticed by the most important city representatives. Every year we attract more teams, more and better solutions, and on the whole we improve this format.”

“The greatest benefit of the Climathon for Bratislava is the support of creativity and cooperation in the search for innovative solutions to climate challenges, inspiring young people to actively contribute to a more sustainable and greener future of our city Bratislava,” adds Michal Weiss from the IBL Software Engineering company, another long-term participant event partner.

List of winners at Climathon Bratislava 2024:

1st Place – Financial reward of 5,000 euros: Not a Candy Shop An application that gives books a second chance through efficient sorting and evaluation.

2nd Place – Financial reward of 3,000 euros: Pucwoll An application for citizens to help determine where new container stands can be placed.

3rd place – Financial reward of 2,000 euros: Green Weather Software that will help Bratislava plant thousands of trees faster.

Prize for secondary school students: InoCrew A secondary school team that transforms the complex climatic data of the city of Bratislava into tangible data for the next generation.