Take part and join a global community of thousands who want to act now, and rethink the cities we live in and the future we want as citizens.

Climathon is a global movement that is organized locally. So it is a city-based program that offers a clear pathway to climate action. At the core of the Climathon program is a yearly 24-hour idea-marathon, ideathon, that takes place in hundreds of other cities across many continents.
During the ideathon, a diverse group of participants, ranging from policymakers to hackers, youth to academics, students to business leaders, will come together to collaborate on forward-thinking ideas that tackle local climate challenges.


The Climathon in Basel

This year, Climathon is coming to Basel for the second time, brought to you again by Impact Hub Basel! As the local organizer, we collaborate with partners that know our city best to tackle specific challenges we have in Basel.
Due to Covid-19 pandemic Climathon Basel 2020 takes place virtually. Even though it is sad that we cannot bring the energy of a creative and motivated crowd to our beloved Impact Hub in Basel, we will still make sure to provide an unforgettable Climathon experience!
Who can participate?
#ClimathonBasel is for everyone that wants to co-create ideas and solutions to drive forward climate action in Basel!
It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, what background or how many years of experience you have, every single person is more than welcome to join our Climate Hackathon in Basel!
Climathon meets BaselHack

2020 is a year that requires us to rethink and adapt. In the spirit of powering collaboration while at the same time serving society in a much stronger way we joined forces with our partner BaselHack!
The BaselHack crowd and philosophy of taking fun seriously is a natural fit to the Impact Hub Basel community and the Climathon movement. The creative concepting power for sustainable ideas comes together with the technology muscles of BaselHack!
The program on 13-14 November 2020
12.00-14.00
Our online platform is ready — Dial in and get technical support
13.00-14.00
Swiss National Panel Discussion — Join our Swiss-wide Climathon 2020 intro
14.00-15.15
Welcome speech and Challenge presentation — Find out what happens during this hack
15.15-16.00
Team building — Find your team mates to work together on an idea
16.00
Hacking starts — Ready, steady, go!
16.00-20.00
Experts are online — Get support from our topic and methodology experts
16.15-17.00
Ideation Workshop — Ideation exercises by Maarten Van Winckel
17.15-18.00
Problem Solving Workshop — The Iceberg Model by Michael von Kutzschenbach, Daniela Prado Zumthor & Ananda Wyss
18.15-19.00
Design Thinking Workshop — On the quest to a compelling product by Philipp Bracher
19.15-20.00
Filling the Skill Gap Workshop — Find hidden treasures in yourself by Jutta Jerlich
20.00-21.00
Dinner time
21.30-22.00
Good Night Yoga by Lukas Biry
23.00-00.00
Live DJ “Em i6”
07.15-08.00
Morning Mindful Meditation — Have a relaxed start into the day by George Peterburs
08.00-09.00
Breakfast — Strengthen up for the day
09.00-12.00
Experts are online — Get support from our topic and methodology experts
09.15-10.00
Storytelling Workshop — Bring your Pitch to life by Chantal Vroom
10.15-11.00
Pitching Workshop — The investors perspective by Maarten Van Winckel
11.45-12.00
Fun Tea Talk — The unavoidable pitfalls on your way by Jutta Jerlich
12.00-13.00
Lunch time — take you food voucher and go get it
16.00
Hack ends — Hands off the keyboard!
16.15-17.00
Final presentations — Show the jury what you have worked out
17.00-17.30
Festival of Ideas — The teams pitch their challenge solution in two minutes
17.30-18.30
Appraisal ceremony — The three Challenge winners and the coding winner will be awarded
This year’s Climathon Basel Challenges
How do we get to “less waste — more respect”?
Day after day, large quantities of disposable packaging are simply left lying around in public places, plants and on the banks of the Rhine – wasting raw materials and labour on cleaning every day. How can we persuade Basel residents to dispose of their waste correctly on the one hand, and to reduce their waste production in general on the other, and to show more respect for the city cleaning services and their employees?
Our lifestyle goes hand in hand with a high consumption of resources and a constantly increasing amount of waste. Consumption on the move in particular is making a considerable contribution to this.
Countless disposable packaging items are simply left lying around in public places every day instead of being taken back or disposed of correctly. This waste not only affects the cityscape and pollutes the environment, it wastes natural resources and a lot of money on cleaning. For example, 1 cigarette butt pollutes around 1,000 liters of drinking water.
The employees of Stadtreinigung receive little or no appreciation. Their daily cleaning and clearing up work is often taken for granted.
In order to reduce the waste of consumption on the road, there are already solutions such as the reusable take-away boxes or coffee mugs from reCIRCLE. The availability and accessibility of such solutions is to be further developed and supplemented by further ideas in this challenge.
However, deposit solutions and fines require new laws and regulations and should therefore not be pursued further in this context.
We are looking for solutions for waste reduction that are suitable for everyday use and can be implemented quickly. We also welcome ideas that contribute to the appreciation and respect for the city cleaning service and its employees as well as to the appreciation of waste-free places where we like to spend time.
A city without waste would not only be good for the environment and climate, but also an expression of respect for our common living space.
What could we do in Basel to quickly and easily get away from environmental pollution and impairment of the cityscape? What practical ways are there to raise awareness and appreciation for the freedom of packaging and recycling management and to make correct solutions attractive and achievable?
An upgrade for Basel — How do we make urban transport even greener?
Basel has a very good infrastructure in terms of mobility (trams, buses, etc.) and supply network (electricity, heating, drinking water etc.) — some of which is visible, others rather hidden. How do we manage to enrich this existing infrastructure with additional innovative uses? How do we make existing infrastructure even more ecological by upgrading it? Examples such as the waste disposal tram from Zurich or the Basel well heaters show us: multiple use is diverse and is exciting in any case!
Ticket machines where parking tickets can be purchased, fine dust sensors that have been on the BVB trams or sensors that display free electric car parking spaces in real time – “upgrades” for multiple use are already available at some locations in Basel. Some of those implemented upgrades make life more pleasant, but not necessarily more ecological. We therefore want to go one step further and expand the urban transport infrastructure with innovative ecological ideas.
It is not a question of abolishing or replacing what already exists (e.g. electric buses instead of diesel or gas buses). It is a question of supplementing what is currently available, combining it with smart future-oriented solutions, adding to it or using it as an alternative.
Drämmli and Co – an overview of the infrastructure around which the challenge revolves:
- Trams
- Buses
- Ticket machines
- Stops
- Public parking spaces
- E-charging stations
- Street lamps
- Fountains
- Power boxes
- Activatable temporary power connections (market stands)
The vision is simple: by combining existing elements of urban transport with new ones, we contribute to a more resource-efficient mobility and supply infrastructure.
Infrastructure upgrades may be radically innovative and unconventional, in line with “thinking out of the box”. Examples of the direction in which this could go:
- Could buses equipped with cameras contribute to the automatic detection of vacant parking spaces (and thus get cars looking for a parking space off the road more quickly)?
- Could a cargo tram, like the one in Zurich, free Basel from bulky goods or load goods?
- Could the energy consumption of public transport during the journey be communicated to passengers in an informative and appealing way (how many cars would have to be driving at the moment to transport us all)?
- Could e-cars be charged via street lamps or via the tram network?
The resulting concepts should be
- feasible (are you ready for a pilot project?)
- innovative (wow-effect!)
- ecological (efficiency, resource conservation, awareness raising)
- naturally closely linked to the mobility and supply network of Basel-Stadt
How do I make my city “cooler”?
More greenery and open areas where rainwater can seep away will lead to a better micro-climate in the city. We humans feel more comfortable and a more diverse habitat can be created for animals and plants. How can people in Basel be motivated to bring more greenery into the city in the long term on their own properties and in semi-public spaces and to unseal areas? What can companies and entrepreneurs do and how?
Hot and increasingly dry summers are a problem for people, animals and plants in Basel. Buildings, soil sealing, gravel gardens lead to heat islands and reduce ventilation.
As a result, the city can hardly cool down at night.
More greenery and rainwater seepage on unsealed surfaces in our city can significantly and directly improve the quality of life.
The canton of Basel-Stadt has already taken various measures to improve the urban climate in public spaces. In this challenge, we are therefore looking for approaches to discover and activate the great and often untapped potential for more green space on private and company premises. What incentives can be created? What can landowners do and how can they be motivated?
A “cool” city is above all green. The best thing is that more green fulfils many functions at once: It improves the microclimate and thus the well-being of city dwellers, increases the diversity of plants and animals, promotes neighbourhood, e.g. when gardening in urban areas and people like to be outside.
Rainwater can seep away more easily in natural areas and trees provide shade on hot summer days. Water can of course also be collected in basins or ponds and can be experienced by children, for example.
Where could there be more green and unsealed areas?
In your own semi-public environment, in the backyard, garden, front garden, in borders, on the roof or balcony, on the facades of company premises and company car parks, in the vicinity of shops and businesses, etc.
The teams of Climathon Basel 2020
A big CONGRATULATIONS to the winning Teams and to all participants!
#CoolerCity, Team 1 – Geo-Crowdfunding: Roman Engeler, Roland Brand, Mark Montalbo, Florian Sauter, Patrick Gusset
#CoolerCity, Team 2 – Green Box: Lionel Bauer, Tina Kontuniemi, Jacqueline Wyrsch, Sascha Baridara → CHALLENGE WINNER!
#LessWaste, Team 1 – Schweini & Mr. Bird Zoé Schürch, Franzi Erbe, Fabienne Knecht
#LessWaste, Team 1 – Green Waste: Christian Leighton, Joël Zimmerli, Victor Parmar, Diana Tapia Cruz, Sonja Grässlin → CHALLENGE WINNER + CODING AWARD WINNER!
#MobilityUpgrade, Team 1 – Efficient Transport: Matthias Pedro Coscoñas, Simone Raisch, Rod Tanzer → CHALLENGE WINNER!
#MobilityUpgrade, Team 1 – Concerts to Go: Sabrina Scherzinger
Facts & Figures
145 cities
Uniting the world’s cities
6’000+ participants
Join a global movement
600+ ideas
Make your local idea count
Transformative ideas for a better tomorrow
Since 2015, every October cities and citizens unite to co-create answers to local climate challenges through Climathon. This year, hundreds of cities across the globe will once again come together – either in-person or online – on November 13 and celebrate Global Climathon Day. Thousands of citizens will collaborate to raise climate awareness, disrupt the status quo, and reimagine the future of how we produce, move, and consume.
TIME FOR CHANGE. BE THE CHANGE.

Any questions, ideas or other input? Email [email protected] or call +41 76 500 40 53

Challenge Sponsors



More Sponsors















