Couldn’t attend GreenTech Festival Berlin?… Wilco got it covered for you

If I would tell you that Green Tech, Formula 1, and sustainability have something in common, you would probably think I am lying or just plain nuts. And honestly, I would not blame you. But stay with me, because that connection is real, and it is where the story of the GreenTech Festival begins. In 2018, Nico Rosberg, known for racing at over 300 kilometers per hour, received the GreenTech Award in Berlin. He was honored for his personal commitment to sustainability after retiring from Formula 1 and shifting his focus toward clean technology and climate innovation. That award moment did not just end with applause. Together with Marco Voigt and Sven Krüger, the founders behind the GreenTec Awards, he helped launch something bigger. In 2019, the GreenTech Festival was born. What started as a spark soon became one of Europe's major sustainability events. And this year, in May 2025, I was there to experience it for myself. So let us begin my opinion article about what the GreenTech Festival really felt like and what I learned along the way.

But before diving into that, let us be honest. While the focus of the GreenTech Festival has always been on sustainability and green innovation, there has not been a strong filter on who gets to join. In the months before I went, I heard voices in the field expressing doubts. Some people felt the event had become too open to anyone, including fossil fuel companies or businesses less serious about sustainability. I am still relatively new to this world, just seventeen months in, so I try to stay curious and open. But I listened. And I respect those concerns.

Some people told me they had stopped going to the festival because it felt too commercial or too friendly to greenwashing. I cannot judge past editions, but I think it is worth acknowledging that this is not a grassroots community event powered by activism. It is a professional festival that operates in the commercial world. That means getting a booth or a speaker slot often depends on sponsorships and budgets, not necessarily expertise or impact.

I try to stay in the neutral middle. What mattered to me was this. I came to the festival to push my mission forward. I want to make my daily job more sustainable, and that can only happen if I talk to the right people. Decision makers. Not just from B Corps or startups, but from all kinds of companies, because the transition to sustainability must happen across the board. With over ten thousand expected attendees, this festival felt like the perfect place to start that journey. I came hoping to meet people who, like me, want to turn operations into something greener. That is how I believe we can start shifting from money corp to sustainable corp. One real conversation at a time.

When we first arrived, we actually ended up in the wrong place. Like many others, we went to Messe Süd, only to find out we were at the entrance of GITEX Europe, a big IT conference focused on AI. Ironically, that event seemed to attract a lot of well-known voices in sustainability this year. Maybe that shift had an impact on who showed up at the GreenTech Festival. I do not know for sure, but it felt like something worth noticing.

Eventually, we found our way to the right entrance on the north side of Messe Berlin. By the time we got there, I was just excited to start. I had spent two months preparing for this, digging into the list of speakers, exhibitors, and participants. Not just to be ready, but to make sure I knew exactly who to talk to. For me, this was not about just watching presentations or collecting brochures. It was about spending two full days having conversations, non-stop if possible.

The main stage looked great, and while the entrance hall was still empty early on, it felt big and welcoming. There was a calm, almost relaxed atmosphere in the air, and despite the slow start, I felt strangely at home. Maybe because I came with a clear purpose, or maybe because I was surrounded by people who at least spoke the same language of change, even if not always in the same way.

Once I started walking around and talking to people, I realized quickly that this festival was not about flashy demos or gimmicks. It was about passion. GreenTech has a lot of really passionate people. You could feel it in every corner, people working in their own field, from carbon capturing to building smart cities that are actually designed with sustainability at the core. It opened my eyes to how many directions innovation is taking. And yet, no matter who I talked to, it became clear that we are all facing a similar challenge.

The technology is there. The research is solid. The ideas are exciting. But everyone is still figuring out the same thing, how do we scale this in daily operations. That is the part that does not get solved in labs or in glossy reports. It has to happen on the ground, in real processes, in real companies. It is easy to talk about ESG goals and reporting frameworks, but most of the people I met were past that. They did not want to stay stuck in checklists or compliance. They wanted action. And they were all still struggling in their own way to make that action real.

It made me feel both hopeful and grounded. Hopeful because the will is clearly there. Grounded because the road ahead is still messy, still uncertain, still hard. But also deeply necessary.

One of the conversations that stayed with me the most was with Deniz Wagner. He did not have a huge stand or some flashy product demo. What he had was a clear dream, making reusable event tableware the new normal. Simple as that. Plates, cups, and utensils that do not get thrown away after a single use, but are delivered, collected, cleaned, and used again, sustainably, at scale.

What struck me was not just the idea. It was how clear and focused he was. He knew what problem he wanted to solve. He had already figured out how to do it. And maybe most importantly, he understood that businesses were not just interested, they were ready to fund it. There was no fluff, no vague mission statement, just a straight path from idea to execution.

That is when sustainability becomes real. When it moves from talk to action. When you do not need to convince people why it matters, they already know. You just show them how it works and why it makes sense. That kind of mindset aligns perfectly with what I try to do in my own work in Green IT. Making sustainability part of operations. Embedding it into DevOps. Turning it into something that does not just sound good on a slide, but actually works in the system.