Serial-entrepreneur Andrés Martínez of iUrban nearly missed a job interview when his phone battery started to run out while he was following directions to the office location. It was the eureka moment when he saw the incredible business potential of installing mobile charging stations inside redundant phone booths scattered across the city.
Today, iUrban e-charging stations can be found in phone booths, lamp posts, metros, and other public facilities. Backed by the City Council of Málaga and the Andalusian board of commerce, the company has expanded outside the national borders into neighboring Andorra, Romania and even across the ocean into Mexico.
Many eco-friendly startups like iUrban have been launched in Spain, with founders taking advantage of national incentives that encourage the creation of innovative recycling models, as part of the pan-European drive to support the circular economy. A circular economy is "an economy that reuses and recycles resources to keep them in play for as long as possible", according to the MacMillan dictionary. Circular economy initiatives have
