Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £250,000 from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Programme.
The aim of this competition is to fund projects that will develop innovative ideas to help with the collection of flexible plastic packaging waste from households. The ultimate goal being the reduction of the amount of waste ending up in landfill or in the environment.
The selected projects will have the opportunity to develop their concept, and then present and prototype their idea as part of a nationwide trial to collect flexible plastic packaging waste from UK households.
Your project must:
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
Your project must:
You will be made ineligible if you have exceeded the £315,000 Minimal Financial Assistance limit during the current and previous 2 financial years.
You must submit a complete declaration as part of your application.
Lead organisation
To apply your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, a charity, or a ‘not for profit’.
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.
We expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
Number of applications
You can only apply into this competition with 1 application. We will only award grant funding to 1 project per business or organisation.
The aim of this competition is to fund projects that will develop innovative ideas to help with the collection of flexible plastic packaging waste from households. The ultimate goal being the reduction of the amount of waste ending up in landfill or in the environment.
Your project must:
Functional and technical requirements
Your proposed containing or collecting solutions for household flexible plastic packaging waste:
The project should take into account the following considerations:
We encourage the use of human-centred research and design principles, working in new ways and involving hands-on customer and user research as a means of informing and testing novel ideas.
Projects we will not fund
We are not funding projects:
22 February 2023 – Online briefing event: Watch the competition briefing webinar recording
27 February 2023 – Competition opens
12 April 2023 11:00am – Competition closes
15 May 2023 – Applicants notified
The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge aims to establish the UK as a leading innovator in smart and sustainable plastic packaging for consumer products. Its goals are to deliver cleaner growth across the supply chain, with a dramatic reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2025.
Among the various activities it funds, the SSPP Challenge is supporting the FlexCollect project which trials flexible plastic packaging waste collections from households in a number of local authorities.
To encourage greater levels of flexible plastic packaging waste recycling in the UK, a user-friendly container is needed for in-home use to encourage the household to adopt plastic film recycling.
The container and associated approach of storage and collection should encourage all members of the household to use it as a means to collect flexible plastic packaging waste and not put them within household black bag waste.
Our team is available to support your business in implementing SLA's - get in touch with one of our consultants.
phone: 0116 223 5887 or email: info@rdsconsultants.co.uk
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