United Kingdom Research & Innovation (UKRI) is to provide £24 million to fund projects run by businesses looking to deliver the UK’s 2025 Plastics Pact targets.
The UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging programme is to offer the funding across two competitions in 2021.
UKRI is to provide £24 million to fund projects run by businesses looking to deliver the UK’s 2025 Plastic Pact targets
Paul Davidson, Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge director, said: “The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging programme is dedicated to supporting innovative projects that will have real-world benefits in reducing plastic waste in the environment and we’ve already seen some exciting projects as a result of our programme funding, include four large-scale recycling plants.
“We are now looking to further our support in 2021 with £24 million investment. By investing in projects ranging from reducing plastic packaging to behaviour change, we can help deliver results to reduce plastic pollution.”
The programme is particularly looking for projects that focus on minimising or reducing plastic packaging, refillable packaging, and sustainable solutions for film and flexible packaging, amongst others.
Applicants will need to explain clearly how they would reduce the UK plastic packaging system’s overall environmental impact.
Plastics Pact
There are four targets the UK needs to meet by 2025 under its Plastics Pact, an initiative run by resources charity WRAP which brings together businesses from across the plastics value chain with UK governments and NGOs to tackle plastic waste.
The Pact hopes to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging by 2025 through redesign, innovation or an alternative delivery model.
By 2025, 100% of plastics packaging should be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
The Pact wants to see 70% of plastics packaging effectively recycled or composted.
And, there should be an average of 30% recycled content across all plastic packaging.
SSPP Demonstrator Round 2
Opening on 8 February, the first competition run by UKRI is the SSPP Demonstrator Round 2, which has a pot of £16 million for the winners.
“By investing in projects ranging from reducing plastic packaging to behaviour change, we can help deliver results to reduce plastic pollution”
This competition will fund large-scale commercial demonstration projects, including large-scale commercial trials of novel packaging technology or systems.
It is open to collaborations only. A full-submission competition will follow the Expression of Interest Competition by invitation only and will be open from 3 May to 14 July 2021.
Grants available from the follow-on full submission will be between £1 million and £12 million.
Business-led R&D Projects
The UKRI’s second competition is for Business-led R&D Projects. It will open on 29 March 2021 and will fund research and development projects.
The competition is open to collaborations and projects and the maximum grant available will be £4 million.
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Source: letsrecycle.com Plastic
