Deadline: 02-Jul-21
Applications are now open for the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Programme (SMEP) to identify, incubate and Implement Practical Plastics Mitigation Solutions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The SMEP Plastics Fund has a total budget of up to £5 million over 3 years. They are seeking calls for concepts for research and development projects that have the potential to bring new solutions into the plastics value chain upstream of the end-of-life solutions.
Ideally, these should be well-positioned to be taken up at scale by industry in the region.
Objectives
Interventions should meet the following overarching objectives:
- Concept interventions should show potential to significantly reduce plastics waste in the environment by introducing new innovative solutions within the plastics value chain.
- The solutions envisaged include upstream interventions, which address the plastics pollution challenge at source through material substitution and design; manufacturing improvements; and repurposing of plastics articles after their first use phase, as well as reuse systems.
- Solutions should have a strong potential for market uptake and scaling.
- To gain market traction, solutions should be technically and economically viable to implement.
- Solutions should be designed to progress rapidly through technology readiness levels and overcome technical and other barriers to entry (e.g., regulatory; value chain integration; market perception; or other).
- Proposed solutions must be suitable for the SMEP priority countries or show that they can be implemented at scale in these geographies
Priorities
From this fund SMEP will contract the following four priorities:
- Research to develop the evidence to support practical solutions with a high chance of uptake and impact.
- Developing and testing innovative technology-based solutions that improve the environmental impacts of manufacturing; and
- Identifying and developing suitable supporting business models and policies to adopt innovative technology-based solutions.
- Generating evidence and practical solutions to address the problem of plastic ocean pollution.
Funding Information
- The programme has an investment fund of up to £20 million to be disbursed over a 5 year period (2019-2024) with up to £5 million of this potentially available for this Plastics Call.
What the fund will achieve?
- This Plastics Fund under SMEP aims to improve pollution levels, human health, and the environment through achieving a reduction in plastic pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- The Fund aims to advance solutions to reduce the incidence of one-way, disposable plastic articles, which are poorly conceived and therefore prone to ending up as litter.
Geographical Focus
- Priority will be given to SMEP target countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan although applications from other ODA countries can also be considered.
- Providers may elect to work in more than one country in a sub-region.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2SPaqrV
