Deadline: 16-Sep-2020
Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £800,000 to fund early-stage, human-centred design projects to reduce the harm that plastics have on environment and to therefore increase productivity and growth of the UK economy. This funding is from the Plastic Research and Innovation Fund.
The aim of this competition is to help businesses to create designs for innovative goods, services or business models that will result in less persistent plastic waste entering environment. This should be achieved by them obtaining a better understanding of relevant customer and user behaviours.
This competition aims to stimulate innovation in design to reduce persistent plastic waste from landfill or entering the environment.
Your project should follow established human-centred research and design principles. It could involve working with new or existing partners, in new ways, and it must involve hands-on customer/user research as a means of informing and testing novel ideas. These ideas could include the radical re-design of existing goods, services or business models, or the design of entirely new ones which serve an existing need in a way that doesn’t rely on single-use plastic.
Funding Information
- Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £20,000 and £80,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any UK registered business claiming grant funding must be eligible to receive state aid at the time they confirm you will be awarded funding. It is not possible to award grant funding to organisations meeting the condition known as undertakings in difficulty. If you are unsure please take legal advice.
Your project must:
- have total eligible costs between £20,000 and £80,000
- start by 1 January 2021 and end by 30 June 2021
- last between 3 and 6 months
Lead Organisation
To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:
- be a UK registered business of any size
- carry out its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- claim funding by entering their costs into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) during the application
- Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone. Find out which definition your organisation falls into. Businesses can work alone or in collaboration with project partners.
Project Team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must:
- be a UK registered business/academic institution/charity/not-for-profit/public sector organisation/research and technology organisation (RTO)
- carry out its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- be invited by the lead organisation
The lead and at least one other organisation (if a collaboration) must claim funding by entering their costs into Innovation Funding Service during the application. Each partner organisation (if a collaboration) must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Partners must enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service. Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.
For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/631/overview