Deadline: 30-Apr-21
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, Inc. (the “Alliance”) is inviting eligible entities for its Chemical Recycling Technologies and Business Models program that supports accelerating the deployment of technologies and business models which enable the recovery of the environmental and economic value of plastic waste and enable a significant increase in recycling through chemical conversion technologies where this creates significant impact.
The Alliance is requesting project proposals built around chemical recycling technologies that involve a chemical conversion, i.e., converting plastic waste that is hard-to-recycle with traditional technologies, to produce plastics or feedstock for new materials and products.
Key Challenges
Key challenges faced by Chemical Recycling:
- Lack of easy access to large quantities and consistent quality of plastic waste as a feedstock due to fragmented plastic collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure.
- Challenge to achieve viable economics due to competition with petrochemical sector’s advantage of maturity of technology and economy of scale, and exposure to cyclical crude oil and derivatives market prices.
- Challenging end product market due to buyer’s leverage and risks driven by scale difference and lack of product quality standardization (offset by high demand for recycled feedstock).
- Difficulty in extracting full value due to lack of globally recognized, credible and transparent product tracing certification and standards across the value chain.
- Limited track record of successful industrial plant operation; Advanced recycling is an emerging solution currently mostly deployed by technology developers with limited scale up capabilities.
- Costly plastic waste feedstock preparation step required as quality of available feedstock is not standardized nor well controlled, and technology development requires limited contamination to support stable, good quality production.
- Lack of alignment amongst stakeholders on benefits, in particular with regards to environmental impact.
- Policies supporting/incentivizing use of recycled plastic waste may not incorporate chemical recycling in their scope.
Funding Information
- The Alliance is looking for Eligible Projects with an expected funding by the Alliance of between US$1 million to US$20 million.
Goals
The Alliance is looking for projects that will contribute to achieving the following goals:
- De-risk technologies enabling plastic waste feedstocks and chemically recycled products to be easily processed into existing refining and petrochemical infrastructures or readily usable with the aim to move plastic waste up the waste hierarchy to generate valuable feedstocks and products and promote circularity.
- Develop a broad range of business models that demonstrate how chemical recycling can create economic as well as environmental value and enable plastic waste to be managed as a resource.
- Develop solutions enabling the chemical recycling eco-system to be rapidly scaled up economically.
- Have potential for rapid deployment, replication and scale-up based on replicable technology and market conditions to be able to make an impact on the scale that is needed.
- Create local community benefits by capturing the economic value of plastic waste that is currently lost.
Eligibility Criteria
- Proposals can be submitted by Applicants from entities and organisations which may be public or private, for-profit or not-for-profit. However, while project submission is open to all, preference will be given to the funding of private sector entities (such as companies, academic/research institutions, individuals) and non-profit entities (such as associations, NGOs, foundations).
For more information, visit https://endplasticwaste.org/Request-for-Proposal