Deadline: 31-May-21
100+ Accelerator is pleased to launch a call for proposals for the Water Stewardship Challenge with the aim to create and implement sustainable and energy-efficient practices to build a more water-secure world.
The UN describes water scarcity as one of the “main problems to be faced by many societies and the world in the 21st century.” Advancing global water pressure and insecurity is the result of climate change, population growth and increasing levels of industrial growth and farming. In addition, water insecurity is aggravated by unsustainable water management practices, waste and pollution. There is an opportunity for companies to play a big part and to help create and implement solutions that use as little water as possible across their operations and help improve water quality and availability for businesses and communities.
The 100+ Accelerator delivers 6 months of remote programming and training to accelerate the collaboration and growth of cohort companies in addition to a pilot/alliance with their partner companies. You will receive support from a global team champion, access to mentor networks and up to $100K toward pilot execution.
What They Offer
The 100+ Accelerator will provide support, guidance and access to potential funding through:
- Pilot customer opportunities with the four corporate partners: AB InBev, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Colgate Palmolive (including the potential to scale company-wide)
- Active mentorship, training and programming in product development, go-to-market, operations, sales and more
- Top mentor network of scientists, academics, domain experts, venture capitalists, corporate sustainability leaders, etc.
- Potential funding from Partner Companies and their networks
Challenges
- Water Monitoring and Analysis
- Measuring and monitoring water quality or availability in watersheds or water sources (including groundwater) to report progress in projects and understand project impact.
- Techniques to assess water risk and predictive analytics for specific geographical locations.
- Reliable, low-cost, easy-to-use technologies for measuring water at all points of consumption in the production facilities (ideally with data transfer capabilities).
- Data collection of water consumption across supply and value chains.
- Data collection and measurement of water action programs to determine efficacy for wells and aquifers.
- Real-time monitoring of static and dynamic levels of water wells with automated reporting of changes.
- Watershed Conservation and Stewardship
- Commercially viable investment approaches for watershed conservation projects (proximity to current 100+ Partner operations is a plus).
- More efficient and sustainable use of water in agriculture and irrigation, and tools to measure agricultural water use improvements.
- Creating and incentivizing corporate consortium approaches or new financing mechanisms for watershed conservation and management.
- Solutions for retaining water in watershed soil.
- Solutions for harvesting and scaling rainwater collection.
- Cost effective water access, improved quality and/or sanitation service innovations for at-risk communities, especially those not connected to formal water infrastructure systems.
- Water Savings and Treatment in Manufacturing and Supply Chain
- Water reuse/recycling including ways to distribute treated effluent for shared local benefit (both urban and rural).
- Alternative cost efficient and reduced water consumption for washing returnable bottles.
- Waterless cleaning and sanitization.
- End-to-end, energy-efficient and low-cost wastewater treatment.
- Low cost & accurate COD wastewater monitoring.
- New solutions that achieve higher energy efficiency or lower rejection rates of treated water (with or without using reverse osmosis (RO) technology).
- Disposal or transformation of the high salt concentration/brine solutions of RO/desalination (applications in remotely located areas particularly encouraged).
- Production sequencing to minimize line flushing/Clean-In-Place (CIP)/sterilization treatment cycles or replacements for chemical cleaning agents or processes that reduce water use throughout the process, especially CIP.
- New, cost effective ideas for effluent treatment and zero effluent discharge.
- Waterless CO2 recovery systems and/or CO2 scrubber.
- Filtration innovations that are more environmentally-friendly, specifically in terms of water use/savings.
- Alternative refrigeration evaporation with reduced water consumption.
- Efficient/automated Clean-Out-of-Place cleaning and sanitization.
Eligibility Criteria
The 100+ Accelerator challenges were developed with input from subject matter experts and partner companies to ensure both global and local issues are addressed.
For more information, visit https://www.100accelerator.com/en/challenge/water