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  If you run a startup or SME that’s committed to solving problems around waste management, sustainable packaging and the plastics value chain, and sustainable food sources here’s an opportunity to get the funding and support you need to scale your solution.
Read more about Opportunities
Enterprise Singapore (ESG), a body championing enterprise development in the city-state of Singapore, is organizing the Sustainability Innovation Challenge 2021. The competition seeks to identify and back institutions that are developing solutions to issues in waste management, sustainable materials, and more. Now in its third year, this annual challenge gives participating companies the chance to collaborate with some of the world’s leading corporations and champions of sustainability to develop and fund products and systems that contribute to a more sustainable future for the world. The challenge is sponsored by the Changi Airport Group, ExxonMobil, EM Services, Mercedes-Benz, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)—also recognized as the ‘Challenge Owners’. Agorize (a ‘co-Organizer’) provides support for the competition.

The Challenge’s Focus Areas And Benefits

The Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge will attend to pressing needs in the following areas, each with a potential winner: Waste Management
  • Design a sorting line to sort recyclable materials from household waste. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste will grant a $20,000 prize to the winning prototype design.
  • Develop a Proof of Concept (POC) for using advanced detection systems to improve the accuracy of the waste sorting process. Alliance will grant a $20,000 prize to the winning prototype design.
  • Achieve Changi Airport’s Zero Waste vision. The winner will get up to $30,000 in funding for the solution’s trial.
  • Make food waste management solutions more accessible to food establishments.
  • Deploy less labour intensive and environmentally friendly solutions for hawker centres.
  • Create new technologies that make polymers more biodegradable and recyclable.
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Sustainable Materials
  • Build a carbon-neutral passenger car fleet. The winner will get paid Proof of Concept (POC) opportunities with the Mercedes-Benz business units.
  • Create a value chain that helps convert plastic and diaper waste to ISCC certified circular polymer feedstock. The winner will get a chance to collaborate with ExxonMobil.
Sustainable Food Source
  • Develop an efficient automated system for assessing the sustainability of food procurement for businesses. The winning proposal will get s$20,000 in seed funding from the WWF.
Eligibility
  • The challenge is open to SMEs, startups, institutions of higher learning, and research institutes from across the world
  • Applicants should be at least 18 years old at the time of their entry into the competition
  • Employees of the competition’s supporters (‘owners’) or their relatives must disclose their relationship to those companies and their employees when entering the challenge
  • Entrants with project solutions that have received funding from the government should disclose the funding they received to the challenge’s organizer

The Leadup To the Final

Applications remain open until Sunday, October 24. Entrants are expected to submit their applications before this date. This will be followed by a ‘Deepening Phase’, slated for November, in which selected applicants will be paired with Challenge Owners. The final event, to be held online, will take place in mid-December. There, finalists will pitch their solutions to the Challenge Owners. To find out more about the Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge 2021 (and to apply for it), click here. Featured Image Source: Open Innovation Network
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This article was first published on 15th October 2021

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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