UKRI’s £60 million Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge supports bold, ambitious innovation that could deliver a step change in the UK’s ability to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging waste.

Making plastics fit for a sustainable future

UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge is the largest and most ambitious UK government investment to date in sustainable plastics packaging research and innovation. Since its inception in 2020, SSPP has deployed almost £60m of public funding – and leveraged over £149m of private money – to support bold, ambitious innovation to deliver a step change in the UK’s ability to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging waste.

In March, SSPP held an event in London at which a new tranche of £3.2 million fundin was announced for innovation in plastic packaging reduction, reuse, and recycling. Hear more about the event and the SSPP Challenge from Challenge Director Paul Davidson.

Hear from other thought leaders on sustainable plastics who attended the event:

Mark Miodownik, Professor of Materials & Society, University College London

Catherine Conway, founder and Director of Unpackaged Innovation Ltd

Paula Chin, Senior Policy Advisor (Consumption), World Wide Fund for Nature

The SSPP Vision

A UKRI challenge delivered by Innovate UK, SSPP’s aim is to establish the UK as a leading innovator in sustainable plastics, driving cleaner growth across the supply chain and delivering a significant reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2025. Its work directly contributes to the delivery of the 2025 UK Plastics Pact targets, funding research and innovation to reduce unnecessary plastic, support greater reuse and refill, and increase recycling.

About the funding

Helping to inspire and inform the wider sustainable plastics community by providing important insights and knowledge to drive progress and feed into future business strategies and policy thinking.

With eight funding competitions completed, the SSPP Challenge has a balanced portfolio of projects sitting across the waste hierarchy that reflect the multiple interventions needed to make plastic packaging fit for a sustainable future, including:

feasibility studies
industrial and academic research
business-led R&D
large scale demonstrators

These projects are delivering impact in the real world; exploiting the opportunities offered by novel materials to eliminate single use plastics, supporting design and processing innovations that reduce the use of plastics, tackling the barriers to mainstreaming reuse and refill, and enabling new recycling processes and infrastructure to be developed at scale.

Key priorities for 2023/24

Films & Flexibles

Often called the final frontier of plastics recycling, films and flexibles are under the spotlight like never before. SSPP is funding innovation at every stage of this packaging format’s life cycle, from design through to material innovation, kerbside collection, and new recycling solutions, including an award-winning cleaning process to produce food-grade recyclate from polyolefin film waste.

Resources

SSPP Challenge Review 2021

Read about how the SSPP Challenge has been driving research and innovation in sustainable plastic packaging.

Plastics-to-plastics chemical recycling

The chemical recycling of plastics is increasingly coming under the spotlight and these articles explore the future role and value of this family of technologies.

Competing or complementary: the relationship between mechanical and chemical recycling of plastics
The chemical recycling of plastics is increasingly coming under the spotlight and this offers the opportunity for a more nuanced debate about the future role and value of this family of technologies, where it fits in the waste hierarchy, and how it aligns with the current and future management of end-of-life plastic.
Measuring recycled content: why Mass Balance Accounting matters for the chemical recycling of plastics
With the UK Plastics Tax in place and other countries exploring recycled content target for plastics packaging, the question of how to accurately measure and provide an audit trail for recycled content derived from the chemical recycling of plastics has become the subject of much debate.

Related News

Ocado expands reuse range to include liquids

Posted on October 29, 2024

Ocado Retail Ltd has announced an extension to its Reuse range, aimed at reducing the use of single-use plastic on everyday items whilst providing the same quality and value.

Innovative projects in India to support recyclable flexible packaging

Posted on October 29, 2024

Climate action NGO WRAP has announced that they are providing Godrej Consumer Products Limited, Huhtamaki India, and PepsiCo India a platform through the Pact initiative to lead five innovative projects focused on demonstrating recyclable solutions for flexible packaging.

Game changing innovation to reduce and recycle plastic packaging

Posted on September 6, 2024

UK Research & Innovation’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK, will be at this year’s Resource & Waste Management 2024 event this week (Stand R-G150, Hall 19, Birmingham NEC) showcasing some of the exciting current research and innovation projects it has funded, as well as wider research initiatives to improve plastic circularity and reduce plastic pollution.

Smart Sustainable Plastics Packaging Case Studies

From seaweed-based coatings and edible film to the latest breakthroughs in plastic-to-plastic chemical recycling, read about some of the ground-breaking projects that SSPP is
funding.

Visit our dedicated case studies site to read more about how we’re making making plastics fit for a sustainable future

Meet the team

The SSPP team has a wealth of expertise and experience to shape and support research and innovation that tackles the complex challenge of making plastic packaging fit for a sustainable future. The Challenge is also supported by a small programme management team. "Plastic waste is one of the biggest threats to our environment, which is why the UK government is committed to funding technologies that ensure more materials can be reused and recycled instead of being sent to landfill, incinerated, or ending up in our oceans." Paul Davidson

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Paul

Davidson

SSPP Challenge Director

Paul is Challenge Director for the SSPP Challenge programme and is passionate about creating a more sustainable blueprint for the way plastics are made and used.

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Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge