UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £2 million for early-stage projects in smart and sustainable plastic packaging. This funding is from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £2 million from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Programme for early-stage projects.

The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge aims to establish the UK as a leading innovator in smart and sustainable plastic packaging for consumer products. Its goals are to deliver cleaner growth across the supply chain, with a dramatic reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2025. 

Your project must aim to:

• help make the plastics packaging supply chain more circular
• deliver the targets of the UK Plastics Pact improve on current state-of-the-art plastic packaging, or supply chain data
• embed life cycle thinking and end of life in packaging design and decisions

Your project must:

• demonstrate how it supports the objectives of the plastics pact and delivers systemic change
• clearly explain how you will reduce the UK plastic packaging system’s overall environmental impact

The aim of this competition is to support feasibility studies and industrial research that addresses widely known problems in relation to plastic packaging for consumer products. You must explain how you are innovating to address one or more of the UK Plastics Pact targets. The benefits of the new approach must be quantified in terms of the Pact targets where possible. Any environmental impacts must be described and justified.

Projects must deliver one or more of the following:

• a more circular plastic packaging value chain, with reduced environmental impacts, such as carbon emissions and improved recyclability
• improved understanding of effective communication techniques to increase recycling rates and uptake of re-use/refill business models
• more consistent data and increased knowledge relevant to the supply chain

Projects can include either:

• the re-design of existing goods, services or business models

or

• design of entirely new goods, services or business models to serve an existing need

Your project must demonstrate a holistic approach, including the likely environmental impacts to:

• humans
• wildlife and
• the broader environment

This competition closed on 20th January 2021.

Find out more, including full scope information, here.

On 3rd November from 10:00 – 15:15, KTN and UKCPN hosted a competition briefing event online on the Future Plastic Packaging Solutions Competition. You can watch it back below: