Addressing the next Global Challenge: Sustainable materials for a circular economy
Communications and Campaigns Manager
As highlighted in recent summers, extreme weather events are becoming a ‘new normal’ due to climate change. While more than one-third (34%) of the world’s largest companies are now committed to net zero, nearly all (93%) will fail to achieve their goals if they don’t at least double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030. We are continuing to release carbon emissions into the atmosphere, extracting finite resources at an increasing pace, and polluting the environment with plastics, clothes, and waste chemicals.
In order to mitigate the causes and effects of climate change and environmental pollution, materials and infrastructure play a key role. By emphasising resource efficiency and reducing waste, transitioning to a circular economy presents a potent strategy. Through our next Global Challenge campaign, we will be seeking novel research and assets in sustainable materials that will accelerate the transition towards a circular economy.
We know from the Covid-19 pandemic that solutions to the challenges we face globally often come from academia. But without a clear pathway from academia into industry, new breakthroughs can rarely make it to market. In order to ensure research can be applied and translated into solving issues such as material sustainability, industry needs a channel to communicate its requirements and priorities.
So, what does industry need from academia in order to achieve their net zero targets? As we know from our previous Global Challenge campaign on plastic sustainability and from activity on our online partnering platform, there remain technical challenges across the life cycles of materials and resources that still require new innovation.
Why are we running a Global Challenge campaign on sustainable materials?
Our Global Challenge programme works to leverage our online partnering platform, Connect, to accelerate the development and deployment of technical solutions to society’s greatest health and sustainability challenges through collaboration with industry.
Through our sustainable plastics campaign, which launched in the autumn of 2021, we learned about the most promising research trends and breakthroughs in the space. 61 novel research projects were submitted from 32 academic institutes, and we initiated 64 new conversations between teams in academia and industry. Our partners included leaders in the materials and chemicals industries such as Dow, PepsiCo, Avient, and one.five. We learned that there were technical challenges to overcome in areas such as producing high-quality products from the mechanical recycling of plastics. Also, more research was still needed to be able to produce biobased plastics with equal or superior performance compared to virgin plastics from crude oil feedstocks.
To round off the campaign, we hosted a panel discussion with world-leading experts from academia and industry to uncover what still needed to be done to tackle the plastic pollution crisis. We learned that a key challenge across both academia and industry is one of scaling solutions out of the lab. There still remains a gulf between the proof of concept and prototyping stages and the commercial manufacturing stage.
One of our panellists, Dr Rachael Rothman, Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering at the University of Sheffield and Associate Director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, emphasised the importance of taking into account existing recycling infrastructure when considering any new alternative plastic materials.
What are the key challenges the research ecosystem needs to overcome to achieve a circular economy?
The circular economy model aims to minimise the extraction of raw materials and curtails energy-intensive production processes. Through practices like smart design, recycling, and waste valorisation, products’ lifecycles are extended, curbing the need for constant manufacturing from finite materials. This reduction in resource consumption and waste generation directly mitigates greenhouse gas emissions and lessens the burden on ecosystems.
Innovations such as next-generation biobased materials, advanced recycling methods, biodegradability, and sustainable designs are all promising steps towards creating a self-sustaining loop from design principles to product end-of-life. Achieving a truly circular economy is a big challenge that will require concerted efforts from across the research ecosystem and technical solutions accelerated out of the lab.
Wider support is also required beyond R&D. Governments and companies all over the world are setting ambitious targets aiming to achieve a circular economy by 2050 to reduce waste and emissions. National government net zero targets underpinned by legislation or policy documents increased substantially in the two-and-half years, from 7% to 75%. As of June 2023, 72 countries have net zero targets, despite no major producer countries or companies having committed to phasing out fossil fuels.
In order to achieve net zero, there are key technical sustainability challenges the research ecosystem needs to overcome. Achieving a circular economy requires every step of the value chain to pull its weight and work collaboratively. We know that the R&D costs associated with creating sustainable materials and recycling and reusing them are high and generally companies cannot do it alone, as a challenge on this scale requires collaboration between sectors and across the different steps of the value chain, requiring vast amounts of technical knowledge and innovation.
These challenges are not limited to academia: start-ups operating in the circular economy space report facing more challenges than other new ventures, as the ecosystem is very complex with fewer clear routes to success. And the challenges are not limited to plastics. For example, in the construction industry, the manufacture of cement is highly polluting and produced in such abundance that it accounts for 8% of the annual carbon emissions around the world and uses around 10% of global drinking water. But academia and industry working collaboratively on solutions, such as adding non-harmful, extremophile bacteria to cement mixes to create ‘self-healing’ concrete that also can withstand extreme weather events, can help us create a more resilient, environmentally friendly infrastructure that looks forward to a more sustainable future.
How are we going to work to help address the challenge?
For this campaign, we will be building on the successes of our plastics campaign, widening the scope to explore the whole field of sustainable materials with applications that are comprehensively cross-sector. We will be looking at how technological innovation can be uncovered from across disciplines and applications to progress towards a circular economy in a truly collaborative and sustainable way.
Five leading companies have already signed up as partners for this Global Challenge. They will be presenting their sustainable materials R&D priorities and needs throughout the campaign.
For academic institutes, researchers and start-ups:
– Showcase your research and assets to our industry network
We’re looking for non-confidential details of novel research or assets from academia, spin-outs or startups that address the manufacture, recycling, or disposal of sustainable materials. We will proactively disseminate all the projects and opportunities that we receive from academic institutes to our industry campaign partners and wider sustainable materials industry network.
More information about how to submit research from your institute or company can be found on our landing page.
– Engage with R&D-driven companies working on sustainable materials
Through the campaign, we will explore the current technical challenges in sustainable materials R&D with the aim of surfacing solutions that accelerate the transition to a circular economy. These technical R&D needs and priorities are being defined by our industry campaign partners, Eastman Chemicals, WestRock, Avery Dennison, and a well-known ecological cleaning product brand. Each will present their R&D priorities and partnering strategies in a series of webinars in October 2023 as part of our Global Challenge Virtual Series.
Reserve a free place on our virtual partnering events with industry today!
For R&D and open innovation teams in industry:
– Join our partnering network and connect with cutting-edge sustainable materials research
Set up an account (this takes less than a minute) to view the opportunities as they’re submitted to our campaign on our Connect platform, alongside over 8,000 other live technologies from teams actively looking to partner with industry.
– Have your requirements proactively disseminated to our academic network
If your company or team are searching for sustainable materials innovations from academia, learn more about how to review and engage with the opportunities submitted to the campaign on our landing page for industry.
By completing this form, your R&D needs and priorities will be distributed to our extended academic network as a shareable PDF document, and our team will ensure you are sent a curated list of the most relevant opportunities submitted to the campaign.
In summary…
If you’re working on rare diseases in academia or industry, get involved!
For more information, read our Global Challenges FAQ or drop our team a message.
Our campaign is scheduled to launch on the 25th September 2023. If you’re registered to any of our platforms, you’ll receive more information by email. And to keep updated with our work addressing global challenges you can follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Written by Anabel Bennett. Edited by Alex Stockham and Joseph Ferner.
Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2023: Addressing the next Global Challenge: Seeking research and innovation in sustainable materials for a circular economy’
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