Is your company working on sustainable plastics, polymers or alternatives?

How does the campaign work?

Our global challenge campaigns are designed to drive innovation and collaboration to support sustainable development and growth. We are inviting our global academic network (1,400 institutes) to submit details of their latest commercial-facing research and innovation in sustainable plastics to be shared with industry teams working on aligned solutions and products. 

All of the research submitted to our global challenge will be hosted on our free-to-access online matchmaking platform, and behind every project is an academic team actively looking to start new industry partnerships to help progress, develop and commercialise their work.

This campaign builds on the work we do through our matchmaking platforms to simplify the initial connection between teams in academia and industry, leveraging our networks and expertise to focus on addressing a crucial global challenge.

Our matchmaking platform, Connect, is completely free for companies to join to review the latest commercial-facing research and technologies from institutes and academics actively looking to find new industry partners. We don’t take finders fees or success fees, and the conversations started through this campaign and our platforms are hosted exclusively between you and the other party.

How to engage with research submitted to the campaign:

1 – If you already have an account set-up on IN-PART:

2 – If you’re new to us (this takes less than a minute):

3 – View the full listing of submissions to the campaign in our open research directory (to be published and updated weekly from the w/c 8th November):

4 – Get priority access to opportunities aligned with your interests:

You can also let us know specifically what your company is working in terms of plastic and polymer sustainability and our team will contact you to make sure that you aee sent all the projects we receive that align with your interests and requirements:

Why are we running this global challenge?

Earlier this year, we asked our industry network what they thought were the most pressing issues that face our society and their sector. Overwhelmingly, respondents stated that climate change and sustainability are the biggest challenges we need to address. With this call, we hope to help mobilise our community and create a clear pathway for research translation and commercialisation for technologies that can make an impact in these areas.

We are focussing on the challenges around developing sustainable plastics, polymers in liquid formulations (PLFs) and alternative materials. The carbon dioxide emissions from plastic production alone are significant, and single-use plastics are having a major environmental impact across our ecosystems.

We’re gathering research and innovation that will lead to the sustainable production of plastics that move away from non-renewable feedstocks and encourage a circular economy, and research into alternatives to plastic materials. We’re also encouraging submissions that can help minimise harmful waste and greenhouse gas emissions during plastic production as well as technologies that will improve plastic biodegradability.

What is a Global Challenges campaign?

In the spring of 2020, we launched our first Global Challenge campaign (formerly named an ‘open call for research’), where we reached out to all the universities and academics in our extended global network to share with us research at their institute addressing COVID-19. We prioritised dissemination of these technologies to industry teams with aligned interests, to help rapidly deploy interventions against the pandemic. Through this Global Challenge campaign, we facilitated more than 60 introductions between universities and relevant industry R&D professionals. We ran a second open call for Covid-related research in the spring of 2021, creating further connections. 

This time around, we are building on the success of these campaigns and turning our focus to sustainable plastics, polymers, and alternatives.

If you have questions or want to know more about this campaign, please share your queries to submissions@in-part.co.uk and a member of our team will get back to you promptly.

Written by Ruth Kirk. Edited by Alex Stockham.

Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2021: ‘Is your company working on sustainable plastics, polymers and alternatives?’

About IN-PART:

We believe brilliant connections can solve real-world problems. We match research pioneers from academia with decision-makers in industry sectors striving for a greater positive impact.

Our goal is to enable connections from around the world to match academic research with industry on a level playing field. Through our intelligent, matchmaking platform we showcase leading university innovations and connect academics with an international community of decision-makers in industry, creating meaningful dialogue and partnership.

Connect, a digital partnering platform for university-industry collaboration.

250+ universities and research institutes around the world currently showcase their research and innovation on IN-PART to find new collaboration partners in industry. R&D teams get free access to the platform (create an account here). There are no hidden costs and we don’t claim downstream success fees.

Discover, a bespoke scouting service for open innovation.

Through Discover, corporate R&D teams can leverage our extended academic network, which reaches multiple teams across 1,200+ universities and research institutes worldwide. In response to a specific research requirement or challenge, Discover enables R&D teams to identify new opportunities for commercialisation or to solicit proposals for new research.

Interested in speaking with our Discover team? Request a demo |  TTO or academic? Sign-up for weekly Discover emails.

Image Credit: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash License