Think Beyond Plastic, an organization that aims to mobilize a large-scale response to plastic pollution, has announced this year\u2019s winners of its annual Innovation Competition. The competition, which looks for \u201cdisruptive innovation\u201d, this year received 145 applications from 35 countries in Africa, Asia, European Union, North and South America. All ideas had to be scalable, offer a solid value proposition with a focus on sustainability. The three winners – Full Cycle Bioplastics, Grow Bioplastics, and NeuWorld Plastics – were selected\u00a0 not only for their innovative product designs, but also for their \u201cunique and promising business applications\u201d, said the jury.<\/p>\n
California-based Full Cycle Bioplastics was named Think Beyond Plastic\u2019s Most Innovative Business of 2016. Full Cycle was selected for their unique and innovative approach to the conversion of food, agricultural, cardboard and paper wastes into high performance and cost-competitive polyhydroxyalkanoate biopolymers (PHA), a biodegradable replacement for petroleum-based plastics.<\/p>\n
\u201cFull Cycle Bioplastics’ innovation is a true example of a circular economy application – an innovative material coupled with an innovative business model,\u201d said Daniella Russo, Founder and CEO of Think Beyond Plastic.<\/p>\n
Grow Bioplastics became the recipient of the Most Innovative Emerging Business award, for its innovative use of lignin to produce affordable, closed-loop biodegradable mulch films for agricultural use. These can replace existing petroleum-based plastic sheets, delivering economic and environmental benefits to farmers, while preventing the landfilling of millions of tons of plastic sheets. Grow Plastics is headquartered in Washington, USA.<\/p>\n
Neuworld Plastics was awarded the Most Innovative Business Idea for its development of\u00a0 innovative, compostable, non-petroleum-based alternatives to single-serve food packaging that, in line with the goal of Think Beyond Plastic, tangibly reduces plastic pollution.<\/p>\n
\u200bHonorable mentions for microplastics went to Catch Microfiber and Save the Ocean! \u2013 both from the US –\u00a0 and to Plastic Smog Emissions Closed Loop (Canada) for their \u201cunique and innovative approaches to preventing microfiber and microbeads from entering the ocean\u201d, according to the Think Beyond Plastic report.<\/p>\n
Three companies – A Better Way to Drink (United States), Drink Water (United States) and AmrutDhara (India) – received honorable mentions for product design and services for innovations designed to measurably reduce or eliminate plastic bottle usage. Clickeat, a Chilean producer of wood-particle based utensils was also recognized in this category.<\/p>\n
The Think Beyond Plastic venture was established in 2007, with a view to advancing entrepreneurship and inspiring innovation for solutions that measurably reduce global plastic pollution. Among other things, it organizes its annual Innovation Competition to promote broad-based innovation, in addition to sourcing and helping to formulate early stage innovations through its program to access academic research labs and university Technology Transfer Offices, and innovation hubs. The organization also\u00a0 produces an annual startup Innovation Accelerator, a program, established in 2013, that is intended to help grow businesses targeted at solutions to plastic pollution; and leads the effort to create policy and economic instruments that support innovation with focus on plastic pollution and marine plastic.<\/p>\n
The three competition winners will participate in this year’s Accelerator class, which has room for 10-20 startups.\u00a0 The program kicks off September 1, 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Think Beyond Plastic, an organization that aims to mobilize a large-scale response to plastic pollution, has announced this year\u2019s winners of its annual Innovation Competition. The competition, which looks for \u201cdisruptive innovation\u201d, this year received 145 applications from 35 countries in Africa, Asia, European Union, North and South America. All ideas had to be scalable, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5847,11722,11966],"supplier":[12497,12499,12494,12500,12498,9311,12491,12492,12496,12495],"class_list":["post-36564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioplastics","tag-plasticpollution","tag-plastics","supplier-a-better-way-to-drink","supplier-amrutdhara","supplier-catch-microfiber","supplier-clickeat","supplier-drink-water","supplier-full-cycle-bioplastics","supplier-grow-bioplastics","supplier-neuworld-plastics","supplier-plastic-smog-emissions-closed-loop","supplier-save-the-ocean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36564"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=36564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}