The Alliance Prize

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The Alliance Prize aims to catalyse change by incentivising transformative solutions that can help to address the plastic waste challenge.

Flexible plastic packaging remains one of the most challenging types of materials to process and recycle. Flexibles found in household plastic waste often comprise multiple materials in layers that cannot be easily separated. They are also easily contaminated, difficult and more expensive to collect as a result of lower bulk density, and have little economic value. While many technologies to address these issues already exist, most have yet to be widely adopted and recovery rates remain low.

New, innovative, and scalable solutions are needed to create a circular economy for flexibles. The more solutions we can make available to significantly reduce excessive waste, reuse, and recycle material to unlock value, the closer we can be to ending plastic waste in the environment.

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The Alliance Prize in Circular Solutions for Flexibles will award US$3 million to a transformational, game-changing solution that supports circularity of flexible films found in household waste, resulting in the extraction of a high value of high-quality fit-for-purpose recyclates from flexible plastics. Such solutions may include adopting different product solutions, reuse options, collection, sorting/processing/recycling or end markets, addressing specific problems in household waste, or developing holistic solutions addressing flexible plastic waste.

The Alliance Prize encourages solvers from around the world to participate. We are committed to a process that is open, transparent, and fair to identify solutions that will make immediate, short-term impact in addressing this complex problem, as well as to help eliminate household plastic waste for generations to come.

The Alliance Prize aims to identify and accelerate novel solutions that enable more effective collection, processing, and recycling of flexible plastics. These solutions should also be commercially viable and replicable, to enable widespread adoption across different geographies. Innovators from across the globe are invited to participate.

Strong solutions for The Alliance Prize in Circular Solutions for Flexibles will be:

Impactful: A bold approach to extract a high value of high-quality recyclates and deliver immediate and recurring positive impact, and a concrete plan to measure value uplift and long-term environmental benefits.

Scalable: An exceptional, data-driven solution designed to effectively accelerate change at a large scale, with a team who is well-positioned to establish a model for communities around the world.

Feasible: A robust plan, evidence-based approach, and the stakeholder buy-in to overcome difficulties and become standard practice over time, led by a seasoned team of experts with remarkable success.

Innovative: A cutting-edge strategy that exceeds the promise of current best practices and a groundbreaking approach that will strengthen and transform circular systems and eliminate plastic waste.

The Alliance Prize is looking for new solutions that go beyond traditional thinking and can form the basis for the next generation of innovations to support a plastics circular economy. Submissions must be led by an eligible organisation. Please complete the Organisational Readiness Tool to help determine if you are a strong fit for The Alliance Prize.

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‍DEFINING HOUSEHOLD WASTE

For the purposes of this prize, household waste is defined as waste material discarded in and collected from households that contains flexible packaging for food and consumer products, constructed from both monolayer and multilayer plastic and metallized plastic film in items including, but not limited to, sealable bags, stand-up pouches, wrappers, vacuum-sealed bags, shrink-wrap, sachets, shopping bags, frozen food stretch films, bread bags, cereal and snack liners, milk packaging film, bubble wrap, etc. Proposed solutions should not focus solely on agricultural, horticultural, and/or mulch films.

AWARD SELECTION

All valid submissions will receive a set of normalised scores from five of our Evaluation Panel judges, as well as valuable feedback that could be used to strengthen and refine your solution as you secure other funding sources. Valid submissions will also have the opportunity to further showcase their solution through a searchable database launching on this site in 2023.

Once a rank order of results from Evaluation Panel has been calculated, The Alliance Prize team will select up to three Finalists with consideration given to diversity of solutions. These Finalists will have the opportunity to strengthen their proposals and present their solution to the Selection Committee in early 2023.

The $3 million award will be provided to one Winner in the form of multiple milestone-based payments from the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. The Winner will also gain access to mentorship and expertise from across the plastics value chain, which will help them tackle early development risks that may stand in the way of large-scale deployment. In addition, other promising innovations may receive exposure to a global network of potential supporters or investors through the Alliance community.

‍ABOUT THE ALLIANCE

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste is a global nonprofit founded in 2019 to end plastic waste in the environment. We convene companies from across the entire plastics value chain—including resin producers, converters, brands, waste managers and recyclers—to work together with the public sector, civil society and communities to address the challenge of plastic waste.

Our focus is to improve the collection, sorting, processing, and recycling of plastic waste by implementing projects and investing in innovative solutions that develop or enhance waste management systems. This is our priority because three billion people worldwide still do not have access to adequate waste management services and where they do, more can be done to improve them.

We look for solutions that are economically self-sustaining and scalable, and always strive for full circularity while recognising that interim measures are also needed. Our investment must also be catalytic, serving to de-risk new ideas that can attract further investment. We believe that ending plastic waste in the environment is possible when public, private and people sectors act collectively. Visit our website to learn more.

QUESTIONS

The Alliance Prize will host Q&A webinars leading up to registration and submission deadlines. Information to sign up will be emailed to those who registered for the prize and will be available on News & Updates.

In the meantime, please contact us to request more information regarding eligibility, requirements, and other prize-related questions.

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