Biotechnology solutions for industrial waste challenges in India

The Newton Bhabha UK–India Industrial Waste Challenge 2017 is now open for applications.

Over the last few decades India has experienced a period of intense growth and industrialisation. Whilst this growth has had many benefits for the country’s economy and people, it has also had some negative impacts on India’s environment and ecology.

As a result of this increased output, Indian cities now have a pressing need for new solutions to reduce landfill waste and incineration of municipal solid waste. Innovate UK, the UK Research Councils (BBSRC and EPSRC) and the Government of India’s DBT are jointly funding a competition as part of the UK–India Newton Bhabha Fund to help find biotechnology solutions for these industrial waste challenges in India.

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Projects should address reducing industrial waste and pollution, and improve value recovery from waste using biotechnology in one or more of these five sectors, which are amongst the largest industrial sectors in India:

• leather/tanning/textiles
• municipal solid waste
• paper and pulp
• sewage
• sugar cane

As the aim of this competition is to encourage partnerships between the UK and India, KTN is running Partnering Workshop on 12th July in York to help facilitate introductions between businesses and academics. This event will provide delegates with an introduction to the competition, an overview of a scoping workshop held in India, information on the support available from KTN, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) and the Intellectual Property Office, delegate project pitches, and one-to-one networking meetings.

The competition is now open, with a deadline for registrations on 11th October 2017, and and a closing date of 18th October 2017.

You can find out more about this competition here, and you can register for the Briefing Event and Partnering Workshop here.