Circular economy projects eligible for grants
By Alejandra Laclette 7 January 2021
Circular economy opportunities are available through new grant intakes for the Circulate Industrial Ecology Program and Civil Construction Market Program through the NSW Environment Protection Authority.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority has just launched new intakes for both the Circulate Industrial Ecology Program and Civil Construction Market Program. Applications are open until 12 February 2021. Visit the EPA website for program details and information on how to apply.
Circulate Industrial Ecology Program grants
The EPA’s Circulate Industrial Ecology Program aims to support the transition to a circular economy in NSW by funding innovative commercial industrial ecology projects. These are projects recovering materials that would otherwise be sent to landfill and using them instead as feedstock for other commercial, industrial or construction processes.
Circulate projects showcase many ways waste can be repurposed and kept out of landfill, such as turning coffee cups into garden beds and plastic bags into school benches. Previous grant recipients have been able to fund projects for a number of different waste streams, such as Yume Food who aim to eliminate commercial food waste, Valera Recycling who recycle contaminated hard plastics using specialist plastic washing and shredding systems, or Plastic Police who are helping organisations reduce, recycle and repurchase soft plastic with their Plastic Blueprint.
If you are looking for help realising a commercial opportunity to redirect valuable materials away from landfill and toward a new lease of life, pitch your project to NSW EPA for up to $150,000 of grant support via the following link.
Civil Construction Market Program grants
Are you in the construction and demolition (C&D) business? The Civil Construction Market Program provides grants to organisations to divert C&D waste from landfill and produce post-consumer recyclate such as glass, paper and plastic through reuse, recycling and industrial ecology projects in the NSW civil construction sector. For this program, a civil project is defined as any Government-led construction project within NSW which is public-owned.
Some examples of potential projects include: recycling spoil material into roadbase, recovering bricks for a new civil development or recycling post-consumer plastic from a MRF into new construction products such as stormwater or sewage pipes.
Previous recipients range from local government initiatives such as Canterbury-Bankstown Council, as well as the private sector like Lendlease and Fulton Hogan Industries.
Applications are open until 12 February 2021. Visit the EPA website for program details and information on how to apply.
After supervising the sustainability educational program at her corporate job in Mexico, Alejandra moved to Australia where she worked coordinating programs that improved consumer understanding of the environmental credentials of packaging and how to dispose of it. She currently manages the Australasian Recycling Label and National Recycling Week campaigns.
