Our Challenges
We´re looking for startups that have solutions to these challenges.
Circular Economy
How do we create a fully circular global economy where waste is eliminated, resources continually circulated and nature regenerated? Help us innovate exciting ways to close the loop .
The future will depend on a circular economy in order to create long-term, sustainable value for everyone. We are constantly on the lookout for new ways to reuse our packaging, improve our packaging systems by increasing recycled content, new systems of recycling infrastructure, eliminating weight and other components. We believe there is potential for creating completely, or near-completely, circular packaging across our entire supply chain.
We are also looking beyond our packaging to create a fully circular economy. The current food supply and how we eat globally is not sustainable. There is a lot of research and development underway to explore alternative protein and food supply options. At 100+, we also believe we have a way to contribute to supplying nutritious, inexpensive and accessible food to the growing global population. Each year, our companies produce millions of tons of co-product, which can be repurposed into other types of consumer products for a more circular global food supply. We also believe our co-products can be used beyond food as ingredients in cosmetics or pharmaceuticals, as well as packaging.
Recycling, Reuse and Returnability
- Recycling and reuse schemes in distribution centers and wholesalers
- Innovations to increase returnability with consumers (convenient waste)
- Post-consumer recycling (one-way cans, kegs and returnables) including more efficient and convenient logistics system, collection points and separation of materials on-site
- New technologies to recycle materials (beyond chemical recycling)
- Re-introduce returnable/reusable packaging into developed markets
- Aluminum (can-to-can) recycling & PET recycling. (Focus on China and Korea)
- Solutions to increase the recycled content in flint bottles without incurring discoloration e.g. additives to boost clarity or sorting mechanisms to identify best feedstock from recycling streams
- Glass recycling infrastructure e.g. get container spec cullet glass out of the single stream recycling more cost effectively and cheaply, new scalable technologies in glass cleaning and sorting, solutions for recycled mixed glass (amber and green)
- Develop new technology to allow for more reuse of recycled colored glass like amber & green into new flint and Georgia Green bottles.
- Plastic free or recycling solution for labels
- Solutions to recycle amber PET
- Eco-friendly, recyclable or biodegradable branding and marketing materials such as cups for events, furniture for bars & restaurants, racks, shelves, posters, printed material, textiles and clothing and any other material used to communicate
- New technologies or schemes for waste collection systems
- Shared reusable infrastructure, possible JV, for collecting/cleaning bottles prior to returning them to the filling line.
- Mobile packaging recycling center especially in remote/rural areas
- Recycling solutions for diatomaceous earth
- Washing solution to increase % of cullet able to be recycled in glass manufacturing
- New opportunities for recycling aerobic sludge
- New solutions for label recycling
- Solutions for recycle incentivisation for consumers
- Non-plastic alternatives for flexibles including bags, sachets etc… , includes home compostable technologies that can provide barrier properties for liquids.
- Recycle sortation technologies for small packaging item, a specific example is recycling of HDPE tubes (e.g. new class of recyclable toothpaste packaging)
- Washing PCR production residues in dry (without using water)
- Serialized Deposit Return System. Pilots, development of novel collection points
- Body and end separation technologies after Deposit Return System collection
- Replacements or alternatives for plastic liners in bottle caps. (Corona Challenge)
- Scalable businesses that leverage plastic upcycling technologies (Corona Challenge)
Packaging Material Alternatives & Innovations
- Food Grade rPP and rPE
- PET Bottle Ultra-Light Weighting, beyond gram reduction and focusing on optimization
- Coating for paperboard bottles that allows recycling and meets shelf-life quality standards
- A multi-pack made of recycled paper
- Recycled/Recyclable secondary and tertiary packaging materials
- Can of the future where lid and body are all made from the same alloy for 1-1 recycling and increased recycled content in can sheet
- Sachet film technology to advance recyclability, biodegradability/compostability
- Shrink-wrap alternatives OR reusable secondary packaging/shrink OR new sustainable solutions for secondary packaging
- Fiber Primary Packaging (Bottles, Pouches, Pods, etc), that are recyclable/repulpable
- Replacement for non-recyclable nylon barriers for PET bottles
- Replacement for plastic blister packaging
- Elimination of labels on packaging
- Use of novel packaging materials and technologies in various packaging categories (aluminum, glass, paper, polymer, glue) that enable further light-weighting or reduced material use
- Aluminium purification although these often take big investments eg. ALCOA ASTRAEA
- Improvements to palletization that removes plastic stretch film, while maintaining transportation quality. (Corona Challenge)
Materials Tracking & Tracing
- Solutions to track packaging materials through the entire circular economy. Better tracking and reporting of recycled content across all materials.
- Visibility and traceability of input materials for packaging
- Reuse marketing materials in different points of sale, increase marketing materials traceability to know where and what are we using or storing and reduce, eliminate, reuse and/or recycle materials that are used to pack marketing materials
- Traceability of aluminium across the value chain, from mime to remelt, enabling product passports
Packaging New Forms
- Novel ways to concentrate products including low water content forms that are reconstituted or used directly by consumers, CPG focus
- New product ideas involving re-fillable / replacement product that is stored or otherwise used with a permanent/durable container
- For dilutable products from a concentrated form into reusable packaging (e.g. bottles), novel ways to ensure the consumer maintains a clean and sanitary environment
Upcycling
- Marketplaces for upcycling coproducts from CPG industry
- Processing technologies that turn our co-products into ingredients for various food applications
- Processes and materials that incorporate co-products into e.g. sustainable packaging solutions
- Find a second life to all of our co-products through products that generate value to our consumers, especially for: spent coffee and tea leaves, seeds, peels, pulp, dry/wet yeast and brewers’ grain
- Biological / chemical process to extract valuable properties for skincare products, pharmaceutical products
- Stabilizing our brewers’ grains which if not treated have a very limited lifetime of 4-6 hours
- Solutions to make transportation economically viable, e.g. low-cost de-watering to reduce original moisture of 80% (brewers’ grain contains only 20%-40% dry matter)
- New foods and beverages derived from and linked to our co-products that enable healthier diets and address obesity and malnutrition
- Anaerobic digestion for brewers’ grain (ideally with cogeneration)
- Renewable or Recycled Carbon, Non Fossil Fuel derived carbon ingredients, e.g. surfactants for cleaning products, CO2 for carbonation
