The Alliance to End Plastic Waste and Plug and Play today jointly announced the 11 finalists selected for the Asia Pacific hub of the “End Plastic Waste Innovation Platform”, a 90-day accelerator programme that supports startups on their innovations in addressing the menace.
The pitch via a virtual Selection Day was organised from Singapore, which makes it the organisers’ third selection hub, following its previous programmes in Silicon Valley and Paris.
The first to be held in the Asia Pacific, the programme is designed to focus on three areas: collecting, managing, and sorting plastic waste; recycling and processing technologies; and creating value from post-recycled plastics.
The accelerator programme will help selected startups seek funding from companies and investors, along with a range of global resources to address these focus areas.
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The 11 selected startups are from Australia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, and UAE:
- Agile Process Chemical LLP, a tech recycling plastics with the technology and machinery supplier for recycling end-of-life plastic waste
- Banyan Nation, an Indian startup that unlocks the market for premium recycled plastics in India through technology innovations across the value chain.
- Bintix, a startup that brings the data dimension into waste management, where all household waste is recycled and the value of waste increases ten-fold.
- BlockTexx, a clean technology company that recovers polyester and cellulose from textiles and clothing.
- BluePhin Technologies, a smart robot that can collect floating waste in commercial water bodies.
- Ishitva Robotic Systems Pvt Ltd, a tech company that designs and builds automated solutions using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and IoT for sorting and segregation of dry waste including plastic waste.
- Myanmar Recycles, a plastic film recycling facility specialising in post-consumer plastic that collects, sorts, washes, and pelletizes often ignored, hard-to-recycle plastic film into resin for domestic and international sale.
- Plastics For Change, a marketplace platform that connects waste-pickers to global markets and ensures a consistent supply of high quality recycled plastic for brands.
- PolyCycl, a company with a patented technology that chemically recycles waste plastics to petrochemical feedstock that has been approved for the manufacturing of new monomers and plastics.
- Re>Pal, a company that does a 100 per cent mixed waste plastics from Indonesia into logistic pallets for sale across Asia from a factory in East Java.
- Rekosistem, an end-to-end zero waste management startup that aims for sustainable via digital solutions and renewable energy.
Today, some three billion people in the world have limited to no access to municipal solid waste management systems, and Southeast Asia is also in a bad shape, even with hopeful tech companies and startups striving to help put an end to it.
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According to a World Economic Forum’s National Plastic Action Report on Indonesia, 70 per cent of Indonesia’s plastic waste –estimated 4.8 million tonnes per year– is considered mismanaged. In many countries in the region, plastic waste is openly dumped or burned on land, deposited in poorly managed dump sites, or leaked into waterways and ultimately the ocean.
The End Plastic Waste Innovation Platform is a collaboration and shared vision by the Alliance, an international non-profit organisation, and Plug and Play, a global innovation platform. This platform seeks to tap into the best technology startups and links them with the resources, experience, and expertise from the world’s largest corporations so their innovations can be brought to scale.
The End Plastic Waste Innovation Platform has hubs in two other cities, Paris and Silicon Valley.
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Image Credit: Bas Emmen on Unsplash
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