Global Research & Innovation in Plastics Sustainability (GRIPS) is back for 2023, organised by the UK Circular Plastics Network, KTN and UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge. Now in its 3rd year, Global Research and Innovation in Plastics Sustainability has joined forces with Sustainable Plastics Live/GRIPS to become a live conference, exhibition and showcase on 10th – 11th May 2023, bringing together companies and individuals to highlight the best of the UK and select international activities which will lead to plastics being less likely to reach landfill, end up incinerated, or become fugitive in the environment.
At Innovate UK KTN our mission is to connect ideas, people and communities to respond to these challenges and drive positive change through innovation. Our diverse connections span business, government, funders, research and the third sector.
We have wide ranging expertise and convene the expertise of others. Through our network of experts, we ensure ideas are shared across diverse sectors and communities, so that opportunities are identified for innovation.
We create powerful connections, with business at the heart of everything we do. We source and create powerful connections with potential partners, ensuring that the benefits of your new ideas are felt locally as well as nationally and globally.
We shape the innovation communities of the future. We actively build communities around emerging innovations and sectors to prepare markets for the global opportunities and challenges ahead.
We have expertise across a whole range of skill sets and disciplines. Our people are experienced collaborators who are set up to understand your innovation project and connect you to our network of business, academics, funders and opportunities.
The UK Circular Plastics Network (UKCPN) aims to bring together the diverse users of plastic products and realise the best means for reducing plastic waste entering the environment through a programme of networking and knowledge-sharing events and related support activities.
The Network has created a coordinated, integrated and aligned community of stakeholders in order to share best practice, focused on unlocking the most critical, short term barriers to plastics circularity.
UKCPN facilitates the following: eliminating the volume of plastic waste arising from within the UK; raising awareness to improve the rate of UK plastic recycling; sharing best practice to reduce levels of confusion amongst citizens and highlighting user-centred design; showcasing innovation that is focused on reducing the amount of plastic ending up in the environment.
UKCPN is an activity supported by Innovate UK KTN & UK Research and Innovation, and is funded through the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge.
Launched in April 2018, UKRI is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Our organisation brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England, which is responsible for supporting research and knowledge exchange at higher education institutions in England, and the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.
Our nine councils work together in innovative ways to deliver an ambitious agenda, drawing on our great depth and breadth of expertise and the enormous diversity of our portfolio. Through our councils we maintain and champion the creativity and vibrancy of disciplines and sector-specific priorities and communities. Our councils shape and deliver both sectoral and domain-specific support.
Whether through research council grants, quality- related block grants from Research England, or grants and wider support for innovative businesses from Innovate UK, we work with our stakeholders to understand the opportunities and requirements of all the different parts of the research and innovation landscape, maintaining the health, breadth and depth of the system.
UKRI’s £60 million Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge supports bold, ambitious innovation that could deliver a step change in the UK’s ability to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging waste.