Waste Management Practices – Dec 1

Posted by Environmental Research & Education Foundation on November 1, 2022

Environmental Research & Education Foundation invites proposals for waste management practices

The mission of the Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF) is to advance scientific research and create educational pathways that enable innovation in sustainable waste management practices.

To that end, the EREF invites applications for projects and research related to sustainable solid waste management practices. The following topic areas will be considered: climate change impacts on and from solid waste management; quantifying circularity of materials; quantifying the environmental burden of plastic wastes; environmental justice relating to solid waste; waste minimization; recycling; waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products (this includes, but is not limited to, the following technologies: waste-to-energy, anaerobic digestion, composting, and other thermal or biological conversion technologies); strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g., organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.); and landfilling.

Previously awarded grants have ranged from $15,000 to over $500,000, with the average grant amount in recent years being $160,000 over an average of two years.

EREF defines solid waste to include: municipal solid waste (e.g., residential, commercial, institutional); construction & demolition debris; certain industrial wastes (e.g., exploration & production waste, coal ash); and other wastes typically managed by the solid waste industry or generated by the public not included in the above items (e.g., electronic waste, disaster debris, etc). Agricultural wastes (not handled by the waste industry), nuclear waste, and land-applied wastewater treatment sludge are generally not included in this definition.

Pre-proposals will be accepted 15 days before the deadline and up to the close of business (5:00 p.m. ET) on December 1, 2022. Pre-proposals must be received during this window to be considered. Upon review, selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal.

Eligible applicants include U.S. or non-U.S.-based institutions, and proposals will be accepted from non-academic institutions, provided the principal investigators are qualified to conduct the research. Principal investigators may include full-time faculty at academic institutions, post-doctoral employees, and principals or senior personnel at non-academic institutions.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Environmental Research & Education Foundation website.

Deadline: December 1, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. ET (Pre-proposals)