Improve Waste Management Practices – May 2

Posted by Environmental Research and Education Foundation on April 19, 2022

Environmental Research & Education Foundation invites proposals for waste management practices

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

To that end, the EREF invites applications for projects and research related to sustainable solid waste management practices, including waste minimization; recycling; waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals, or other useful products (including 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 as 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 (that aren’t 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 from 15 days before the deadline date and up to the close of business (5:00 p.m. ET) on May 2, 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: May 2, 2022 (Pre-proposals)