The European project SoTecIn Factory – Social and Technological innovation Factory for low carbon and circular industrial value chains, led by INESC TEC, is looking for European social entrepreneurs with experience in technology to develop solutions that contribute to a more circular, sustainable and resilient industry. The project will provide €3.3M through a call open until September 28.
The main goal of this initiative is to support social innovations that improve the circularity of value chains, while reducing the industries’ carbon footprint. In this sense, the call seeks to support 25 European social entrepreneurs (including researchers, SMEs, and start-ups) who present innovative tech-based ideas to address circular challenges, namely regarding the textile, plastic, packaging, food, water and nutrients value chains.
In practical terms, explains Gustavo Dalmarco, project coordinator and researcher at INESC TEC, what is sought are, for example, “solutions that help reduce and replace single-use plastics, maximising the potential of packaging; platforms or tools that help to connect consumers and agricultural producers; digital solutions with data-centred approaches to increase transparency and traceability in the agro-food value chain or that allow greater data transparency, traceability, and verifiability at the product level and reduce the impact of textile production”.
“We aim to take important steps in the transition to a circular and low-carbon economy, using sustainable solutions based on social innovation, favouring circular rethinking, reducing, reusing, repairing, reconditioning, and other strategies”, he said.
At an early stage, each of the 25 selected entities will receive €15K to support the development of innovative products and services with social impact. Of this group, 15 will have the opportunity to participate in a pre-market technology demonstration, which includes additional support of €85K.
In addition to funding, social innovators will benefit from mentorship, training actions with scientific support to the implementation of their solutions, and the design of business models.
This is the first of two calls within the scope of SoTecIn Factory – which, in addition to INESC TEC, brings together five other European partners: F6S Network (Ireland); bwcon (Germany); Impact Hub (Austria); Metabolic (the Netherlands); and CNR (Italy).
Applications are open until September 28: https://bit.ly/3rkeocM.
The project is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Programme. You can subscribe to the newsletter and follow SoTecInFactory’s activities and open calls on www.sotecinfactory.eu.
INESC TEC, as a support office of the Enterprise Europe Network, supports this European programme and is available to clear any doubts and provide personalised support throughout the application process. Further requests are possible via the email een-portugal@inesctec.pt .
The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC.
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