What is the Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund?
The Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund is a program that provides funding for businesses to adopt circular economy opportunities that design out waste to improve environmental and economic outcomes for Victoria.
Background
In a Circular economy, a resource lifecycle includes 3 key phases: make, use and recycle.
The project must explore, test or demonstrate solutions in the make phase or the use phase of the lifecycle. It must prevent waste by design.
Make phase
Refers to the design, production and distribution of products or services.
The project should be about designing materials, products or services to prevent waste.
Examples of activities that can be done in a project:
- Create products that are durable, and can be more easily repaired or reused.
- Provide virtual options for physical products.
- Re-design products, services or systems to eliminate waste.
- Use fewer materials or resources to deliver the same value to customers.
- Use non-toxic, renewable materials as inputs.
Use phase
Refers to the consumption or use of goods and services.
The project should be about keeping materials and products in their original state for as long as possible.
Examples of activities that can be done in a project:
- Enable shared use of, shared ownership of, or shared access to products.
- Extend product life through maintenance, repair or refurbishment.
- Reuse or re-sell second-hand products.
Objectives
The project must deliver at least 2 of these outcomes:
- Creation of new Circular products and services
- Avoidance of waste materials to any waste or recycling destination
- Increase employment through Direct creation of Jobs.
Funding Streams
For round 2, the Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund (the fund) aims to support Circular economy projects that design out waste to improve environmental and economic outcomes for Victoria.
The fund is distributed through 2 streams:
- Stream 1: Textiles Innovation (funding of between $75,000 and $150,000)
For collaborative partnerships that identify opportunities and apply innovative circular economy business models that focus on preventing textile waste. - Stream 2: Collaborative Innovation (funding of between $150,000 and $250,000)
For collaborative partnerships that focus on preventing waste from multiple organisations in a specific supply chain, sector or region.
Eligible Projects
The project must focus on:
- designing out textile waste from the make or use phase of the resource lifecycle (in this case, for textiles)
- an Innovation for Victoria (that is, it has not been done in Victoria before).
The Innovation could be a:
- Business model Innovation – where a new product, process, service or system is created
- technical Innovation – where a new technology is developed
- social Innovation – where new capabilities, connections or relations are created.
The project must also:
- start within 3 months after it’s announced that it has been awarded funding
- primarily take place in Victoria – over 50% of activities should be in Victoria
- be completed by October 2023.
Project activities can include:
- business case development
- design
- experimental proof of concept
- feasibility studies
- ideation or concept generation
- implementation
- pilots, trials and demonstrations
- prototyping
- research.
The following project costs are eligible for funding:
- capital costs (such as infrastructure or equipment)
- new or existing staff costs (such as salaries) that are demonstrated to be directly related to the project
- consultancy or contract costs
- project management costs
- project evaluation
- other project execution costs.
You can submit multiple applications. Each application must be for a different project. An application must not be for multiple projects.
Eligible Applicants
Applications must include at least 2 organisations. In such a group application, the main organisation responsible for delivering the project is the lead applicant, and the other organisation/s are the project partners.
The lead applicant must:
- be either an individual business, research institution, social enterprise, industry group or charity
- have a current Australian business number (ABN)
- have been operating for a minimum of 2 years.
The project partner can be from either one of the above categories or one of the following:
- other not-for-profit organisations
- government
- local government.
The project must:
- be focused within Victoria
- ensure the project activities largely take place (i.e. more than 50%) in Victoria
- meet or exceed the minimum co-contribution requirement for funding ($1:$1)
- be completed by October 2023.
Timing
Round 2 Stream 1 applications close 15 November 2021 and Stream 2 applications close 9 December 2021.
