Sustainable Product Challenge
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Sustainable Product - Repair and Reuse
Creating a more sustainable impact on the world through extending product life
THE CHALLENGE: Create a solution that would allow us to extend the life of our products for our customers through either repair services or replacement.
Throughout the history of industrial revolutions, we have continued to advance the technology used to design products, machinery, and systems. While these products allow ease in carrying out various tasks, there are some key metrics that users highly prioritize, such as quality, functionality, easy repairing, recyclability, safe disposal, or end-of-life.
Products with a short lifespan result in huge material wastage, expense in disposal, and environmental implications. Being an ethical and responsible business underpins everything that we do. So, we are committed to delivering innovative and sustainable products and services to all our customers and for a better world. So this means we aim for a longer lifespan for products and less global material depletion as the result of it can be, for example, the reduction of the increasing amount of landfill that leads to the pollution of water bodies.
Background
Consumer research shows that as customers increasingly embrace social causes, they also seek out products and brands that reflect their values – even to the point where they are willing to pay a premium for sustainable and environmentally responsible products and brands. It also tells us that as the world accelerates towards a low-carbon economy, there will be more opportunities to grow sales from new and existing customer segments through sustainable products and service solutions. These will help our customers’ operations run more efficiently, cut costs and reduce environmental impacts.
In an ideal world…
We will advocate products with multiple uses, and provide end-of-life solutions and services on products that could be repaired rather than replaced. Extending the life of a product has a significant reduction in landfill contribution therefore it is critical to ensure we have solutions in place.
Interested?
Applications are Now Closed!!
Please refer to the overview for full competition information.
Entry Criteria
- Teams of 3 to 5 people
- All team members aged 18-30 at the time of entry
- All team members registered with DesignSpark
- All entries must be in English (be able to communicate in English)
- A passion for sustainability!
Searching for our #RSINNOVATORS
We are looking for 20 teams to take through to the next phase of the competition, where we will support you with a program of mentoring and masterclasses to turn your ideas into innovations!
THE TIMELINE:
25 October - Event: Turn your ideas into Innovations! / Competition open for entries
30 November – Submission Deadline, get your entries in!
December – A shortlist of teams will be invited to submit a video
January – 10 finalist teams announced
February & March – 6-week masterclass and mentoring program to equip your team with the skills and knowledge needed to turn your idea into a reality (teams will need to commit to 1 masterclass, and 1 mentoring session a week)
27th to 31st March – The virtual final, pitch the solution your team has been working on to a panel of judges, and be in with the chance of winning 3 grand prizes!
Prize
In case you missed it...
1st Place - £10,000 GBP!
2nd Place - £5,000 GBP!
3rd Place - £3,000 GBP!
- A total of 3 teams will be crowned ultimate champions! That's 3 chances of winning!
- An opportunity to further develop your solutions further through an amazing accelerator program