Public Funding for Topolytics Ltd

One of the biggest barriers to scaling the circular economy is maintaining visibility and control over manufactured materials when they enter the waste system. The circular economy dictates that this material or product should be retained at its highest utility, ideally never becoming a waste in the first place. This project aims to turn the waste system into an 'efficient materials supply chain' that will more readily enable the identification and recovery of industrial by-products/waste and post-consumer material. The project builds on Topolytics' existing position as a leading player in the global 'wastetech' sector - using mapping and machine learning to make the world's waste visible, verifiable and valuable. Topolytics WasteMap(r) platform ingests, normalises and analyses waste data at scale, from a range of sources, in order to generate insights for waste producers, the waste industry, investors and regulators. The innovation in this project will enable Topolytics to bring together data from manufacturers of consumer products, industrial products and packaging further developing its data science approach to tracking material through the waste system in order to generate more and better insights for manufacturers that enables increased sustainability of UK manufacturing - specifically tackling waste reduction, re-use of resources and associated reductions in carbon emissions.

Topolytics has developed the WasteMap(r) data analytics platform to make the world's waste more visible, verifiable and valuable for waste producers, waste processors and regulators to substantially improve the outcomes for waste resources, reduce carbon emissions from the movement of waste and enable the circular economy. Jane Stewart first met Founder CEO Dr. Mike Groves in 2017 and was aligned to Mike's vision that addressing the waste data challenge would significantly improve the environmental and commercial outcomes for waste. Jane understands the waste data challenge and opportunity first-hand having spent 12 years as Group CFO then Strategy Dev Director of William Tracey Group (now Enva), a national recycling and resource management group. Jane was a key member of the leadership team that scaled the business from a local waste management company in Glasgow to a national, full-service resource management business, one of the top 20 players in the UK. Jane is a Director of Topolytics assisting the business in innovating to deliver its vision whilst scaling the business globally. Topolytics is recognised as a leading player in the global 'smart waste' sector - applying mapping and machine learning to make the world's waste visible, verifiable and valuable. Topolytics WasteMap(r) platform ingests, normalises and analyses waste data at scale, from a range of sources, in order to generate insights for waste producers, the waste industry, investors and regulators. The innovation in this project will enable Topolytics to develop a pilot module to extend the WasteChain(r) (from collection to fate) to track operational waste movements prior to collection by a third-party contractor. Generating actionable insights for waste producers on operational, unregulated movements of waste within a producer's site or facility enabling reductions in waste, improving operational efficiencies and improving the quality of resources for re-use or recovery whilst enabling reductions in carbon emissions arising from the movement and processing of waste.

PragmatIC-Semiconductor has developed a unique technology platform for ultra-low-cost flexible electronics that could connect trillions of objects. The technology makes it viable to add RFID to low-value high-volume product packaging, to identify and trace objects throughout the whole lifecycle. **Our vision** for project TRACE (Technology-enabled Reusable Assets for a Circular Economy), is to apply ultra-low-cost RFID technology to trace reusable food-grade plastic packaging, encouraging reuse and enabling highly-scalable infrastructure. This large-scale solution has the potential to make packaging re-use the norm - consumers would no longer see the plastic as something to use once and destroy but as a valuable asset to re-use many times. TRACE addresses the challenges that currently prevent large-scale re-use: * Understanding consumer perception and how best to encourage adoption * Developing robust and optimised re-usable packaging designs * Enabling item-level traceability throughout the packaging lifecycle * Ensuring packaging remains safe and fit for purpose * Developing and demonstrating an end-to-end model for collection, sorting and washing infrastructure * Quantifying the overall environmental impact of moving from single-use to re-usable packaging The core technology innovation is the use of PragmatIC's ultra-low-cost RFID tags to enable a packaging re-use model. These tags provide machine-readable unique codes that allow automated identification and tracking of individual items throughout multiple re-use cycles. Rich data generated can support consumer adoption and infrastructure implementation for optimal environmental impact. For example; the movement of assets within the system, number of cycles, packaging provenance and legislative reporting. This project will tackle several significant technical challenges including: * Establish **minimum viable packaging** for food-grade re-use * **Embed tags** within the plastic to ensure durability throughout the packaging life-cycle * Demonstrate an **automated sorting**-**system** at TRL7\. The project will assess the **net** **environmental impact** of the entire solution and demonstrate the system in end-to-end **trials**, including assessment of client satisfaction throughout the supply-chain, analysis of consumer response, and assessment of costs and benefits. Although reusable packaging is our initial target, many components within the project can be extended to improve recovery and upcycling of single-use packaging. TRACE is led by PragmatIC-Semiconductor. Partners includes Ken Mills Engineering (leading manufacturer of MRF systems), RECOUP, Topolytics (experts in waste-mapping), and Sheffield University's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC-Cymru) and the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures.

One of the biggest barriers to scaling the circular economy is maintaining visibility and control over manufactured materials when they enter the waste system. The circular economy dictates that this material or product should be retained at its highest utility, ideally never becoming a waste in the first place. This project therefore sets out to turn the waste system into a 'downstream materials supply chain' that will more readily enable the identification and recovery of industrial by-products/waste and post-consumer packaging material.The project builds on Topolytics' existing position as a leading player in the global 'wastetech' sector - using mapping and machine learning to make the world's waste visible, verifiable and valuable. Topolytics WasteMap(r) platform ingests, normalises and analyses waste data at scale, from a range of sources, in order to generate insights for waste producers, the waste industry, investors and regulators. The innovation in this project will enable Topolytics to bring together data from manufacturers of consumer products, industrial products and packaging further developing its data science approach to tracking material through the waste system in order to generate more and better insights for manufacturers that enables increased sustainability of UK manufacturing - specifically tackling waste reduction, re-use of resources and associated reductions in carbon emissions.

The waste system is complex, inefficient, opaque and is not data driven - an acknowledged problem globally. Reflecting this, on a global basis, more than 70% of the world's waste currently ends up in a landfill, waste dump or is lost to the environment. Consequently, there is a need for better data on waste to improve the outcomes for this material. Topolytics' WasteMap(r) platform - addresses this challenge by ingesting, cleansing and analysing waste data at scale, generating trusted insights for waste producers, recyclers, investors and regulators. In essence we are using mapping and data science to make the world's waste more visible, so that the data is verifiable, and we can then generate insights that unlock value in the material for all players in this 'downstream' supply chain. Topolytics is scaling to meet this major environmental and social challenge and realise the associated global commercial opportunity. It seeks support to further develop WasteMap(r) to enable the company to accelerate to commercial deployment, at scale, globally. By applying its innovative, data-driven approach to the management of materials -- WasteMap(r) has the potential to become a smart grid for the world's waste.

Topolytics is a waste analytics company. It makes data on commercial and industrial waste visible, verifiable and valuable through state of the art mapping and analytics. Building on the Clean & Cool Mission, this project aims to assess the feasibility of and codify a new business model that supports the aim of exposing high quality granular data on industrial and commercial waste. It also enables the company to exploit the model and build its market presence in the smart waste sector.

Codbod is a cloud based environmental data and reporting platform for SMEs. It uses mapping as a means of organising data on waste, water, emissions, energy and other environmental metrics. The Innovation Voucher has enabled us to develop the spatial analysis and mapping functionality.