Material Focus has announced that the four projects have been awarded funding from its Circular Electricals Fund.
The Circular Electricals Fund provides financing for projects that will keep electricals and their materials in use for longer.
The first four projects to receive funding will address several areas: improve resource efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and encourage collaboration across industry.
Out of 65 applications, the four that have been selected are University College London, British Geological Survey, Bristol Braille, and Reconome.
Commenting on the announcement, Scott Butler, Executive Director at Material Focus, said: “We are delighted to be announcing that the first of the recipients will receive £567,720 of the Circular Electricals Fund, which will help drive innovation and support the development of a more circular electricals system in the UK.”
“These ambitious projects reduce the environmental impact of electricals by improving product design, improving resource efficiency, and encouraging collaboration.”
The research project led by University College London aims to make repairing household appliances easier, beginning with washing machines.
‘The Big Repair Project’ will explore how product design, new technologies, communication strategies, and business models can help people and businesses to keep products in use longer.
The British Geological Survey’s ‘Mapping Technology Metals in Electricals’ will use the funding to identify how much can be recovered and reused from electricals.
The researchers plan to undertake modelling on where technology metals are disposed of and recycled, and identify opportunities to commercially recover these metals from end-of-life electrical items.
Bristol Braille plans to use the funding to create the ‘world’s first’ repairable, affordable full-page digital Braille display machine for blind people to read a page of digital information in Braille in the same layout and information density as sighted people.
The ‘Future Canute: Sustainable electronic products for Braille users’ project aims to minimise electrical waste, maximise the lifespan of devices with a twelve-year warranty, and make the devices user-repairable and upgradable by blind people at home.
Reconome is developing a data-driven solution to increase the reuse of decommissioned devices that aims to extend the lifecycle of devices over the next year.
The ‘Intelligent device refurbishment to increase environmental and social impact’ project aims to reduce e-waste and support digital inclusion while creating a scalable model that boosts commercial viability.
