The Healthcare Waste and Resources Research Group
1. The UK Research and Innovation Strength in Places Fund
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund is supporting consortia of businesses and research organisations to build on their existing research and innovation capability and present plans for new activities that will have a demonstrable impact on local economic growth.
This first competition stage is an expression of interest (EoI). Consortia will set out plans for large collaborative proposals. Following assessment, successful EoIs will be selected to receive seedcorn funding to further develop a proposal for a full stage project.
Successful bids to the first stage will be awarded up to £50,000 to develop full-stage proposals over a period of six months. In the second stage, those awarded early-stage funding will be eligible to bid for up to £50 million of funding to carry out projects designed to drive significant local economic growth.
Projects can be led by either a UK-based business or a UK publicly funded research organisation. Project consortia must be based within the project’s geographical area and have the support of local civic leadership.
For more information, click here
2. The Resource Action Fund
The £18 million Resource Action Fund has been established by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to support resource efficiency projects, with the goal of diverting, reducing and better managing waste. The Fund will support key policy outcomes in the areas of food, plastics, textiles, recycling infrastructure and litter.
The overall programme is broken down into Large and Small Scale grants. The first strand to open to applications is the Waste Prevention Grant, which aims to improve how organisations handle and distribute leftover food, by investing in infrastructure such as weighing equipment, storage solutions, warehouses, industrial freezers and fridges, labeling equipment and vehicles.
The Large Scale strand will provide capital infrastructure to help address a current capacity gap for redistributing food produced by businesses that is currently being wasted, diverting this to people in need. The Small Scale strand will provide new small-scale capital infrastructure and revenue support to organisations redistributing surplus food from the likes of retailers and food manufacturers.
There is a budget of £5 million for Large Scale grants and individual awards of between £200,000 and £1 million will be provided. £1 million has been allocated for Small Scale grants, supporting projects ranging in value from £20,000 to £170,000.
For more information, click here
3. Revitalising green spaces at Mount Vernon Cancer Centre
Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in Northwood, on the outskirts of London, is starting work on a two-year programme to redesign several green spaces in the hospital grounds.
For more information, click here
4. The IWUN Project
The Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) project, is a three year research project awarded £1.3m by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Valuing Nature Programme. It aims to find out more about how Sheffield’s natural environment can improve the health and wellbeing of the city’s residents, and especially those with disproportionately high levels of poor health.
One of the outcomes of the research has been the valuing of green prescribing and how it can be better included within the concept of social prescribing. Part of the work has been to create an infographic to help translate the evidence more clearly.
To see the infographic, click here
5. Manchester’s NHS Foundation Trust launches gamification staff behaviour change scheme
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has become the first NHS Trust to sign up to the JUMP employee engagement initiative, in a bid to encourage its 20,000+ employees to develop habits which improve the organisation’s environmental impact while also boosting their own wellbeing.
Read more here