The sustainability movement has reached the business models of nearly every industry in the United States, and many companies, municipalities and states have set aggressive sustainability goals that include how waste streams are being managed. The EREF Board of Directors has set an initiative to ensure research funded reflects EREF’s long-term strategic plan to address all areas of integrated solid waste management, with a strong focus towards research that increased sustainable solid waste management practices.
EREF is one of the largest sources of funding for solid waste research in North America. EREF is not affiliated with any other entity or group and governed by a duly elected Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is the decision-making body that has responsibility for establishing policies that define program interests and fundamental objectives to be served by the Foundation.
All pre-proposals shall be submitted through an online application. Mailed hard copies and email submissions will not be accepted.Pre-proposals are now REQUIRED prior to submitting a full proposal using the pre-proposal template. All pre-proposals must adhere to the criteria noted and be submitted by the established deadlines. Pre-proposals submitted in response to this RFP that do not fit within the topic areas noted will not be reviewed.
Pre-proposals will now be due December 1 and May 1. Pre-proposals will be accepted starting 15 days prior to the deadline date and up to the close of business (5:00 p.m. eastern time) on the deadline date. Pre-proposals must be received during this window to be considered. If any of the above dates fall on a weekend, then the deadline will be the Monday following the due date.
Research Topic Areas
Pre-proposal topics must relate to sustainable solid waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:
- Waste minimization
- Recycling
- Waste conversion to energy, biofuels, chemicals or other useful products. This includes, but is not limited to, the following technologies:
- Waste-to-energy
- Anaerobic digestion
- Composting
- Other thermal or biological conversion technologies
- Strategies to promote diversion to higher and better uses (e.g. organics diversion, market analysis, optimized material management, logistics, etc.)
- Landfilling
Desirable aspects of the above topics, in addition to or as part of hypothesis driven applied research, also include: economic or cost/benefit analyses, feasibility studies for untested technologies or management strategies, life cycle analysis or inventory, and analyses of policies that relate to the above.
For more information on EREF’s Research Grants Program, visit https://erefdn.org/research-grants-projects/how-to-apply-for-grant/.