Shell GameChanger programme works with start-ups and businesses on unproven early-stage ideas with the potential to impact the future of energy. We provide companies with support, expertise and seed funding, while they maintain the independence to make their own decisions.
We seek proposals from companies that can apply digital technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to help significantly improve the quality of life of front-line waste-management workers.
Disruptive ideas that could help accelerate the energy transition can exist anywhere. We evaluate and mature early-stage technologies that companies are working on, to help de-risk, move towards a proof of concept and increase the chances of their success.
Through an established approach, GameChanger evaluates technologies to check for a match with the programme. We assess against four key criteria:
- Novelty: is your technology fundamentally different and unproven?
- Value: could your technology create substantial new value if it works?
- “Why Shell?”: is your technology relevant to Shell and the energy future?
- Testing: can the concept be proven quickly and affordably? Is the right team in place to deliver this?
India currently produces nearly 62 million tons of waste per year, and the country’s continued urbanization will only increase this rate. The sheer volume alone poses serious environmental and public-health challenges for the country in every facet of waste management: collection, sorting, transportation, treatment and disposal. In many cities, municipal solid waste (MSW) contains human and animal excrement as well as hazardous chemicals and sharp objects. Disease and injury are unavoidable occupational hazards for lower-level workers in waste-management sector, who sometimes are children. Yet MSW has intrinsic value—particularly in a “circular economy” that fosters the reuse of resources. Its value, however, depends on how well it is collected and segregated. For that reason, a successful waste-management business depends on the health and safety of the front-line workers who are directly involved in the collection and segregation processes. Increasing the efficiency with which they execute their jobs also helps to improve the quality of their lives, since this potentially increases the economic return of their labour. We believe that digitalization has the potential to improve the lives of millions of front-line workers in waste management in India by simultaneously addressing health, safety and efficiency. If hazardous material can be identified at the lower collection and aggregation levels, contamination risk can be reduced in the subsequent steps of the value chain. The data gathered at these levels can also help identify value-adding opportunities and nurture the growth of a circular economy.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
◼ Digital technologies, services or systems designed to improve the quality of life of on-the-ground personnel associated
with waste management
◼ Digital platforms to capture and manage data and derive useful insights from them
◼ Digital technologies, services or systems for segregating, sorting and generally managing MSW at the scale
characteristic of small-to-medium Indian cities
◼ Digital platforms that integrate the different links of the waste-management value chain
◼ AI-based detection of hazardous waste.
IN SCOPE
◼ Digital and AI technologies for the scavenging, collection, sorting and segregation of municipal solid waste (MSW),
including mixed plastic
◼ Low-cost, handheld or body-mounted devices for the early detection of hazards during sorting and segregation of
MSW
◼ Monitoring or mitigation of the environmental or social impact of MSW
OUT OF SCOPE
◼ Proposals on policies & regulations
◼ New business models
◼ Industrial wastes
◼ Mechanical recycling
Awards:-The company with the top proposal will receive between USD 15,000 – 25,000 to progress a “proof of concept” in a phased approach over a period of no more than 12 months. Two runner-up companies will also be named; they will receive mentoring from GameChanger. Further development and/or funding may be supported by Shell depending on the individual companies’ progress.
Deadline:- 21-11-2020
