Establishing UK based production via the development of automated production of a novel flushable and biodegradable sanitary towel

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Polipop is a highly ambitious company focused on the development and production of the first certified flushable and biodegradable sanitary towel. This vital innovation removes the waste disposal burden in relevant toilets. Furthermore, it resolves the problem that around 30% of sanitary products are wrongly flushed down the toilet contributing to the problem of blocked sewers and plastic pollution in our wider ecosystem. Due to the pad being biodegradable they can be harmlessly flushed down the toilet and make a drastic impact on the billions of sanitary products sent to landfill or incineration every year. This innovative biodegradable sanitary towel does not yet have an established high volume production process so Polipop has started production of the new towel in India and Italy with manual production methods. This approach is not ideal for Polipop, the products have to be shipped all over the world and the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the company severe delays and production complications. The current manual production process also makes the pad expensive, the current pads costs 25 pence each to make which is too expensive for the market. The aim of this project is to enable Polipop to do the research and development necessary to automate the production of the pad and bring the production to the UK to drastically improve the carbon footprint of the business. Furthermore, by developing specialised high speed machines to produce the pad the team hopes to increase production speed by an order of 2, from 3 pads per minute to 300 pads per minute. This will drastically reduce the cost of the pad to less than 8 pence per unit. This project fits the The Sustainable Innovation Fund: round 1 competition because: * The business has been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, this project enables the business to create new opportunities for the company and the UK economy as we recover from the pandemic.* The project makes a significant contribution to climate change and environmental sustainability, at present billions of sanitary products are shipped to waste processing facilities and either burnt or buried in landfill. This results in thousands of tonnes of plastic waste entering our ecosystem every year. This project enables a truly biodegradable approach to be taken that is entirely compatible with current sewage treatment infrastructure.* The project is directly beneficial to marginalised individuals that suffer from stigma, Polipop is targeted for women and incontinence related markets, users such as men and transgender individuals will benefit from improve discretion of a device that can be immediately flushed down the toilet.