EREF is an IRS 501(c)3 non-profit organization and is one of the largest sources of funding for solid waste research in North America. 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.
It should be noted that EREF defines solid waste to include:
- municipal solid waste (e.g. residential, commercial, institutional)
- construction & demolition debris
- certain industrial wastes (e.g. exploration & production waste, coal ash) and
- other wastes typically managed by the solid waste industry or generated by the public not included in the above items (e.g. electronic waste, disaster debris, etc).
Pre-proposal topics must relate to sustainable solid waste management practices and pertain to the following topic areas:
- Climate change impacts on and from solid waste management
- Quantifying circularity of materials
- Quantifying environmental burden of plastic wastes
- Environmental Justice relating to solid waste
- 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
Dollar Amount: Previously awarded grants have ranged from $15,000 to over $500,000 with the average grant amount in recent years being $160,000. Typical project durations are about 2 years.
Deadline: May 1,2023 or December 1, 2023 (Pre-proposal, Biannual submission period)
Eligibility: Principal investigators (PI) must be qualified to do the work proposed and should be experts in the subject matter referenced in the pre-proposal/proposal. Typically, this would include full-time faculty at academic institutions, post-doctoral employees, and principals or senior personnel at non-academic institutions. Graduate students are not eligible to be principal investigators.
Full RFP: https://www.erefdn.org/research-grants-projects/how-to-apply-for-grant/