Centre for Global Eco-Innovation
Building partnerships to grow a sustainable and circular economy
Why eco-innovation?
Eco-innovation delivers the goals of sustainable and equitable societies and economies, including sustainable development. This is achieved through commercially viable approaches that:
- Deliver new business opportunities
- Achieve more efficient or responsible use of natural resources
- Reduce impacts on the environment
- Enhance societal, economic and technological resilience to environmental pressures
Established in 2012 as a multi-partner Centre led by Lancaster University, the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation demonstrated its value in just three years though the initial project achieving:
- World-rated research
- An award-winning team
- Over 300 businesses engaged
- Over 120 new products and services with environmental benefits
- Over 260 jobs created
- Over £4m inward investment
Resulting in a projected saving of:
- 27,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions
- 46,000 tonnes of water
- 19,000 tonnes of materials
- 200,000 tonnes diverted from landfill
Lancaster University
The Centre was conceived, grown and led by Lancaster University. Lancaster University is a global top 1% institution with over 12,000 current students and a network of over 130,000 alumni in 183 countries worldwide. Our research has been rated as “world leading” in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, which assesses the quality and impact of research by UK universities.
Lancaster has an outstanding track record of collaboration with businesses, delivering support to over 5,000 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
The Centre is located within the “exemplar business engagement facilities” of the Lancaster Environment Centre, one of Europe’s largest centres for environmental research.
Solutions to global challenges
Delivering business opportunities
Green business is good business
The EU Environment Report 2015 demonstrates that businesses in the environmental sector, despite a time of recession, have grown faster than their counterparts.
An escalator of opportunity
From a small scale initiative to a long term research project, whether you want to develop a new product, compete in a new market, enhance your organisation’s performance, tap into a diverse skill-set, or access world-leading facilities, the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation has the contacts, expertise and resources you need.
Supporting emerging technologies
Innovation lies at the heart of the Centre, be that in new technology, product design or systems of delivery. The research is supported by world class facilities and undertaken by leading researchers. We help refine, demonstrate and validate new innovative solutions.
Developing global businesses
Global challenges require global solutions and local implementation. Through the network of universities, national and international contacts and supply chains, from international players to local SMEs, the aim is to develop partnerships for global solutions.
Benefits:
- Access facilities and contacts to develop and grow
- Develop competitive advantage through new skills and expertise
- Explore your potential for new markets
- Develop new products and services
- Use emerging science and technologies to improve your organisation
Training a generation
Eco-innovation provides great opportunities for skills training at many levels. Our training ranges from short-term bespoke courses for industry, to Masters and doctoral degrees. Our undergraduate and Masters degrees combine taught modules with opportunities to work with industry. We are training a generation to lead the introduction of innovative technologies and circular supply systems.
Award winning
The Centre for Global Eco-Innovation is an “Outstanding Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Initiative” according to the UK Research Councils. Lancaster University can support institutional capacity building through its award winning team of knowledge exchange experts, who have extensive experience of creating collaborative projects and operating models.
Positive environmental impact
Eco-innovation supports the global need to ‘live well within the limits of the planet’.
It has the power to decouple global economic growth from resource use. It is fully consistent with delivering solutions to economic and technological priorities expressed in other terms, for example, “clean energy”, “low carbon”, “sustainable agriculture”, “sustainable development”, “green economy”, “bio-economy” or “circular economy”.
Eco-innovation will be an integral part of the successful transformation towards a world-wide green economy.
Driving eco-innovation
The Centre for Global Eco-Innovation is building an international platform for an alliance supporting university-business collaboration. We deliver high quality, business-led research to create eco-innovative technologies, products and services. We educate and train skilled people able to develop, deliver and advance eco-innovation throughout their careers.
A global network
The Centre uses its global network of contacts to develop tailored solutions to global challenges, based on the highest standards of research.
- Sharing a common mandate to act as focal points for eco-innovation partnerships between research, business and the wider community
- Driving effective interactions between research, policy and the private sector
- Co-designing and supporting research-driven partnerships with business to meet the specific needs of countries or regions
- Building an international network of centres of excellence in eco-innovation
Solution focused
The Centre is solution focused rather than technology driven. It offers multidisciplinary solutions based upon the understanding and collaboration between universities, their researchers, and the business community.
Join us
We are seeking new collaborative partners to grow a sustainable and circular economy and welcome inquiries.
