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Czech, Portuguese and Spanish entrepreneurs win Social Innovation Competition

Oct 25, 2019 | News

(25 October 2019) – Yesterday evening, the European Commission announced the winners of the 2019 European Social Innovation Competition.

Innovation
© European Commission

Under this year’s theme, “Challenging Plastic Waste”, three private sector projects out of 543 applicants won a €50,000 grant for creating innovative solutions to promote plastic re-use, recycling, plastic waste reduction and drive behaviour changes.

The awards went to MIWA (Czechia), a circular distribution and sale system for food and non-food products with reusable packaging, SpraySafe (Portugal), an edible spray to preserve food items that reduces the need for plastic packaging, and VEnvirotech (Spain), a biotech start-up that transforms organic waste into biodegradable plastics using bacteria.

The Commission also awarded the 2019 Impact Prize to MTOP Goes Digital (Austria), a learning programme that helps young, highly qualified migrants enter local labour markets.

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