Provost’s Innovation Challenge @ Tangent – Hacking Plastics

Posted on: 10 February 2020

This year for the second time, the Provost’s Innovation Challenge @ Tangent will be running in March, with the winning student team receiving €10,000 in funding and a place on LaunchBox, Tangent’s Student Accelerator.

Last term, the College community voted and, with a slim majority, selected ‘Over-Reliance on Plastics’ as the problem to be solved during this year’s three day Innovation Challenge. Pressing issues include

– 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic are currently in our oceans

– 40% of plastic produced globally is used just once

– One million drinking bottles are purchased every minute

– We produce 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year

Trinity has a long-standing commitment to social innovation, which is crucial to addressing some of the most pressing issues facing society today, and to preventing global crises of the future. The Provost’s Innovation Challenge offers Trinity students the chance to work in teams on creative solutions to the problems facing our society today.

Students from all disciplines can now sign up to Hack Plastics and come up with real-world solutions to this problem. This year’s Challenge is happening during Reading Week from 3 – 5 March. Last year, the Challenge tackled the problem of homelessness, with one of the overall winners of LaunchBox 2019, Aquahomes, coming through the 2019 Provost’s Innovation Challenge.

To sign up to the hackathon, Hack Plastics, please visit here.