Waste management remains one of the hardest problems to solve, both in terms of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions across the waste value chain, generating toxic effluents, and causing long-term environmental damage. Recycling alone cannot address the complexity of the problem.

Material innovation is a major lever for advancing a circular economy. It is essential to curate and scale sustainable alternatives across plastics, textiles, sanitary products, and construction materials that meet industry-grade performance requirements. While no single substitute yet matches the full property spectrum of conventional plastics, accelerating adoption of lower-impact and biodegradable options remains critical.

Potential solutions may include, but are not limited to:

Plastic
• Affordable, scalable, biobased, and biodegradable alternatives to synthetic polymers/plastic and their platform precursors, which can fulfil the functional properties of conventional plastic in applications such as packaging, electronics, homecare, cosmetics, and agriculture inputs etc.
• Low-cost, retrofittable automated sorting solutions that utilise advanced sensing and data analysis to accurately decipher material composition, including differentiating between conventional and bio-based plastics, for optimal end-of-life processing in any material recovery facility.
• Cost effective, advanced biological and chemical recycling technologies, to recover high value materials.

Textile

• Affordable, high-performance, scalable, biobased biopolymer, fibers and fabrics with a substantially lower carbon footprint than conventional textiles.
• Development of sustainable and decentralised supply chains that enable processing, and resource-efficient production of biobased/agri-based textiles fibers.
• Resource-efficient processing innovations, including microbial dyes, waterless dyeing technologies, green chemistry auxiliaries, and technology retrofits, to drastically cut water use, energy demand, and toxic effluent generation.
• Advanced biological and chemical technologies for recycling textile waste into high-value, reusable fibers.

Sanitary

• Material innovations to replace petrochemical plastics and super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) in sanitary pads with sustainable, biodegradable, and high-performance alternatives.

Construction

• Low-carbon material alternatives that reduce cement demand and water use in concrete production and curing processes.
• Process innovations that reduce dependence on finite resources (e.g., clay, sand, water) in kiln-based and building material production.
• Advanced reuse and upcycling technologies to upgrade construction and demolition (C&D) waste components (e.g., concrete, brick, sand, gravel) into standard and advanced concrete applications.

India holds 18% of the world’s population but only 4% of its freshwater, with demand expected to exceed supply by two times by 2030. Over-reliance on groundwater, low wastewater treatment, and increasing contamination have made water scarcity a critical challenge.

Simultaneously, India is home to 21 of the 30 most polluted cities globally, with millions breathing air far above WHO safety limits. Prolonged exposure to polluted air causes severe health impacts, claiming over many lives annually. Climate change further worsens both air and water stress through extreme weather, shifting rainfall, and declining resource quality.

Air and water are vital to both human health and economic development, yet they face increasing pressure. Fostering innovation in these systems is essential to protect public health, ensure resource security, and build a resilient, low-carbon future for India. The emphasis is on solutions that are decentralised, energy-efficient, and cost-effective, reducing reliance on scarce resources, enhancing quality and safety, and enabling circular use.

Potential solutions may include, but are not limited to:

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
• Desalinators with material innovations, powered by renewable sources of energy driving both water and energy efficiency.
• Atmospheric Water Generators that are productised, cost effective, with a focus on household access to drinking water.
• Cost-effective incremental innovations in design, material used and process of filtration to reduce inefficiencies in existing filtration systems and target niche contaminants in endemic zones.
• Decentralised, energy-efficient, and cost-effective wastewater treatment solutions (sewage & effluents) that reduce high capital/operational expenses, minimise chemical/energy use, and enable compliance with discharge standards or safe reuse.

Air Pollution

• Affordable, energy-efficient indoor air purification systems that minimise both upfront and operational costs, eliminate the generation of secondary pollutants, and significantly reduce waste by utilising durable or regenerative components with minimal maintenance requirements.