National Grid competition to encourage green product design

distributed by noodls on 02/18/2013 08:34

Sharing and Personal Tools

Please select the service you want to use:

National Grid has launched a UK competition among its suppliers to come up with innovative ideas to make their products greener.

It is the first initiative to come out of the company's successful inaugural sustainability summit, which was held in September last year.

The summit attracted more than 300 people from the company as well as Government, regulators, suppliers, customers and community groups.

Based on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation-backed concept of the 'circular economy', the supplier design competition encourages suppliers to operate a closed loop approach to the supply chain and to redesign products for reuse, disassembly and remanufacture.

Top prize will be a three-year membership to the Circular Economy 100, a new programme by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to help businesses make the move to a circular economy.

The CE100 - which was launched earlier this month - is a platform for 100 pioneering businesses to accelerate the transition to a circular economy over 1,000 days.

The competition begins today, Monday 18 February, and closes at midnight on Monday 3 June.

Jon Carlton, Director, Project Lead said: "We are passionate about turning today's waste into tomorrow's resource using circular economy principles.

"Not only is this the right thing to do for the environment, but it can lead to a more cost-efficient way of working, as the price of commodities rises in response to the growing global demand on finite natural resources.

"We can't achieve this transition to a circular economy alone, and to encourage novel, innovative thinking in this area, we have developed this Supplier Design competition, which we hope many of our suppliers will be inspired to enter."

Ends

Link to the supplier competition pages on nationalgrid.com:
http://www.nationalgrid.com/circulardesigncomp/

Link to register for competition news and updates:
http://eepurl.com/vpphr

Link to the CE100 pages on ellenmacarthurfoundation.org:
http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/business/ce100

Contact for Media Information only:

Graham McQuarrie
National Grid Media Relations

T: 01926 655273
M: 07977 493933
E: graham.mcquarrie@nationalgrid.com

For more information, please:

Notes to Editors:

Ellen Macarthur Foundation
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's goal is to inspire a generation to re-think, redesign and build a positive future through the vision of a circular economy.

The circular economy offers the opportunity to move away from our "take - make - dispose" model by ensuring, through careful design and innovative business models, that technical and biological materials continuously flow, safeguarding valuable resources and restoring natural capital.

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

National Grid
National Grid (LSE: NG; NYSE:NGG) is an electricity and gas company that connects consumers to energy sources through its networks. The company is at the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing our society - to create new, sustainable energy solutions for the future and developing an energy system that underpins economic prosperity in the 21st century. National Grid holds a vital position at the centre of the energy system and we 'join everything up'.

In Britain, we run the gas and electricity systems that our society is built on, delivering gas and electricity across the country. In the North Eastern US, we connect more than seven million gas and electric customers to vital energy sources, essential for our modern lifestyles.

National Grid in the UK:

We own the high-voltage electricity transmission network in England and Wales, operating it across Great Britain
We own and operates the high pressure gas transmission system in Britain
Our gas distribution business delivers gas to 11 million homes and businesses
We also own a number of related businesses including LNG importation, land remediation and metering
National Grid manages the National Gas Emergency Service free phone line on behalf of the industry - 0800 111 999 (all calls are recorded and may be monitored)