Spring Accelerator 4
The next Spring Accelerator programme – addressing an Ambition inside WIS2050 Theme 2: Providing Clean Water For All – is looking for specific, implementable solutions that help the UK and Ireland water sector to prevent the risks posed from emerging contaminants at wastewater treatment works.
Emerging contaminants are (often unregulated) chemicals and other substances detected in water and the environment that pose a potential risk to human and/or ecosystem health.
The emerging contaminants category is made up of a variety of different substances which have often been manufactured to help people but have unintended consequences. Water users including domestic, industrial, agricultural and construction, as well as chemical spills, facilitate the movement of emerging contaminants into wastewater treatment works. For example, pharmaceuticals like antibiotics or contraceptives are often only partially absorbed, with the remainder excreted into toilets and into the wastewater network.
Spring invites innovators to provide solutions to help us better understand, monitor and manage emerging contaminants in all areas of wastewater treatment to protect the health of people and the environment.
Spring Accelerator 4 aims to identify and support solutions in all aspects of the wastewater treatment train. This can include but is not limited to: assessing the risks posed by emerging contaminants, monitoring, concentration, removal, destruction and exploration of their circular economy potential. Successful solutions will not only help safeguard the environment but help water companies to go beyond regulatory requirements and prevent the risks posed from emerging contaminants as close to source as they can, at wastewater.
Challenge timeline
Spring Accelerator 4 is sponsored by:
Find out more about the Accelerator and how to apply.
The Spring Accelerator is an end-to-end innovation challenge process that has been created to identify innovative solutions that help address a significant need in the UK water sector, reduce the duplication of innovation efforts, and provide a path to faster adoption.
Each Accelerator programme launches a specific Call for Innovation which has been designed to address a specific Ambition inside one of the seven Water Innovation Strategy 2050 themes. Spring Accelerator 4 sites inside Theme 2: Providing Clean Water for All. You can see SA4’s Call for Innovation here.
Learn more about the Accelerator here.
The Accelerator is open to all innovators who have an idea or solution that addresses the challenge statement. Applicants may be individuals, businesses or a partnership between the two.
More detail can be found in the SA4 Terms and Conditions. Other information, including the application questions and scoring criteria, can be found in our Innovator Guidelines.
The goal of the Spring Accelerator is to speed up the process of finding, progressing, and adopting solutions to a given water industry challenge. This means that those who successfully navigate the accelerator process will go on to progress their solution with one or more water utilities. This could take the form of mentoring, a collaborative trial to test the solution in context, or anything in between.
Following Water Company engagement, Spring’s Knowledge Transfer service will provide easily shared project outputs, creating sector-wide project legacy and making it easier for teams to communicate the intricacies of their project to a wider audience.
At this time, financial support is not offered as part of the Spring Accelerator process. Project / trial delivery is at the discretion of the water companies involved.
Submissions to the Accelerator first undergo a review from Spring’s industry experts who will provide an initial assessment of the application.
Submissions will then be shared with subject matter experts who have been selected by each of the participating water companies. The subject matter experts will provide a second review of submissions and vote on the ones that they would like to be brought forward to the Innovation Exchange. Feedback is aggregated and sent to all applicants.
Applicants who are invited to the Innovation Exchange will have the opportunity to pitch their solutions to key water company stakeholders. These events go a lot deeper than a pitch, however; experts and decision makers from interested water companies will join applicants in a round-table like moment to start building a business case for mobilising the solution. Successful Exchange events end with commitment from multiple water companies to progress a solution.
More detailed information, including the application questions and scoring criteria, can be found in our Innovator Guidelines.
