Change Starts with Ideas
The Incubation Network is an impact-driven initiative that sources, supports and scales holistic innovative solutions to combat plastic pollution through strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems with a diverse network of key partners.
Part of a highly collaborative community of innovators, investors, partners and programs, The Incubation Network works together with industry players to tackle key barriers to address plastic leakage and advance a circular economy. This includes sourcing and supporting, to scaling early stage or pre-investment solutions and connecting compatible ecosystem players to reinforce the value chain in waste management and recycling.
Established in 2019, The Incubation Network is a partnership between The Circulate Initiative and impact innovation company, SecondMuse.
Female workers play a role at all levels in the waste management chain, but most dramatically at the bottom.
A primary focus of The Incubation Network by The Circulate Initiative and SecondMuse is to foreground gender in all aspects of the waste collection and recycling and circulate economy systems.
Our Focus on Women
Female workers play a role at all levels in the waste management chain, but most dramatically at the bottom.
A primary focus of The Incubation Network by The Circulate Initiative and SecondMuse is to foreground gender in all aspects of the waste collection and recycling and circular economy systems
The Incubation Network in Action
Leakage and Livelihoods
The Incubation Network’s Leakage and Livelihoods program is supporting a cohort of seven organizations across India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Each organization is testing a solution that aims to improve material recovery and reduce plastic leakage into the ocean, while also improving livelihoods and social protection for informal waste workers.
In addition to a program-level research agenda, each project is receiving support around impact measurement.
Circularity Concepts: Exploring key drivers of the plastic circular economy
As part of its efforts to end the flow of plastic into the ocean and advance a circular economy, The Incubation Network, in collaboration with RRS Asia, has developed a learning series to bolster knowledge of new and emerging issues, materials, policies, and technologies as well as the state of infrastructure in South and Southeast Asia.
Covering key topics of interest, the goal of the series is to examine the current state of each topic, discuss important related issues, provide resources, and answer burning questions from our community.
Global Innovation Challenge
The Incubation Network organizes an annual Global Innovation Challenge each year to source, support, and scale startups and growing businesses that provide real-world solutions to plastic issues.
The 2020 Global Innovation Challenge: Plastics Data Challenge was a pilot readiness program aimed at supporting innovative solutions to overcome the data gap in the waste management sector to prevent the flow of plastics into the ocean. Findings from the challenge have been developed into a report that identifies business models that can improve access to quality data on plastics and plastic waste.
In 2021, the Global Innovation Challenge: Future of Flexibles identified innovative solutions that can drastically reduce flexible plastic waste in Asia. After receiving over 120 applications from 30 countries, a cohort of 15 startups were identified to join the program.
Ocean Plastic Prevention Accelerator
The Ocean Plastic Prevention Accelerator (OPPA) in Surabaya, Indonesia is a social innovation ecosystem builder program that fosters a collaborative network for innovative solutions to strengthen and improve how the local waste actors relate to each other.
Supported by The Incubation Network by SecondMuse and The Circulate Initiative, OPPA works together with businesses, innovators, start-ups, multilateral organizations, and governments, to identify problems and gaps within the local waste ecosystems, and develops solutions to address them. OPPA’s activities have successfully closed gaps through acceleration programs, networking, facilitating collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and supporting government programs.
Local Partners for Global Impact
By partnering with existing incubator initiatives, The Incubation Network by The Circulate Initiative and SecondMuse will rapidly scale the number of innovators in the sector in South and Southeast Asia, building out their capacity, and providing acceleration support for those innovations.
We will do this by working with individual entrepreneurs as well as with existing incubators and accelerators, global experts and local governments, among others.
Our Partners
