Overview
The REAL Compost and Biofertiliser Certification Schemes’ Research Hub (“The Hub”) is a tool to source funding from the compost and anaerobic digestion industries in order to develop the technical and regulatory aspects of certified compost and digestate production, testing and usage.
The primary benefit of the Research Hub will be the increased amount of evidence available for the industry to develop and ensure long-term competitiveness and growth.
The Hub is funded by CCS/BCS participants through the collection of annual research fees. The research fees are calculated relative to feedstock input tonnage. The Hub will be managed by REAL and its operation overseen by a Research Panel. The Panel will manage the funds and outline the process for appointing organisations to deliver the objectives of projects funded by The Hub. The Panel will also decide which projects will be funded, determine the ways in which the results may be used, and help to disseminate the outcomes.
You can find the Research Hub Governance Paper, which details the operation of the Hub and its objectives, here. This paper was finalised on the 7 February 2019.
Call for Research Project Proposals
Scheme participants and the wider industry can influence the work of the Hub through the submission of a Research Project Proposal.
REAL has issued a second call for Research Project Proposals to be submitted to the Hub - REAL welcome your research ideas.
If you would like to submit a research proposal to us, please do so using a PDF version of the Research Proposal Submission Form here, or a Word version of the form here. If you require some assistance completing the form, please contact advisor to the Hub, Stephen Nortcliff (contact email included within the submission form). The call for proposals will run for six weeks, from Thursday the 23rd January 2020 until Wednesday the 4th March 2020.
Following the submission period, the Research Hub’s Research Panel will review and evaluate the proposals; a number of proposals will be shortlisted. Shortlisted proposals will be inputted to a SurveyMonkey, which Biofertiliser Certification Scheme (BCS) and Compost Certification Scheme (CCS) Operators will be invited to complete. Following the SurveyMonkey, the results of which are considered advisory, the Panel will come together to determine, through a second evaluation phase, which of the shortlisted proposals will be selected.
Please send completed Research Proposal Submission Forms to Olivia Furssedonn using olivia@realschemes.org.uk. Please also contact Olivia for any other Hub-related enquiries.
N.B. Research project proposals previously submitted to the Hub and not taken forwards, will not be automatically reconsidered. Please re-submit your research proposal using the above form, if it was not taken forwards in 2019 but you wish it to be considered in 2020.’
The first project of the Research Hub
REAL is pleased to announce that the first project of the Research Hub has been selected and is titled 'The development of a Research Library for the Organics Recycling industry'.
The Panel discussed each of the thirteen shortlisted Research Project Proposals, as included in the SurveyMonkey, and informed by the survey results, decided to take forward one research project in 2019.
You can find the Project Brief for the first project of the Research Hub here.
The Research Library will be an informative and valuable resource for both the composting and anaerobic digestion industries.
The Research Hub website
REAL is pleased to inform you that The Research Hub website is in its design phase. It is anticipated that The Hub website will be launched in Spring of 2020. In the interim, please refer to this page for Hub updates.
Should you have any queries related to proposals, the SurveyMonkey or the Research Hub in general, please contact Olivia Furssedonn, Administrative and Projects Assistant for the Hub, at olivia@realschemes.org.uk.