RISE^® Innovation Award

RISE Innovation Award The RISE^® Innovation Award will recognize innovation in areas within and on the periphery of the nonwovens industry which utilizes advanced science and engineering principles to develop unique or intricate solutions to problems and advance the usage of nonwovens. Nominees will be selected from various disposable and durable product categories and disruptive enabling technologies who exemplify innovation. Areas for consideration include: raw material advances, advances in process or manufacturing technologies including web forming and converting, new product or application development, or other areas that may extend or enhance the use of nonwovens.

Meet the Finalists for the 2020 RISE^® Innovation Award:

Leakproof Absorbent Nursing Pads by FemTech at MAS Holdings Pvt Ltd
Within FemTech at MAS, we look at solving needs across the entire female reproductive lifecycle- from menarche to menopause. Having already invented absorbent underwear for urinary incontinence and menstruation, a period pain relieving band, and anti-hot flash clothing for menopause, our next step was to look at pregnant women. We found that none of them are happy with their existing solutions to manage breast milk leaks- current reusable products leak through, feel wet and are not absorbent enough. We used extensive research to gauge how much they leak during the day, how many times, etc. to come up with a product that can absorb 30ml of milk while feeling dry and is leak-proof. We further solved pain points moms were having by adding a bra shape to the pad, adding an outer layer to grip on to the bra and stay in place, and also developed another fully absorbent in built bra for moms who do not want to change their pad.

BlueCON Nonwoven by Sustainable Solutions Incorporated
Our Polypropylene resin and nonwoven products are created from Hospital waste that for years has been landfilled. Through a collaboration with healthcare manufacturer our company created a sustainable recycling program to offer U.S. hospitals. This program, called Blue Renew offers education and training to hospital employees around safely collecting and recycling surgical sterilization wrap. Once collected, our company transports the material to regional recyclers to melt down the material and create our trademark BlueCON resin. The creative approach for this project was really in three phases ; 1. "Perception" No-one wants to handle hospital waste, but through our recycling relationships we gained confidence by including them and showed them first hand the passion that hospital have around recycling. 2. "Hauling/Collection" Even though we collect 5 M lbs. annually of sterilization wrap, the lbs. our spread out over 400 hospitals so hauling was a challenge. We decided that the only way this would be cost effective is to leverage relationships between current vendors at hospitals to the project and create a back haul system. We are currently partnering with medical document destruction companies, waste haulers, linen companies to name a few that have a vested interested in the success of the recycling program. 3. Finally, "Logistics" , once collected who buys the material from the haulers.. We have been blessed to work with regional recyclers, extrusion and converting companies to move the 5 M + lbs. at a frequency that matched storage capacity of our collectors.

Spunbond High Efficiency Filter by The Nonwovens Institute
This is a completely new approach to creating a filtration media with the right efficiency at low pressure drop at high throughput.