ZESUP Challenge

About ZeSUP

The ZeSUP Challenge — Zero Single-Use Plastic Challenge — is MEF's climate-tech accelerator targeting the single-use plastic crisis at its most entrenched source: the Food & Beverage industry. Packaging in F&B — across delivery, drive-throughs, takeaways, and supply lines — is dominated by polystyrene, flexibles, and films: materials that are hard to recycle and deeply embedded in fixed supply chains that resist change. ZeSUP scouts early-stage startups offering viable alternatives to traditional plastics or building innovative reuse and refill business models for the restaurant sector. Co-launched by Climate Angels, the GoMassive Earth Network, and The Incubation Network, the programme operates at the intersection of circular economy innovation and commercial deployment.

Selected startups gain access to a $500,000 project and venture funding pool. More critically, they enter direct commercial partnerships for paid pilots with major industry operators — including Rebel Foods, the world's largest internet restaurant company (Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, and 45+ brands). The pilots are not just commercial validation: data from each deployment feeds into a broader academic study on carbon savings and the true environmental impact of plastic alternatives versus virgin plastic production — generating evidence that can inform regulation, procurement, and investor decisions well beyond the programme itself.

ZeSUP carries serious international governance: the programme is funded by the PREVENT Waste Alliance — an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) — alongside the ECCA Family Foundation, and operates within the broader Innovate & PREVENT international framework. GoMassive handles local accelerator execution and Indian market alignment, while the international architecture provides the policy weight and accountability structure that makes the programme credible to large-scale industry partners.