Turning ideas into impact: how Scottish businesses can tap into academic expertise on our doorstep

It’s part of the university’s mission to ensure its research makes a difference to the world around it – a mission that saw it named Scotland’s number one modern university for Research Power and Research Impact in the most recent Research Excellence Framework.

Maggie Reid, Business Development Relationship Manager for the School of Applied Sciences, where the academic team is based, wants more local organisations to harness the brainpower of the academics on their doorstep.

“It's about bridging the gap. We are a very industry-focused university, and we want to apply our research to real situations for organisations and the community around us," she explains. "Sometimes universities can seem quite opaque to get into for businesses: these partnerships provide that open door to get research in and out to drive innovation and growth, and to develop talent.”

Using evidence for maximum impact

We all know that single use pollution (aka litter) is bad and picking it up is good – but how can we prove it? That’s the question being asked by Professor Tom Campbell, who’s also the director and academic lead at the Mountain Bike Centre of Scotland, and Dr Hollie Fountain, who has focused on exploring the impact of mountain bike "trail therapy" for people facing mental health challenges.

"The wider public understands the negative impacts of litter in that natural environment on our trails, whether it's for mountain biking or walking... we know litter and single-use plastics have negative environmental impacts (largely due to TFT’s existing research - The State of Our Trails Report is a world's first project documenting exactly this): we know how long single-use plastics in particular can linger in the environment; we know they break down and smaller microplastics contaminate soil, water and air and that there's a real danger to wildlife through ingestion and entanglement.

"But equally, if not more importantly, I think the act of physically removing litter from the natural environment is really significant. We're talking about environmental stewardship and ecological citizenship, with people taking responsibility for the environment – and there's evidence that this type of stewardship can promote a sense of place, a connection to nature, and ultimately improve well-being."

The team believes this is the first study of its kind that aims to demonstrate the impact on wellbeing of cleaning up much-loved spots like trails: as Tom says, "there's been nothing done to date that I'm aware of that looks at how removing litter and removing pollution, being physically involved, and actively removing those from the environment might impact upon these more positive outcomes".

Cleaning up our trails

Trash Free Trails was born in 2017 with a simple aim: to (re)connect people with nature through the simple act of removing single-use pollution from places they love. This community-led, not-for-profit organisation wanted to “bring the beach clean mentality in-land”– particularly given that studies show there could be up to 23 times the amount of plastic waste released on land in the UK as in the sea.

From the start, they wanted to generate the evidence that would prove that what they were doing could bring about real change, explains Rich Breeden, Associate Director of Trash Free Trails. "There are lots of organisations out there removing pollution, but something that sets us apart is a scientific backing to the work that we do. We don't just go and pick up pollution; we go and pick it up in very specific places for very specific reasons with very specific people."

And this evidence base has the ability to generate real solutions, that can then be scaled up and even adopted by other organisations. "We want to have a long-term impact and the only real way to do that is to work with places like Edinburgh Napier and people like Tom and Hollie."

Creating a model for the future

The 30-month project will seek to define the correct approach by understanding the feel-good factors for participants, then designing a framework to measure that impact on wellbeing. Working with Trash Free Trail’s communities of volunteers, they’ll develop a pilot then adapt it as needed.

The hope, according to Rich, is for the evidence to form a ‘social prescribing model’, something NHS Scotland describes as “helping you to find the right support when you need it, connecting you with activities, groups and services in your local community that can help address some of the challenges and issues that you may be struggling with”.

"It's also about strengthening our offer to make us more attractive to corporate funders or for trust and grants funding, which enables us to have more impact because that's what we're about: Ultimately, we need more support to have a greater impact, and this is how we will achieve that," he adds.

And lastly, they want to develop a nature connection training model, one "that is ratified, proven and delivered by a really engaging organisation like ourselves to allow businesses to increase their nature connection".

"Plus, our volunteers, who are the most important people in this whole conversation, can participate in the research in one way or another, they can actively benefit from it and, if it's something that they want to deliver with their communities, then that will be freely available to them as well."

Lending academic expertise to firms and groups

"Removing litter is a simple act, but actually it's so complex in terms of the mechanisms underlying that – and we're trying to evidence the benefit, to understand how that very simple thing actually extends into potentially massive benefits, especially for the social groups that don't currently engage in all this,” says Tom.

“That's the really powerful approach of the knowledge transfer partnerships:they enable projects with real world impact."

Funded by UKRI for the past 50 years, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships like this one connect organisations with academics to facilitate access to the expertise they need to achieve strategically important objectives.

"Often it's linked to increasing turnover and financial viability by developing a new product or a new service that allows you to employ more people," explains Maggie. “But in this case, it's allowing an organisation like Trash Free Trails to demonstrate the societal impact element to their funders and therefore increase their funding in the future.

"As well as the economic benefits to their organisation, whether that is to secure future funding or increase turnover, there is access to expertise, resources, facilities, people that they would not have access to. It's about building a partnership as well with the university which can really offer you a competitive advantage, because your services and products are underpinned by research."

“Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are all about impact – economic, academic, social, and environmental – and innovation,” adds Dr Anne-Marie Haughey, East of Scotland KTP Centre Manager. “This collaboration between TFT and ENU academics will provide TFT with the capabilities to evidence and increase their impact, empowering them to have greater reach and deliver more of the activities central to their mission. The KTP project will enable development of a green social prescription model which is projected to have significant UK economic and social value, as a result of improvements in individuals’ wellbeing.”

Want to get involved?

Want to chat about how a Knowledge Transfer Partnership could benefit your organisation?

Visit Edinburgh Napier University’s Innovation Hub and email [email protected] to find out more.