Deadline: March 28, 2025

Small businesses are pivotal in advancing sustainable practices by driving innovation and developing circular economy solutions. This is especially visible in business models based on reuse, material-shift, waste repurposing, and avoidance. The green economy itself can create opportunities for small businesses through demand for new products and services that increase production efficiency and lower business costs.

Are you an organization that supports the circular business model? Are you a non-governmental organization that empowers small businesses and entrepreneurs to become sustainable? Are you owning a small business implementing or wanting to scale sustainable innovations?

Launched for the first time in 2021, the World Trade Organization’s Informal Working Group of Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises, together with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International Trade Centre (ITC), and this year in partnership with UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), are calling for innovative ideas that help small businesses participate and contribute to the circular economy.

With this competition, your ideas will not only raise awareness among businesses and policymakers of the diversity and opportunities for a circular economy but will also promote best practices in supporting the sustainability and resilience of small businesses, and their participation in international trade through efficient, innovative, and zero-waste business models.

Benefits

• The winner(s) will be invited to travel to Geneva for the award ceremony on 26 June 2025, sponsored by ICC and ITC. The International Trade Centre will additionally award each winner $4,000 prize money to support the development or further scaling of their winning project and issue an award certificate.
• Moreover, training and mentoring opportunities will be discussed with each winner according to their needs, while winning submissions will be promoted by ICC, ITC, UN Trade and Development, and the WTO MSME Group through their communication channels.

Eligibility

• Proposals are open to small businesses, enterprises, industry associations, chambers of commerce, and non-governmental organizations.
• Initiatives that can include awareness-raising campaigns, competitions, capacity building, training, mentoring, and networking programs related to the circular economy.
• Small businesses active in the circular economy with an innovative business concept that, through its operations, reduces, prevents, or repurposes waste in equivalent conventional business models.
• Applications should have a clear link to international trade and include an action plan. To see examples from past competition winners, visit the MSME Group Small Business Champions website.

For more information, visit

To apply, click here