Summer Internship
Upland Road: Internship Opportunities
Upland Road is looking for three undergraduate students entering their junior or senior years who are studying environmental science, sustainability, business and finance, public policy, engineering, social sciences, or other complementary disciplines, to tackle foundational research projects that will help us expand our understanding of markets and industries, and will impact how we build and where we locate our facilities, as well as how we configure our campuses and our company.
Upland Road is also looking for one graduate student, with a background in law, public policy or business, to help refine various business models and financing structures and contextualize them in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Creating Zero-Waste Communities
Upland Road develops eco-industrial parks, called SMART (Sustainable Materials and Advanced Recovery Technology) Centers, which are designed to monetize waste, drive economic growth, and advance environmental sustainability by converting ~90% of all discarded materials to beneficial uses. Upland Road’s innovative technology separates commingled solid waste. Our transformative business model then generates consumer goods, soil amendments, clean energy, and green fuels – all from recovered paper, plastics, food and yard waste, glass, metals, and hard-to-recycle items, such as diapers.
Recycling Crisis. Managing solid waste efficiently and economically is not tomorrow’s problem – it is here today. The closure of offshore markets, particularly China’s, to recycled materials has dramatically increased waste disposal costs across the country. New and creative solid waste management strategies are needed urgently. SMART Centers are the breakthrough, zero-waste solution to the dual problems of rising costs and the unpredictable economic performance of traditional recycling.
Experienced Team. Upland Road is a team of seasoned experts with extensive experience in solid waste management, manufacturing operations, conversion technologies, advanced technology development and deployment, environmental market transformation, law, and corporate sustainability. Among Upland Road principals are adjunct faculty members at Columbia Business School and Fordham Law School. Team members have excellent contacts across industries, as well as with local, state, and federal governments.
Transforming Garbage. Commingled waste materials are garbage; separated waste materials are valuable feedstocks. By converting ~90% of America’s waste to productive use, SMART Centers can significantly reduce the use of landfills. Additionally, the SMART Center model does not require separate waste and recycling bins, which eliminates the need for multiple pickup routes. All waste can be combined into one bin, which is separated at the SMART Center by Upland Road’s patented MaxDiverter™ equipment. This convenient One Bin™ system consolidates collection routes, eases traffic, and reduces air pollution. Each SMART Center will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between one and two million tons CO2e per year, the equivalent of taking between 200,000 and 400,000 cars off the road.
The Company. Today, Upland Road operates virtually. We are actively engaged in negotiations to site our facilities in several locations across the US. We meet regularly via technology platforms and in a New York office periodically.
Internship Focus
An internship with Upland Road will provide you with insight into a rapidly changing market that has profound impacts on our environment, both in the US and internationally, and will allow you to help transform a system that for decades has resisted modernization. You will have the opportunity to work directly with senior-level executives from legal, corporate, and sustainability fields and will participate in regular group meetings and calls in addition to periodic intern update sessions.
We are looking for highly motivated students who are able to commit 20 hours a week for 8 weeks, beginning on or around June 6th, to work under the direct supervision of a project manager delivering a range of work product in various areas of study, ranging from quick-hitting, targeted research on individual companies, situations or techniques, to wider-ranging and more comprehensive overview white papers. Your work will be incorporated into our corporate research library and will be used as the basis for negotiations with commercial partners and government agencies.
We offer a $2,400 stipend, paid in two equal installments during the summer, for undergraduates.
For the graduate student intern, we offer a stipend of $4,000, paid in a similar manner, assuming completion of two discrete projects during the Summer.
Representative areas of research include:
1. Off-take partners. Understand the materials being separated by the MaxDiverter™ and their market values. Research potential off-take partners and supply chains for each of those materials. Examples include companies that are reusing synthetic textiles to upmarket them and companies that are optimizing the use of various grades of plastic.
2. Competitor analysis. Develop a platform for a comprehensive understanding of the current and potential competitors to Upland Road’s SMART Center. This includes analysis of substitute and complementary technologies and programs that could be competitors or potential partners.
3. Patent and related market analysis. Upland Road owns proprietary technology that is covered by 26 process patents. In order to stay up to date with emerging technologies, we would like to maintain a clear, structured understanding of the current patent landscape in the waste management and circular economy spaces.
4. Public policy. Provide a detailed overview of recycling and sustainability-related legislation at a local and national level, as well as in-depth research on specific public policy developments such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).