Nike in partnership with NASA, the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development announced the fourth gathering of the parties for the next stage of the big ‘game changing’ initiative to find the waste reduction technologies.

Photo: the Launch forum, from launch.org

The partnership was announced in November 2011. The partners have launches  the LAUNCH non-profit to explore solutions for energy, health and water. Nike has been working hard on the waste reduction for the last time. Last week, the company announced its low-waste Flyknit technology as a significant step in the sustainability direction.

“LAUNCH waste is a great program for them specifically,” Victor Friedberg, LAUNCH’s executive director told in an interview to GreenBiz. “It speaks to a topline issue that Nike is interested in.”

Within the LAUNCH, Nike expects to find solutions that will “contribute to the greater efficiency, sustainability and stability of waste elimination, reduction and mitigation management systems across global supply chains”.

The fourth stage of the program that was launched on April 1 is seeking for innovations that are focusing on waste visibility, elimination, reduction, disposal and related reduced environmental impacts. Companies that have waste-reduction innovations can apply till May 15. Ten winners will travel to a forum at the Pasadena, California Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July. The will have the chance to discuss their innovations and the ways of bringing it to the market.

Last year, Nike launched the Nike Better World web site to track brand’s projects that benefit ecology.