We have a hardy batch of ecopreneurs in Ireland, too, who are finding novel uses for materials that would otherwise have been wasted, and developing new products to replace the ubiquitous single-use plastics which often end up littering land and sea. <\/p>\n
Niamh and Ruair\u00ed Dooley BiaSol and Circular Food Company![\"Siblings](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/QIZCHITY3ZEDXOLZRKLP4ET54U.jpg\")
Siblings Niamh and Ruair\u00ed Dooley established food start-up BiaSol, creating a nutritious supplement from breweries’ waste spent grain. Photograph: Philip Doyle\/Irish Farmers Journal <\/p>\n
A three-year stint in Vancouver working for a start-up vegan restaurant whetted Niamh Dooley\u2019s appetite for foods made from \u201cupcycled ingredients\u201d that would otherwise have ended up in the waste bin. On her brother Ruair\u00ed\u2019s suggestion, while bored at home during the Covid lockdown, the University of Limerick food science graduate started experimenting with her own recipes for nutritious foods<\/a> made in a sustainable<\/a> way.<\/p>\n One idea used cricket powder to increase the protein content of snack foods. \u201cMy research found that the western world wasn\u2019t quite ready to eat insects,\u201d she says, \u201cso I looked into what was the most wasted product in Ireland that could be rescued for use in food.\u201d <\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018Shroom boom\u2019: The Cork-based entrepreneur growing the future of packaging from mushroomsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The brewery industry discards thousands of tonnes of spent grain every year \u2013 mostly from barley, wheat or rye \u2013 after extracting the starch to convert to sugar for alcohol production. It\u2019s a nutrient-rich byproduct, naturally high in fibre and protein.<\/p>\n \u201cThe spent grain is the outer layer \u2013 or husk \u2013 which breweries either gave or sold to farmers for animal feed,\u201d she explains. \u201cWhen I cold-called 30 breweries, they said no one had ever asked them for spent grain as a food ingredient before.\u201d <\/p>\n Drying and milling the spent grain in her parents\u2019 kitchen, she started adding it to recipes and sending samples to chefs and bakers. <\/p>\n Along with Ruair\u00ed, an accountancy and finance graduate, she pitched to the Enterprise Ireland<\/a> New Frontiers programme and won \u20ac50,000 investment for 10 per cent of their business. Ruair\u00ed returned from working in Australia and the siblings jointly set up their first food premises in Ferbane, Co Offaly. Two years later they moved to a larger production facility in Tullamore, from where they now dispatch their range of BiaSol flavoured bars, granola and DIY mixes for scones, protein pancakes, brownies and cookies to retailers and cafes in Ireland, the UK and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n Tesco recently launched a spent grain loaf, co-branded with BiaSol and O\u2019Hara brewery which supplies the grain. <\/p>\n Ruair\u00ed says finding private investors to believe in their mission to scale up was the most challenging part of starting a new business. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen Niamh and I started BiaSol, we had no experience in food manufacturing, no network, no insider knowledge. We had a mission to show that food waste could be upcycled into ingredients that people would actually want to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Manufacturing & Design: How spent grains fuel green shoots for circular economyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Niamh\u2019s focus was on getting the flavour and nutrition right. \u201cWe had to educate people that this ingredient is good for you. When brewers take out the starch, there is 40 per cent fibre and 20 per cent protein left in the husk. We only use four or five plant-based ingredients in our bars and granola.\u201d Both their chocolate brownie and apple and cinnamon oat bites have won Great Taste awards. <\/p>\n Niamh and Ruair\u00ed have since set up the Circular Food Company to advise large food manufacturers on ways to upcycle byproducts and waste food. One project involved \u201crescuing\u201d waste bread from bakeries to convert into sourdough crumb for sale to Irish meat processors. <\/p>\n Their next big project is a cocoa powder substitute. \u201cDue to climate-related issues, there has been low global availability of cocoa and the price has gone up,\u201d Ruair\u00ed says. \u201cOur ingredient made from spent grain from O\u2019Hara stout has a deep colour and rich flavour, and could be used as a cocoa substitute for muffins and cakes.\u201d<\/p>\n Angie NagleBladeBridge Wind turbine blades have a maximum lifespan of around 25 years. An estimated 2,000 wind turbine blades will be decommissioned in Ireland in the next 10 years, and Angie Nagle is keen to get her hands on some of them. Her business, BladeBridge<\/a>, transforms these blades from wind farms into street furniture. <\/p>\n Although a small start-up with just two employees and a design consultant (Simon Dennehy from Perch design) on contract, BladeBridge has created some impressive pieces, including a bench with integrated bicycle parking and picnic tables on the Achill Greenway, e-bike charging hubs for the ESB, and a greenway bridge over the Dungourney river on the Midleton to Youghal Greenway (the company estimates that 80 per cent of the virgin steel in pedestrian bridges could be replaced with repurposed blades). They have also made tables and seating for several shopping centres around Dublin. Each piece is designed for disassembly so the materials can be reused. <\/p>\n Nagle, a qualified and experienced engineer, took a different career direction on maternity leave when she set up Baby Markets, pop-up fairs for parents to buy and sell baby products. She left that in 2018 to do a PhD exploring business models for repurposing wind turbine blades. <\/p>\n \u201cI was never a super skilled engineer, so now as chief executive of BladeBridge, I love my overarching role working with customers, designers and engineers. It\u2019s really hard work, but it\u2019s creative and I can work around family demands,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n The company is supported by the Re-Wind network of researchers across five universities \u2013 University College Cork, Munster Technological University, Queen\u2019s University in Belfast, Georgia Tech, and the City University of New York \u2013 established to come up with solutions for old wind turbine blades, which are ordinarily sent to landfill or incinerated, causing a significant environmental challenge. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a great believer in one person\u2019s trash is another person\u2019s treasure. And I love finding new uses for things,\u201d says Nagle, whose husband runs local repair cafes in Cork. <\/p>\n Nagle\u2019s next steps include looking to markets overseas \u2013 Scotland, England and other European countries. In the future, she would like to inspire local wood and steel fabricators to develop products from wind turbine blades close to local wind farms as they decommission them. \u201cI\u2019d like to have a pop-up re-manufacturing line in a shipping container where blades could be turned into products for use locally,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n Michael WyldeRezero When UCD economics student Michael Wylde realised that cigarette filters were made from the same material luxury glasses frames were made from, he knew he was on to something. <\/p>\n More than 100 million cigarettes are seized by Irish customs every year, amounting to around 30 billion throughout Europe. Rezero<\/a> is the only company collecting these clean, unused cigarette filters for reuse from European customs officials. <\/p>\n \u201cSince 2022, we have recycled over 220 million filters that would otherwise have been sent for incineration,\u201d explains Wylde. Once the raw cellulose acetate is extracted from the filters, Rezero converts it into pellets for use in buttons, glasses and, more recently, acoustic panels to absorb sound in offices and homes. <\/p>\n The company \u2013 which Wylde cofounded with Jack Hartnett, a recycling engineer, after they graduated from Trinity College \u2013 supplies materials to glasses and button manufacturers in northern Italy. The company is preparing to launch Grian, its own-brand eyewear collection made from Rezero pellets, in the coming months. <\/p>\n Discovering that large fashion brands were slow to work with a new supplier, and that their environmental story wasn\u2019t enough in itself to entice fashion brands, were hard lessons to learn. \u201cWe painfully overlooked how reluctant to change big companies were,\u201d Wylde says.<\/p>\n He firmly believes that the climate benefits<\/a> of using upcycled materials instead of virgin fossil fuel materials need to be highlighted again and again. \u201cThe quality of our materials is on par with virgin materials, but until our story is valued, we won\u2019t get a premium for our products,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The company has been supported by Enterprise Ireland and the Department of the Environment through the Circular Economy Innovation Grant scheme, and mentoring from Neil Skeffington, founder of Novelplast, a company that recycles PET plastic into pellets for recycled plastic bottles. <\/p>\n Mary O\u2019RiordanHaPPE Earth The huge upsurge in consumption of single-use plastic in healthcare<\/a> during the Covid pandemic got Mary O\u2019Riordan and her cousin Lisa O\u2019Riordan thinking about how they could help the healthcare industry transition to medically approved compostable alternatives.<\/p>\n As a public health doctor working in the control of infectious diseases, O\u2019Riordan was acutely aware of how a healthy planet and healthy humans go hand in hand. \u201cEnvironmental disruption causes a rise in infectious diseases,\u201d she says. \u201cWe felt that there must be ways to stop using something as environmentally detrimental as single-use plastics.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, O\u2019Riordan gave up her job, sold her flat in Dublin and moved back to her home city of Cork to cofound HaPPE Earth<\/a> with her brother David and cousin Lisa. <\/p>\n Within three months, along with researchers at University College Cork, they had developed CE-approved splash aprons made from bio resin. <\/p>\n \u201cHealth Innovation Hub Ireland helped us get them into hospitals,\u201d says O\u2019Riordan.<\/p>\n The next step was to develop on-site biodigesters \u2013 machines that use enzymes, heat, UV sterilisation and mechanical shredding to turn these used aprons (together with hospital food waste) into a soil enhancer for the horticulture industry.<\/p>\n![\"Angie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/NRUNEP3GIZBTDK2FJTNNYCL6GM.jpg\")
Angie Nagle from BladeBridge, which repurposes decommissioned wind turbine blades to make street furniture and pedestrian bridges. Photograph: Louis Tang\/NoirXTone <\/p>\n![\"BladeBridge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3DQ5O66OJRBY5NDZZV3KST6OLU.jpg\")
BladeBridge street furniture, made from decommissioned wind turbine blades <\/p>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Q75NDHTMVFAWBEICCTZOQEAUH4.JPG\")
Michael Wylde, chief executive of Rezero, which recycles unopened cigarette filters into sustainable alternatives that include buttons, insulation fibre and luxury eyewear frames. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n![\"HaPPE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/J6JMNBODL5H6LPAHZIHSKCS37Y.JPG\")
HaPPE Earth cofounders, cousins Lisa O’Riordan and Mary O’Riordan, who developed CE-approved splash aprons made from bio resin <\/p>\n