Irish green technology company MyGug is setting its eyes on European markets for its system which turn food waste into renewable energy and fertiliser.
Founded and headquartered in Ireland, MyGug designs and manufactures small-scale anaerobic digesters aiming to help address the 59 million tonnes of food waste generated annually in the European Union which contribute nearly 10 per cent of total carbon emissions.
“We are acutely focused on the fact that food waste is created in the largest amounts in the smallest settings,” said MyGug chief executive and co-founder Fiona Kelleher. “That is where our product is having the biggest impact.”
The business, which was an Irish Times Innovation awards finalist in the sustainability category, are aiming to give individuals more “agency and control over their own food waste, and using it to generate energy”.
MyGug’s digesters convert food waste into a biogas mostly made up of methane for cooking with just 1.5kg of food waste daily fuelling 10 hours of cooking time per week, according to Kieran Coffey, the company’s chief technology officer and the designer of the digesters. The technology also produces a nutrient-rich liquid byproduct that can be used in gardening as fertiliser.
“As a start up, one of the big things for us with a new product is trying to find the right fit in terms of market suitability,” said Ms Kelleher, as she showcased the product at the Airfield Estate in Dundrum as part of an initiative to promote sustainable energy use and food waste reduction within educational and community settings.
The company has been targeting the education market, with units now in schools and universities in Ireland and the UK, such as University College Cork, Technological University of the Shannon and Bishop Burton College.
“What we are seeing is multiple units being bought by universities,” she said, with their product being used as part of “living lab” and environmental initiatives in various universities which is driving sales.
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Now the company is looking more widely and is looking to scale into the education sector in the UK and Germany, while targeting sales in Northern Ireland, where the company sees potential for adoption of its technology across education, hospitality and small commercial sectors. The product line includes digesters scaled for households, schools, and small institutions, and the company is set to launch them on its website next week.
Long term, they envisage their product in the household market. “B-to-C [business-to-consumer] is a much bigger market,” Ms Kelleher said. “If you want to scale a technology like this, you need to be looking at that household market, but we still see that there is a huge amount of application in the education ecosystem.”
“The joy of getting into education first, is that you then develop a product pathway to B-to-C because those people you are dealing with in schools are the young people who will be the change makers of the future and will be incorporating this technology.”
