A SUM of €10,000 for business investment funded by the Department of the Environment will be awarded to one of six finalists who will take part in a “Green Dragon’s Den” later this month.
The competition is part of a one-day Sustainable Innovation Forum designed to encourage the creation of new products out of recyclable waste.
The finalists and their business ideas have been chosen, but will not be revealed until the forum on April 27th at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin. Each business involves “upcycling” – taking a product that is currently landfilled or exported and creating a new product or enterprise.
The forum aims to foster jobs through using the 1.5 million tonnes of recyclables that are currently sent abroad for processing.
Conor McGovern of rx3, the Government’s programme for developing new markets for recyclables, said upcycling had the potential for developing a thriving green economy.
“The rx3 Sustainable Innovation Forum will give people ideas on how to rethink about waste as a valuable material that we could be reprocessing here in Ireland to create jobs and stimulate the Green Economy,” Mr McGovern said
Many firms were already generating revenues and employing people in Ireland using recyclable waste as their raw material, through ideas such as turning plastic bottles into products including clothes hangers and roadside kerbs and making plant pots from waste cardboard and paper.
Attendance at the Sustainable Innovation Forum was a must for anybody who wanted to turn their ideas into a viable upcycling business, Mr McGovern added.
Registration for the forum is at www.rx3.ie
