The three Irish college graduates, from left, Jack Hartnett, Michael Wylde and Johnnie Bell, behind Rezero, which turns unopened cigarette filters into buttons and other items. Photograph. Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times
The figures they provide speak for themselves; 700 billion unconsumed cigarettes coming from industrial waste are incinerated each year. So one in 10 cigarettes that are made are destroyed.
They found an old button machine in Smallwares in Castlebellingham, a company founded in 1936 as a button factory, the first of its kind in Ireland. It remained in production until the 1990s when button making was outsourced to eastern Europe. Rezero is also in commercial sample development under NDAs with two high-profile luxury international brands in Italy and France with the aim of producing sleeve branding, eyewear and buttons. “There is very little innovation in the button industry and our goal is to target brands who want to replace their existing buttons with green alternatives. We want to be suppliers to Irish and UK brands and increase button production in Ireland,” Wylde says.
Rezero aims to sell more than one million a year starting in 2025 and will be taking part in the Future Fabrics Expo trade fair in New York on November 19th, which is the largest global sourcing destination of sustainable textiles and materials. They also have a meeting with one of the world’s biggest shoe brands in the US about shoelace tips called aglets, which are usually made from plastic or metal with the idea of discussing replacements with virgin CA in millions of laces.