Cheese is one of the EU’s favourite foods, with Greece, France, Germany and Estonia topping the table for annual consumption. However, all that cheese comes at a cost. Each year nearly 4 million tons of waste byproduct known as whey permeate are created during the manufacturing process, which unless disposed of properly, are both a threat to the environment and a huge waste of money.
The team behind Ireland’s Whey2LIFE — a 6-year, €3.7 million project which closed last year — realised there was money to be made from whey permeate, if they could find a way to extract the valuable protein and turn it into animal and fish feed. At the same time, they could drastically cut the water and carbon footprint of cheese manufacturing by using what was left over to generate bioenergy. The project also developed an integrated biorefinery combining fermentation and anaerobic digestion.
‘We started out effectively investing to validate a concept at a very small scale level, to try and establish what the potential for that market would be going forward,’ says project coordinator Tom Nolan. ‘We're trying to take a linear value chain and convert it into a circular value chain.’
No waste? No whey!
Whey2LIFE reuses 100% of the whey permeate: firstly by turning it into yeast biomass to replace expensive and environmentally-damaging vegetable proteins and fish oil; and secondly by feeding waste water into an existing anaerobic digester to generate biogas. The biogas is then used to power a biorefinery to produce yeast — which is 40-50% protein — which can replace soy and fish-based feed ingredients.
‘We established there was both an opportunity to create value from the whey permeate, which was this undervalued byproduct, and equally that there were synergies with the existing infrastructure that we had on site,’ adds Tom. ‘The solution shows how dairy byproducts can create new circular bioeconomy value chains.’
Results are still being analysed, but it’s expected the project will save up to 14 000 tons of whey permeate each year which would otherwise have been dumped in fields and rivers. Nearly 20 000 m3 of wastewater has been reused instead of being discharged in public sewage systems, and around 2.7 MW of bioenergy generated — saving nearly 700 000 tons of CO2 each year, roughly equivalent to the emissions from 1 200 electrically-powered homes. Production potential is estimated at up to 2 000 tons of protein-rich biomass every year.
Whey2LIFE supports the dairy sector to adopt circular solutions. It builds on the success of a previous Horizon Europe project, Whey2Value, which proved it is possible to turn waste whey into vitamin-enriched food additives and purified water. The project supports the EU Directives on Water Framework, Urban Waste Water, Waste Framework and Nitrates, as well as food and waste reduction targets. Since 2021, LIFE has invested more than €25 million into projects to improve efficiency and reduce waste in the food and drink production sector which contribute to the EU circular economy action plan, the proposed Circular Economy Act and Clean Industrial Deal.
Details
- Publication date
- 23 April 2026
- Author
- European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
