Winning ideas for 2025: coffee scrub cream, hay-stuffed toys, honey with medicinal herbs

Scrub creams made from coffee waste, toys stuffed with hay, and honey with medicinal herbs – these innovative green businesses are the winning ideas of the competition “Green Ideas 2025”, organized by ARNO. The jury, in the category of embryonic ideas, selected “The Scent of Hay in Every Home” by the association Uma Sto and “Natural Scrub Cream from Coffee Waste” by the team EcoScrub. The winning idea in the category of green businesses is “Medena Dolina – Living with Nature” by the NGO Medena Dolina. At the final event, 10 ideas were selected from a total of 39 submitted applications. The 2025 competition was characterized by a greater number of embryonic concepts and a predominance of ideas from rural areas.

“Our stuffed toys will serve as both souvenirs for the organization and mascots, given that the village of Umin Dol was known for geese. The production will involve women from the village. The toys will be filled with hay and aromatic herbs. The stuffing is biodegradable and can be replaced after some time,” said Roza Trajkovikj from the association Uma Sto.

“Medena Dolina produces honey and honey with eco-medicinal herbs in small, practical packages. “It is important to emphasize that neglected fields in Belica and the region are being cultivated and transformed into melliferous areas, without destroying the natural heritage,” said Mena from the Association for the Development of Beekeeping, Protection and Survival of Bees and the Ecosystem ‘Medena Dolina’, village of Belica.

“EcoScrub is a green idea that transforms coffee waste into natural body scrub creams – a product that nurtures the skin while protecting the planet. “Instead of ending up in landfills, coffee becomes a raw material with added value. Our slogan reflects the mission: ‘Love yourself, love your planet as much as you love your coffee.’ We successfully extracted oils from coffee waste and showed that true value can come from waste,” said Zimere Saiti Musliji, a member of the team of three PhDs behind the idea.

The jury evaluating the applications included: Robertina Brajanoska from the Macedonian Ecological Society (MED), Besiana Mustafa from the Chamber of Commerce of North-West Macedonia, Todor Stojchevski from MKA2000, Dobrinka Stefanova Gjorgjieva from ProCredit Bank, and Bojana Kiselovski from Macedonia 2025. For the national winners, the partners provided support: free registration on the platform Connect2MK, two-year membership in the Chamber of Commerce of North-West Macedonia, and vouchers for consulting services from MKA2000. In 2025, ARNO additionally awarded all three national winners with a voucher for half a year of access to the paid version of ChatGPT Plus.

“This year we were surprised by the response of citizens who only had an idea and not yet a business. However, what is concerning is the decrease in programs that support green social entrepreneurship. In the next three years, ARNO will work on establishing a local Impact Entrepreneurship fund. We will need to find ways, with local support, to ensure the continuous financing of impact businesses – a new term that brings together green and social businesses. We are learning about this from our European partners, Impact Europe, through the project Impact4Change,” said Irina Janevska from ARNO.

Green Ideas is an annual competition that supports the development of small, local, and sustainable business ideas in Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece. Each year, three representatives from each country participate in the regional competition, and four winners receive $5,000 or $10,000 to realize their ideas.
The Association for Social Innovation ARNO, for the 11th year in a row, administers the national Green Ideas competition and is proud that the country has already had regional winners, with a total investment of $100,000 for the development of green businesses in the country: The first cooperative of organic consumers Our Good Earth (2015), the initiative for repairing old furniture that grew into a small business led by architect Marta Mojsova – SPIN (2016), the platform for selling affordable meals Food for All (2017), education through illusionist eco-messages Green Magic Production (2017), Bio Smart Rice – sustainable rice production (2019), Challenger – a mobile app that rewards citizens for every green kilometer walked (2019), Weiss Additive – producing food additives from grape pomace (2020), O-krug (2021) – a circular startup producing eco-essential oils and air fresheners from orange peels, Insect Pilot Room (2022) – protein pet food production from insects, Mirjana Josifoska – designer hats made from textile waste (2023), and Trajche Rusev – innovator of a portable stove (2025).