Disposable hearing protection that does no harm.

Approximately 50 million disposable earplugs are discarded every day - adding up to 18 billion pairs of single-use plastic waste every year. Industries like construction, manufacturing, aviation, and live music rely on single-use hearing protection for safety and hygiene, but traditional polyurethane foam earplugs are petroleum-based and persist in the environment. BioBuds was founded to eliminate PPE plastic waste without asking workers or safety managers to compromise on hearing protection. Hearing should last a lifetime. Your earplugs shouldn’t.

BioBuds is a UK-based startup founded out of the University of Bristol by Ryan Lang and Samuel Levey, working alongside material science, industrial design, and manufacturing partners to bring next-generation biomaterials to personal protective equipment.

BioBuds are made from a proprietary flexible foam made of bio-derived, biodegradable polymers produced through bacterial fermentation. We are formulating our foam to be non-toxic, body-safe, and as close to 100% non-petroleum as possible, right down to the pigments.

Yes. Our foam is engineered for softness and slow-rebound recovery. You roll them down, insert them, and allow the foam to gently expand and seal the ear canal for comfortable, seamless acoustic protection.

Acoustic performance and regulatory compliance are our top priorities. We are currently advancing our prototypes toward official acoustic and regulatory testing (including SNR ratings, UKCA/UCM, and CE marking via SATRA in the UK) to ensure full compliance with EN 352-2 for workplace PPE.

BioBuds are made from biodegradable materials designed for home compostability. Even for industrial facilities that rely on general waste or waste-to-energy (incineration) streams rather than composting, switching from petrochemical polyurethane to bio-derived foam reduces reliance on fossil fuels and lowers the overall carbon footprint of your PPE supply chain.

Most alternatives either require inconvenient reusable washing routines, rely on materials with limited recyclability (like PLA), or carry a steep price premium. BioBuds is designed as a true drop-in replacement for single-use foam earplugs, combining high-volume affordability, familiar slow-rebound comfort, and biodegradable materials.

We build hearing protection for high-volume commercial and industrial environments, including construction, manufacturing, aviation, and live music/nightlife venues.

To fit different workplace workflows, we are developing both individually wrapped pairs (with custom branding opportunities for events and venues) and bulk twist-out dispensers for industrial sites.

We are engineering BioBuds and scaling our supply chain to be price-competitive with existing bio-based PPE (~16p per pair) and close to conventional disposable foam earplugs (10–13p per pair) at volume.

We have secured our commercial supply partnership and are currently in prototyping. We are producing a limited run of proof-of-concept samples for prospective enterprise partners and investors. Contact our team to join the pilot waitlist or request an evaluation sample.