Two Women
Get Rid of Plastic

A grey rolling door rises at the press of a but­ton to reveal an unpre­pos­sess­ing ware­house space. Here in Buch­holz, a small town in north­ern Ger­many, one of the most impor­tant goals of the future—a world with­out plastic—is being active­ly pur­sued. Trace­less Mate­ri­als GmbH, a Ger­man start-up, has devel­oped an inno­v­a­tive solu­tion. Hid­den away inside small sam­ple ves­sels on a lab­o­ra­to­ry table as well as in large black boxes on the right side of the depot: a light orange crys­talline sub­stance that is capa­ble of replac­ing plas­tic. With this sub­stance, the two founders of Trace­less, CEO Dr. Anne Lamp and COO Johan­na Baare, seek to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the plas­tics industry—and to wage war on plas­tic pol­lu­tion. The two women and their team—winners of a 2022 Ger­man Entre­pre­neur Award in the cat­e­go­ry “StartUp”—are keen­ly ded­i­cat­ed to achiev­ing their goal.

A truck­load every minute. Or expressed in num­bers, around ten mil­lion tons a year. Accord­ing to the NABU con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion, that is the rate at which plas­tic waste lands in the world’s oceans. That fig­ure will more than dou­ble by 2040, pre­dicts a study by the Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts non-prof­it and the Sys­temiq sys­tem design­er. One of the main caus­es is the enor­mous increase in sin­gle-use plas­tics. And the con­se­quences are dire. Marine ani­mals and birds are dying. Habi­tats such as coral reefs are suf­fer­ing from a build-up of waste. And bio­di­ver­si­ty is pro­found­ly at risk. To avert the impend­ing demise of the oceans, there is a great need for pioneers—companies like Traceless.

Found­ed in 2020 in the town of Buch­holz in der Nord­hei­de south of Ham­burg, Trace­less has devel­oped a com­plete­ly new prod­uct: a bio-based gran­u­late that can be fur­ther processed into a sus­tain­able alter­na­tive to plas­tic. The founders have even ensured that the plas­tics indus­try doesn’t have to con­vert its injec­tion mold­ing machin­ery in order to fur­ther process the prod­uct. The gran­u­late is made of residues from pro­cess­ing grain, which are also used in ani­mal feed. Of cru­cial impor­tance here is that the mate­r­i­al is com­plete­ly biodegrad­able under nat­ur­al com­post­ing conditions—within a record time of nine to twelve weeks, the founders promise. As the name “Trace­less” indi­cates, this is a solu­tion that van­ish­es with­out a trace.

The idea for Trace­less came from Ham­burg native Dr. Anne Lamp, born in 1991, around three years ago when she was work­ing on her PhD in process engi­neer­ing at the Ham­burg Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. Along­side her doc­tor­al research, she turned her atten­tion to anoth­er process: name­ly, how a mate­r­i­al with sim­i­lar prop­er­ties to plas­tic could be pro­duced from agri­cul­tur­al indus­try byprod­ucts. Ini­tial sam­ples were gen­er­at­ed, and the first large com­pa­ny became inter­est­ed. This was the fam­i­ly-run Otto Group, a long-stand­ing inter­na­tion­al e‑commerce busi­ness. “Otto was excit­ed right away, even though it took some imag­i­na­tion to envi­sion real pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als from those early sam­ples,” says Lamp. “But that was when I start­ed to real­ize this could real­ly attract people’s attention.”

While still a doc­tor­al can­di­date, she prompt­ly entered her idea and first project sam­ples in the “ActOn­Plas­tic” chal­lenge from Project Togeth­er, a Berlin-based incu­ba­tor. There she met her co-founder Johan­na Baare. “The chal­lenge was to bring togeth­er 100 ideas to solve the glob­al plas­tic prob­lem,” says Lamp. “Mine was one of them. Every­one with an idea was assigned a men­tor from busi­ness, and I was matched with Johan­na.” The two women held vir­tu­al meet­ings for half a year on Zoom, refin­ing the idea into an actu­al busi­ness model. Two and a half years later, when Lamp took the plunge to launch a busi­ness, she was clear about one thing: “I can’t do this alone, I need Johan­na at my side.” While Lamp brings the tech­ni­cal exper­tise, Baare is respon­si­ble for busi­ness mat­ters. “What makes us such a strong founder team is that we com­ple­ment each other so well in our respec­tive areas of exper­tise,” says Baare, who was born in 1988 and earned degrees in psy­chol­o­gy and busi­ness administration.

What truly unites the two young entre­pre­neurs is the goal on which they res­olute­ly base all their busi­ness deci­sions. “Our mis­sion is for our prod­uct to make a real impact,” says Lamp. “We want Trace­less to replace as many plas­tic prod­ucts as pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly those that could end up in the envi­ron­ment or for which we don’t have the right recy­cling tech­niques.” Trace­less has a wide range of poten­tial appli­ca­tions. The gran­u­late can be used to make wraps and coat­ings as well as alter­na­tives to hard plas­tics. Pack­ag­ing and sin­gle-use prod­ucts are high on the agen­da as well. Prod­ucts like straws, ice cream spoons, fruit and veg­etable con­tain­ers, and e‑commerce pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als could all be replaced by Trace­less in the future. In order to clear­ly dis­tin­guish these end prod­ucts from their con­ven­tion­al plas­tic coun­ter­parts, each will be stamped with the Trace­less logo.

In con­junc­tion with sev­er­al part­ners, includ­ing the Otto Group and Lufthansa AG, a 22-mem­ber team is work­ing inten­sive­ly on the first pilot prod­ucts. Plans call for Otto to already start test­ing Trace­less ship­ping mate­ri­als in 2022. And Lufthansa, Germany’s largest air­lines, is ready to use the first pro­to­types for its onboard pack­ag­ing. Fur­ther steps are need­ed, how­ev­er, before pro­duc­tion can begin on an indus­tri­al scale. The gran­u­late is cur­rent­ly being made in small batch sizes at the first pilot plant in Buch­holz. “Com­pared to the vol­umes we used to make at the lab, that’s already quite a lot for us,” says Baare. “But it’s essen­tial­ly noth­ing for the plas­tics indus­try so we real­ly have to scale it up. That’s our great­est chal­lenge, but it’s also a major incen­tive to ramp up our mate­r­i­al pro­duc­tion as fast as pos­si­ble because there’s clear­ly a high level of demand.” The team is prepar­ing to start up a larg­er plant in 2024, in order to pro­duce on a mass scale and be capa­ble of replac­ing entire prod­uct lines with nat­ur­al mate­ri­als in the near future.