TU-start-up traceless wins Deutscher Gründerpreis

Johanna Baare and Dr. Anne Lamp have won not only the prestigious Hamburger Gründerpreis, but also the German Gründerpreis with their company "traceless". Congratulations! The start-up is a spin-off of the TU Hamburg and produces packaging made of bioplastics that dissolves on its own after a short time. In this way, the company makes an important contribution to the fight against packaging waste.

A year ago, we profiled "traceless" in spektrum 02/2021:

Text: Frank Grotelüschen
Photos: Eva Häberle

Enormous amounts of plastic waste are produced worldwide - 90 million tons of which end up somewhere in the environment. A start-up created at the Technical University of Hamburg promises a remedy: It has developed a plastic that can be used in a variety of ways, is fully compostable and thus does not pollute nature.

Fascination with biomolecules

"I was fascinated by these natural molecules," Anne Lamp recalls. "If you bring them together in a certain way, they can show remarkable properties." She soon discovered that the biomolecules, treated in a special way, could be made into a plastic-like material. "During my doctoral work, this was just a side issue," the researcher says. "But later, in discussions with industry, I realized they were very interested in a plastic that was truly sustainable." Although plastic emblazoned with the label "biodegradable" is already available for purchase, it only decomposes under great heat in industrial plants rather than in a common compost pile - and therefore doesn't have the best reputation among the public.

So Lamp delved into the matter, fiddled with the details and kept refining her process. Finally, in 2020, she took a bold step and founded traceless, together with Johanna Baare, a trained economist. "For me, founding a startup meant a bit of a change," says Lamp. "I had to take off my pure science glasses and suddenly think economically as well." Initial financial start-up support came from Hamburg Innovation's "Calls for Transfer" funding program. Since then, several partners have invested a low million amount in the young company.

Completely gone after two months

The traceless team also tested degradability extensively: For example, they put their plastic in an ordinary garden compost pile, along with a conventional plastic bag. "After two months, our material was completely gone, unlike the bag," Lamp says. "That was completely unchanged." But then couldn't the traceless plastic degrade unintentionally, such as when it sits in the pantry for months? "No, it behaves similarly to paper," Lamp answers. "That, after all, only decomposes under conditions that prevail in the wild." Stored dry and protected, it can last for centuries - as countless historical documents prove.

The traceless plastic could be used, for example, to make disposable items that still all too often end up in the environment and whose production the EU has banned since this summer - including drinking straws, lollipop sticks, ice cream spoons and cotton buds. Another application that the start-up is working on is in agriculture: Here, seeds and fertilizer granules are often coated with plastic so that they do not take effect immediately after being spread on the field, but rather after a delay. This is practical for farmers, as they do not have to drive over the fields as often to spread fertilizer and seeds. However, this releases considerable amounts of microplastics into the environment. If fertilizer and seeds were coated with the traceless plastic, the problem would be alleviated - it would volatilize in the soil without leaving a trace.