Sustainable alternatives to non-recyclable packaging

Even the most conscientious consumer can struggle to complete a day without purchasing a product wrapped in plastic. A takeaway sandwich; the thin film round toiletries; even individual broccoli heads are wrapped in it. The planet churns out 141 million tons of plastic packaging annually, which accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s plastic waste.

It’s a problem that is right before our eyes – and one that we all participate in. So, when Claire Hae-Min Gusko, who was working for a Berlin-based startup with Martin Weber, sat down to brainstorm key issues they wanted to tackle, this rose to the top of the list. Demand for sustainable packaging is growing – half of consumers want brands to improve on this front, according to a 2022 survey by Nielsen – and the market for it is set to grow from about $300 to 500 billion by 2030. “Because of our background in consumer goods, working with large retailers round the globe, we felt more drawn to that space,” says Gusko. “And the biggest problem in the consumer goods industry at this time is packaging – packaging pollution.”

In 2020 Gusko and Weber founded one.five, a Hamburg-based startup dedicated to creating sustainable, recyclable alternatives to non-recyclable packaging. Today it offers bespoke solutions to brands, developing AI-powered custom packaging to suit a range of goods. Its flagship products include translucent paper alternatives, which can cut plastic usage by 70 per cent. It also produces mono-material paper packets suitable for food, liquid and non-food products, and high barrier, paper recyclable material for sensitive and longer shelf-life food and non-food products. With about 35 full-time employees spread globally, the company has raised €10.5 million in funding and is raising its Series A round.      

Utilising its rapid lab-to-market pipeline, one.five is able to create bespoke solutions at pace to help it stand out as a company. “Right now, we’re delivering prototypes of real materials into the hands of the customer in about 100 days,” says Gusko. “Then we get feedback from the customer, and then we go into scale-up with the customer’s supply chain.” The process is further expedited thanks to a custom-built AI to generate new material designs while crunching the many variables that impact the cost and viability of packaging in order to quickly assess what will deliver. From conception to launch is about one to two years; and payment is on delivery of materials. 

At first, however, Gusko and Weber needed to understand the problem. “We spoke to a lot of scientists,” says Gusko. “And we saw that there was a huge gap between what research is coming up with and what the market is actually adopting.” She realised there was a “chasm” between the lab scale, validated technologies – such as compostable plastic that can be broken down by bacteria, or eaten by worms – and the reality on the consumer side. One problem is the slow process of converting research into a scalable product; the other is optimising a solution to the specific needs of a customer. “We realised that maybe there’s a way we can systematically reduce this gap,” says Gusko, “to bring more innovations to the market at greater speed, but still address the very critical needs that brands have of packaging – which is that it still needs to perform and be affordable.”

Soon one.five had a research and development team working on exactly that. It included material scientists, chemists and individuals who had worked for some of the world’s biggest packaging producers. It was, as Weber told Sift magazine, “Disneyland for material science”. The first hire was a scientist, but “because our business model is a licensing model”, the second one was a lawyer.     

AI is at the heart of what one.five does, but building the model presented one of its biggest challenges. Packaging is an incredibly technical problem to solve – sustainability is just one of myriad elements to factor in. The question for Gusko was: “where do I get the right data so that my model also gets me the right output?” The answer was its own material science lab in Hamburg where it can test and characterise materials and – crucially – collect primary data to feed into its own engine. It’s one way it differentiates itself from competitors and it has “opened doors” with suppliers and packaging manufacturers that may have otherwise been cautious about collaborating with a disrupter. That’s because while one.five’s AI engine can create recommendations based on primary data, it can also work with manufacturers that are open to running their own data through it and test for different outcomes. “It’s really attractive because the alternative is they have to build this functionality all by themselves,” says Gusko.

Lately one.five has been working with a large European fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) brand. It wanted to shift from a multilayered non-recyclable composite packaging to a mono-material paper packaging better suited for the paper-recycling infrastructure in the regions it sells in. It demonstrates the uniquely local needs of customers – and the way one.five needs to calculate the pros and cons of different materials within different regions.

And as one.five continues its work, the speed at which it can deliver grows exponentially faster. As each new product matures, it is able to piggyback off the research to adapt it for others, speeding up the process. To date, it has two anchor customers. Both of these, Gusko points out, are in the top 10 largest FMCG brands. Of course, she adds, they want to do more. The company’s hit list includes the biggest emitting consumer goods brands in the world. “Our goal by 2040 is to save 80 million tons of CO2 annually. That’s the North Star.”