Treeless pack is an innovative alternative of packaging material based on microorganisms. The start-up saves thousands of trees. Treeless pack, this is Patrycja Kucharczyk and Adam Korczak. How the two PhD candidates in Biomedical Sciences ended up in the packaging industry and how it all started, is what they share in this blog post.

When the corona pandemic begun, we saw people switching towards online shopping even more, which triggered an increased demand for packaging. In parallel, we observed the trend away from plastic towards paper packaging and the associated increase in demand for lumber, while alternatives for scalable and sustainable packaging materials were missing. At the same time, we noticed increased numbers of destructive wildfires due to global warming and elevated levels of greenhouse gasses.

“It was clear to us that we need to protect the forest landscapes which are the lungs of our planet.”

By combining our fields of expertise, in example tissue engineering (a field where we usually aim to develop artificial mammalian tissues and organs) and microbiology, we thought, where in industry one could apply the same concepts but in a different setting and if you think about it, trees are also tissues. But why growing trees, if we can directly produce the derivatives of trees by the use of microorganisms?

There are already packaging materials made from alternative fiber on the market. However, it is only used in 3% of global pulp production. How does your invention differ from the existing treeless products?

It is indeed a growing market and this number is steadily increasing. People now tend to choose more sustainable products and the society makes more responsible choices. Also, the political pressures on companies rise as the UN defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which companies need to embed into their practices.

Other treeless products emerge, however many of them are not scalable, as they only depend on limited resources such as wastes from other production processes. Many bioplastic solutions to be scalable require farmlands or peatlands which are again the cause of deforestation. Each solution is associated with specific disadvantages which limits its use for certain applications. Our material has the advantage that it can be grown really fast, not limited by e.g. waste resources making the approach independent and scalable. Taken together, the emerging alternatives are a positive sign reflecting the need for market diversification.

Building a start-up requires a lot of effort. How do you manage the balancing act between PhD and entrepreneurship?

“We believe successful ventures are not intensive, full-time sprints, but develop over long time.”

The longer you stick to your project, the more validation, emerging ideas and relevant partnerships will be encountered on the way, minimizing the risk of later failure. With strong beliefs in our vision, since approximately one year we are bootstrapping and investing most of our free time to develop the project. Currently, we are both in our PhDs (currently also looking for a third team member to support us from the business perspective), which gives us lots of creative, innovative ideas as well as opportunities, such as access to entrepreneurial societies, coaching programs, cutting-edge technologies and exchange with future pioneers within a common working and prototyping space.

Thank you very much, Patrycja and Adam, and good luck to your future entrepreneurial journey!

Treeless Pack

Patrycja Kucharczyk

Adam Korczak