One.Five: A platform approach to solve the plastic problem and why Revent invested

The Plastic Problem

Every year, 380 million tons of plastics are produced and millions of tons are dumped into our oceans. These plastics break down over time into harmful microplastics that pollute and harm the environment, animals, and human health. We all remember “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” from grade school, but the worst offenders: Single-use plastics, are unable to be recycled.

Quitting plastic is hard

Plastic has fantastic qualities that make it inherently difficult to replace — it’s light, cheap, relatively strong, and extremely versatile. For all these reasons it’s extremely embedded into our daily lives. We use it for food preservation, to insulate our homes, and for everything from electronics, textiles, and everyday consumer products. It’s all around us in different forms and functions. The most pervasive way we see plastics is in the everyday items that we throw out on a daily basis — coffee cups, straws, water bottles, plastic bags, and wrapped produce from the grocery store. These represent a large portion of the plastic thrown away (up to 50%) and thus the most urgent opportunity for us to find alternative solutions.

However, its prevalence and versatility make “quitting” plastic extremely difficult. Specific characteristics (weight, manufacturability, porousness, etc.) are unique in each use case, and plastics are often used with other materials (lined cardboard) which makes finding a drop-in replacement extremely difficult.

One.Five is not the silver bullet. It is the armee of alternative solutions

The team at One.Five have created a platform that identifies state-of-the-art research in bio-materials and brings it from the lab to commercial use to replace plastic and other materials in the packaging industry. Precisely, the founders Claire Hae-Min Gusko and Martin Weber have developed a novel search and allocation technique that can characterize the individual use case of plastics and identify plausible alternatives. They have unique access and insight into technology developed in academia and match this with the needs of commercial buyers. By understanding both sides, they can expedite the commercialization of research leading to a faster global transition from single-use plastics.

At Revent, we don't believe that plastic will be fully replaced by one or two alternative solutions. There are so many different use cases for plastics, that we believe it will take a variety of alternatives to replace plastics. One.Five provides exactly this platform which is required to identify the variety of alternatives and fast-track the commercialization.

The global packaging market today is >1 trillion USD and is expected to hit 1.5 trillion by 2030 and regulation is putting more pressure on the industry to reduce plastic use. In fact, a new EU directive is set to support change to a sustainable and circular economy by banning plastic products completely if there is a more sustainable alternative available. We see this regulatory pressure along with consumer pressure providing tailwinds for increased innovation in materials, all of which will accelerate One.Five towards finding and allocating innovative solutions to some of our biggest hard-to-crack plastic addictions.

Conclusion

Plastic waste is causing immense damage to the environment as well as human health. Bio-based alternatives are available but need to be brought from research institutes to commercialization. One.Five is the platform that expedites research and thereby accelerates the global transition to bio-based plastic alternatives. Due to the gravity and urgency of the problem the company will see tailwinds from regulatory bodies as well as consumers who will put additional pressure on industry players to replace plastic. We believe that Claire, Martin, and the One.Five Team will be the ones supporting the industry in this transition, solving our plastic problem and as a result creating a very valuable company for the planet, society as well as their stakeholders and shareholders.