Pulpa-
tronics

Chloe So & Barna Soma Biro

PulpaTronics is developing fully recyclable RFID tags made from paper – to replace metal antennas that are typically hidden in price tags, hotel key cards, and packaging labels. Laser technology converts carbon in paper into a conductive material that can simply be recycled with regular paper waste after use, reducing CO2 footprint by 60%.

Though largely invisible to consumers, RFID technology is everywhere. Around 18 billion single-use RFID tags are produced globally each year, and that number doubles every two to three years—making it the fastest-growing waste stream in Europe.

Traditional “smart” labels rely on metals that require mining and polluting industrial processes, only to end up as waste after a short lifetime.
We spoke with founders Chloe and Soma two years after launching their London-based company. We discuss arts and science, their ambition to do more with fewer materials, and their journey from lab experiments to pilot projects with major UK retailers.

Text: Lonneke Craemers, Photography: Blickfänger & Pulpatronics

Hi Chloe and Soma, congratulations on your spot on the Secrid Talent Podium! Let's start at the beginning of your journey. Where did you grow up?

Soma: Originally, I am from Budapest, Hungary. My parents are medical doctors, as is my older brother. And my father also launched his own company. I think both were inspirational for me. I'm also really into science and running a company now.

As a kid I loved the living environment. Any kind of animals and plants would fascinate me. I was into visual arts as well, just making and crafting things by hand, but I chose to study biology.

Chloe: I spent my first 13 years in Hong Kong and then moved to the US. I was a middle child. My older sister was always my role model. With her I could be the naughty, sort of wacky younger sibling. But at the same time, I was an older sister to my younger brother. So, I had to balance between being a bit crazy with also being a good example.

My parents are both working professionals, but value creativity. My dad loves urban design and glass blowing. And then my mom loves music, singing and Chinese painting. Like them, and like Soma, I also did a lot of painting and sketching growing up.

How did a passion for arts and science bring the two of you together in design?

Chloe: I really wanted to do something tangible for the community and make my mark. Visual art does that in its own way, but I was more interested in consumer goods and building products that contribute to society.

I remember in high school I recreated a 2D painting of high heels by Wayne Thiebaud into a 3D piece of art, which was in a form of a high heel. That’s when I realized: 'Oh wow, I'm using math skills to bring this to life.’ I decided to study engineering with an industrial product lens and then got into consumer psychology and design aesthetics. That is how I landed in the design world.

Soma: With my academic research, I also felt a gap between what people are discovering and learning, and what actually gets implemented in the real world. The results were always about gathering theoretical knowledge for understanding the world. I missed how that manifests and how you could build things that make a difference.

That’s why I joined a dual master's program, called Innovation Design Engineering, where Chloe and I met. It’s an interdisciplinary course that is taught jointly by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. People from various backgrounds come together to solve real-world challenges. This is where PulpaTronics really came from.

We want to reduce the use of resources instead of adding them.

You want to manifest scientific discoveries into the real world. What sparked the start of PulpaTronics?

Soma: Both of us were determined to be planet-centric from day one. We wanted to reduce the use of our planet’s resources instead of extracting more to add them to products. Whatever we are designing, we want it to be as sustainable as possible and potentially even more circular than existing alternatives.

We doubled down on that to realize: ‘This is something that is strong and impactful enough to go to market with’.

Our journey began with just curiosity. We read a lot of research papers and quickly identified global e-waste as a massive and growing problem. Then we found out about this laser technology that can yield conductive material and make electrical circuits from just paper without adding anything!

Chloe: In our design process, we focused on e-waste issues and found that replacing metal antennas in traditional RFID tags was the perfect use case. We realized that RFID technology is going to continually increase in the market and that the single-use element of it is just so out there and horrifying, because it's so massive.

You aim to reduce global e-waste. Can you explain what an RFID tag is?

Chloe: Even though most people don’t know or see it, smart identification is all around us. An RFID tag is a tiny device that helps businesses to keep track of things, like packages or product inventory. When you buy something and put it in those magical scanning bins at checkout, that's RFID technology working.

Soma: The technology is widely adopted in commerce, transportation, and logistics. In retail, you can find RFID tags embedded in clothing price tags to help with store management, theft prevention, and self-checkout. Other examples are credit cards, transport tickets, hotel keycards, and festival wristbands.

What are the main issues with disposable RFID tags?

Soma: There's growing demand for product traceability and smart inventory management solutions, but this also means that there's a huge amount of e-waste generated from it. The numbers are staggering. 18 billion RFID tags are produced globally every year, and production doubles every two to three years.

Chloe: The problem is the lifecycle. In traditional RFID tags, metal antennas get sandwiched between two layers and then attached to a product. That requires mining, chemical etching with harmful substances, complex manufacturing processes, and global shipping.

You go through all of that, extracting metals from our beautiful planet with a very high environmental footprint, only to have them go back to the earth as polluting waste after a very short lifespan. Once you buy the product, you cut off the tag and throw it away. You probably don't even know it was there. It's really just a swing tag with great functionality for business efficiency, but the lifespan is so short. That just doesn't make sense.

Can you explain why your laser technology is so revolutionary?

Soma: Inside each RFID tag are two main parts: a microchip and an antenna. The microchip stores a unique identification number. The tag is actually a super simple electronic circuit that is powered by radio waves through antennas.

When an RFID reader – a scanner – sends out a strong radio signal, the antenna catches it and then turns it into a tiny bit of electricity. That little bit of energy wakes up the microchip just long enough to send a message back to the reader, like: ‘I’m a red T-shirt, size small.’

Chloe: We create RFID tags entirely from paper. Instead of using a metal antenna, we are turning paper into an antenna. No mining, no chemical etching, no complex supply chains. Our solution reduces CO2 emissions by 60%, and the tags can be recycled through regular paper streams.

We are simplifying over-engineered technology from a nature perspective.

How does lasering turn paper into an antenna?

Soma: It's a combination of various technologies. The magic happens at the molecular level. We first develop a substrate material, typically paper. Paper naturally contains carbon because it’s made from plant fibers.

Using very specific laser settings, we trigger a chemical reaction inside the paper substrate. We turn the carbon that is naturally present in the paper into a conductive material like graphene or graphite. The shape of this electronic pattern or circuit is what then functions as an antenna.

Chloe: It's similar to drawing with a pencil on paper, but it's not additive. We're not even using ink or printing. We laser-scribe or laser-engrave an electronic circuit onto paper. And it goes beyond just paper. Our technology works on all carbon-rich materials, like wood, cork, cotton, even plant-based bioplastics.

What does your production process look like, and how far are you on that journey?

Soma: We make the paper ourselves, because that way we have control over the exact chemical composition and the microstructure of the paper. We're working with virgin materials now, but our finished paper is fully recyclable. We could work with a very controlled recycling waste stream as well, if we understood exactly what was inside the paper material.

Up to this point, we have been creating initial prototypes, the first iterations of RFID tags. That is through a fully manual process in our workshop in London. We are now at a stage where we are slowly transitioning into semi-automated production to create sheets and sheets of tags. We are looking to deliver on three to four pilots this year these require us to produce them in the thousands.

Chloe: Eventually we want fully automated manufacturing with no manual process required, but that's something we're looking to achieve around next year or later. What is also exciting for us is the idea of licensing our technology. The process is quite simple: we're using a laser. In the future we want to integrate our laser heads into the production line of, say, a packaging company.

What pilot projects are you working on?

Chloe: Our focus is on targeting retailers and packaging companies, but we're trying to tackle various industries to see how our technology works in different applications. We've got big brand names, which means the pressure is on to deliver.

We have one pilot in retail, which is the most standard RFID use case. It’s with a massive grocery chain for their clothing line, looking at inventory management. Then we are also testing more innovative use cases like embedding our technology for connected packaging applications. Some of this packaging work is with a big UK paper company.

Pilot scales range from 1,000 to 5,000 tag tests maximum. Timelines vary from days to months depending on the application. For inventory management, a couple of weeks covers an entire cycle, while hotel key cards might take longer testing periods.

Is your solution economically attractive to your clients?

Chloe: It comes down to our manufacturing process. We're not sourcing metals, not mining, and so on. We see our manufacturing process as simpler, so we're able to bring costs down. We're not at scale yet to validate those price points, but comparing apples to apples, our material cost is already much lower.

Soma: The licensing model offers additional advantages. That way you can create RFID tags on demand at the source of production. That streamlines processes even more and drives the cost down.

That also democratizes our work. We're trying to create more accessibility for more people and industries. RFID technology is great, but only mega corporations can afford it because it's still expensive compared to barcodes.

What are your biggest challenges right now?

Chloe: The next six months’ challenge is finding the right use case and finding the right fit. The longer-term hurdle is more complex. We need to make sure we can produce in a way that fits into existing label production line streams.

We make RFID inlays that get sent to converters, people who turn inlays into end products. That means we need the right formatting, so people can feed it into their automated systems. No one's going to change infrastructure for us.

Soma: We are tackling typical deep tech challenges while bringing something to market that no one has done before. We need to know: what does the machinery look like? How do you scale up? How do you create tags consistently while maintaining IP?

Coming into the market as a disruptive alternative means making sure we are able to navigate our relationship with bigger companies, who've been in the industry for decades. Some of them may not be interested in our cheaper, more sustainable alternatives succeeding.

Those magical scanning bins at checkout, that's RFID working.

To enter the market as a disruptive player, what support would be most valuable to you?

Chloe: We are looking for people who are willing to trial or test our tags. We welcome any commercial partnership. More pilots are always useful. For European expansion, some grants require cross-country partnerships. So, we are also looking to find other startups or small companies interested in co-developing aspects of our product. For example, substrate material, lasering, creating RFID reader machines, or testing performance.

Soma: We invite people that can provide substrate materials, like those in the paper manufacturing, paper pulping industry, bio-based or plant-based materials. We also need packaging manufacturers and label manufacturers who can help with scaling up.

We would like to work with more people focusing on laser technologies, microchips, and alternatives to conventional electronic components. And we could also use help from people with expertise in durability and performance testing to get our product certified.

How do you see PulpaTronics in 10 years?

Chloe: Our bigger vision is to simplify over-engineered technology from a nature perspective. We want to create simpler electronics for single-use e-waste products. The goal is to increase item-level tracking across more industries and preserve more of our world's resources.

Soma: We see potential everywhere. Whatever you can mark with a barcode or QR code, you could potentially mark with an RFID tag. And whatever has an RFID tag, you could replace with our more sustainable version.

Our solution is also very much aligned with the digital product passport initiative, helping companies trace products from source.

Finally, what is the main message you want readers to take away?

Chloe: Single-use e-waste awareness. Electronic waste is everywhere and needs addressing.

Soma: PulpaTronics represents more than just better RFID tags. We're advocating for a fundamental shift in how we approach technology. I think we should question whether all our sophisticated solutions really need to be so complicated, so wasteful, and so disconnected from natural cycles. What we're doing is taking advanced technology and stripping it back to the bare minimum to make sure it's still functional but uses as little resources and energy as possible.

Chloe: What we promote is the concept of substraction. That is not subtraction, it has an extra ‘s’. We aim to add value through removal rather than addition. In today's world, we often still think that more is better. When you're designing things, just add this component and it'll fix the problem. Instead, we are stripping things to make something better.

This can even be a useful reminder for people in daily life.

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