The story behind the paper powering Tapp: ‘Why cut down trees if we don't have to?’

Where it all started

After spending more than ten years working at a wholesaler, Peter van Rosmalen, founder of PaperWise, became increasingly interested in sustainability. Around that same time, his granddaughters asked him a question he could not shake off: “Grandpa, if you use everything up, what will be left for us?” “At first, I laughed it off,” Peter says. “I told them not to ask such difficult questions. But it stayed with me.” 

It was the catalyst for a journey into the world of paper production. In India and China, Peter saw enormous amounts of agricultural waste being burned after harvest. “I saw agricultural waste simply being turned into smoke while it contained perfectly usable fibres,” Peter says. “I kept thinking: if I can change even a small part of this system, shouldn’t I try?”

Turning plant residue into paper

The logic behind PaperWise is simple: valuable raw materials should not go to waste. Every year, crops like sugarcane, wheat, and rice leave behind massive amounts of stems and leaves. “People forget that only 20% of a plant is food. The other 80% is agricultural residue,” Peter explains. “We give those leftover fibres a second life.” 

By extracting cellulose from these byproducts, PaperWise creates high-quality paper and cardboard without cutting down a single tree.The result is a secondary raw material that becomes available every single year, with a significantly lower environmental impact than traditional virgin wood pulp.

From agricultural waste to smart electronics

When Tapp founder Niels Postma, who has deep roots in the printing industry, started looking for a way to ditch plastic housings, the collaboration with PaperWise was a no-brainer.

“Niels asked a question nobody had really asked us before: ‘Can you print electronics onto paper?’” Peter recalls. It was new territory for both companies. They spent months sending materials back and forth, testing how conductive inks interacted with agricultural fibres. The goal was clear: strip the datalogger back to its essentials. No plastic, no bulky batteries, no unnecessary hardware. Just a smart, paper-based label.

Solving the 65-million-tonne problem

In 2025, the world generated an estimated 65 million tonnes of e-waste. Traditional dataloggers contribute to this pile with their plastic shells and disposable circuitry. Tapp flips the script by using the smartphone people already carry as the interface for reading and sharing shipment data.

By integrating the electronic components into PaperWise material, Tapp has created a logger that travels like a document but performs like a high-tech sensor. “Tapp fits our philosophy perfectly,” Peter says. “They aren’t just trying to be ‘a bit more sustainable.’ They are proving that the entire system can be built differently.”

According to Peter, the collaboration still feels special. “We work with large international companies as well,” he says. “But Tapp fits us particularly well because they genuinely build their story around the same philosophy. We are both trying to prove that things can be done differently.”

Building differently

Peter knows changing industries takes time. PaperWise spent years being told the idea would never work. Tapp faces similar challenges in logistics today. But neither company was built to follow the existing system. 

For both Tapp and PaperWise, the mission remains the same: rethinking the materials and assumptions that the logistics industry has accepted for decades. Or, as Peter puts it: “If the raw materials for a better future already exist, why keep cutting down trees?”conditions, the conclusion is clear: “Monitoring should be simple. And it should give you answers.”