Gn the beginning, back in 2005, there was the biogas plant. Then, two years later, a small factory was added. The then five employees of the company Biowert in the Hessian Odenwald produced insulating materials from grass, with which houses can be insulated. The grass manure produced in the production process drove the biogas plant, the heat produced was used to manufacture the insulation material, and the electricity was fed into the grid. An almost perfect cycle.
“We were ten years too early with that,” says Vera Schwinn today, fifteen years later. The management assistant can still remember the early days well. “Back then, acceptance wasn’t particularly high. We weren’t believed that it would work.” But Biowert has stuck with it, with 14 employees today, the company still has a “start-up character”, as managing director Jens Meyer zu Drewer says, but the idea of the Odenwald is becoming popular seen in a different light. Biowert no longer manufactures insulating materials. The company’s product today is granulate, which usually consists of around forty percent grass fibers and sixty percent recycled plastic – and which can be processed into a large number of products.
