Karsten Hirsch

Karsten graduated from law-school in Germany in 2018 and went on a holiday trip to Vietnam with two friends. They witnessed the plastic pollution of the Mekong and decided to found the first company to tackle ocean plastic pollution already in rivers. Karsten is Co-Founder and CEO of the social enterprise and grew Plastic Fischer from a rough idea to an internationally recognized organisation that is probably the most efficient company in the world when it comes to ocean plastic pollution prevention. The startup collected more than 300 tons of River Plastic in less than a year time and created local jobs for underserved communities in the emerging market.

Plastic Fischer developed an extremely scalable model to stop plastic in rivers in developing countries. The simple technology can be built in place of operation and the operations are carried out by local people from underprivileged communities that are employed by Plastic Fischer on full-time basis. We are able to successfully set up new projects, employ +60 people in India and Indonesia and collect +300 metric tons of plastic in less than 2 years – remotely. We have a strong focus on India, but our projects can be implemented anywhere in the world within short time and at low-cost while having an holistic social and environmental impact.