Planting change, one pot at a time

Kiwis are clean, green and love planting trees. However, there is an unacknowledged dark side to the nursery industry. Each year 350 million plastic plant pots are used in Aotearoa. These are fragile, and hard to dispose of - an issue 19-year-old Elisa Harley has been working to solve for the past three years.

After selling native plants in lockdown, Harley noticed there were left-over pots and came up with a solution.    

“All these plant pots that I had lying around at home, all this forestry trash we were driving by on our road trips in the school holidays, we could merge the two and see if we can make use of this natural material in New Zealand to create a biodegradable product.”

She started investigating how to manufacture biodegradable pots sustainably in Aotearoa. This came with challenges.   

“I was young and inexperienced.  

"School didn't teach me how to do business, and I didn't know much about the industry but very early on, I just kept asking questions, getting connected to the right people, scientists, industry experts, nurseries who all came together and supported me and helped me with those things I didn't know.”

Three years later she now has a business, Enivo Pots, creating biodegradable plant pots made from New Zealand forestry slash. She says manufacturing her pots in New Zealand was important but meant she had to alter design plans to fit what manufacturers were capable of. Four prototypes later, the pots are now being trialled at Nova Natives nursery.  

“The pots are holding up really beautifully. The plants are looking wonderful. It's just so exciting to hold up a native plant in an Enivo pot knowing that had we not created this business, it would be in a plastic pot.” 

Nova Nursery Manager Jake Linklater says the pots are holding up well. He says the major downside of the nursery industry is plastic waste. "I hate throwing the plastic pots out, I'll often make others throw them out instead of doing it myself." He says the Enivo pot is a great step towards solving plastic waste in the nursery industry.

The positive feedback has further encouraged her enthusiasm for the pilot trial taking place from December.   

“I'm looking to get our molds finished being made and get a pilot group of plant pots that we will distribute to a set group of nurseries across the country.

"We'll monitor for a 6 to 9 month trial before we start to go commercial and hopefully get into some retail stores as well."

Her innovation is drawing international attention. In October, she travelled to Dubai to speak at a convention - one of the many she has been invited to over the past few years. These talks and her hard work have piqued interest in her product overseas.  

“We are already getting quite a lot of interest from countries overseas, but initially we're starting with the beautiful raw materials we have in New Zealand, seeing how we can make that applicable to our biodegradable plant pots.” 

Her ideas don't end with just pots. For Harley, the sky’s the limit.  

“By nature, I'm a big ideas person, so I have lots of other ideas I'm hoping to be able to start and bring these solutions to the world.  

"But at the moment, these plant pots have my heart. I really see that there's a problem which now could have a solution.” She encourages others to explore their ideas and to ask for help to achieve their goals, as you never know what is possible.