Meet Elisa Harley, founder of Enivo, one of 22 ventures in the Sprout Accelerator Spring26 cohort. We caught up with Elisa for a quick-fire five questions in five minutes about Enivo and what she hopes to get from her time in the Sprout Accelerator.
1. Tell us about Enivo. What are you building?
Enivo is passionate about making products for the planet to help us live, loving the land. Over the past 3.5 years, we have been working to reduce the 350 million plastic plant pots used every year in New Zealand by making biodegradable plant pots locally in New Zealand. Whilst we work to commercialise products for the horticulture industry, we are exploring other industries in which plastic could be replaced by molded fiber products. We all know that we love the land, and Enivo is here to help us live like that.
2. What problem are you working to solve?
Planting trees is one of the best things we can do for our environment, but unfortunately, the way that we plant trees creates millions of tons of plastic every single year. In New Zealand alone, gardeners and nurseries will use up to 350 million plastic plant pots. 95% of these won't be reused, with the pots either going back to nurseries to be bleached and sterilized, all going to landfill, or worse, being buried and burnt on site.
Although plastic is cheapest up front, there are additional costs, more than just the environmental costs, but ones which also add to the complexities of internal processes within a nursery. Planters doing plantouts on site have to pick up every bit of plastic that was brought onto the site and then work out what to do with it. Nurseries within their own sites and operations have to navigate plastic that breaks or gets contaminated, and a product that's being shipped from, often, the other side of the world.
3. How does your solution work?
Enivo uses New Zealand manufacturers to produce biodegradable plant pots from recycled fibre collected from that region. The process is fiberforming, where we take paper waste, pulp it back up, and then use our custom moulds to create our Enivo products. These plant pots have a 6-month potted shelf life with the plant in the pot, and then you can bury the whole plant and pot directly into the soil or into a larger pot. Plant roots can grow through the walls of the pots as well as through our side slits. The pots should then biodegrade in under 12 months.
4. What is the next important milestone for your venture?
We're working on our commercial launch of our first round of plant pots for a pilot trial. Through the Sprout Accelerator, we'll also explore which other industries or products could benefit from being replaced with locally formed pulp products.
5. What are you hoping to get out of your time with Sprout?
We are really excited to create a product that's co-designed with the industry. Sprout will be really helpful in helping us get connected, run a pilot trial with trustworthy results, and also help us develop a strategy on where we want to go with Enivo in the future.
Find out more: www.enivo.co.nz:
Instagram: enivo_nz