Sprout World has made a pencil that you can plant after use, combating disposable culture. It is the world’s first fully sustainable pencil, and it’s made possible by replacing the usual eraser on the top of the pencil with a seed capsule. The pencils were a concept by MIT students, in partnership with Michael Stausholm, CEO of Sprout World. Via CNN:
“At the time, I was living in Denmark and working a lot with sustainable companies,” he said. “But sustainability is hard to illustrate to consumers. I was searching for a product that could easily do that.”
A year later, he came across Sprout Pencils when it was a Kickstarter campaign.
“I loved the idea. It was a perfect way to explain what sustainability is all about,” said Stausholm.
Stausholm partnered with the students and convinced them to let him sell the pencils in Denmark. “We sold 70,000 pencils in the spring of 2013. We realized there was definitely demand for them,” he said.By 2014, the startup had sold a million pencils across Europe.
Later that year, Stausholm acquired the patents and rights to the brand and became Sprout World’s CEO.
He said Sprout World now sells an average of 450,000 pencils a month and has logged more than $3 million in revenue.
The Sprout Pencil can be bought here.