Picture this: After using your pencil down to the nub, instead of throwing it out, you plant it — and watch flowers bloom.
Three MIT students dreamed up the idea of plantable pencils during a design course in 2012 and decided to make the company a reality. Now, SproutWorld, which has its American office in Boston, has sold over 50 million of the sustainable pencils.
The wooden pencils have a capsule made from biodegradable material that contains seeds instead of the typical eraser. You plant the capsule in a pot of soil and it dissolves. Then, the seeds grow into a plant. The company offers pencils that bloom into flowers, herbs, vegetables — even trees.
In 2021, the company extended beyond pencils to include makeup liners that grow into wildflowers when you plant the stub.
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The three MIT students, Mario Bollini, Lauren West and Benjamin Judge, turned to Kickstarter for funding. Their campaign attracted the attention of entrepreneur Michael Stausholm. He was immediately drawn to the sustainability aspect of the company and decided to invest.
“I thought it was a great way of illustrating what sustainability is all about. Instead of using something and throwing it away, you plant it so it can be used for its original purpose,” Stausholm, co-founder and CEO of SproutWorld, said this week.
In 2013, Stausholm and the students started selling the product in Europe. They sold over 70,000 pencils in Denmark in the spring of 2013, according to Stausholm. By 2014, the startup had sold a million pencils across Europe.
Later that year, Stausholm acquired all the rights from the students for the company, and Bollini, West and Judge moved on to other projects. Today, the plantable writing pencils, along with the makeup pencils, have been sold in over 80 countries.
Because the idea that would become SproutWorld first took root at MIT, Stausholm felt that Boston would be the perfect site for the company's American office, which is now located at 177 Huntington Ave.
Stausholm said that “local production is very important to the company.” For its Europe sales, the company does all of its production and sourcing of materials within the continent. For the U.S. operation, manufacturing takes place in Minnesota.
SproutWorld has continued to experience double-digit growth year over year since its inception, according to Stausholm. In 2021, revenue was $6 million, and is projected to reach $8.5 million by the end of 2022. The CEO said revenue expectations for 2023 is $10 million, an expected growth of nearly 20%.
SproutWorld is a certified B corporation of about 35 employees. Most employees are in Europe, with about 10% located in the US, according to Stausholm.
— Meera Raman is an ACBJ reporting intern.
