Say Goodbye to Wooden Pencil Stubs

When you have worn out a wooden pencil to a stub, you normally throw it away, but a company has found a way to recycle the stubs and make them useful and healthful. Does it make sense? For this company, it does, and they have the numbers to prove it.

Eco-friendly startup

Sprout World, a company in Denmark wants to minimize waste. Michael Stausholm, the company’s CEO said that the United States produces three million pencils outside of the 15 billion produced worldwide annually. This means that a lot of pencil stubs are thrown into the trash each year. In wanting to shrink wastage, the startup company introduced the plantable pencils, which could sprout flowering plants, herbs or vegetables.

The Denmark-based company orders their wooden pencils made of cedar from Pine City, Minnesota and Stausholm said that their pencils become a very sustainable product that brings life to a new one out of a dying one. Sprout World’s pencils replace the end where the eraser used to be with a biodegradable capsule that contains peat and a small amount of seeds. When the pencil is worn down, you plant the capsule part in the soil and the stub end of the pencil becomes the marker. As the capsule dissolves, it releases its contents.

The plantable pencil

The concept for the plantable pencils was developed in 2012 by three MIT students. Stausholm said that he was working with several sustainable companies in Denmark at that time. It was difficult for consumers to visualize sustainability without something to look at and he was searching for a product that could effectively illustrate how sustainability works. He found Sprout Pencils, which at that time was only a Kickstarter campaign and he fell in love with the idea because he believed that it was the perfect example to explain sustainability.

He was able to partner with the MIT students and they allowed him to market the product in Denmark. In 2013 they were able to sell 70,000 pencils and by 2014, the startup company sold a million pencils in Europe. In that same year, the rights and patents to the brand were acquired by Stausholm and Sprout World was born. He then became its CEO.

There are 14 varieties of plantable pencils available, with the seed content stamped on the pencil’s barrel. Some of the varieties include green pepper, sunflower, basil, lavender, sage and cherry tomato.

Future plans

Sprout World plans to bring the pencils to the U.S. market, considering that the creators of the pencils and the manufacturers are from the United States. He had already opened an office in Boston that is manned by two employees. He is currently crunching numbers to bring the price down because he wants more people to use Sprout pencils. They are already developing new products, including colored pencils and plantable greeting cards that would be available in January.

Image credit: Sprout World