She says her Enivo Pots business has already had to work around a few setbacks. Harley tells us how her interest developed and how she plans to tackle the eye-popping amounts of waste the industry produces.

In 2019, I grew some succulents to fundraise for a gymnastics competition. Around this time my family would often go on native bush walks in Wellington. This grew my appreciation for our native plants and birds.

So, after successfully selling succulents, I tried to grow some native plants. I was not successful that time but an uncle put me in touch with Coastlands Nursery in Whakatāne, which gave me some native kākābeak seeds.

All 300 of them survived and I was able to sell them and tell the story of one of New Zealand’s most endangered native plants.

Firstly, to find we use 350 million individual plastic pots and planters every year. I couldn’t help but think about what this number would look like globally considering this was the number just for our little country.

Secondly, a large chunk of these plastic pots will have just a single use before finding themselves in the landfill, or worse getting burned.

It seemed crazy that something so good as planting more trees could in fact be negatively impacting the environment through plastic waste - surely there must be a better way.

The idea of Enivo Pots came to be in 2022. I knew it was something I wanted to develop further. Then in 2023 the Wellington regional co-ordinator for the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) came into my school.

YES is a nationwide competition for high school students to create real-life businesses. So I had this idea of biodegradable plant pots, and now had the opportunity to get mentorship through the YES programme. So I founded Enivo Pots.

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