The average person is said to have more than 30 plastic plant pots sitting around their homes.
But if Millie Gallacher, 17, has her way, the Sunshine Coast will soon lead the charge to a better way.
The seeds of change have been planted and she is now seeking help, to get them to grow.
Millie, a senior student at Unity College, has started her own start-up business creating bio-degradable pot plant sacks that are made from locally sourced materials.
Millie and her family moved to Australia a few years ago from the United Kingdom, but she grew up in Malaysia.
Not long after relocating to Australia, Millie and her family moved into a new house at Little Mountain and she was tasked with replanting plants from their plastic pots.
As she gently moved plants to new homes and with her fingers in the soil, she realised how time consuming and wasteful plastic pot usage was.
That’s when her idea struck.
“I got the ‘ah-ha!’ moment to put them in bags that don’t need to be swapped out,” she said.
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Already experienced at making clothing and bags for her family and friends, Millie took on the challenge of making patterns suitable for her venture.
She realised she needed to also grow her business knowledge and started the process of testing the most efficient ways to make and market her bio-degradable planter bag.
Once her design and products were developed, she entered the Generation Innovation competition, hoping to gain valuable business knowledge specifically pitched at young entrepreneurs. It also helped her gain better connections to people on the Sunshine Coast.
“I came over here a few years ago with my family so we don’t really have that big connection base over here,” she said.
“So, for me trying to start up a business is really challenging, to get into contact with my market that I still felt fairly alienated from.”
Millie hopes the GI experience would give her the opportunity to really grow her local audience and connect to them.
And of course, she wants to see her biodegradable planted bag idea will take off for the betterment of the environment. The key was to develop a model that was just as cost effective as plastic pots.
Lillie Hull is a USC journalist student.
