With climate change threatening to doom our lives forever, more and more people are resorting to producing and purchasing products that not only does less harm to the environment, but also help make it better.
Based in Cebu, Philippines, Eco Hub is one of the contributors to eco-friendly lifestyle. They have become a recent social media sensation for their plantable pencils – which grows into actual plants once they are too short for use.
At a glance, these innovative writing tools look exactly like ordinary pencils. The key attraction is at the tail end.
What might seem like an eraser is actually a ‘gelatin capsule’ that houses different types of seeds of plants.
The pencil in itself is made of sustainable wood, clay, graphite and non-GMO seeds. You can read the labeling on the pencils and will come across mint, silk, tomato, citronella, basil, carrot and the list goes on. These are indicators of what plants the seeds will later grow into.
Eco Hub writes on its post that this gives it ‘a new lease on life’.
“Instead of being thrown away, the plantable pencil becomes a symbol of sustainability”, they added. They can grow as fast as five to ten days once planted and watered regularly.
If you think this is a new venture, well it is not.
A company called Sprout has been marketing plantable pencils across regions including Europe, Canada and USA. They are the collaborative brainchild of three MIT students and a Danish entrepreneur.
The project was initiated in 2012 and was aimed to produce pencils that grown into herbs, vegetables and plants. After receiving funds from an entrepreneurship campaign, the company was launched in 2013 and has been in operation since.
It is indeed heartwarming to see such efforts being made into actual products that strive to provide a sustainable environment for the future.
Credit: CNN
