Insiya Jafferjee, Co-Founder, Shellworks

Tell us about your company and what inspired you to start it?

Shellworks is on a mission to make plastic waste a thing of the past. We design and manufacture petroleum-free, compostable packaging that performs like plastic but is created in partnership with nature. Our flagship material, Vivomer, is grown by microorganisms and can naturally break down in any environment whether that’s soil, home compost, or even the ocean leaving no trace behind.

The inspiration for Shellworks came from my own journey. After working in tech at places like Apple and Bose, I felt a growing pull to use my skills for something more meaningful. While studying in London, my co-founder and I began experimenting with waste streams, initially extracting biopolymers from shellfish shells. What started as a student project quickly grew into something bigger, because we realized the potential to address one of the world’s most urgent problems: plastic pollution.

For me, it wasn’t just about inventing a new material it was about rethinking our relationship with packaging altogether. I was driven by the conviction that sustainable choice shouldn’t mean compromise. By combining engineering, design, and biology, Shellworks became a way to align my technical expertise with a mission that deeply matters: creating solutions that work for people, brands, and the planet.

How specifically does it relate to sustainable design, production and/or consumption?

Shellworks was founded to tackle one of the world’s most urgent problems: plastic waste. Sustainability is embedded in everything we do: we design with circularity in mind, produce without fossil fuels through biological processes, and make it effortless for consumers to dispose of packaging responsibly. By rethinking materials at every stage from design to production to end-of-life we’re proving that the sustainable choice can also be the most practical, beautiful, and scalable.

What community or customer behaviours are you hoping to create or reinforce? 

At Shellworks, we want to encourage a shift in both community and customer behaviour towards effortless sustainability. That means fostering habits where choosing sustainable packaging isn’t seen as an extra step or sacrifice, but the intuitive and natural choice. We hope to empower consumers to feel confident that the materials they use will safely return to nature, no matter where they’re disposed of. Beyond individual action, we’re also aiming to build a community of conscious brands and consumers who recognize that design, production, and consumption can work hand-in-hand with the planet, rather than against it.

What is one of the most helpful or enlightening lessons you’ve learned along the way?

One of the most enlightening lessons I’ve learned along the way is that progress often comes through iteration and resilience rather than perfection. In the early days, we faced setbacks from materials that didn’t scale to manufacturing mishaps that destroyed entire product runs and those moments could have felt like failures. But each challenge forced us to adapt, pivot, and refine our approach. I’ve learned that building something truly innovative means embracing experimentation, listening closely to feedback, and staying open to change. That mindset not only shaped Shellworks’ evolution but also reinforced for me that persistence, humility, and flexibility are just as important as vision when tackling complex problems.

What’s the biggest problem you’re currently trying to solve?

The biggest problem we’re currently trying to solve is how to make sustainable packaging the default at scale. It’s not enough to create a material that composts beautifully in the lab. We have to ensure it can be manufactured at industrial volumes, meet the performance and aesthetic standards brands expect, and remain cost competitive with plastics that have benefited from decades of subsidies and infrastructure. That balance between innovation, scalability, and accessibility is the real challenge. Our focus now is proving that materials like Vivomer can move beyond niche applications and truly replace plastic in mainstream markets, so that sustainability isn’t a premium choice but the baseline.

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