In place of plastic: Lankan entrepreneur makes strides on global stage
Insiya Jafferjee
They are the ‘Climate Champions’ standing tall and firm in Earth’s race against global warming and its destruction.
Picked from across the globe to be on ‘The Independent Climate 100 List 2025’, it is “a recognition of the people and companies dedicated to finding positive climate solutions”.
Some have made a splash recently with a notable contribution to the fight, while others are celebrated for their long-term commitment and contribution, states the British online newspaper about its second edition of the world’s leading environmentalists.
Among the campaigners, change makers and innovators drawn from wide and varied fields stands 34-year-old Insiya Jafferjee, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ‘Shellworks’, with her roots strongly embedded in Sri Lanka.
The Independent’s coverage encompasses Arts & Fashion; Activists; Business & Finance; Entertainment, Royalty & Sport; Food & Agriculture; NGOs, Non-Profits & Philanthropists; Politics & Government; Reader’s Choice; Scientists & Academics and Tech & Entrepreneurs.
……And Insiya takes her place among giants such as billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg; philanthropist and founder of Microsoft Bill Gates; Tesla and Space X tycoon Elon Musk; conservation giants Sir David Attenborough & Dr. Jane Goodall; royalty King Charles III & Prince William; activist Greta Thunberg; and movie stars Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo & Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The list also includes – Pope Leo XIV; United Nations Secretary General António Guterres; Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney; Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum; Ireland’s first female President Mary Robinson who served in the 1990s; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen; and Founder of Britain’s largest energy supplier (a major part from renewable energy), Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson.
With Insiya securing a place in the ‘Tech & Entrepreneurs’ category, the newspaper states: “Making a material that would last forever has undoubtedly come back to bite us with plastic and now decades have been spent looking for an alternative.
“Insiya Jafferjee’s Shellworks company turns bacteria into Vivomer, a biodegradable material that behaves like plastic but is fully compostable and doesn’t create microplastics when it breaks down.
“Shellworks say that since its creation in 2019, Vivomer has replaced 40 tonnes of plastic and 1.2 million units of packaging. Jafferjee’s ambition is to fully replace all petroleum-based packaging.”
Vivomer, a natural and compostable polymer in the making
For remarkable Insiya, this is not the first laurel bestowed on her – in April 2025, she also won the ‘Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award’ in London, United Kingdom (UK), which celebrates “audacious women redefining success” and honours trailblazing entrepreneurs shaping industries, breaking barriers and inspiring change.
Reports state that Veuve Clicquot’s Bold Woman Award, now in its 53rd year, has stood as a beacon of female entrepreneurial excellence.
Insiya’s strong suits had been the STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics) subjects of Mathematics and Physics, most tended to shy away from. Living in Colombo and studying at the Asian International School (AIS), outside of the classroom her interests had ranged from badminton to theatre.
With a sincere apology for the delayed response to our request for an email interview because her company had a very intense lead up to the New Year, Insiya, the daughter of Nisrin and Turab Jafferjee, says she sat the Advanced Level at AIS, followed by Stanford University in the United States of America. This is where she studied a “unique” combination of Mechanical Engineering and Anthropology.
“This mix allowed me to understand both how things are built and how humans interact with them. Before starting Shellworks, I built a career in high-stakes manufacturing and operations,” she says, elaborating that she worked at Bose (known for audio equipment) and Ford (the automotive giant), but perhaps her most defining corporate role was at Apple (a multinational technology company), where she was part of the operations team that launched the Apple Watch.
Seeing manufacturing at that scale was incredible, but it also opened her eyes to the sheer volume of material moved through and the urgent need for better alternatives.
Later Insiya crossed the seas to the UK to complete a Master’s at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.
Humble were the beginnings of Shellworks in 2019. It was a student project during Insiya’s Master’s. “My co-founder, Amir Afshar, and I originally started by experimenting with polymers found in shellfish waste (chitin), which is where the company’s name comes from,” she says.
Eventually, the duo pivoted to a more scalable, vegan microbial process. Today, Shellworks based in London has a dedicated team of 30 scientists and designers.
On why Shellworks chose the beauty industry, Insiya says it is because this sector is a massive contributor to plastic waste; small, complex beauty containers are rarely recycled and they saw a major opportunity to provide a truly “circular” solution there.
For Insiya, winning the Veuve Clicquot’s Bold Woman Future Award in 2025 was a “significant” milestone. “Personally, it was a wonderful validation of the hard work our team has put in. For the company, it provided a prestigious platform to show that sustainable packaging isn’t just a ‘green’ choice, it’s a sophisticated, ‘bold’ business choice for the future of luxury and retail.”
Being named in the Independent Climate 100 List 2025 alongside powerful global voices, meanwhile, had been incredibly humbling. It was a testament that the company’s mission, moving the world away from petroleum-based plastics, was being recognized as a critical piece of the global climate puzzle.
When asked how Insiya ‘balances’ her work-leisure life, she says that she is focused on staying balanced – travelling and exploring new cultures when she can get away from the lab.
For Shellworks, Insiya sees the future as being about scale. “We want to move beyond being a ‘sustainable alternative’ to industry standard. We are working on expanding our production so that one day, compostable packaging is the norm, not the exception,” she adds.
Truly, an entrepreneur that Sri Lanka can be proud of!
| Leading brands using Shellworks packaging | |
| It was ‘Vivomer’ that paved Insiya Jafferjee’s path to fame.Giving a simple explanation about her company’s product, Insiya says that Vivomer is a material made by microbes. “We use a fermentation process (think of it like brewing beer, but for materials), where microbes produce a natural polymer. How it works: Because it is a natural material, other microbes in the soil or a home compost bin recognize it as food. They eat it and it disappears completely without leaving microplastics behind.”The biggest challenge for Shellworks, however, is with industry giants – proving that a “grown” material can be as durable and beautiful as plastic.Their perseverance has paid off and their product has been recognized and taken on board by trailblazing brands like ‘Abel Fragrances’ based in New Zealand; ‘Eclo’, a make-up brand in France; and ‘Wildsmith Skin’, a skincare company in England, which use Shellworks’ packaging for their products. A bigger name which has given the nod to the Shellworks’ product is UK-based ‘Wild Cosmetics’, Unilever’s latest acquisition.
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