Yasmin Wessels remembers the crushing embarrassment of walking through the schoolyard with a big bunch of flowers for her teacher.
The daughter of New Zealand tulip bulb and flower growers, she and her brother would bring homegrown bouquets to school for Mother's Day or end-of-year presents.
As she got older, Ms Wessels came to understand the deeper meaning of sharing flowers.
"They are nature's gift to us. They're so beautiful ... and represent the cycle of life," she told AAP.
"It takes a while to grow and bloom and you appreciate them so much because they only last a week or two."
Working with her Dutch-born parents at a flower auction in her final year of high school, Ms Wessels was struck by the sheer scale of plastic waste in the industry.
At 20, she founded The Flower Loop, a business that collects plastic bouquet wraps and sends them to be recycled and re-used.
Her vision has earned her the title of an evokeAg Groundbreaker, a mentoring and leadership program for young innovators in the sector.
Now 24, Ms Wessels' work has diverted more than seven tonnes of plastic - or one million flower sleeves - from landfill.
She hopes to bring the system to Australian flower markets.
"Hopefully it becomes something consumers recognise and ... want to support," Ms Wessels said.
It was her dad who encouraged her to find a solution to plastic waste, which was initially to use paper to wrap their bouquets instead.
But when Ms Wessels realised paper waste created high levels of methane in a landfill's oxygen-free environment, she sought guidance from a recycler in her parents' homeland.
Circular Plastics, a closed-loop operator in the Netherlands, offered her a job, or support to start her own business.
Ms Wessels took the more challenging path of going out on her own.
"It was a perfect storm of being born into a family of flower growers and seeing the issue, but the plastic problem is a worldwide one," she said.
"With an issue that big, there's also an opportunity just as big.
"With so much negativity and anxiety around what's happening in the world at the moment, there's always a positive way to look at things."
Zoe Carter, another Groundbreaker, has also turned challenges into progress.
Ms Carter, a long-time animal lover, was told by a high school careers adviser not to pursue agriculture because it was "for old men" and there was no money in it.
She nonetheless studied agriculture and worked on a property in NSW, until a serious riding injury forced her to change tack.
Working everywhere from an abattoir boning room to a sheep stud, Ms Carter realised farmers needed to connect with workers passionate about the industry.
She founded Agriculture Jobs Auswide to showcase career paths in the sector.
"There's so many passionate people out there that just keep getting turned away," Ms Carter said.
"There's an incredible amount of opportunity."
The women will present at evokeAg in February 2027, alongside fellow innovators from NSW, Queensland and SA.
