Do all our cleaning products need to be packaged in single-use plastic?
This entrepreneur's simple idea is keeping 2 billion plastic bottles out of our oceans and landfills.
This entrepreneur's simple idea is keeping 2 billion plastic bottles out of our oceans and landfills.
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00:00So I'm in the cleaning aisle of my local grocery store where I first had the idea for Blueland
00:05because I could not believe that we really needed all of these single-use plastic bottles.
00:24Cleaners are typically over 90% water and water is the main reason why a lot of these
00:29products come packaged in plastic instead of paper.
00:32And so I wondered, why are we paying for all this water?
00:35Why can't we just add our own water at home and just buy what we need?
00:50So I'm a serial entrepreneur and I started a series of businesses in the beauty and fashion
00:55space.
00:56And when I became a new mom, I started doing a ton of research around what kind of water
01:00I should use to make my son's baby formula.
01:03And I was horrified in doing my research because I learned that our drinking water in general
01:09in the U.S. contains hundreds of pieces of microplastics per liter.
01:13That's when I started to first connect the dots between all this plastic we're consuming
01:16as a society and how it's ending up in our oceans and our waterways where it's breaking
01:21down into these tiny pieces of microplastics.
01:26That's when, you know, I just decided as a consumer to really try to cut back on my
01:43single-use plastic consumption.
01:45Everything seemed to come packaged in single-use plastic, whether it was ketchup or lotion
01:50or toothpaste.
01:51I also realized that given my serial entrepreneurial background that I could really help try to
01:59give consumers more choice.
02:09So our solution was this dry tablet where you could just add your own water at home.
02:22I'm not a chemist, so I had no idea where to start.
02:34And so we just started calling, you know, all these cleaning manufacturers, any cleaning
02:38manufacturers that we could find, and started asking them if they could make these tablets
02:43for us.
02:44And they looked at us like we were crazy.
02:51It was really important for me to put out a product that was affordable for all households.
02:57And so really proud that we were able to create refill tablets that are $2 or less per refill,
03:03which is cheaper than the alternative of buying a new plastic bottle full of water each time.
03:10Because our tablets are about a hundred times smaller and lighter, we can fit about a hundred
03:23times more of these on a truck or a train or a plane that's going to its final destination.
03:40It was never just about cleaning products.
03:43If we're going to really drive real change, we need to radically rethink how we do business
03:49to have a positive impact on our oceans, on wildlife and future generations.