This entrepreneur's idea is reducing plastic waste

Brut America

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.

Transcript

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.

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