As microplastics get hotter each summer, more and more people are aware of how they are more environmentally friendly. A CEO who leads a $55 million company has chosen a fundamental sustainability behavior.
Before launching the plastic-free cleaning product company Blueland (returned by Gwyneth Paltrow and Justin Timberlake) Sarah Paiji Yoo lives a zero-waste lifestyle. In pursuit of no garbage, serial entrepreneurs abandoned takeaway coffee, plastic utensils, food packaging, bottled shower gel, and even discarded diapers.
“I wasted about two and a half years with my family. But, in all of this, the impact my family has had is very small, very small,” Yoo, co-founder and CEO of Blueland, told me wealth. “That’s where I start to get that feeling, ‘Oh, if I give someone a better choice, I might have a bigger impact.”
Her husband and two children abandoned inevitable items such as bags of fries or coffee cups. She even walked to using cloth diapers and shopping at the farmers’ market.
Her zero waste habit has 2.5 years: reusable diapers, cutlery, coffee cups
Yoo said her choice to throw away diapers shows how real she is to her true commitment to a zero-waste career, but it took a lot of work to change her routine habits throughout her life.
“I started carrying everything reusable with me: bags, coffee cups, cutlery, straw,” the entrepreneur, 41. “I switched to soap and shampoo bars instead of products in plastic bottles. Admittedly, the bar was a tough sell for my husband.”
Blueland CEO also started composting and shopping at local and green markets for a week’s food. Those two and a half years made her question her consumption, the convenience of plastics, and whether she really needed to waste it.
“This idea extends to every area of my life and still shapes the way I make decisions today,” Yoo said. “This experience helped me increase my expectations for the products I brought into my home and ultimately led to my desire to start Blueland’s products.”
By creating Blueland, Yoo believes her business is finally offering customers environmentally friendly options by selling plastic-free packaging in laundry and dishwasher detergents, cleaners and soaps. By 2022, the company Finish Lifetime sales and profitability of $100 million; now its products fly out of the shelves and into the grocery bag every 10 seconds.
“Plastic is a more partisan topic when we get started. It really breaks down by partisan,” Yoo said. “With today, it does become more common, which is exciting.”
Turn habits into bigger moves: blueland
It is a disturbing realization to know that true climate and environmental actions must be consistent and popular in order to make progress. Generation Z is even pursuing Causes at workof the two smallest employees, about 45% have left work or planned for excessive climate problems, according to 2024 Data Deloitte.
But one’s environmental actions are a bucket of things that must be done, and entrepreneurs like Yoo are making it easier for them to get greener in everyday chores.
Blueland CEO realizes that it is not realistic to make a lot of people who are zero waste. So in research with her co-founder John Mascari, they found that the most influential starting point was to reduce plastic packaging, which occupied the largest new plastic waste category.
Over the past six years, Blueland has raised more than $55 million, 95% of which are funded by female investors. Notable supporters include Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Timberlake, Adrian Grenier, former Sweet Green CEO Nicolas Jammet, Rent the Runway Cofounder Jennifer Fleiss and Thrive Market Ceo Nick Green.
It has sold over 10 million products online and sold throughout the store, such as Whole Foods Costcoand Target. But helping people understand that tasks is half the journey.
“When we started in 2019, we spent a lot of time talking about ‘Why?’ like, ‘Why do people care about plastics? ” “The ultimate goal is purely to build a successful business. So, education really makes me happy. ”
