Microplastics are everywhere. Everywhere.
They are in our waters, in our food and even crossing blood barriers to enter our brains.
Sarah Paiji Yoo launched Blueland in 2019 to help consumers minimize the amount of microplastics they come into contact with each day. This meant creating special tablets that dissolve in water and can be used to create household essentials like hand soap, laundry detergent and dish soap.
Paiji Yoo created the company after becoming a parent. She tried to live a zero-waste lifestyle and found it to be quite challenging. “I was doing all this work to maintain a zero-waste lifestyle, and it wasn’t lost on me that there was probably a better way to have more impact and give other consumers more and better choices without single-use plastic.”
So she got to work to help others try and reduce the waste in their lives. She spent months formulating a never-seen-before tablet while researching the most pressing concerns about water and microplastics.
Supplier after supplier told her that her dream would be hard and even impossible to achieve — but she found a way to make it work. Blueland spent its early years as a direct-to-consumer before slowly entering retailers. Even this was a calculated move, Paiji Yoo said, believing that it would be better to go to retail once the brand was more successful.
“There’s a lot of risk, a lot that goes against our mission around striving to be a sustainable company and waste if you don’t get it right with physical retail,” she said, referring to the wasted inventory that comes if a consumer doesn’t purchase a product.
Paiji Yoo also spoke to Dom and Tim about how she formulated a tablet that can dissolve in different water types, the evolution of plastic pods in our kitchens and what she would like to see change in how the U.S. addresses its microplastic dependency. She also spoke a bit about her founder journey and how, after spending years in finance and consulting, she decided to take the leap and start something of her own.
It was around the time when the female founders of Rent the Runway, Birchbox and BaubleBar were making headway. “I decided I want to try to start something,” Paiji Yoo said.
Listen to this week’s Found episode to hear what happened next.