We were lucky to catch up with Natalie Lennick recently and have shared our conversation below.

Natalie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

Green Ablutions proudly donates 10% of every sale to protect endangered sea turtles. These magnificent creatures are most at risk from ocean plastic pollution. Many single-use plastic items, like bags or bottle caps, look like food to sea turtles and we see it’s destructive impact daily. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, a sea turtle rehabilitation facility in Florida, reports that 100% of deceased young turtles they find have stomachs full of lethal plastic.

For years we have known that only 9% of plastic was actually recycled (and more recently that figure has dropped to only 5%). While individuals may effectively sort items in their curbside bins, many municipalities are ill-equipped to process recyclable products due to lack of infrastructure, contamination, and rising costs. Green Ablutions takes pride in helping sea turtles twice. In addition to our financial support, every Green Ablutions bar replaces up to three plastic bottles of comparable liquid product. We’re making a difference one bar at a time!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My Green Ablutions journey started in 2018 when a story in my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, reported that the city was burning half of their recycling instead of actually recycling it. It sounded crazy! Why would they burn something of value? Why not recycle it? While the majority of paper and glass that make it into your bin are recycled, plastic recycling is much more complicated. There are seven different types of plastic that can be recycled (and many others that cannot). Waste managers pick and choose which they’ll accept (often based on their secondary market value). When too many “wish-cycled” items contaminate a batch it gets trashed instead. The process of recycling plastic often costs more than the resulting material sells for. The Inquirer reported the city earned ~$70/ton for recyclables in 2012 but by 2018 they were paying ~$170/ton to haul it away. As stewardship turned into a losing enterprise, Philly chose the budget over the environment. It was cheaper for Philadelphia to burn the recycling than process it. The fact is, even if you sort your recycling perfectly each week only 5% of plastic is actually recycled.

FIVE PERCENT!

The average person uses 10 bottles of shampoo a year. Effectively, one of those bottles gets a second life as a park bench but the rest end up in a landfill, incinerator, or even worse our oceans. Over 80% of the plastic floating in our oceans originally came from somewhere on land with the remaining materials coming from ships at sea. Plastic takes over 400 years to break down all while leeching hazardous chemicals into our environment. How can any brand put an eco-friendly claim on a plastic bottle?

I always felt a sense of accomplishment by cleaning and sorting my recyclables each week but, after reading that article, I realized recycling wasn’t enough. I decided to cut down on my own family’s consumption of single use plastic. Finding the most sustainable replacement wasn’t easy and oftentimes it came with a premium price tag. I tried to look through the greenwashing and make educated decisions: Are compostable bottles still a good choice if I didn’t have access to the only type of industrial composting facility in which it would break down? What about bioplastics? Is a local item wrapped in plastic better for the environment than a plastic-free item shipped from across the globe? It’s complicated.

One of the easiest zero-waste swaps I made was a shampoo bar but the first bar made my hair waxy and dry at the same time. It was awful! I tried another and another – all with terrible results. I finally realized the “shampoo” bars were actually soap. Soap is created when lye (sodium or potassium hydroxide) chemically reacts with fats/oils in a process call saponification. It’s great for making skin squeaky clean but terrible for hair. It took weeks of treating my hair with salon brand shampoo and conditioner before my it felt normal again. I wanted a product that performed like liquid shampoo and conditioner, without the plastic waste, and was made in the USA. When I couldn’t find it, I decided to do it myself.

In 2019 I left my successful career of 15 years to bootstrap Green Ablutions. In January 2020 I started selling my plastic-free, vegan shampoo and conditioner bars at a local farmers market. This gave me an opportunity to quickly gather customer feedback. When Covid arrived arrived in March, I immediately pivoted to selling through greenablutions.com while also homeschooling my two kids. In June, I was accepted as one of 6 companies (from almost 80 applicants) for a startup incubator, Pennovation, sponsored by University of Pennsylvania. This program paired me with a mentor and provided 1:1 coaching for sales, marketing and refining my brand. Shortly there after I received my first wholesale partner and have added dozens more in the years since.

This year Green Ablutions was named one of the best eco-friendly travel products by CNN and I was featured in Forbes Women.

When you support Green Ablutions, you support a woman-owned business crafted with a sustainable mindset from the start. I apply environmental best practices to all aspects of business operations and the full lifecycle of our products – ingredients, packaging and shipping.

Responsibly sourced vegan and cruelty-free ingredients ensure ethical products you can trust. Liquid shampoo and conditioner bottles contain up to 80% water – something you already have at home. Each bar replaces up to 3 plastic bottles 4 liters of water compared to traditional liquids. At only $12 MSRP per bar offer a healthy savings for your wallet too!

Our zero waste packaging ensures nothing ends up in landfills or polluting the ocean. Our boxes are made using recycled post-consumer fibers and printed with vegetable based inks. They can be recycled curbside or composted at home. This promise applies to our shipping containers as well! All orders from greenablutions.com ship completely plastic-free. Their compact size also means it takes less fuel to ship, cutting down on emissions and we offset our transportation impact through a partnership with Shopify.

Our logo has a story too. Named Tabby by my kids, she’s a promise to make our oceans a better place. When you support Green Ablutions you help Tabby and sea turtles like her twice. These magnificent creatures are most at risk from ocean plastic. Sea turtles can’t tell the difference between a plastic bottle cap and a tasty fish. Our customers have prevented almost twenty thousands of bottles from littering the environment and 10% of sales support sea turtle conservation at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

This is going to sound crazy coming from someone who wants to sell you a product, but the most sustainable item is something you already own. I’d love to sell you a shampoo bar, but please don’t buy one if you already have a closet full of shampoo at home. We as consumers need to be more mindful of what we buy and when we buy it. Over consumption is already causing us enough problems. Green Ablutions will be here when you need it. That philosophy drives the company’s slow and steady expansion across retail networks.

Green Ablutions products are available through our website, www.greenablutions.com, and in almost 30 neighborhood co-ops, refill shops and family owned grocery stores. You can also purchase our products on BeWomn, a marketplace for woman and non-binary owned brands. Wholesale is available directly through our website and also through Faire (greenablutions.faire.com).

We don’t sell on Amazon as a matter of principle. I’ve been told I could make a ton there. I’ve been told it’s a stupid decision but I believe the makers need to be responsible for their waste and Amazon is one of the largest contributors to trash in the USA. Oceana reported in 2019 that Amazon produced 465 million tons of plastic waste, at least 22 million of which ended up in the oceans. In addition to excessive packaging waste, they’ve pushed out so many small businesses and have awful employee labor practices. Amazon contradicts my values in just about every way.

I started Green Ablutions to fill a need. Since then I’ve worked hard to maintain strict environmental values even when it’s not the most profitable choice. Our suppliers are just like us, small and family run businesses here in the US. For me, sustainability is also keeping a small footprint by supporting other small women owned and family businesses. I could save a lot of money buying cheap supplies made overseas or make more profits selling on Amazon but that goes against my vision of sustainability. I believe who we choose to partner with is just as important as what we make.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

I’ve received excellent press – Martha Stewart Living, CNN, Forbes, Apartment Therapy to name a few, but the best source of new customers are my immensely loyal existing customers. It makes sense – you’d probably take the recommendation of a close friend over a random listicle from the internet. Customer emails are my favorite and I’ve lost count of how many people have reached out after they’ve tried our products. “This is the best shampoo, period” is a common phrase in product reviews. They’re always amazed that a shampoo bar can work, not only better than the last bar they might have tried, but better than the liquid products they’ve been using forever. One customer said she tried 12 (12!!!) different shampoo bars over the years before someone recommended Green Ablutions. Ours ended up her favorite so much that she later brought our entire line into her retail store. Several customers buy dozens of bars during the holiday season to give out to everyone on their list. I appreciate every one of my amazing customers and every order from the website ships with a handwritten thank you from me.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.greenablutions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenablutions
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenablutions
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/greenablutions
• Other: Wholesale: https://www.handshake.com/suppliers/green-ablutions-1300 https://greenablutions.faire.com

Image Credits
Credit Green Ablutions