Archive for Personal Care

Shawn Seipler, Founder of Clean the World

Shawn Seipler was once at a hotel in Minneapolis when the question struck him, “What do they do with the soap when I’m done with it?” When he asked the front desk, he was told they just throw the soap away. He saw how wasteful of a practice it was, and began to mentally brew potential solutions. Soon (once he was back at home in Florida), he created a makeshift work station in his garage, and had his family helping him to melt, sanitize, and reform bars of soap. Shawn was able to collect bars from several hotels around Orlando, and his first completed batch was 2,000 recycled bars strong. Shawn was able to bring himself and them to an impoverished area of Haiti. When he arrived at the church where he would hand them out, a crowd five times the size of his soap supply was waiting for him. Before this point, Shawn was aware of the great need that Haitian people had for hygiene supplies, but upon learning of how many of them died every day of disease, and seeing how grateful they were to receive soap, he knew his social enterprise had to continue. Shawn founded Clean the World in 2009, and since then the organization has expanded the scale of its operation, now donating to 115 countries (including homeless shelters in the US), it has diverted more than 28 million pounds of waste from landfills and donated over 87 million bars of soap. It has also expanded its range to include recycling the plastic of small liquid soap bottles.

The process of recycling the soap used by Clean the World is the same in its fundamentals as what Shawn Seipler used initially in his garage. Though at first his team was using potato peelers, meat grinders, and cookers, the work done by the industrial-quality equipment they now possess is doing the same things at a larger scale. The modern process is as follows: First, the bars are extruded into pellets and ground so that all foreign particles are removed. Then, the soap is sterilized by heating. Next, there is another round of pelleting and grinding to eliminate any potential remaining particles. Lastly, the soap is turned back into fresh bars. Clean the World now has recycling centers all over the earth, helping to prevent waste and provide for those in need.

 

My Sources:

FAQ – Clean the World

The afterlife of hotel soap | CNN

How Used Hotel Soap Could ‘Clean the World’ | Inc.com

Shawn Seipler doing his part to ‘Clean the World’ – Kenosha.com

Tehzeeb Lalani by Anna Ortiz

Tehzeeb Lalani, a young entrepreneur based in Mumbai, India, seeks to heal peoples’ relationship with food. She owns the company Scale Beyond Scale, a Mumbai-based company that consults clients on nutrition. Scale Beyond Scale is designed to help clients move beyond mindsets of short-term weight loss goals and on to mindsets of wholistic and long-term health. Lalani seeks to teach people to design behaviors that they can keep for a lifetime. Working with clients including those with health concerns such as diabetes and heart disease, Scale Beyond Scale is equipped to help people look at issues other than weight loss. She calls the movement toward wholistic health” more sanity, less vanity!” Lalani believes that two strategies for success in implementing ideas are setting deadlines and having a partner for accountability. “Telling people about the idea and that you will bring it to life in a few weeks/few months is also a great way to ensure you hold yourself accountable,” she says for an interview with ideamensch. She is also fond of her morning routines, which include meditation, breakfast, an hour of work, and a yoga class. She says that because she lacks control over the rest of her day, her morning is important for her to feel centered and grounded; she can then tackle anything that comes her way next. I think Tehzeeb Lalani conducts herself with thoughtfulness in both her personal context, with her morning routine, and professional context, in her field that prioritizes psychology. People would do well to slow their lives, think hard, work hard, and take care of themselves as Lalani does.

NOHBO, Planet-Friendly Personal-Care

Ever wonder when large clunky plastic containers of bathroom hygiene products will be a thing of the past? Nohbo, or NO-Hair-BOttles, has answered this question with, “right now!” Benjamin Stern thought up the innovative idea of Nohbo in his ninth grade biology class and ran with it. At the young age of fourteen, Benjamin watched a documentary about the plastic-bottling industry and how much plastic truly ends up in your bathroom garbage each year, rather than being recycled. He took it upon himself from that day forward to come up with an eco-friendly solution to the limitless plastic waste. His goal was to blend the innovative concept of detergent pods with every-day bathroom products such as shampoo, body wash, and shaving cream. Young Benjamin’s solution was the prototype he created that was a dissolvable ball of product inside of a biodegradable wrapper. He saw the problem of plastic waste in single-use products being mass produced and eradicated this unnecessary abundance with his waste-less product called Nohbo Drops. This product was just the beginning because it soon launched him all the way to the hit TV Show, “Shark Tank.” It was here where he struck an impressive deal with Mark Cuban for $100,000 with a 25% equity stake in his business. Success was bound to happen.

The years following this were big for Benjamin Stern, he not only had Mark Cuban on his side, but he had money and mentorship to aid his growth. On many accounts this young man has found himself deeply appreciative of the amazing business people and scientists that he is surrounded by. They have helped him avoid countless mistakes. In the past three years, Stern graduated high school, raised over three million dollars in business financing, and his Nohbo Drops have been bustling off of the shelves. Though Ben Stern has seen success on all levels, he has hit some pretty significant roadblocks along the way. The most major of the many was the “structurally instability” that the dry dehydrated product form caused within the biodegradable wrappers. This problem was fixed by filling the wrappers with a gel based product which not only worked better and was easier to ship out, but also cut the production cost to a third of what it had been. 

These eco-friendly drops of personal-care products are making Ben Stern a successful young entrepreneur, and they are making the abundance of single use plastic bottles, (that are overused in hotel chains especially,) a thing of the past. These Nohbo Drops melt in your hands once in contact with water and leave no plastic waste to discard following their use. As this environmentally aware entrepreneur has made clear, they [Nohbo] “are a mission driven research and development company founded on the premise of eradicating unnecessary single use plastic bottles in areas where there truly is no need for them.” 

From inspiration to innovation, Benjamin Stern has found a problem and solved it. Today, he continues to work hard behind the scenes at Nohbo. If only he had known that one spark in his mind during a ninth-grade biology class would lead to the prosperity he lives in today. It took only his pursuance of one single idea to inspire a whole generation of young men and women to find problems in the world and try to solve them just like he did. He has not only thought like an entrepreneur, but he has innovated an old commodity like one too. 


For More Information On Nohbo Visit: https://nohbo.com/

Or Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5TMemcpi3w