A Mission to Remove Single-Use Plastic with Marina Tran-Vu of EQUO

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and author of the Conscious Design book. And with me today, I have Marina Tran Vu, founder of Equo, working to replace all of the disposable plastic utensils that we love, sort of. And pick a more eco-friendly option for us out there. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, so I'd love for you to start with what got you down this journey of deciding to tackle disposable plastic silverware.

Uh, that's a very good question. Um, it wasn't something that I was really, um, I would say involved in previously. I don't think I woke up one day, it was like, I gotta solve the straw or fork problem. Yeah, it just kind of happened because I moved over to Vietnam about 3 years ago. Didn't really intend to stay in the country for that long, was only supposed to stay for about a year. When I first moved, had no friends here.

Yep.

So I was a little lonely. And so what I did was I spent a lot of time in cafes. And in one of the cafes I went to in Vietnam, they had this like green thing in my drink. And I was like, what is this? You know, 'cause I, I had only ever seen at that point, you know, maybe paper straws. And then I would see mostly plastic straws. So I was like, what is this floating in my drink? And it turned out to be a grass straw. So that was kind of my first experience—

Whoa.

With a product or like with a straw that was not made of paper or plastic. And so my curious mind kind of went from there and was like, okay, I gotta learn more about this category, why this isn't everywhere. 'Cause it seemed like a great, you know, solution. that's made from natural materials, yes, now you can throw it outside and it would still decompose, unlike, you know, plastic or paper. So that's really kind of what the whole idea—

Oh, that's awesome. So now you've, you've expanded, right? You've started— gone beyond just, just straws. So can you talk a little bit about that evolution of starting with one and now you're— well, you're growing quite a bit, it seems. So Which is great. It's good. It's good. More people are wanting it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we started off with the grass straw, really, you know, that's because it was the first product I experienced. And then we moved on to add in the rice straw. And we really like the rice straw because, you know, it has edible properties. It comes in multicolor, which is cool. So you can actually eat it after you use it in your drink if you want to, you know, if you're really that, that hangry, go ahead and do that. And then we started to add more products to our portfolio. So that included sugarcane, coffee, coconut, And people kind of ask, like, you know, why would you add so many products to your portfolio and so many different materials? And I would say it's kind of like, it's kind of that exploratory phase where everyone wants to be sustainable, but we really don't know what the limits are in terms of sustainability or what the options are. And so why not expose everyone to all that? You know, I think we didn't sell on plastic for decades, you know, because everyone was trying to find that perfect material. So I thought, you know, same sort of thing with a sustainable alternative to single-use plastic. Let's explore all the different options and let people choose for themselves.

Right. So you're kind of running an experiment to see what, which material actually, actually wins the popularity vote almost.

Uh, popularity, and I would say durability vote too. Um, you know, it's one of those things that, um, we learn as we go. And one of the biggest things I learned is like, you know, a grass or rice straw is amazing and really cool, but, you know, when it comes to expectations From certain people, and people have wild expectations about their straws. Oddly enough, they do. It's gonna stay in my drink, and it's gonna last for you know a couple hours, and I can chew on it, bend on it. I could twist and turn it, and it should still be you know really really great as a product. You know, and that doesn't do so well for something like a piece of grass that you put in your drink because I'll crunch. You know, it'll break down very quickly, or may not do well for like you know a product that is edible, like a rice straw, where You know, if it's edible, ideally if it touches water or liquid, it should break down. Otherwise you're eating like a Big Mac, you know, which won't break down in liquid. So, or so we've seen, so we've seen in certain experiments. So that's really something that we found quite interesting.

Okay, and is there one that's a favorite of yours that you've found that works really well as a material that you really like working with, or that people kind of just seemed to like, or is closer to, I guess, close to normal?

Yeah, yeah, the, the closest one to normal I would say is probably for a lot of people is the sugarcane straw. Um, just because it's a light pale color, it's very flexible, um, it has a nice little sweet aroma actually, um, and it comes in a lot of different sizes. And you can literally put it into a drink for about 72 hours before it starts to break down, though I don't really know why you would want to drink a drink after 72 hours. But, you know, people have tested it, you know.

There are those people that have their, their cup and they have their straw and like refill it with water for like 2 days straight before they're like, maybe I should get rid of this.

Yeah, or the people who have it like inside their tumblers in the car, you know, they have that giant one in their car and they're like, I'm just gonna sip on this and I want to keep my straw in there, you know. Um, and which is totally fine too. So The sugarcane one is extremely popular for us. Coming in second is the coffee one, which is exactly the same as sugarcane, but it actually smells like coffee. And oddly enough, I didn't know that there are people that exist in this world that don't like the smell of coffee. So that's why it's a little bit less popular than the sugarcane one.

Interesting. Yeah, I would have figured caffeine, the smell of coffee would have been more popular from a Smell standpoint, but that's what I thought too.

But yeah, there are some people who adamantly don't like coffee. Maybe the tide's shifting to tea or something, you know. So, um, so yeah, we've had some feedback on that. And then my personal favorite is the coconut straw just because it's really solid, you know. It's really, really solid, you know. Um, so that's, that's the reason why I like that one.

Nice. And, and so I looked through your products, you have utensils as well, you've expanded into, and then Bags. So tell me a little bit how— what got you to go, okay, utensils, straws, let's leap into making reusable bags now?

Well, I think the first thing that we wanted to do was try to figure out which were kind of the most commonly used single-use plastic items, you know. And this is not including like no food wrap or cling wrap, you know, because that one can be a little bit difficult to solve. But like just real tangible products that you can bring kind of anywhere or use on an everyday basis. And so that's why we started off with straws. the form factor was very, very simple because it's basically a cylinder that you kind of push out like pasta.

Okay.

And then forks and spoons and knives, they just made sense afterwards, to be honest with you, just primarily because what do you kind of use with straws sometimes? It's forks, knives, and spoons. And so that's kind of how we've looked at our portfolio is trying to replace everything single-use plastic and kind of building similar sort of group products together. And bags actually just came naturally because I know everyone in the world is just trying to replace bags because we use it. Literally, bags have like almost the worst—

They're terrible.

Yeah, like they're a horrible effect on the environment, but they also have the worst, I think, duration in terms of use. An average single-use plastic product is used for 15 to 20 minutes. Single-use bags can actually be as little as 5 minutes on average, depending on where you live, because it's a very convenient sort of like, you know, product.

Yeah, yeah, I talked to somebody about that and they were talking about, um, in grocery stores, that little vegetable, like the bag you put produce in, that has like a 1-minute lifespan of actual like use on average, which is insane. Like it's so, it's so short.

Yeah, it's pretty horrible. I mean, like especially if you're going in places where maybe it's more urban, like you're walking from, you know, maybe the convenience store on the corner to your home or wherever else, or like, you know, from the coffee shop to your desk, and they'll still give you a paper, uh, plastic bag or something like that, and that's used for like 5 minutes, you know. So it's a huge amount of waste, and so that's why we've expanded our categories into where they happen.

Got it. And as far as your utensils, are you aiming to be more durable Like, are you finding there's a need for that, or is it really just, like you said, like the 5-minute use? So you get it, you eat, you eat, and then you toss it 5 minutes later?

Yeah, you know what I mean? I would say at the beginning, um, with some of our products, we thought we can just make them for the duration that people expect to use them, which is, you know, 5, 10 minutes, very quick, and then kind of go. But then we realized afterwards, if we want to have, um, you know, longevity to some of our product, we had to Look at reformulations that allowed them to be beyond expectations. So it's kind of like an overprom— sorry, under-promise, over-deliver sort of like mentality. Yeah, so that's why we actually kind of moved more towards durability for our products.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on conscious design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, Then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Got it. I mean, that makes sense. I feel like people also save their plastic, plastic forks and stuff. So you have that group of people that might Yeah, okay.

We definitely have those, and then the people who want to reuse the products over and over again. But, you know, like, again, we're out there just to replace single-use plastics. You know, if we wanted to go reusable, there was another method for that. But for us, our real value and core is that we want to make sustainability as easy and seamless as possible.

So we really do focus on products that are use once, Right, trying to make, make it more accessible, rather than make it the fast food of convenience for people.

Exactly. And it's less of a barrier. It's also like, you know, less work for the consumer. Like, they all want to be sustainable. But if you had to put in that much extra work, you know, it makes it harder to get them to adopt a new behavior.

Right. And are you Are you selling more direct to consumers starting to purchase, or are you trying to get in business? Kind of how are you getting this to the market and who's really responding more?

Yeah, you know, I think for us we didn't really have a choice, unfortunately. So we launched during the pandemic, and I mean like at the height of the pandemic, we launched our Kickstarter campaign. In April 2020, April 2020, global lockdown happened. So, you know, it wasn't the ideal time. And then we all know what happened after then, right? And so the fact that I think most people didn't really go into stores anymore by default made us go towards kind of this sort of direct-to-consumer e-commerce model for these categories, which is very unconventional. Like, there aren't brands that Well, no, like you're not going out and buying like a 200-pack of straws on the regular usually, you know.

No, always— I think Solo Cup is the only one, only one that's managed to make like a direct consumer relationship where you're like, I know what a Solo Cup is.

Exactly.

No idea what anything else is though.

Exactly, exactly. And so that's kind of where our brand was headed. But that's also, I would say Solo Cup was one of the rare products within a commodity market that we would say is Exemplary of what we want to do is we want people to remember us, even in these categories that they traditionally didn't care about or ignored or didn't look for brands. We want to stand out and we want people to choose us. And so that's why we do go that direct-to-consumer route. But we also have the B2B side, which is really where a lot of our volume and our revenue will come from.

Got it. And are you seeing more, I guess, large corporate, small business? Is it a blend? What How's the reaction been and interest on the business side?

Yeah, you know, this might sound a little bit critical, but I would say that I find that smaller businesses have been adopting our products and giving us a chance a lot more than big corporate, which is a little bit unfortunate because I think, you know, there's a lot of things that play into it. There's politics, you know, there's a lot of red tape. And then there's also preferred suppliers. Some of these preferred suppliers, people have had decades of relationships with. Sometimes they are the paper and the plastic producers that they have multiple partnerships with. And so that makes it very difficult for us to kind of get into larger corporate companies while they're also kind of communicating out to the world that, hey, we're all about ESGs and looking at sustainable solutions, yet not really giving us a chance. So For us, a lot of our business that has been growing, at least on the business-to-business side, has been with smaller mom-and-pop shops and cafes. And we really appreciate that too, because I think they really do see the message and they take more action than most corporate big suppliers and buyers.

Right. Well, that's good. I mean, it starts somewhere. So even small chains are— there's still a lot of straws, right? If you think about the volume even a small cafe has, There's a lot, there's a lot of utensils and straws that get used in one thing. I am thinking of like one busy coffee shop in LA is a lot of people. So it's still, it's still a big volume. It's just not, I guess, billions of straws like Starbucks would be.

Like an everyday sort of like, you know, smaller business will do maybe like 1,000 to 2,000, you know, per month. You know, a little bit of a busier one will do like 5,000, and like a really busy one will go like, you know, 10,000 a month, you know. So that can really, really add up in terms of the amount of products that they use, especially straws.

Right, right. Well, that's amazing. That's, that's a lot of, a lot of plastic that's getting wiped off by you having this product. Are you kind of looking to the future? Where do you Where do you see this going? Where do you want to expand to? Kind of what's your more grand vision for, for the brand?

Yeah, you know what, uh, the grand vision is kind of to replace anything that's single-use plastic. And I mean absolutely everything. I want to do, um, every straw in the world, every fork in the world, every plate, every bag, every food wrap, every food container, um, you know, every cup, every lid. Anything that's single-use plastic. I'm not going after plastic because actually, you know, I do think that plastic is a great material when used correctly and for things that do require a large amount of durability. But single-use plastic, I just feel, has no real place in the world. It's been abused, unfortunately, by us.

Yes.

You know, so anything that is single-use plastic, you know, I'll go into stationery. Whatever there is that's plastic, even those little, you know, the little tables inside their freaking pizza boxes. I want to replace all those, you know. So I think—

Yeah, I forgot about those little pizza things. You just toss them away. Yeah, yeah, you should, you should do that. Let's do it. I want to see, I want to see some sugar, sugarcane, or, you know, I don't know if you want coffee mixed with your pizza, but I'm sure somebody would. Somebody would be like, yes, I want the coffee one.

Exactly. I think there's endless possibilities. We've pretty much made anything possible out of plastics. So I think I've got a long journey to go.

Oh, that's amazing. That's a good mission to have. That's a long mission to have as well. It'll keep you busy. Your business will only grow. That's definitely the good thing. Yeah, well, I, I really appreciate you taking the time to, to chat about what you're doing. Before we wrap up though, I want to make sure you have the opportunity to share if somebody's wanting to get a hold of you guys, find you, where do they go? And then, you know, anything else you want to share with anybody who listens or watches?

Yeah, so I would say the first thing is that if you're looking for our products, you can find us on Amazon for US, Canada, and Australia. Um, and then You can also find us on our website at www.shopequo.com. And then we're also on Instagram and Facebook, so just EQO Intl. Intl stands for international. So you can find us on Instagram and on Facebook and on TikTok as well. So we're all over the place, you know, we're trying to be young and hip as well. And then the last thing I would kind of leave everyone here with is You know, hopefully, um, not just like, you know, our brand, but hopefully everyone who's listening can give sustainable brands a chance. You know, we're not all expensive or difficult to adopt or, or, you know, trying to tell you that you're the worst person ever for not, you know, using sustainable products. We're just trying to make a difference in the world. So hopefully you can give us a shot.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll echo that point. It's not as expensive as people think. Which is super important. People hopefully will recognize that sooner rather than later. It's not— you're not 10 times the cost to be eco-friendly. It's just not, not there. So yeah, well, I really appreciate the time you took to chat. It's been, it's been fun. I love your mission, and I hope to see— yeah, hopefully I'll see those little pizza, pizza things. And so awesome, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.