Sustainable Packaging and Concentrates with Stephen Reble of Etee

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and author of the Conscious Design book, and I'm excited today to have Steve Revelle. He's the co-founder of Eddy, focused on removing plastic and some water that we don't have to ship from all of our consumer products that we use. Welcome to the show.

Awesome. Hey, how's it going, Ian?

Yeah, so excited to dive into this and you guys are doing some amazing things. So kudos to you even diving into this process.

Yeah.

So how, let's start with your origin story. How did you decide that you wanted to tackle plastic and shipping water all in one, all in one business?

Yeah, so it's kind of interesting, you know, my friend and I, PJ, we used to play in a band together, um, which is sort of a weird connection. And then one day, we always like to— in our band, we talked what we called shizness, right? So it's the mixture of business and the creative, the shit, you know what I mean? We called it shizness. And every now and again, we talk about the shizness. And we always sort of joked around about starting our own business, but never really happened. And then late 30s come along, my wife's pregnant, I had this long-term contract, it dropped, and I had started playing around with online advertising. And what I realized is something was happening in consumer packaged goods online that had happened to the music industry in the early 2000s, which is it was getting democratized. Suddenly you could come up with really interesting ideas and get them out online in a way that you never could before because you were up against a wall with Walmart or any other number of retailers to actually get innovative ideas out. Once you had social media, Facebook advertising, things were opening up. You could do really innovative stuff. So I had always been really fascinated with sustainability. I did a degree in philosophy, hung out with a lot of left-wing people, and they were always like, if you want to change the world, you start an NGO, you work for a government organization. And my position was, if you really want to make a change fast, start a business. Well, jump ahead 15 years, the internet is making things so much more accessible. Like I said, there's a lot of innovation happening. So we saw an opportunity to get an idea out there, almost infomercial style, but hopefully a little cooler. You know what I mean?

Right.

So what we were noticing is if you're trying to get people to make a change, right, you need to be able to explain it and you need to have a way to visually demonstrate it. And what we saw was an opportunity with plastics, starting specifically with food packaging. And we started with something really basic. I'm sure you've heard about it now. We were among the first companies to actually bring it online, which is beeswax food wraps. And we had this really general concept, and it's what I call kitchen chemistry. But what's really cool is by focusing on natural ingredients, you can ensure a number of things are going to happen. Number one, you're not going to be cross-contaminating your food with, uh, some of the nasty stuff like phthalates and bisphenols and all this that come from flexible packaging, right? Number 2 is it's going to be backyard compostable. So by starting with these core ingredients, ensuring that it's reusable and washable, we had a really compelling story. And we were able to get, uh, about 100,000 customers in our first 6 months from launching this concept.

That's amazing.

From there though, we were like, okay, this is, this is really cool, but how far can we take it? So we went from kitchen chemistry to some more complex stuff because what we realized is there's a massive problem that no one ever thinks about. There's one singular ingredient in most consumer packaged goods in your home, whether it's personal care products or cleaning products, and that is water. And the fact is, most of these products, from dish soap to shampoo to facial cleansers, cleaners, you look at it, the first— what's the first ingredient on any of those products? It's water. 60 to 90% water, which means we're shipping water all over the world unnecessarily. So building on this initial concept, we were able to develop our own packaging And I'll show you. So here's— this is for our sort of beauty care line. What we've done is we've developed a packaging that's made of natural waxes, oils, resins, and hemp. And over the last 5 years, we've developed it. So there's a long origin story. I recognize I just sort of took up a lot of time talking about that, but that's basically what happened. We saw these 2 kind of worlds come together. The first is what happens when we get rid of water?

Right.

And the second is, what's the packaging that we can do from there? And what we realized is you can keep the same sort of general functionality of a product by getting rid of water. And then that enables you to kill 2 birds with one stone— emissions and plastic packaging. And so that's basically how we got started. And then we packaged it all up online. where we were able to go direct to the customer, get in front of them and talk to them. And I would say our customers even helped us develop the product. There's a lot of crowdsourcing that happened because we would be able to get immediate direct feedback as opposed to having it sit, you know, in a retail store where you, once it's outta your hands, you have no idea what the customer's doing with it.

Right. Yeah, that's a good point. It's hard to get, Feedback. And I think that's, I would agree, that's part of why direct-to-consumer model, you're able to be way more agile in changing directions and getting, because you actually get feedback rather than just, is it, you know, otherwise it's really just, is it selling or is it not? But there's not really why is it selling or why, right? There's no other contextual information. It's kind of Just a binary yes, no, selling, not.

This is exactly it. And I would say even the thing that was really cool is we were able to find a community online of people that were really passionate about what we were doing. So before we even launched the product, we knew we'd be able to sell it because, or we had, you know, a high degree of confidence because we basically developed the product with our customers together. And then we'd iterate. We'd come up with version 1, we'd get their feedback, we'd come up with version 2, and then they would start to get really excited about it. And then when we release the product, it's like gangbusters. You're away to the races.

Right. And, and I— you mentioned a little bit, it took you 5— I think you said 5 years to develop your, your packaging that Yeah, I mean, and it's an ongoing process.

So our whole— you hit it on the head when you talked about agile. We were really influenced by agile product development from the software industry. You know, Google really championed that idea where it's like, get your minimum viable product to market as quickly as possible and then decide whether or not it's worth putting more time and energy to it. So like, Our V1 was those food wraps, and then there were— we were like, well, what else can we do with wax? Because we really didn't want to rely on petroleum products when it came to making packaging for our concentrates and things. Um, and so we went back to wax. And so V1 was the wraps themselves, and then V2 is, can we make this into a vessel? And then V3, okay, it melted in the summer, how can we improve that? And it cracked in the winter. And so we're We're constantly iterating and updating. So it's been like a 5-year process and it's still ongoing, to be honest. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you stopped developing and innovating, then you're— somebody else is gonna come along and just keep going. So it's a good attitude to keep towards it. It's not ever done. It's just usable. It's a good place now, but you can always improve it.

How—

I'm curious, how did you guys go about, because it's not, you're using a tube, so it's not like a block of soap, right? That's one form. You can go basically dry. How did you balance that out? What was kind of your thinking process? Oh, we want it to not be, you know, a brick, but we also don't wanna ship 90% water. Like where—

Kind of what would—

how'd you go through that thinking process?

Yeah, I mean, really basic. Again, coming back to the customer. So there's a reason why people switch from solid bar, let's say for example, dish soap's a good starting point. So there's a reason why people switch from solid bars to liquid because they found liquid a lot more convenient to use and it doesn't turn into a pile of gunk on your sink. So, well, we also did, we are, V1, like the very first dish soap we made, was in a bar format.

Okay.

But you're only going to hit a really small niche of people. And so it was really key when we were developing the specs for this product, we wanted it to perform just like any other dish soap. Once it was all made up, we wanted it to be just like what 90% of the population is used to using, at least in North America and Europe, which is a standard liquid dish soap with that sort of viscous kind of gel-like quality. You know what I'm saying?

Right.

And so we didn't want them to have— like, one of our sort of mandates is make it easy to make a change. And this is where the chemistry comes in, because it's actually not that easy to do when you have a super concentrated formula. And if you want, I can— do you want me to demo it? I mean, I know a lot of people are listening. Do it.

Well, everyone, everyone can jump over. It'll be on YouTube too.

Okay, so let me see. I actually didn't think through very well how I'd turn that.

That's okay. Surprise demos are great.

Yeah. Okay, so there's a cool angle. Okay, so this is, this is our dish soap. Comes in a box like this. Let me hold it up here. Sorry, I'm losing my left and right. So this box, which is, I don't know, What do you figure? 7 inches tall, 2 inches wide, contains the equivalent of 3 bottles of dish soap. So right away you can see from, uh, an emissions standpoint, imagine how many thousands of dish soap you could ship around in such a small size, right? You know what I mean?

Right.

So here's one of the 3 pods. Again, so this is sort of like a tube. And again, this packaging here, it's made of hemp algae, natural waxes, oils, and resins. A lot of the ingredients are local. The hemp itself is a waste product. The algae is a waste product. So it's, it's pretty cool. And all you have to do is rip off the top like this, and then you'll see it's almost like a toothpaste kind of consistency. You can see it dropping in here. And oh man, I didn't— you didn't get a good enough view there. Sorry.

All good.

But can you see all this paste at the bottom there?

Yep.

So that is essentially the cleaning agents required to make this amount of dish soap. And you see how little it is. And if we want to be really thorough, you can crack open the tube here. And once you're done with the tube, you just rinse it out and you can put it in your compost. So then from here, you just shake it up. And I sometimes use, you know, like a— what do you call it? A milk frother.

Okay.

So you can just use a milk frother and you can shake this all up like in 20 seconds or something. And once you let it sit for a minute, you'll have just a regular dish soap like any other. And let me see if I can show you. Yeah. So see, you've got this again. I'm losing my left and right. Can you see this sort of viscous—

Right. It looks like dish soap.

Just regular dish soap. And you see how long it takes to sort of make it and it won't separate. We're constant. We're also improving the formula all the time as well. So it's not going to separate over time or anything like that.

Right.

And what we've done is we've completely eliminated plastic packaging. We've vastly reduced emissions, and yet you still end up with the same kind of quality dish soap that you would expect. We have the same thing. I'll show you here. And this is a facial cleanser. So really high-quality facial cleanser and same concept. I'll show you. Boom boom boom. You can see how it just foams up.

Oh, love it. Everything else.

Yeah, that's it.

That's awesome. Just you know some chemistry and that's it. Trial and error.

Yeah, and it's it's really true because the chemistry that's that's the tricky part. How do you get two liquids to interact together in order to create a gel? Because that's what you have, and you'll see there are other companies out there that are doing powders, and they don't get into this. Kind of level because it's, it's that much more difficult and it requires a different kind of packaging too, right?

Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna ask about that too, right? Because there are, I've seen powders. I knew a guy that was part of a startup that was doing powders and it, it's a great idea, right? Because there's no water, but it didn't always, it wasn't always the nicest for the user to actually come by. Like, yeah, it's a great idea theoretically, but as soon as you're, you know, putting powder into water, now you have powder in the air. Now you have— right, there's—

Well, the other thing is you're limited on the ingredients you can use too. Like, so for example, trying to do a powder for a facial cleanser, what we found is you can't use the same sort of quality of ingredients. The chemistry isn't as sophisticated. So when you're using liquid ingredients, gel-like ingredients, You're going to get a higher performing— what powders are really good for, let's say you want to do an all-purpose cleaner where there's like no gel, um, that's where powders can be really good. But it's also tricky to get a powder that won't also lead to a residue when you go to actually clean. It's a challenge. So powders are good.

Okay.

We actually also developed a concentrated powder for like laundry detergent. We found that was really good. But when it comes to these products where you used to like this gel-like viscosity, that's where powders kind of fall short. And when you want to do something like skincare, we also found that's where powders fall a little bit short.

Right. Because I would imagine, because both of those, and we don't really think about it, right? But part of the whole feeling of like when you're cleaning your hands or right, there's, there's more Feel like when you throw it in your washing machine, there's no tactile— like, it's a machine doing that. You're like, the machine doesn't care. You don't, you don't think about that. It's just, did it get clean? Did it rinse off? Like, is there residue on my clothes or not? Whereas, like, what you're talking about, like, facial thing, you're talking about hands. So, like, those are—

Body wash.

We touch possibly our entire body and have that that experience, that if it doesn't fit the experience, then it's harder to, to, uh, transition over to a different—

That's exactly it. And, and it's funny because one of my bigger concerns was, oh man, will people want to like squeeze the pod into the water? Will they, will they be okay with that extra bit of work? You know, we put up TikTok videos and there are people like, but no one wants to do that effort. You know what we found? People actually like the process, like the tactile experience of like ripping the wax and squeezing it in. What, what ultimately makes or breaks a product in this space, in my opinion, is the end functionality. People don't mind taking a little bit of extra effort, but it's in the end when I got it in my bottle, when I'm cleaning my dishes, when I'm putting it on my face and I'm washing makeup or trying to cleanse my pores, is it gonna function the way that I expect? If you can tick that box, you're good to go.

Yeah, I mean, I think the functionality—

I think—

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. Well, I think, I think the beauty industry is a great example of that, right? Think of all the crazy things you could possibly do that people do to keep their health, skin healthy. Like what, you know, name it, people will do, go to no end as long as it works. As soon as it, as soon as someone is like, no, we can prove it doesn't work, then no one will touch it. But if you can prove that it works, no matter how crazy it is, we'll do it because we want that end, like what you're talking about, that end result. Does it do exactly what I want it to do? Does it actually? And that's, I love talking to startups in the sustainable world and helping them understand that because a lot of people approach like, oh, it has to be just sustainable or like, You know, you kind of hang your hat on that hook and then ignore the rest. So I love that you're like, yeah, but function, like our goal. Yes, sustainable, but you got to do the thing.

This is exactly it. Like, my whole thing is I actually didn't even want to be a sustainability company because you get put in a box because— So you do, you do actually. Oh, it's— oh, it's sustainable, which means it's great for the planet and not my skin. It's sustainable, which means, you know, Hard to use. Great, I'm never gonna be able to wash my dishes, but at least I'm not hurting Mama Earth. And you're gonna appeal to like such a small number of people, which means number one, you're not gonna grow as a company, and number two, you're never actually gonna make a true impact. Like, right, if we wanna make an impact, you've gotta appeal to a large number of people, and that's sort of what it's all about.

Yeah, one of my, one of my favorite things that I tell people is like, we could We could design you a perfectly sustainable product. Like, it could be zero carbon, zero everything, like, great biodegrade. But if no one will buy it, it is actually the least sustainable product because we just wasted a whole bunch of resources making something no one will use ever. So yeah, it's, it's so important to think about that step. And I hadn't even thought about what you mentioned of like, The— because there are certain things where you like enjoy the process of doing something. So I hadn't thought about that, but it makes total sense. They're like, oh yeah, the process. Like, oh yeah, I get my thing, I open the wax, I open it. I like— there's kind of a little bit almost a ritual. Ritual. Yeah. That's where it's like, oh, I do my thing and then I have it, but then it also works. But I have this little thing that I do.

And it takes maybe a couple times, like your first couple bottles, it might feel a little funny or whatever, but then you start to do it. It's like, I— a lot of my product development starts in my own home. And I remember watching my wife, who since we had kids started drinking a lot of coffee, right?

Mm-hmm.

And she will take 10 minutes in the morning to make an espresso coffee, and she bumps the machine. And like, I, I have tried to make it for her and I can't because there's like this very specific process, this ritual that she performs every single day. And what I'm realizing is, okay, well, all I'm asking you to do is this ritual maybe once every 4 to 6 weeks.

Right.

Do you know what I mean? And it takes, it takes like, you know, all told, maybe 5 minutes. And you're done. But if you—

I don't know, I think you did it in like 45 seconds for us. Yeah, yeah, but it can be, it can be efficient.

Yeah, it can be super efficient. And then the other thing that's interesting, because we've got little kids, is especially, you know, like kids like to touch things and squeeze things. So you get your kids involved in this and you tell them about it, and then like for my kids now it's normal. It's just, it's what you do, and they think it's kind of cool and So it's a great way to kind of get them involved in the whole process too.

Yeah, I love that. It's cool. And those little rituals too, I think that, that, like you said, like the coffee thing, my dad's saying like, oh, I make my coffee with my machine and it's just a thing. And you, and I don't know what it is about humans, but I think we have those little things and we actually enjoy, like we somehow enjoy and benefit from like those little Rituals. Like, oh, I'm gonna take my time to make my soap now. Like, I'm gonna go, go take that time up. It's, it's time to open that. There you go. Great.

And it's weird, like, I'm probably putting more into it than maybe the average consumer would feel because it's, after all, it's just dish soap. It's just a facial cleanser. But I do think in that brief moment that you're actually in that process and you are making it, that's when, like, you also— I can feel good about myself. Like, we're inundated. We're seeing the fires in Maui. We're seeing like crazy stuff happening. And I believe we got here by these simple, daily, almost mindless actions. We didn't think about it. We get in our car, we fill it up with gas. We, you know, we take our bottle of dish soap, we pump it in. We're more concerned, is it getting— is it cutting grease? Is it— Doing whatever. We wash our face. These are daily habits that, you know, everyone across, at least at the very least, the Western world, if not the majority of the world, do every single day without really any thought.

Right.

And there's, you know, millions upon millions of people taking these singular actions every single day. That's why we got into this problem. Well, if you can then reverse it and you get millions of people taking a singular action towards something as simple as dish soap or facial cleanser or toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, all of a sudden that adds up in the reverse and we can start to make a massive global impact just by these pseudo-meaningless tasks. And so my sort of thought is in that 45 seconds that you're making this, you can just kind of pat yourself on the back and recognize Holy shit, I'm making a difference in the world just by this simple action. You know what I mean?

Right. Well, I think that's— you brought up some really great points about, you know, how do you actually make change? And you gotta make it easy. You gotta make people feel good about it.

Yes.

And you can't disrupt their life completely. Like, there's, yeah, there's that percentage that will commit, you know, they do everything maximum sustainable to that level, right? But the rest of us go, we have other things to accomplish, we— that we are wanting to. So if you can make us feel good and how— and play this little part, happy to. Just, we can't derail our lives completely over in one direction or another.

It's funny because you really touch on something that I think is at the foundation of what was called a failure by a well-known environmentalist here in Canada, David Suzuki. I'm not sure if you've heard of him. I don't know his stuff super deep, but he's a well-known sort of household name. He had this show called Nature of Things, and he's a well-known activist. And he wrote an article basically saying that the environmental movement failed. And I'll be honest, I haven't looked deeply into the article. I don't know what his main point is, but what I took from it, having watched environmentalism from the '90s, is I feel that environmentalism so often turned into an us versus them. It's like an extension of the '60s civil rights movement where it was like, not civil rights so much, but just anti-war movement, let's say, where it's like, us versus them. Do you know what I mean? And it's the big bad corporations. And this goes back to what I was saying when I was doing my philosophy degree. I'm going to start an NGO and it's, we're against those organizations. We're going to sue them. We're going to shut them down. And you guys are destroying our planet. And it creates this like really adversarial relationship. Yes, it does. And I believe that's where business can play such a big role in activism and environmentalism because business can sort of bridge the gap and we can say, okay, wait a minute, we still— we need to make money. We need to be making jobs. Most people are not going to be in that fringe group that are willing to bend over backwards for the Earth. It's just the reality. But there's a huge number that know there's a problem. They believe in climate change. They believe in plastic, that plastic pollution is an issue. They don't want to be shamed for it. And they want an easy vehicle to start having an impact. And that to me, like, I think perfection is the biggest hurdle. Perfection and also this sort of, what do you call it, when the polarization that we've seen, particularly in the last few years where it's like, oh, you're an environmentalist, you're on the left, you're against the environment, you're on the right. And it's like fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. It doesn't need to be that way. Just squeeze your bottle of dish soap and have a good day. You know what I mean?

I love that. You need to maybe put that in an ad. Just, just, uh, do your desk, just dish soap and be happy. It's okay.

It's okay. It's all good. I don't care which side you're on.

Right.

You—

yeah, that we're politically, uh, agnostic. You can all, you can all use our Our soap, it's safe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, it's interesting. I'm maybe getting a little off topic, but I've been sort of fascinated by that court case in Montana. Are you familiar with what just happened there in climate change?

Um, which one was that?

No. So it's just recent. It's a lower court in Montana that ruled in favor of youth who— where they basically said climate— if you're going to launch an oil and gas project, that could have climate-changing implications, you need to take into account the right of youth to a healthful environment in the future. And what I think is fascinating about that is Montana is historically a red state. And I guess what I'm saying is, is we're starting to see this shift. We're starting to see this change. And there are certain states that may come off as more right-wing or whatever the case may be, but when you're starting to see these really visceral, uh, changes in our climate through the wildfires, through the floods, through all this stuff, I hope that it doesn't become a political issue. It's just like, we got to come together and we got to solve this because there's a legitimate problem, you know?

Yeah, I did hear about that case. Uh, it was An interesting idea. I'm curious to see how, how, if it lasts. You never know with that stuff. There's always a higher— I, well, until, until you hit the Supreme Court here in the US.

It'll be knocked out. I'm— I wouldn't be surprised if it's knocked out for sure, like, right, in the Supreme Court. But the point is we're seeing these glimmers, do you know what I mean? So maybe the first one gets knocked out, but the second one succeeds, and maybe in a different state or whatever, but like Right, exactly. I think the pendulum's swinging, but it's—

Yeah, I think that there's— we've definitely— it feels like there's— I don't know, we, we might be finally towards the point where there is some actual downhill to where— to what we're, what we're doing as far as sustainability and things like that. Yeah, which would be great. Not to say the road's over, like we're, that's only like maybe a halfway point-ish.

Yeah.

I don't know if we could even say halfway point, but it is, it is, it is a point that there's, there's shift. And yeah, I think that case is a great, great example. And yeah, seeing the fires in Maui, like that's another big thing. Like even, you know, even if the power company gets blamed fully for that, Still, like, it's big, right? It impacts, it impacts people in their own home. Like, it's not just, oh, there's big environmental things somewhere else. It's, oh no, a whole city burned down. Like, that's, that's way more attention-getting than there's some fires in California forests. Like, it happens every year. You know, we kind of just like easily push that aside because, oh, maybe 1,000 people had to be evacuated and then they all go, like, especially California.

Yeah.

You're like, oh, all the rich people go back to their houses anyway. They're fine. Like that, right? You have that kind of that attitude towards it. But then something like this happens. Like, oh, that's okay. Yeah, no, these aren't just rich Californians and it's not a yearly thing. Like, it's a big deal. How do we, how do we address it? It's like, it's a wake-up call.

Fires in Canada this year?

I know you— yeah, you've had bad fires.

Like, like, the crazy thing is, if you look at a graph compared to previous years, it's off the charts. Like, tens of millions. I think it was like 10 million acres. Don't quote me on it, but it's in that range. Like, approximately 10 million acres of forest was burned by July. Like, 10 million. Like, can we even comprehend that amount of space? And so, yeah, like, again, I'm not— I'm— it sounds like I'm going down the political path, but that's— I, I just think there's something legitimately happening that we have to look out for.

Well, I think, I think we— most people— and actually, uh, there was a poll that was done in the US that maybe it was like 4 years ago or so. It was finally that climate change was like one of the only things that the US agreed on.

Really?

Like across party lines, state lines. Like we finally crossed a point where generally our population finally agrees, you know, not that there's, but that there is climate, like climate change and that we don't like it.

Like, basically, like, I'm really glad to hear that. But the next, next thing is, how do we get rid of, uh, the coal power plants? I'll just give you a quick update. I, I did a quick search here about the forest fires in Canada. So over 27.1 million acres of land, 11 million hectares in Canada, and that comes from CBS News. So that is significant.

That's a lot.

This is a lot. Anyway, um, so that's, that's a bit of a rabbit hole, but I think it's relevant because—

We could talk about that for a day.

Yeah, yeah. And this is what's— so if we, we come back here, and I'm— it's not about making a pitch or anything, but if we talk about things like dish soap as like a sort of micro example of a macro potential solution, the little bit of research that I've done to date, if And it's, it's hard to get exact numbers. But if we're talking in generalities, and I think most people can agree, like, think about, like, do you know many homes that don't have liquid dish soap, or body wash, or shampoo, cleaners, laundry detergent?

I mean, Walmart sells it. And dollar store, Dollar Tree, Dollar, you know, all of the dollar stores sell it, which means literally every household down to the poorest on the In the US, I can't speak to other countries, but even the poorest ones in the US all have it. Like, it's—

they all have it.

So we all have toilet paper and soap.

Like, yeah, this is it. So we're talking billions of gallons of water being shipped all over, leading to climate-changing emissions.

Right, right.

And sometimes, like, as much as I'd like to say we're such you know, geniuses over at Etsy. We just, we took a very focused approach to a problem that we felt we could solve. We're a tiny company. We were totally bootstrapped. We have not had any major investment up to this point. We haven't sought out investment yet. And we have solved a fairly significant problem. And to me, the good news is I think there's a lot of simple fixes that we can take, whether it's a company like ours. I even, like, I'm looking out my window right now. I'm— my other little obsession these days is monarch butterflies, you know, and because they're an endangered species now. And there's this, like, shift happening in this neighborhood. I moved during the pandemic from an urban city center where everyone's front garden or front lawn was not a lawn, it was a garden, and they all had pollinating flowers. Come to this more rural community and everyone mows their ditches. No one uses those ditches in front of their house, but they mow it, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I decided to let my ditch go and start having wildflowers in In it, and you should see the life that's in there. And we now have monarch butterflies in there. We have all this sort of stuff. It drove my neighbor crazy. He's like, how could you let such an eyesore happen in your front yard? But that was his stance last year. This year, there's this little sort of empty plot of land next to his house, which he used to always mow.

Mm-hmm.

And now he's just let it go. And so imagine if everyone who owned a home— you don't even need to convert your whole lawn into wildflowers, you just convert that unused section, you let it grow. Do you know what I mean? And I guess that's my point. There's so much easy opportunity for us to turn things back. Anyway, I could go on, but—

No, I love it. I love it. I think that's— it's so true. Like, we always think there's There's gotta be some super complicated solution, right? We're like, oh, it's gonna require some calculus on this blackboard and CAD modeling and data modeling and 20 scientists to like think about it to begin to try to solve it. And sometimes it does take that, but it doesn't always take that. Like, that's not actually— Right? It doesn't always require that. And it's something that I talk about even in some of the presentations I do and talking and stuff is like, we all, I firmly believe that we have the solution to all of our problem in our population. We don't need anybody to be born. We don't need anybody like we all, we have it. The solutions are here. It's a matter of And I think culturally we don't. And there's so many people that I even personally come across that are like, oh, I'm not an inventor. I don't solve problems. Meanwhile, they've like solved 1,000 little problems with like, oh, I just combined these 2 little things, right? I'm a welder and I just made all these gadgets around me to make my job easier. Like, you are an inventor. Like, you don't, you're, yeah, you're not, we're disconnecting. Like, oh, I don't design, I don't invent. Meanwhile, you're like, but, but you just solved it. Like 20 problems that a million other people have.

Like, what do you mean?

Like that, that is so, I don't know. Hopefully, I don't know how to, that's a whole other problem to solve of like, how do you convince the world again that they actually do come up with good solutions? But like, that is like, it's untapped potential of like, I know the solution is there. Somewhere somebody has the right idea.

Think about this. 15 years ago, could you and I have been sitting talking and recording a podcast?

No, not like this.

And, and it's funny, it's easy to beat down on social media, and maybe it needed to be called out for some of the negativity around it, but I still call podcasting a form of social media, and it has enabled us to spread ideas and like at a rate that is, well, it's never seen before. Like, it's probably— I mean, the internet is what, as big an invention as the printing press, or if not bigger?

Oh, it's— we are in the internet age. Like, it's, it's definitive in its invention and what it can do. Like, it's— it is defined. It is defined every— like, we are literally Yeah, we're living it.

We're living it. And the impact it's had. So when you're talking about convincing people that they have the ability to make a change or to be designers or problem solvers, that's where the internet comes in and why it's so empowering because you can start your podcast, you can get on your little social media soapbox. And if you can build an audience, you can convince people that they can make a difference. And that to me is so empowering and so exciting. And that's where, like, again, the environmental movement I think has fallen a little astray by being doom and gloom. Let's spread all the information about everything wrong with the world versus, hey everyone, let's get into the sandbox together and let's come up with solutions and let's play. Like, that's what I've really enjoyed with product development at Etti. And working with our customers, we come back into our little sandbox of social media, of our emails, whatever it is, and we're like, okay, sky's the limit. What's an idea? Like, what's the next idea we should develop? Okay, you help us develop it. Let's talk about it. Oh, that wouldn't work because of this reason, but what if we did this? And then let's create it together. And everyone gets pumped up. And instead of just like buying a product, They're actually helping to solve a problem and it's fun. You know, it doesn't have to be doom and gloom. It's like we can all come together and have fun creating solutions and thinking about things in new and dynamic ways.

Yeah, I love that. And it's, yeah, including people is, I think it's important. It's important to do that. Well, this has been, this has been amazing. I think we could talk for hours and hours.

Yeah, of course.

Of course. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll do another episode, follow up on this conversation. But for this one, before we wrap up, I do wanna make sure people know where to find you. Anything else that you wanna, wanna share? How can people find, engage with you? All that fun stuff. Give you some time to do that.

Yeah, for sure. So our company is ETI, which stands for Everything Touches Everything.

Very true.

So etee.com fits in perfectly with the conversation. Um, and if you go to eti.com, you'll see a whole range. Uh, you know, our new focus is our skincare because the skincare industry is responsible for billions of units of plastic, not to mention emissions from shipping water all around the world. So we're really honed in on that, but we've got all sorts of cleaning products. We've got toothpaste, we've got laundry, and we developed it all in the last 5 years. So if you want to come join our community and help us develop more products and learn about everything that we're doing, just head on over to eti.com. Everything touches everything else.

Awesome. And that'll be added to the show notes for everyone listening. We'll make sure plenty of links for everyone. And yeah, I really appreciate your time, Steve. It's been great. We'll We'll have to do this again.

Yeah, awesome, man. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for, uh, listening to me ramble too.

Absolutely. No, it was fun. Thanks.

Okay.