Heather Fritzsche founded youbody, the sustainable personal care brand, to help lessen the environmental footprint and promote water stewardship.
Her concept starts with waterless body wash and using powder-filled packets that break down, rather than plastic that pollutes. To use the youbodypod, users simply mix three packets of various flavored powders to craft their unique, eco-friendly wash.
Fritzche’s former career in product design revealed how much waste exists in our society, while also giving her the knowledge on how to develop her own products. YOGA + Life asked her more about what sustainability means to youbody.
What does sustainability mean to youbody?
Sustainability means everything to us. As we were developing the product, there was always options that were less expensive but less sustainable, and at every turn, I chose the more sustainable option. For example, the packets are made of a film — everyone knows these from flavored water packets, right? Well, those will frequently use the #7 recycling symbol on them, because technically, there is technology there to recycle them, but most municipalities don’t. It’s actually very rare for those to be recycled, and if they do end up in the recycling stream, they generally just corrupt and pollute it. So instead, we used a NEO Plastics film that has an additive in it so that it breaks down in the landfills in 120 days. No recycling needed.
In addition, body wash is about 85% water, so every one of those plastic bottles that you hold in your hand in the shower every morning has been trucked all across America, and it’s really mostly water. If you imagine a truck driving across the country, and the pollution it creates, one of those trucks can hold about a million showers of liquid body wash, but about seven million showers with youbody. It is also shocking to me that from body wash ALONE – not considering shampoo, conditioner or everything we drink – creates over a billion plastic bottles a year.
Tell us more about the concept behind your product. Why is it important to have an eco-body wash?
There are sustainable options coming up like crazy in every industry, but the shower has been largely ignored for a while. I really like body wash – you couldn’t pay me to use a bar of soap – because I love the lather and the fragrance, and the experience and exfoliation of showering with a pouf. So, when I wanted to be more sustainable in my shower, I saw that the only sustainable option was a big step down for me in terms of the experience of showering.
Youbody is designed to be a super-premium shower experience, with fragrances designed by a master perfumer, and a formula that is plant-based, free of dye, parabens, sulfates and sulfites, is hypoallergenic and has an incredible lather. I didn’t want our sustainable solution to be a step down, it is really a step up.
We saw you donate 5% of your proceeds to Water.org. Why do you support this organization?
It’s horrifying to me that there are places in this world that don’t have water, and in industrialized nations like the U.S., we pollute the environment to truck around bottles of water because we have so much of it. It’s so unnecessary. As a business owner, I like the approach that they have a scalable system of investing in water availability by ensuring financing to local groups who are doing the work.
Photos courtesy of youbody.
