Hello Health, Moms Empowered
Hello Health, Moms Empowered
Poop, Periods & Plastic: The Business of Taboo
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Miki Agrawal, celebrated as a visionary entrepreneur and author, is the driving force behind the innovative companies TUSHY, THINX, and WILD, that have done over half a billion dollars in revenue to date. Author of best-selling books "DO COOL SH*T" and "DISRUPT-HER," she's recognized by Fast Company as one of the "Most Creative People" and by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader." Beyond her entrepreneurial ventures, Miki is known for her compelling presence as a speaker, offering unique insights into breaking taboos with creative innovation, product development, creative marketing, and business scaling. With 20 years of entrepreneurial adventures, Miki has established herself as a thought leader in creative business strategy and challenging the status quo. With a track record of building two nine-figure companies that disrupted two industries, Miki is now channeling her entrepreneurial spirit into her fourth venture, HIRO, aiming to solve the global plastic crisis with nature-inspired plastic eating fungi. Go to HIRODiapers.com to learn more.
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Hi, this is Pamela Worth with the Hello Health Podcast. And today I have Mickey Ackerwald. She is an incredible force. Very innovative companies such as Toshi, Thanks, Wild, bestselling novels, do cool shit, disrupt her. Recognized by FAS Company as one of the most creative people and by the World Economic Forum as a young global leader. Welcome so much. And you can't wait to hear more about Hero and some of the really um interesting things that you're doing around nature-inspired plastic eating functions.
SPEAKER_01Yay. Awesome. I'm so happy to be here. Where are you based? Sorry? Where are you based right now? Scottsdale, Arizona. Oh nice. What about you? Um Austin, Texas.
SPEAKER_00Awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So tell us about what makes you excited.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. Um, what makes me excited is actually tuning into ecosystem consciousness. And what that means is it it the way I think about it is it first we first start with this I mean consciousness, where it's like me, me, me, me, me. You know, you're like selfie, me, when you're a kid, it's all about you. And then you grow up. And then finally you you have you go through this one-way doorway from maiden to mother or bachelor to father, and you go from an I, me consciousness into for the first time an us-we consciousness. We're like, oh, it's not just about me, it's about my baby, it's about my family. And all of a sudden it opens up your aperture really in a different way for the first time. But my desire is for people to open up their aperture even more to an ecosystem consciousness, because without a strong ecosystem, our babies are going to suffer. We're suffering. I mean, there the the the global warming that's affecting all of us disease, fire, floods, like the amount of stuff that's happening, or the blanching of the oceans. There's gonna be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, only 40 harvests of soil left if we don't actually change. Like there's such real things that we've been passing the buck, passing the buck, passing the buck, but now we're like all caring about our babies that we're growing, and yet we're literally dumping them into this like wildly toxified ecosystem that we co-created, right? And so I'm so in so inspired by the fungal kingdom, by nature, and how fungi and nature have been literally regenerating for billions of years and have figured out how to regenerate everything back into the earth. And it's a sacred reciprocity of birth, transformation, death, transformation, birth, transformation, death, transformation cycle. And the fact that we are, we've cut ourselves off to just birth, transformation, death. And and there's no there's no the end of life piece that comes back to birth. And that that's a part of the plastic is just getting piled and piled and piled and piled and piled. It's now ending up in our brains, our bloodstreams, in our in our reproductive organs, and now in our baby's umbilical cords. It's all over our rivers, it's just everywhere, this plastic. And the beautiful, magical thing is that fungi have been breaking down the carbon backbone of trees for hundreds of millions of years. And it turns out that the carbon backbone of trees is very similar to the carbon backbone of plastic, because plastic comes from fossil fuels and fossil fuels come from compressed dead trees and dead animals. So if fungi can break down trees, they can also break down plastic. And so we just are having to tune back in to nature consciousness and realize that the answers have been here all along. We just have to like listen, tune back in. We don't have to change our ways too much to go back to the Luddite life. Like, I'm not saying that. It's just more like, how do we take on more regenerative principles? And so what I started is a uh the first diaper called Hero Diapers that is based on regenerative principles. It's the first diaper that actually considers the end of life. 6,000, every single baby goes through 6,000 diapers. And every diaper takes four to 500 years to break down. Like a hundred billion diapers end up in landfills every year. And the very first disposable diaper is still in a landfill somewhere. So it's like the the stats are insane when you really look at this crisis that we're in, this global plastic crisis where 91% of plastic is not even being recycled, that's being put in our oceans and our landfills, incinerated, and now mismanaged, which is what's ending up in our brains, our bloodstreams, and our, you know, baby's umbilical cords. And so what I wanted to really create is a product that met parents where they are. We know that's I know that 66% of mothers are either primary or co-bread winners now. So I'm not asking moms to not only make the bread, cook the food, clean the kids' house, do all the stuff, and wash all the dirty diapers from the cloth diapers they're using. It's just too much. And so I tried cloth diapers after a month, couldn't do it. Discovered that 50% of moms buy the cloth diapers, only 2% continue with them because everyone wants to, but it's like, oh my God, you can't do all that. And, and, and, and so diapers, disposable diapers are an essential product. So we created the first truly unbleached diaper that's also high performing and the best, you know, made with unbleached cotton, super soft. The best diaper made with 80% less plastic. All the stats are in. It's like up to five times drier than leading brands. It absorbs up to three times faster than leading eco diapers. It's just a great, high-performing, epic diaper. Parents love it. And it's the first one that comes with mycotechnology, like literally little friendly fungi that are sleeping inside this pouch that are non-toxic culinary grade, amazing. And you literally, when you're changing the soil diaper off the baby, you literally take the soil diaper, whether it's a poopy diaper or pea diaper, you just drop this whole pouch into the diaper, you close it, and you throw it in the trash, and that's it. In a couple of weeks, the little fungi that are sleeping inside this pouch will wake up, fertilized by the baby's pooper pee, and then start to grow. And our vision is for this diaper to be self-composting by, you know, in under 12 months. Like we want, we're like, we're really like that is our true, true vision. Um and so it's amazing. Yeah. So I love that. Instead of four to five hundred years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, that's um can you put the pouches with any other plastic thing that you throw away?
SPEAKER_01So they're designed for the diaper because this has cotton and wool pulp, and it's like the most like out of all the diapers, it has the most natural materials. And so this works best for this, but it will it will still be it'll still be better than not putting it in any in in like not putting anything in at all. Does that make sense? It'll probably work slower. The fungi will probably be like a little, you know, not stoked to eat a much more bleached processed plastic diaper. Um, but you know, like for example, like coterie is like 50% more plastic than these diapers or bleached, they have the the the line. Like this probably would work like not great with those diapers because they're mostly plastic. Yeah. So yeah, it depends. So ideally, yes, we're gonna keep strengthening these to make them work with with any diaper, but they're really made first for the hero diaper.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So where do people find these diapers?
SPEAKER_01Hero diapers.com. H-I-R-O diapers. Check it out. It's the most beautiful. I I love the website. It's so artful and it's really shares the essence of what we're doing compared to like any other diaper company. Like you really, really feel the heart of what we're we're doing at Hero. And um, but ultimately is we are the first to really, really tackle the end of life of these plastic problems that are billions of them are ending up in landfills. We're the first to take fungi out of, you know, like a you know, they're growing in landfills, but from a lab into a shelf stable, scalable way. No one's ever been able to figure out how to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's incredible. What else can people be doing in terms of like like what like let's say the diaper stage? What else have you kind of found in your research that is helpful to families and people?
SPEAKER_01Totally. So this what I call this is like the gateway. It's like the one inspired action gateway to taking more inspired actions. We're like, you start with one inspired action, put this in the diaper, and put it in your trash. That's it. It's like one little thing that's gonna help it regenerate. So start there, then it's like, oh, I want to compost. I'm gonna get a composter. So that's your next inspired action. All of a sudden, you realize that 24% of food waste that ends up in landfill, sorry, um, 24% of landfill waste is food waste. And if we can literally just compost our food, that any scraps we just put in this little composter, there's electric composters you can get like anywhere now. You can just get and it just turns it into soil and dirt, and you can just put it outside. And even if you live in a city, you can put it by your local tree, you know. So you can get a little electric composter and it's not there's no fruit flies, it's totally great. You leave it even outside on your porch, and you just bring your scraps and you just put it there, and all of a sudden you're helping divert 24% of landfill waste if you just take one inspired action. The next inspired action, you're like, I don't need to buy cleaning products anymore. I've got, you know, some vinegar, water, and some essential oils. Mix it together in a can in a in a stainless steel can, and there you go. You have, you know, I love mixing, you know, amber, a lavender, uh, you know, I I love um jasmine, like there's so many different delicious, and you can add some more peppermint. You get lots of different ways that you can mix and make really cool essential oils and make that your your cleaning cleaning sprays. And so, um, and then you know, you can replace, you just start boycotting, you say, I'm boycotting plastic water bottles. I'm boycotting plastic bags. You literally just bring your water bottle and just bring your bag everywhere you go. It's pretty straightforward. You don't, you just you just it becomes second nature. You just don't that diverts like billions of like if every single person took these simple, one-inspired actions at a time, you replace your paper towels with, you know, these little cleaning rags, and you can just literally like like reduce your paper towel consumption by so much getting a Tushi Baday. I started the company Tushi Baday. Tushi literally has helped save 10 million trees from getting flushed down the toilet. We have funded resoiling and reforestry projects all over South America by actually properly washing your butt clean after you poop, you know? And so we have helped literally all that toilet paper consumption. You're cutting down by 80, 90% using like a couple of squares to pat dry. A lot of people also use our butt towels or whatever that you can just pat in Italy. They don't even use toilet paper, they just pat with a towel because you're clean, you've already showered your butt. And so, you know, um, and so we've it's like, how do you create everyday solutions that are like just doing one inspired action? Oh my God. But actually, using a bidet is actually an improvement in my life. Like it feels so much better, like washing myself properly. That's actually elevating my own life. Oh my God, like putting an unbleached diaper on my baby where I'm not putting bleach, like dioxins, like literally leaching into your baby's skin for the first thousand days of their life. Like, no, I'm actually putting an unbleached diaper on my baby that's the most soft and wonderful. And I know that I'm not leaving my baby with a giant pile of billions of you know, like pounds of trash, you know, and of plastic waste. And so, like, how are you starting to really reorganize and reorient your own your own self slowly by taking these one inspired actions at a time? And all of a sudden, next thing you know, you're an eco-forward parent leader, you know, and you start to like really replace your shampoo bottles with no more plastic. Everything is in these little tins or glass bottles that you refill, or you, or the powders that are even better that you just like go like this and it just lathers, and it's like there's so many. I bought, I just bought a toothbrush that's made with like horse hair like remnants and like a bamboo thing, you know, and like I like it's just stuff like that where you're just all of a sudden you're you're just more conscious of everything that you're doing, and you're just like, oh my God, like what, you know, even just buying like like sandwich bags for my son, like you know, before it was just like I I just was buying sandwich bags because at my sandwich goes, my oh my god, like compostable, obviously, so only glass container or containers that he can take a sandwich, or I have these compostable bags that I'm that I'm that he's gonna, you know, that are totally compostable. And so like stuff like that, where you're like you just start to like take one inspired, and all of a sudden your home just starts to get become eco. It just happens, you know.
SPEAKER_00Anything else that you want to touch on? Any other tips, tricks? I love this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, I mean, I think just putting your feet outside and going outside and starting to like re-attune yourself to nature, like getting your feet in the dirt and just like being okay with it, you know. I went to I just came back from Amazon Rainforest, and I'm still like a city mouse, and I was like, I'm taking my shoes off and I'm gonna walk around, even if there's like crazy insects here. Like, and I was and it was so nourishing, you know? And um, yeah, there's still so much city kid in so much of us that we have to just start to repatriate our own remembering of our connection to nature. I mean, we inside of our bodies, we we have beyond a microbiome, we have a microbiome, we have fungi living inside of us, just like there's fungi literally under the entire planet Earth, connecting every living being quietly, effortly, just like doing this work for us with no recognition. And we have one inside of us that's our gut, like our gut sense, our gut without that out there in here, we'd be dead. We wouldn't be alive, we wouldn't be here. And so to have reverence for the whole ecosystem means that you're leaving your baby in a much better way. So I'm here to like just shout about ecosystem consciousness and how important it is to care about the ecosystem your baby is gonna grow up. And if you don't care about that, your baby is not going to thrive. That's it. It's that simple.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Mickey. Really appreciate it. Yes, we will have all of your show um notes with all of your social media and websites in there as well. So thank you so much. Thank you.