This BIPOC, Female Owned Home and Personal Care Brand Is Paving the Way for Sustainable Business

Did you know that every second, 4.75 tonnes of single-use plastic is being produced worldwide? This amounts to approximately 150 million tons per year. Single-use plastics are causing direct harm to our wildlife, adding to the Pacific Trash Vortex and increasing GHG emissions. This is detrimental and annual climate change reports are only worsening from here. If that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what does.

When wanting to eliminate single-use plastics, the spotlight should be shined on manufacturers. They’re quite possibly the leading producers of single-use plastics worldwide. If you look around your home right now, you’re guaranteed to find at least 3 daily items that are made from single-use plastics. I was able to understand this cycle with owners of Good JuJu, Alexa Monahan and Lisa Jagatia. Not only do they create all-natural, plastic-free home and body-care products, they’re proving how you can have both a successful business that is also environmentally conscious.

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Meet Alexa & Lisa From Good juju

Alexa and Lisa started the Good JuJu brand in November of 2020 and since then, the business has been flourishing. Both of them have a marketing background in the natural health industry. Lisa perviously worked for Genuine Health, a supplement company based in Toronto and Alexa for her family business that founded health food stores across B.C.. While in their independent marketing careers, they began to cross paths and have been close ever since.

“We both come from backgrounds of super strong benefits in sustainability, people and community and businesses with a purpose. So when we sold our business in B.C. it was the same time Lisa was leaving Genuine Health and she said she always wanted to start a business that was run by women and it has to be something good for the planet,” Alexa said.

Goodbye To the Old Ways OF Traditional Business

Traditional businesses are not sustainable and Lisa breaks down the cycle by saying, “you look at the plastic pollution, the way that it contributes to the economy and the way these businesses are set up is all about capital gain.” If we continue to live in a world where businesses don’t care about the environment and the people in it, the future won’t look too bright.

“When we set up Good JuJu we knew that we wanted to set up something that operated differently. Our mission is really to remove the amount of single-use plastics that people use in their everyday routine. The other aspect of it is that we really wanted to inspire other businesses to change the way they’re doing business,” Lisa said.

Companies need to start looking at how their production effects the environment. They need to start looking at their recycling and composting programs. Lisa says, that some companies just think purchasing carbon offsets will suffice, but environment issues don’t go away that easily.

Sustainability Isn’t Just A Value, But The Foundation Of Good JuJu

Good JuJu is a member of the 1% For The Planet, an international organization whose members contribute at least 1% of their annual sales to environmental causes. Good Juju aligns with their morals and how they want businesses to continue to do more for the planet.

They recently announced their 50 By 30 pledge. Their goal is to remove 50 million plastic bottles from entering the waste stream by 2030.

“It sounds like a big number, but we send 3 billion plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles and 7 million plastic laundry detergent bottles to landfills every year in North America. So, if we can even make a small dent in that it will be something great,” Alexa said.

Plastic-Free Packaging

Climate is always at the top of their daily discussions and they’re trying to find ways to be more sustainable in both their products and packaging. When it comes to their packaging, everything is 100% plastic free, including their shipping materials. Retail boxes that hold the products are made from the remanence of sawing boards and they’re pressed to form re-purposed boards. The protective foam on the inside to hold the product is made out of non-GMO corn foam that just dissolves with water in the sink. This means the entire package 82% compostable and 18% recyclable.

When it comes to the shipping packaging, they use post-consumer recycled packaged envelopes, paper tape and compostable stickers. Everything from start to finish is environmentally friendly, and its something that’s not usually seen in businesses.

“This is how we’re trying to change the way business is done. Any shipping that comes out of our online store is carbon negative. We pay for the offsets to not just make our shipments carbon neutral or carbon negative…This is all a part of our investment to the planet,” Lisa said.

About The Products

Shampoo & Conditioner Bars

Good Juju makes all-natural, plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars. The idea started with both Alexa and Lisa trying out a few different brands of shampoo bars and thinking to themselves they could do it way better. They wanted to eliminate everyday single-use plastics in their home, like those of shampoo and conditioner bottles, without compromising on product performance.

To develop the bars they worked with a naturopathic doctor, a hair dresser, and a cosmetic chemist. It took them 8 months to develop the bars and some of their unique ingredients include:

• Organic Mushroom Extract
• Broccoli Seed Oil
• Sacha Inchi Oil

Lisa says ingredients like these don’t just sit on the hair but actually penetrate the hair shaft to make hair healthier and stronger. Each bar can last up to 50-75 washes.

“Our bars are interesting and unique because we did use a naturopath. He’s also a researcher and has worked at Harvard. He gave us these cutting-edge science proven, clinically tested ingredients and that’s made a huge difference in the formulation and why they’ve been so successful and popular,” Alexa said.

They offer 4 shampoo and conditioner bars for all hair types.

1. Normal / Balanced Hair Shampoo & Conditioner
2. Dry / Curly Hair Shampoo & Conditioner
3. Oily / Fine Shampoo & Conditioner
4. Scalp Car Shampoo & Conditioner

Laundry Detergent Eco-Strips

The Good JuJu Laundry Detergent Eco-Strips are plastic-free, ultra-concentrated, hypoallergenic and eco-friendly. You add one strip to your load and it cleans your clothes perfectly. Alexa says these strips are made by, “taking the active ingredients from the detergent by removing the water.”

Purchasing an eco-strips packages means you’re preventing a 1-litre plastic jug from entering a landfill and contributing to a 94% reduction in transport-related GHG emissions.

Good Juju Laundry Detergent Eco-Strips are offered in both a Summer Rain scent and unscented.

Feature Image: Good JuJu