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Sustainable Haus: How a Refill Store Is Quietly Changing How We Live · Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy

• HHWW Janette [Mary Meyer] Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. We have with us today Janette Spiezio. I said that right. She is with a Sustainable Haus in New Jersey, which is a locally owned refill and sustainable and we're going to learn all about it. So I get so excited about learning about small businesses that are making a big impact and you are one of them. Before we get started, I want to say we have a podcast sponsor, Mindiii, M-I-N-D-I-I. And they do everything with full stack building of websites, all the data storage in the back, keeping everything safe. So look up them for anyone who needs IT services. So Janette, you were in corporate for 30 years and then now you opened up this store. Tell us first about the store. Like, what is it? [Janette Spiezio] Sure. So we're a eco-friendly store. We are a home goods store. We have over 3000 items. It's called Sustainable House. It's spelled H-A-U-S, the German way. It's just this really cool place. People who come, it's an experience. It's an experience when you come. We are a small but mighty zero waste refill store. And that just means that our products create zero waste, zero impact, as much as possible. And you can refill. You can refill laundry detergent, dish soap, hand soap, shampoo, cleaners, toothpaste, tablets, all that stuff. And then we have lots of reusable. So everything is meant to have a lower impact, no impact in many cases, and be non-toxic, healthier for us, our families, and the planet. That's amazing. [Mary Meyer] I was having a conversation with my grown daughter, who's in Atlanta, and about how I was, you know, I get frustrated with so many chemicals around me that I just don't have any control over. And she was like, mom, but you were an early adopter, like you were in the 90s wanting to not, and I was, you know, my health failed in the 90s. So of course I'm an early adopter with some of these things. But I still feel like after all these years, I don't think I have experienced a store like yours. [Janette Spiezio] Well, I would like to say that there aren't many like us. There are definitely lots of refill stores. So go look up your local refillery, zero waste store. We're a bit different because I just wanted to have a lot of solutions and answers. So we have things that your average store won't have. We have lots of bakeware that is stainless, no aluminum. We have lots of wood, utensils, bowls, cutting boards. We have food storage and the whole wall of food storage, and we're a small store. So we try to have a lot of choices. So even like on deodorant, we have four different brands with multiple scents. And of course unscented because nobody needs a scent. Almost everything is scented with essential oils. We have a couple that aren't. So it's all that stuff. And I think that these kinds of stores are growing in popularity. So there's more around. There's probably about 500 or 600 across the US. So they're out there. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Well, good. So why no aluminum in the bakeware? [Janette Spiezio] Well, you know, there's a lot of people that will say it is linked to dementia and Alzheimer's. And you can look for studies. We're really big on finding research and studies that back things up. And this is one that's a little bit harder to find much definitive evidence on, but there are tons of links or correlations to dementia and Alzheimer's. And I realize that is not as strong as it could be, but there's a clear thread in the conversation about heavy metals. And so we try to have as much glass and just stainless as possible with the best grades of stainless, which is, you know, some of these things are hard to find. And we try to find the best we can. We are not perfect. So huge disclaimer. I'm not a doctor. We are not perfect. But we are really trying to give people better choices. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Well, and yay for that because we need better choices for sure. And there's a lot in there's some of the things that you talked about when I was reading through your things was like, you know, the transparency and building a clientele based on they trust you versus on. I'll call it mark, you know, marketing. I was in marketing for a couple of years. I don't say anything negative about that at the same time at the same time. You know, like people read the front of the cute label that says this is so great for you and not turn it on the back where it's like, no, actually, it's it's not. So we believe the we believe the marketing, I think probably in a way. Is that kind of what what is that what brought you into this? What what kind of made you do this? [Janette Spiezio] Yeah. And I will say when people ask me about my job, a small side note, because you mentioned marketing, I would say my number one job is marketing, which, you know, that's why I'm here, right? We're here to talk and to get exposure. And the I guess the biggest difference is we are trying to market for good and for better options and not for profitability. Our goal is not to make the most money. It's to get our employees a living wage and get people to make changes, which are healthier for individuals, families on the planet. And so it's that's that's the difference. But without marketing, no one finds you. I mean, you can just sit there and, you know, hope that it will come in and it won't necessarily. So what got me into it was one day, sort of at the end of my time in corporate, I was looking at my, as you know, green laundry detergent, right? It had all the had all the things. And it was in a paper as like a paper bottle and it and everything was plant derived. And I was like, wow, this is, you know, good stuff. And I decided to research what each of those things were. And it was before I knew about Think Dirty, Yuka, Environmental Working Group.org. And I tried to research those ingredients and it was like, it was so hard. I gave up and I decided I could make my own detergent. And that sort of led me down this rolling path because I thought I made this great detergent. If I wanted it, others must want it. And so I started at farmer's markets and I never had a business plan. I just knew that I wanted a place where people could come and find some of the best solutions that were out there. And again, it doesn't make us perfect because we live in this world that is just really imperfect. But we tried, we tried hard to educate people and to find better choices. And a big, big part of what we do is educate. And that's really where I think the marketing comes in because we talk about toxins, products, how they're used, what the options are. So people can find better choices. [Mary Meyer] You know, I just last night I was, and again, I say I was an early adopter. So I feel like I've been trying to do this as living a life that is, that is free of chemicals in this country in this time is impossible. So you want to just be as clear of them as possible. Like you actually have to take some steps to get them out of your life. If you want to have, feel good. I mean, if you want to feel good and not, you know, get a bad diagnosis or something. But last night, so I say that, but last night I was doing what you're doing. And I was just, I'm just trying to find some dishwashing soap, right? And so this is the first time I'm like, let me look at the back of it and read the, read what's in there. And I'm like, none of these, what is this? You know, so the, the citric acid and, which is, most of citric acid is derived from genetically modified black mold. So like, why is this in a cleaner? Just, and kind of a lot of junk that you're, you're like, there's no way - guar gum. And I'm like, why is that in a cleaning product? None of this stuff needs to be in there. So there was some, and that was, this is the most natural I could find. So there were some enzymes in there. So I'm like, okay, the enzymes I imagine are cleaning potential, but it's like, this is, it just seems silly. And that was the most natural I could find. [Janette Spiezio] So I will say that my biggest tip would be, you know what, when it comes to food, they always say like, shop the periphery of the grocery store, right? Where you're getting the whole foods, the vegetables, the organics, and all the, the real things. When it comes to cleaning products, I think if you can shop powders and bars, there's so much cleaner because we'll start with two main things. Dry things don't need preservatives the way liquids do. So when you're buying a liquid product, there's, there has to be a preservative. We just, there just has to be, or it doesn't have any shelf stability. So that's one. And generally they want to make it in these big batches important. So you need some kind of emulsifier. So now you're talking extra ingredients. And then of course the whole world, perhaps besides you and I want scent. So there's that. And, and so your liquids just have so much other stuff. Whereas I make a bar, it's a dish block, a dish bar, and it is made of saponified coconut oil. That's it. And saponified does mean that there's a lye water mixture. That's the only way you can make. So we could talk about, you know, other things, but that's not soap. So if you're making a real bar of soap, you need lye water and oil. We use coconut oil and that's all you need. And it does your dishes fine. Not only does it do them fine, but it lasts longer because it's a bar. But you have to learn how to use it because you're, most people are used to like a thick, gloppy gel. And that's going to stick in your sponge or your brush for a long time. And you're going to get all your dishes clean. Whereas if you're using a thin soap, the water's going to wash it away. So you need to have the water off. You scrub everything up. It makes beautiful lather. And then when you're done, you rinse and you're good. So they go a long time. There's no extra ingredients and it's lovely. Powders, similar. You don't need any of the preservatives or any of those other things. So it's basically usually some kind of a grated soap and a couple of ingredients. I am not totally against citric acid. I think it's one of the ways that you get an acid in a powder form. When I think about how we wash our dishes, like in the dishwasher, there's always a residue left on your dishes. And my mother, who used a commercial dishwashing detergent her whole life, her dishes, which same set she's always had, her good china, is incredibly faded. Why is it faded? It's faded from the dishwasher liquid. So you got a lot of stuff in the liquids you don't want. So yeah, at least the citric acid, it washes off and the acid interacts and gets things clean. But I am fine with people who don't want to use any citric acid. Those are also excellent, excellent choices. I don't want to eat it. [Mary Meyer] I had a guest also say that it can be made with other stuff. I want to say he said sea kelp, which I think I'm wrong, but something else. [Janette Spiezio] Yeah. Well, I mean, in theory, so like in the canning world, because I do all these things, right in the canning world, you want to add some acid to help just get the right pH balance of, for example, your tomato sauce. And they always recommend using citric acid. And the reason for that is, you know exactly the percentage acid. So when you're putting that in, you know what it's doing to the pH, whereas lemon juice is hard to measure. Now you might imagine I use lemon juice because it's, I don't want to use citric. I don't want to eat citric acid or all the reasons that you said, but if I'm cleaning my dishes, it's a different, it's a bit of a different standard for me or my toilets or that sort of thing. [Mary Meyer] So they just had, they just had a mess of this. So I'm sure like the original, how it was originally made was great. And then of course, you know, someone comes along with, he wants to make more money and doesn't care for unhealthy and makes it crappy. So that just is the way the world is today. [Janette Spiezio] Yeah, but I will tell you there are, when you want to get the other, the other challenges, if you want to get a liquid of any sort, liquid shampoo, a liquid laundry detergent that makes you have the exact same experience of what you're used to buying on the grocery store shelves, the commercial brands, you're going to have a list of ingredients that are hard to pronounce because you need like a number of things. But when they're done well by companies who know what they're doing, you don't get things that like sodium lauryl sulfate. You don't get things that produce 1,4-dioxane and known carcinogen. You don't have just all the bad stuff, right? So there's always two ways to do it, right? There's a clean way and there's a financially commercial cheap way to do it. And that's what, you know, most people are doing it the cheap way, but there are, there are good brands. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, and I think this is just one of these areas also that we overlook. Like we don't think about like we're putting the pod, you know, like the cleaner pod in our dishwasher, since I mentioned dishwasher, but that leaves a residue that is going to mess with your health and your children's health on your plates. So we don't think about that. We don't think about what's like paperware, like to make it so it can sustain liquid. There's chemicals on that and you're absorbing those chemicals when you have a paper cup you're drinking out of or a paper plate that you're eating off of. We don't think about that at all. And people who are really focused on health don't consider these things. So it's just something to bring into mind. And I know it feels like more bad news, also it's more good news if you don't know why you don't feel good and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's fine and I can make a change. [Janette Spiezio] Yeah, well, I'm just going to point out we're filming this in July, which is plastic free July. And I think there are so many things that people don't realize are plastic and you just went through a group of them. But I will not use a paper plate. I will not use a to go coffee cup of any sort and I will not use a teabag. So just think about let's go to the toilet for a moment. You take a little piece of paper and you drop it in the water and you come back a day later and what do you have? Just it's like a little bit of muck, right? It's all broken up. There's nothing left, right? However, if you take a paper plate or a coffee cup and you fill it with hot coffee and you let it sit there on your counter for two days, it's not leaking on you and that paper plate isn't falling apart in your hands. Well, it's not paper anymore. It might have some paper in it for sure, but it has either a plastic coating and probably that plus a PFAs, those forever chemicals, to make it water and oil repellent resistant. And it's not just the pod that goes in your dishwasher that leaves a residue on your dishes, but that pod dissolves and it ends up in our water stream. And most dishwasher pods that are commercial pods have like a plastic coating or if it's like a laundry strip, I know I just moved to a different machine, a laundry strip, that all contains polyvinyl alcohol. Polyvinyl alcohol is, by chemical definition, plastic. Yes, it dissolves. All those cases it dissolves because when you open your dishwasher, your washing machine, there's nothing left. But we know what microplastics are, and we know what nanoplastics are, and nanos are the ones that are microscopic and they go between the blood organ barriers. That's what's leaving all the plastics in our bodies that we can't get out. You know, polyvinyl alcohol is just one of the causes. So if we want to live healthier, we just really need to think logically about some really basic concepts and stay away from the things that are too good to be true. [Mary Meyer] And we can't trust that the government is watching out for us because they just have proven they're not. [Janette Spiezio] And they really never have been. Without getting into politics, they have not, for a long time, done anything to really protect us in the US. And yeah, and I think it's really simple. I worked with a high school student who was looking to vilify. She was looking to do a very eco project where she did a video that showed how we could be greener, basically. It was a lovely message. And she felt like the politicians or our government officials were the villains and not doing enough. And I would just say, when you follow the money, I was in compliance, I was in audit. When you follow the money, that really starts to tell the story. And it's the big corporations that are supporting the politicians that are then looking out for corporate interests. So it's really corporations at the root of it, which is trying to just show growth and make more money. And I think most people start out, politicians include and start out wanting to do good for people. But in order for our political system to get people elected, they need funds and funds come from corporations. And yeah, it's a bad cycle. [Mary Meyer] It is a bad cycle. Yeah, for sure. That the people that tend to run it then are the ones that have the cash and the ones that have the cash are the ones that are not necessarily interested in keeping us healthy. So yeah. Okay. So you said you had some props for us. Do you have some of the things in your store? I want to see them. For anyone who's listening, we also have this on YouTube so you can watch and look, but we'll talk about it. [Janette Spiezio] So this is a shampoo bar. And it's our favorite brand. She's out of New Jersey, where I'm located. And it is, you can, there's probably 50 bars on the market. You can try them all. This is the best one. So you can buy it from her. You can buy it from us. You can buy it from your local refillery. The reason it's so special is it's just an amazing shampoo. The conditioner is out of this world. The shampoo won Oprah's best curly hair shampoo. It's for all hair types, color treated, coily, curly, thick, thin, purple hair, you name it. All hair types. And the conditioner is a leave-in. And most brands don't do that. And a leave-in just leaves your hair feeling great and silky. It comes in seven cents. They are one of the few things in the store artificially scented, but they get the highest rating on the Yuka app. They are, there's no phthalates, no parabens, it's keratin safe, all the things you want it to be. And of course, there's an unscented version, which is the one I use. And wet bar, wet hair, you glide, you lather, beautiful lather, no one for dioxane. And then you rinse. And then you apply the conditioner and you apply the wet bar to your hair and you just work it through a tiny bit. It just is a beautiful feeling. You want to get it off your roots, but you want to leave some on the ends and on your length and tangle free. It's the official, they're the official sponsors of the US Women's Diving Team. They are, they're just an amazing brand. They work a lot with Surf Rider. They do tons of charities. They don't sell on any of the big box places. And they will, if you buy from them directly, they will encourage you to go to your local refill store because they're trying to change the way we shop. So that's one thing. [Mary Meyer] Very cool. [Janette Spiezio] And I'm just going to sort of jump over to, I became a best-selling author a month ago. Yeah. Oh, yay. Yeah. But in here, I've written a chapter. It's a Chris Voss book. He is an amazing former FBI negotiator, hostage negotiator, amazing consultant, founder of the Black Swan group. He's just a really famous, amazing person. But in this book, Lead with Empathy, we all have written a chapter about leading with empathy and mine is about how a shampoo bar can change the world. And really when you think about it. So if you make a shift, the average person goes through 12 bottles of hair care in a year. And we can debate that. Some people change when they're real young. Some when they're very old. But on average, figure about 40, 50 years of change. So 40 or 50 times 12, we're somewhere in the 500 range. You tell 10 friends. So your book club friends, your best friend, sister, parents, siblings, children, book club people, podcast friends, all that. And 10 people make the change. 500 bottles goes to 5,000. And then one day you all wake up and say, why am I buying my laundry detergent and dish soap in a plastic bottle? And you multiply that by two or three and you have just exponential change. And so it doesn't matter what you change, your laundry detergent, your shampoo bar, or paper towel alternatives. You can just get a reusable. I make these. They're all flannel and they're just really easy to use. They wipe up really nicely and you don't have to buy paper towel. I've saved $3,500 by not buying paper towel for 10 years. All through COVID, running a store, having a farmer's market booth, no paper towel. And, you know, it just, there's always savings. And you might say paper towel might not be the worst, but I could go into, you know, five or six reasons why paper towel isn't great. And the first one I'll just start with is it's wrapped in plastic and it's single use and it's killing trees and trees are using a lot of water and, and, and why not save the money and go to reusables? [Mary Meyer] So, yeah, that makes so much sense. And this is, you're challenging me. So this is good. You know, I feel like, I feel like, you know, you just grow up and this is how we do it. You know, this is how, and that means for a very long time, this is, you know, we've bought things, our shampoo in the bottle and we've, but this isn't how we've always done it, right? So, you know, you go back to before I was born, you know, and I think this is why we forget, you know, because it's, you know, time passes and you're like, this is before my time. But what did we use to clean? Did we use these chemicals that, why are we using these chemicals that are only bad? [Janette Spiezio] So, you know, you could take a bar of soap and do just about everything. You could, our dish soap, we also make it in a very small size, which is a little tiny pot. It's just a little pot of soap. There's nothing else to it. You dissolve that in water and it's a beautiful spray cleaner. You could take that bar of soap and rub it on a rag or cloth and you could wipe your counters, wash your floors, clean your tub, clean anything because it's just soap. Add a little baking soda and now you have a little scouring and that's pretty much all you need. If you don't want to buy, you know, fancy paper towel alternatives, you can take an old t-shirt and cut it up. We're not saying that there's one way to do it and when it comes to saving money and saving the environment, the two really kind of go together. I like to think of it as rolling the clocks back to, what did our grandmothers do or our great grandmothers do depending on our age. And the really sad thing is if you've ever seen the story of stuff, it's fun to watch on YouTube, there's a whole series, but they start with really what led us to all this consumerism and it was after the world war and I can never remember which one. I want to say World War I or II. Anyway, sorry. After the world war, the US government had a policy of obsolescence. They didn't want products to last forever because they needed to create jobs. So they wanted products only last so long and that was the beginning of our downfall. Plus, combine that with the plastic revolution that everything could be made out of single-use plastic and there was no consequences. Nobody thought about what the impact was to the planet, to human health, to animal health. Nothing. Nobody ever thought about it. They just kept making more and we are still, our plastic use is still on the rise. There is no sign of it slowing down, which is unfathomable to me. [Mary Meyer] Well, and you know, this is like, it is a crisis because they're finding it now in reproductive organs. So it's like, this is going to create, it can create infertility. So that's a crisis. [Janette Spiezio] So a crisis. I mean, that is like the end of humanity. Did you watch the movie Plastic Detox? I have not, no. Okay. Well, you kind of gave it a little summary or at least a talking point. So it is a story of fertility, but it's not just fertility. And it, in my opinion, has a happy ending. But I think that the movie Plastic Detox on Netflix is so accessible. And because fertility is kind of at the core is hitting a nerve with a lot of people. And I think that's a really good thing. I don't know exactly why, but I do think that that, plus more awareness and more influencers on social media talking about these issues and the toxins and people like you and me, I think more people care than ever before. So we are having one of our best years at the store. I've been doing this for 10 years and it's been so hard. I thought if you built it, they will come and they don't. You have to really market and talk and educate and the more of that we all do, the more people that come on board. And I think it's going to hit a tipping point, but it's going to be a ways off. Yeah, we still have a ways to go. [Mary Meyer] Well, I do feel like people in general, they're just like they're tired. They're like, oh, this is more bad news and we're bombarded with bad news. And they don't want to think that it can be that bad. Even though they're having health issues, they don't connect health issues, energy issues with toxins in their home that they're consuming and can make a change on. And it's understandable. Like it is like a wake-up call. We're just used to it and we think, I didn't feel sick in the 80s or the 90s, whatever it is. Why do I feel sick now? Because there's more of a load. Every year, there's an additional toxic load added and then your body is not releasing at all. And it keeps like even in the last few days, it's getting worse with what's being approved for chemicals. So it's, you know, we do have the good news is we have making our own choices and making our own space. We have some choice in what we choose, what we buy, what we use. We have more choice and power in that than we realize. And certainly we want to be a voice of change to go. We're not going to put up with this with, you know, a government and it is both sides because it is controlled by corporate interests and corporate interests don't go away if the other side is elected. So we can do something to speak up against we're not putting up with this. We're not going to do this and do whatever we can say to the government. And also, we have to make the changes because if no one buys the crappy stuff and the crappy stuff doesn't get made anymore. [Janette Spiezio] Yeah. And if people support businesses and podcasts and farms that are doing better than big corporations will realize they too are going to have to make changes if they want to be viable. I'll give you a tiny example. I have a daughter who lives in Dublin and she came home as a surprise this past week. No, I mean, it wasn't a surprise. It was an unscheduled visit home and she immediately went out with her friends and she came home and she was so sick. And first thing I said to her is, what did you eat? And she said, I didn't eat good. And, you know, in Dublin, her first order of business was finding the organic farm share and place where she could buy food that was organic and healthy and food in Dublin in general is better in all of Europe, right? It's just a little better. And so she went from better regular food and she's used to eating really great food over there and all organic and she comes here, goes out with friends and feels just terribly sick and a sick for like 24 hours. And now she's better and she knows what to eat. She and I eat very, very similarly and it just, you know, she had a shock to her system when she came back here. I think that one of the most important things we can do is support organic farms. You know, that's how we treat the land. That's how we're going to feed ourselves in the future. There is so much wrapped into that. I'm also a co-founder of Beyond Plastics New Jersey. So Beyond Plastics is a national group headed by Judith Eng. She's a former EPA administrator. She's pretty amazing. And the goal of Beyond Plastics is like spread throughout the U.S. So we're the New Jersey chapter and we are educating and changing the laws in New Jersey. So we're just working on so many things but we got to skip the stuff past. Stuff is the stuff you get with takeout. So you know the plastic cutlery and the napkin wrapped in a plastic bag and the condiments and chopsticks and just straws and all that junk. Well, starting August first restaurants in New Jersey won't be able to give them out with takeout unless asked for. That's simple. And most restaurants are thrilled because it's going to save them money. Most consumers are thrilled because it's not going to create all this junk in their drawers. And most people don't want it. They take their takeout home and they eat at home. So this is such a tiny step but an important step. And the more of this stuff that we work on, that's really important. So so I think like you meeting my daughter, our kids, we can all make individual choices that are better products and we should and it's so important for our health. But we also need legislative improvements and it just takes people stepping up and working on these issues. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, and being aware and we know it is an extra. I think people are just like, it's an extra stress on my thought process and I want life to be easy. And I don't want to have to stress so much and same. I mean, like we don't want to, we don't want to be dealing with this stuff either. So when your health fails and you have the realization that it actually is because of all this junk in the environment and then our food and then our homes, then you make you're like, well, do I die or do I make the changes? So I had to come to that conclusion a few decades ago. You know, it was the 90s so I'm like, I'm going to have to make changes because I can't, I'm 23 and can't function. You know, so there's other people out there who are like not feeling well and but you don't even really realize how you don't feel well because it's just how you've built for so long. Like we don't understand a vibrancy and it's harder and harder to just feel good and feel energetic and feel healthy and vibrant. I don't know that I feel that all the time because it's just always something and I'm, you can't always control your environment either. [Janette Spiezio] So before joining joining online with you, I was, I'm in my house and I can hear the air filter just going like the filter in the downstairs part of the house and I realized I have a window open and I don't know we've had a lot of storms there's a lot going on and so I closed the window and the air filter you know calms itself down. So it's just coming at us in all ways and you said before you can't avoid all toxins and I 100% agree but I think it starts with working on our water, our food, our air, the things that touch our skin which is all of our cosmetics, all of our cleaning products and I 100% agree I would say a large percentage of our customers are people that have had health issues, have children or family members with health issues and for me I grew up as a first generation American with an organic garden a mother who worked in a health food store we sewed our own clothes we canned our own food we did a lot of the really good things early on however then I got married and I kind of got away from some of that and then one day I woke up and I was like oh my god I gotta get back there and just really kind of leaned in hard with the idea that I've had melanoma and I've got some thyroid issues and you know the standard kind of stuff as we get older and I say standard stuff I do not mean to minimize it because it should not be standard stuff but for most of us as we're getting older we start to get some things I don't take any medications and I want to solve all of my health issues and I want to stay healthy by eating organic whole food plant-based blue zone diet and I want to reduce all the toxins in my life I'm wearing I'm wearing a dress I bought in Dublin it is organic cotton small batch made plant diet like you know these are the kinds of things that we really need to care about and we can take a lot into our own control and I think for me we do two things the store has like the easy stuff right like we can get you set up on all your reusables and we can get you the cleanest products which would be for example you clean your hair with a bar of soap the cleanest products you can get or you could go with you know a little more fun of an experience but it's going to be top-rated ingredients and a luxurious experience but either way all the things you can do like no plastic utensils when you're cooking your food absolutely no non-stick cookware of any sort and that's your bakeware too like what you're putting you know your cookie sheets your muffin tins it is I don't believe in silicone I don't use bioplastic like biodegradable like you know supposedly better plastic we don't we don't use that we don't want that we don't have that and so we have all the things that you can easily swap out [Mary Meyer] This is this is something I've talked I've talked about with friends but I've never talked about on the podcast why is non-stick not good? [Janette Spiezio] So okay PFOS poly and perfluoroethyl substances are the chemical that does a number of things and I'm just this is a primer on it they make things non-stick waterproof stain resistant fire and flame retardant so that's a pretty broad range of chemicals how broad you might ask oh there could be anywhere from three to fifteen thousand different chemicals so one of the most important things to remember is if it says like Teflon is whatever free of PFAs or whatever that's a single chemical that they're talking about so any non-stick cookware is going to say it doesn't have X in it well X is one that one chemical it's not this panoply of three to fifteen thousand how come I don't know the number because I've read all different numbers so it's just an inordinately large number of these chemicals that do all this stuff and why are they called forever chemicals because they persist in nature nearly forever so nearly forever it's not truly forever but a very very very long time and it's not just our bodies that they persist in that they persist in water in animals in air and nature and so it's so important to reduce that so anything that you wear that protects you in the rain I was just researching raincoats almost every single raincoat on the market except for maybe three or four brands uses a forever chemical a P5 related chemical to make the jacket water repellent it also makes pans non-stick so when we get all these cheap and beautiful looking pans that say they're Teflon free they're going to have some chemical that makes it non-stick so if you want a non-stick pan take a stainless steel pan heat it up for somewhere around two minutes at medium heat and when the water beads if you drop the drop of water and it evaporates it's not hot enough when the water bounces like a little ball that bounces around the hot pan then it's hot enough and you can then cook your food and it really won't stick I usually use a tiny bit of oil in there and then you can cook anything from pancakes to stews and frying food and it does just fine so there is no such thing in my opinion as a safe non-stick pan with one exception and I'm going to say that there's ceramic is an exception but it's a really complicated one so if you have a full-on ceramic pan and I'll name a brand Xtreama it's not going to have a coating that makes it ceramic it's ceramic all the way through if however it's just a pan that's coated it's that coating that's chemical the thing that I have not researched enough is like your LaCrucettes that people use for making sourdough I have one I use it I think they're okay because it's a cast iron with a ceramic layering and I think that's very different than the coated pan so if you're getting a $15 frying pan in a big box store I can assure you it's leaching forever chemicals and they're staying in your body forever and ever so the number one there's in terms of tips for health clean your drinking water reverse osmosis is really the only way buy reverse osmosis water drink you know get a filter you get a countertop one it's not super expensive and it's cheaper than bottled water it's the only thing that'll get out plastics and PFAs the forever chemicals we'll get them all out I don't know but it's the only thing on the market that we are aware of that does a decent job so filter your water and get rid of all the non-stick cookware of all sorts [Mary Meyer] in general I do think society we worry about bacteria and viruses so is there like some kind of like you know demon bacteria or a virus that's going around we do not think at all about all these things we're talking about we don't think about chemicals that we're using chemicals to kill the invisible demon virus I'm being a little dramatic I understand but it is it is the I just I have been dealing with it a lot lately too so it is these we're participating in our own chemical overwhelm because we believe this and this is what I talk about I think in marketing it's like that's marketing so we've been marketed to so heavily we don't consider it marketing we consider it truth in science are we sure that you know the chemicals are needed and all these things we're doing is needed for this or is the chemicals the things that are hurting us and causing our bodies to be under such duress that they cannot operate correctly to deal with bacteria or virus [Janette Spiezio] Yeah, you mentioned that people often don't care until they get sick and then they're like how did this happen but I think we also have to remember that our bodies are used to fighting the things that are irritating it right so there might be a chemical in my laundry detergent that I've used forever and ever and ever and ever and my body's used to it so it's always fighting it is our bodies fight the thing that it's constantly irritating it and then we hit overload right so then all of a sudden some other foreign thing like a carcinogen comes at us and we're so busy working on the toxic chemical in our laundry detergent that we can't fight off that other that other toxin so I do agree we're on overload. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, and this is going to sound a little maybe too much for people but I got to say it so if you're using the toxic chemicals for your laundry or whatever it goes out of the home out of the apartment and everyone breathes it in and so you are you are hurting the health of people that might be immune compromised or whatever by doing that so for some people who are like ah it's just me doing it these these things do they flow to the neighbors they flow into the community they flow into your water supply supply and they're in the air when you're you know I just get the lysol sprayed all the time around me and it affects my health it very negatively affects my health and I've vocalized that but also it's like people just believe that this is the right way to handle health is spraying chemicals [Janette Spiezio] yeah [Mary Meyer] and using a lot of chemical cleaners so I'm going to ask people just to maybe let's rethink that is it really and I disagree that it's the right way to handle health obviously you know so [Janette Spiezio] so we have a new neighbor a new person moved into the house next door and I'm so happy because they're not spraying their yard the old neighbor didn't either but most of my neighbors spray their yard and it's really simple if the grass is perfect you don't touch it your pets walk on it you don't walk on it and you keep your organic garden as far from that as possible so I'm so thankful that they moved in and they are a chemical free yard so that was really a good win and there's a very significant laundry detergent brand that rhymes with the word wide and on its website they list 87 ingredients and I say to people all the time if we can't filter out pharmaceuticals from our drinking water what makes you think we can filter out 87 chemicals from a laundry detergent because I know the answer it's just common sense we can't so if we want to live healthier as individuals as families and as a planet which is not just for us and the animals it's for every like living creature and it drives me nuts sometimes when I meet people that are vegan I'm whole food plant based and when I meet people who call themselves vegan and they're all about the animals and they're holding a cup of plastic with a drink in it when they're using terrible products when they're wearing synthetic clothing you're just like you have missed the big picture here [Mary Meyer] yeah it is true and I think we all do a little bit even the most you know I think I feel like we all do I feel like I'm very very cautious and I'm still like I'm like well it's just so nearly impossible to just have it be so I just want to escape I have some land in Georgia I just want to go escape there I don't have a home built on it yet though so I can't do it I'll come visit just like yeah I'm just like I want to escape but there's no escape I think you know [Janette Spiezio] I think though that there are I did a list not long ago about some non-negotiable things and you know it's stuff that we just don't always know about right we live and you said it in the beginning we live in a very toxic world so until you learn the good and bad like what is okay and what isn't okay you don't know right so it never occurred to me that wearing polyester spandex, lycra, nylon any of those would be bad and if you want to find yourself a pair of socks without any of that there's almost zero out there and if you find the brands there are a couple they are not going to stay on your feet properly they're going to be very slouchy beyond what you want them to be so you know I'm not somebody who is so pure that I say never you and I are both on phones computers we drive cars we have glasses and plastic in our life it's okay to have a little bit but know what it is and what it's doing and how to make better choices and especially around food your home you know if you look around my house I don't have any synthetic carpets I don't have any vinyl flooring that's not true I have one room of vinyl flooring it's my basement and you know we just need to do better on every turn and I just yeah follow people like you and I that have lots of advice and suggestions but I will say you know pay attention to what you're drinking make sure you're careful about your clothing and if nothing else start with underwear all cotton all natural fibers and if you can afford it please organic because you know we talked about the fertility crisis if you're wearing synthetic underwear I'm pretty sure that there is a there are studies out now that are specifically linking that to lower sperm count and fertility problems so just clean up the underwear and there's so much we can do laundry detergent our skin is our biggest organ so get your laundry detergent and all your beauty products cleaned up these are easy things to do no non-stick cookware and here's a funny one no microwave popcorn yeah yeah yes and which isn't to say that you can't microwave popcorn now I don't use a microwave but if you do and you want to and you take kernels in a paper bag plain paper bag and put them in your microwave organic popcorn kernels they'll make beautiful popcorn and there's nothing wrong with that but the ones you buy in the aluminum tins and bags are just full of forever chemicals and all kinds of other really nasty things [Mary Meyer] I don't use a microwave either and I someone I don't even know who someone sent me a study on how bad microwaves were like in the mid early 2000s let's say 2010 I don't know and so I'm like I don't know why someone sent me a 30 page document oh why not he is the microwave it's very random but I think if you if you're tuned into your body you're going to realize it doesn't have the same your body doesn't react the same it's it just deadens it takes out the the aliveness of what we need in food and it just it feels very very dead [Janette Spiezio] yeah [Mary Meyer] it feels deader [JanetteSpiezio ] so I have I have got I have gut issues and if I eat clean I'm absolutely fine but if I eat things I should not eat like not organic wheat products not organic corn products I don't do well with artificial flavors and colorings when I eat those things like I don't feel good and it's an immediate reaction within within minutes I can tell you that I've had something that does not agree with me [Mary Meyer] yeah and I think people like us that are a little more sensitive or we're also the barometers like if it's it's negatively affecting us it's probably not positively affecting someone else yeah so these things and that's just something to think about and we are not we are not trained to just listen to our bodies we're very not trained we don't do it we don't we don't go how is my stomach feeling today? I don't either like I just like you know if you put attention on a different body part you're like how is my how does you know anything you should have a headache how does my head feel? How does my neck feel? All of a sudden it'll start telling you something but you know so I know we're probably running out of time a little bit can you can you show us some stuff on your on your website or some of your favorite things when I share your website with us? [Janette Spiezio] Sure okay so you want me to share my the website? [Mary Meyer] I can do it. I'll do it [Janette Spiezio] okay [Mary Meyer] I have it up and so I will [Janette] I'll talk through a little bit there's over 3000 items so it can be hard to find things but if you shop by category that's helpful we have some of the largest selection of food storage that you can find without plastic and if it does have plastic it's usually just around like the lid or a connector it's not plastic touching your food might have a silicone base for just a little bit of ease and use ice cube trays have been viral for us for the last year and a half we sell a lot of stainless steel 18-8 stainless ice cube trays they're super fun we ship out every single day anywhere from five to 30 packages so we are yeah we're a pretty we're a pretty well oiled machine when it comes to that although we're still a small business there's like six of us and we are just working on it plastic cutting boards are no-no so we do a lot of olive wood that's our dip shampoo bar that you just pulled up [Mary Meyer] oh yeah I was yeah [Janette Spiezio] that's an absolute this is our best-selling product in the whole store and that's the unscented one so we sell more of this than anyone anywhere on the planet it is the thing that keeps our store most alive and it's just it's $24 for the shampoo bar it lasts me eight months I shampoo twice a week the conditioner is $32 and it lasts me two years two years two years for a conditioner bar so that's amazing yeah and it's just a luxurious experience you can see on the lower side is this one of the soaps I make that brown picture we make soaps with just body soaps are made with organic saponified coconut oil and some extra virgin olive oil our dish soaps are just coconut oil saponified if it's lavender or mojito grapefruit or lemon it's all organic essential oils um yeah I make them here those are our dishwasher pods there's only three ingredients a little bit of water baking soda and a little bit of citric acid they're great for cleaning toilets and sinks and anything stainless or porcelain so they're good for your dishwasher too [Mary Meyer] yeah you were talking about the the cutting board so okay so you have bamboo and natural olive wood [Janette Spiezio] olive wood is my favorite because it's a single slab of wood but a single slab of wood is going to have more imperfections and it's going to um be a little harder on the on the wear and tear over time but it's a beautiful board and we were you were talking about bacteria before and I just want to say this about plastic a plastic cutting board after you've used it and cleaned it if there's bacteria left they will live there for a very long time and a wooden cutting board like an olive wood cutting board if you've washed it and cleaned it and there's any bacteria left it goes into the wood where it dies nature solves itself and there's a study on this so it's not just it's not just me making this up randomly so so yeah yeah so we think when you're cooking you should use olive wood utensils you can use bamboo as well it's another option and we have a lot of stainless also so we don't have we don't have like we don't have cookware in terms of like frying pans and pasta pots but we have all your bakeware and if you if you bought your bakeware in the grocery store it is and it's dark it is coated and every time you're baking in it you are sharing those forever chemicals with your food [Mary Meyer] yeah those look good good plates nice good cookware thanks this is very this is very curious to me what is this this razor [Janette Spiezio] wow so safety razors we have we have about five different options in the store a safety razor will run you anywhere from 30 to 110 dollars but the blades are about 40 cents each so instead of buying those nasty plastic cartridges for like 20 or 30 bucks you're buying 40 cent blades so the money you save really starts at the end of year one and every year thereafter the the first one you looked at is the leaf pivoting head razor that's it and it is every razor you've ever used is a stationary or pivoting head and the pivoting head means you don't really have a lot of thinking to do so you want to shave with purpose and intention you never press the metal razor onto your skin you just let it glide you always lather up but it's a better shave so those like multi-blade plastic ones they pull the hair so far out of the hair follicle that when it cuts it it falls below the skin line and that's that really beautiful close shave you get but any curl in the hair or even just the way it starts to grow can lead to an ingrown hair and that's the razor rash and the bumps and the bad shaving experience so having a safety razor is just a beautiful way to shave [Mary Meyer] that's so cool I just had no idea something like that was even available [Janette Spiezio] yeah so we just and and another really great product to consider especially for any women out there or anybody who has women in your life period products can be really full of toxins there was an article I think that came out about a year ago and it talked about can't remember what it was it might have been lead in our period products I don't know some some toxin and I went back to the study because I read the study the whole study and the study actually was a compilation of all the studies ever done and there must have been like 30 other studies done on period products and they found just like every toxin you could imagine in there each study looked at something different and you know we hear in our headlines focused on one and that is not the story the story is they're full of all kinds of stuff so reusable period products [Mary Meyer] is this personal care is it interpersonal care are you what's up? [Janette Spiezio] if you go to the search bar and type in period yeah yeah so we like my favorite is the glad rags pads because you can get them in organic cotton I think that's the best there is period underwear is really good too because it is predominantly organic cotton some of it's just cotton but the part that touches your the gusset part is always organic cotton that's glad rags my favorite brand and they come really clean if they're not hard to manage and the average woman spends somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars on period products in her lifetime in the US and you buy a good set of reusables and you're going to spend a hundred for maybe like five or ten years and some people use the same ones their whole period like the whole life of their period the amount of waste that it reduces is ginormous and you're getting healthier choices and what's really interesting is almost every big period brand you find in the in the grocery and drug stores are all run by companies that are male run and you know when you start to look at the women run brands all of a sudden people start to care more it's just so fascinating so we talk about underwear being important for fertility well so is your your period products and period health it's our most sensitive skin [Mary Meyer] yeah of course yeah of course and the most the most sensitive time [Janette Spiezio] yeah yeah exactly yeah so there's so many ways to make changes and for us I just want to challenge every all the listeners to pick something to change pick three things I don't care what they are I don't care if it's store related or not pick three things maybe clean your water find a better laundry detergent switch to a shampoo bar get rid of your non-stick cookware stop using microwave popcorn I mean these are some easy things start to make those shifts and what you will find is you start to make more changes right tell two friends share the knowledge and we hope that people will follow us on Instagram Sustainable Haus we do a newsletter we are on substaff we're in all the places but we're just trying to bring people better products and pretty much every single product has a every product has a reason there's a reason that we wanted that over something else and it replaces something that is not good [Mary Meyer] yeah so Jeanette if so you want people to go to a refillable store in their area if they can find one yeah and if they can't find one [Janette Spiezio] you do ship we do and even if you find one you're going to find that we're just going to have things they don't have so you know we're a nice supplement to what you might not be able to find locally [Mary Meyer] Yeah, well thank you for offering that so I'm going to go definitely spend some time more time on your store. I've spent some time already. So, it is SustainableHouse.com yep and house is HAUS HAUS so all right thank you Jeanette anything else to share before we head off to our day? [Janette Spiezio] Mary it was such a pleasure to be here. I've really enjoyed our chat and I love meeting with like-minded people and audiences so thank you for having me.