East Bay Family Reduces Plastic Waste, With Sisters As CEOs Of Small Business

ALBANY, CA -- It all started in an East Bay kitchen.

Julia Scheeres, Tim Rose, and their daughters Tessa and Davia had been talking about small ways they could help the environment.

“We were looking as a family for ways to be more sustainable,” said Julia in an interview with Patch.

The family runs a small business called Sustainabar, where they create products to clean people, pets, and even dirty dishes with the aim of reducing plastic waste.

Tessa, 15, and Davia, 12, serve as co-CEOS. Julia is the COO, and Tim is head of the shipping department.

“We have gotten a lot of support,” Davia said.

The company offers dish soap, lotion bars, shaving pucks, hand soap, shampoo, and conditioner. All products are made right in the family home.

Sustainabar uses ingredients such as coconut oil, shea butter, essential oils, castor oil, and lye. They create concentrated bars that get people, pets, and dishes clean without wasting water and plastic, according to the company website.

Their project began in 2019.

Julia said she learned about shampoo bars online and found one at a commercial retailer, but was surprised at how expensive it was.

“That’s what started our quest. That’s what started Sustainabar, was wanting to find a shampoo bar that was affordable and that worked with our hair.”

So, the research into how to make the bars at home began. But what is a shampoo bar? It looks a little bit like soap, but it’s formulated for your head, not your hands.

“You just take it and you wet your hair and you rub it on your head,” Julia explained, “And it creates a nice lather."

Johnson & Johnson estimates 552 million shampoo bottles are discarded every year in the U.S. -- either recycled, or sent to the trash. The company said 40 percent of people don't recycle in the bathroom.

“It might be slightly more inconvenient than just squirting something in your hand and slopping it on, but we are kind of past convenience at this point with our relationship with the planet,” Julia continued. “We need to start changing our ways.”

The first Sustainabar “test” was at Tessa’s school holiday craft fair in 2019. The shampoo and conditioner bars they brought to sell sold out in an hour.

Julia said there was a “sharp learning curve:” figuring out a marketing strategy; finding a good shipping strategy; and, of course, researching just how to make the products at home.

“The first time I tried to make a traditional cold-processed soap,” Julia said, “I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to mix lye in an aluminum container, because it makes hydrogen gas. Which is precisely what I did.”

Thankfully, Julia was mixing the soap outside and could quickly run in and shut the door.

Finding the right scents for Sustainabar products also included some trial and error. Julia explained that the family bought white thyme essential oils, and tried a batch of dish soap with a thyme fragrance.

“When you’re doing your dishes with it, it smells like you’re doing your dishes in a Thanksgiving turkey,” she said.

“There’s been some flops along the way.”

Now, the family dining room has turned into company headquarters: racks of craft shelves, rolls of packing paper, and baskets of curing shampoo bars fill the room. This is something they do in the evenings and on weekends, as the daughters have school and Mom and Dad work.

Davia and Tessa hand-wrap every order and even include a hand-written joke with their products.

“I like designing them, I like packaging and making it look cute,” Davia said.

With a laugh, Davia said she and Tessa work well together “depending on what mood she’s in, and what mood I’m in.”

Julia makes most of the products, and her husband Tim takes mail orders to be shipped. Julia said she keeps Tessa and Davia in the loop on all business decisions, and they get paid for their work.

Support in the community and online has shown them other people are worried about sustainability too. Julia said Facebook has been a good way to find people who are interested in the product.

“There are a lot of people, now, who are really concerned about global warming and the environment and plastic waste,” she said.

Much of Sustainabar’s business comes from e-commerce, though they now have products featured in Bay Area stores. Early last year, Sustainabar began reaching out to local businesses.

“We went down Solano (Avenue) and went into stores that we thought were interested,” Davia said. She and Julia talked to the stores about their product and gave away some samples. One store, Morning Tide, liked what Sustainabar had to offer.

Now, Sustainabar products are in four stores: Morning Tide in Albany, Re-Up Refills and BayMade in Oakland, and FillerUp Refills in Morgan Hill.

The family donate bars to the Berkeley Food Pantry and the Dorothy Day House in Berkeley.

Through it all, the Sustainabar team is focused on their original goal: doing what they can to reduce waste. Julia said the company has kept 4,000 plastic bottles out of the environment.

“I feel like we may be throwing ice cubes at a bonfire, it feels like that some days,” she said. “But if we were all throwing ice cubes at that bonfire, perhaps we could put it out.

"It's not about a handful of people trying to be perfectly sustainable. It's about everybody trying to be imperfectly sustainable, I would say."

You can learn more about Sustainabar on their website, Facebook, and Instagram.