Kate Jakubas Shares Her Honest and Eco-Friendly Approach to Creating Household Cleaning Products
While obtaining her master’s degree in environmental engineering, Kate Jakubas of Meliora Cleaning Products developed a keen curiosity for how the toxic chemicals in our cleaning products and detergents affect our natural environments and personal health.
Jakubas wanted to see if she could create a laundry detergent, without harmful and toxic chemicals, that would actually get her clothes clean—and it worked! After a few more successful experiments with different cleaning products and armed with her background in environmental engineering, Jakubas launched Meliora Cleaning Products—a Certified B Corporation dedicated to providing ingredient transparency and eliminating the impact household chemicals have on the planet.
On this episode of Grow Ensemble’s Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, Jakubas shares more of the backstory behind the founding of Meliora, how she really honed in on her company’s approach to the triple bottom line — people, planet, and profit — and how the company uses metrics and certifications to hold itself accountable. She also discusses her experience teaching this approach to others.
Want more episodes on nontoxic and environmentally friendly consumer goods? Look here:
- Episode 12 — How to Divert Over 50,000 Plastic Bottles from Landfills, with Lindsey McCoy, CEO & Co-Founder of Plaine Products
- Episode 08 — Going Pound for Pound with Co-Founder & CEO of Grain4Grain, Yoni Medhin — How to Use Farmer’s Markets to Shape a Pitch & Sustainable Pancakes to Feed Families in San Antonio
Bonus Material: Get the Full Show Notes and Extras for This Episode
Meliora Cleaning Products is part of the community of businesses that have used a third-party verification of their impact. Use the free B Impact Assessment to evaluate your company’s impact on all stakeholders, including the environment, your workers, your community and your customers.
Join us for this chat to catch these key takeaways:
- How Jakubas developed her passion for the vision behind Meliora.
- The inspirations behind Meliora’s business practices.
- How the name of her company (Meliora = “better”) serves as a reminder to constantly be looking for ways to improve.
- How teaching served to solidify the mastery of her business approach to both herself and her students.
Bonus Material: Get the Full Show Notes and Extras for This Episode
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
Building a ‘Better’ (Plastic-Free, Waste-Free and Toxic-Free) Business was originally published in B the Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
