PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — When the topic is climate change it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. That led to a new business idea for Alex Gamboa-Grand.
“Most of us have good intentions. We all care about the environment but it feels like too big of a thing on an individual basis,” Gamboa-Grand told KOIN 6 News. “We were really stressed out about climate change and sick of waiting around for someone else to fix it.”
She and her co-founder Lindsay Smith created Way of Being, a shop and online store focused on curating sustainable, low waste products for your home, your personal care routine and more.
“One of our biggest philosophies is that everybody can do something, and it literally is just starting somewhere,” she said. “We were individually doing this research and work. It’s very time consuming and not realistic for most people to do that. So we wanted to basically have a one-stop shop that’s just as easy as going to the grocery store or going on Amazon. It’s just as convenient for you as anything else.”
The products at Way of Being are a combination of products they’ve used before and products they’ve found in their research.
“That’s actually been a really fun part of this business, too, is finding all of these vendors,” she told KOIN 6 News. “One of our emphases, too, is using the business to support where we are spending it.”
For Earth Day, they partnered with VertueLab, a local non-profit helping entrepreneurs and tech startups trying to tackle the climate crisis.
“We’re fighting the climate crisis by providing support and funding to clean tech, or climate tech startups,” said Tricia Clemans, the Impact Programs Manager for VertueLab.
Their work has helped launch startups finding new solutions for green energy or new uses for food waste.
“We’re working on these larger industries and bigger markets, and we love doing this work,” Clemans said. Partnering with Way of Being is “part of our climate pledge we have online. People can make a difference on an individual level as well.”
Whether it’s an overhaul of your kitchen or bathroom or one simple swap, Alex Gamboa-Grand hopes people will realize there are lots of ways to make an impact.
“We wanted to spread that sense of agency to people and show them that there are little things you can do every day that add up and have a big difference,” she said.
“It takes all of us,” Clemans said. “It takes all these parts as part of a system to get this to work.”
Anyone who takes the VertueLab Earth Day Pledge on their website will get a free pass to the Adidas employee store.