Baresop is a no compromise, zero waste personal care concept, making it easy to reduce your single-use plastic waste and carbon footprint from your everyday hygiene care experience. Their bottles are made from locally-sourced recycled things and are recyclable and their sachets are made in Melbourne from home compostable paper.
We had A Cup of Chai With Prisca Ongonga-Daehn, the Founder of Baresop who, after a two-year journey, developed a plant-based hand and body powder concentrate delivered in a certified home-compostable sachet - a solution that's better for you and better for the planet.
Let's start with a bit about yourself - who are you and what are you the maker of?
Prisca Ongonga-Daehn is the founder/CEO of baresop. She is a disruptor for good with a passion for developing products that solve the world's biggest problems and add value to human life. She identifies as Bla(c)k Woman Founder with a pronoun She/Her.
Tell us a bit about Baresop, how did it all start?
Your traditional hand, body, shampoo and conditioner is 90% water and 10% active ingredients. Essentially, we're just shipping and storing diluted water and plastic across the world. This results in tonnes of carbon emission and billions of single-use plastic waste.
We have used a patented technology and crystallised only active ingredients into a concentrated plant based powder to foam soap that makes it easy for you to reduce your waste and carbon footprint without compromising your everyday personal care experience.
baresop. is a modern day zero waste personal care subscription-based service that keeps your body clean – and your conscience too.
A couple of years ago, frustrated to find an easy solution to reduce plastic waste in body care products, l went on a personal journey to find out why there were no simple and easy to use solutions.
After much trial and having real conversations with the Australian community, l found out that the solution needs to be convenient, easy and saves you money at the same time.
Asking the question, do these products necessarily need to come in this liquid form? L spent almost a year to find a solution, she was surprised to find out that water content in body and home care products made it necessary for them to be packaged in single use packaging.
l then went on a two-year journey to find a way to cut out the water. The result is a plant-based hand and body powder concentrate delivered in a certified home compostable sachet. And so, combining a zero-waste solution that’s better for you and the planet, baresop. was born.
What does an average working day look like for you?
An average day starts at 5am with my morning run along Elwood Beach. I like to get home just before the kids are up and make breakfast and school lunch before they are up. We usually leave the house together around 7.30am. It’s pretty much hands on deck from then till about 6pm. I find cooking quite zen so you’ll find me preparing dinner from 6pm. We love to reconnect as a family at dinner time and share our day. I start working from 8pm till 10pm - give and take.
What are Baresop's greatest achievements to date and what are you most proud of?
We’re proud of how we’ve been able to bring along a strong and growing community around us - on our journey to create change with every wash. When we launched the concept - there was nothing like it and we had to navigate to create awareness on our closed loop powder to foam soap concept. Our purpose is to make it easy for everyone and empower every household to do its little bit to create change for humanity and our planet. We feel that we've done this really well within such a short period of time.
What's been the biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge is how do we keep innovating even better products that make it even easier for everyone to create change. And even further, how do we do this in a way that’s best for our shared humanity and our planet.
We’ve created a model that tracks our impact in the 3 pillars of single use plastic waste, CO2 emission and Water Conservation. Our challenge is how do we keep collecting accurate data on how quickly we’re moving towards our mission of eliminating 1B single use plastic bottles from landfill, 5000 tonnes of Co2 avoided from our atmosphere and 600,000L of water conserved by 2035.
When you've got a bit of free time, what do you like to do?
When I have a bit of time, I love to immerse myself in self care experiences that activate my five senses. I tend to lean towards group yoga, silent meditation and outdoor active activities such as hiking and running. As well as nurturing connections with friends - I especially love getting out of the city to the Red Hill neighbourhood for a bit of raw nature.
Do you have a favourite Prana Chai Blend?
My favourite is the Prana Chai Original Blend, hand down! You can taste the freshness of the fragrances especially Cardamom which is my fav in Chai tea.
If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
Because I am always on the fly every waking hour, I’d love to go to a wellness centre or an eco led vacation where I can mindfully reconnect with my spirit, mind and body.
Are you working towards anything exciting that you can share with us?
We’re super excited to be on track to expand our range and release even more impactful product solutions. However, even more so, we’re about to start creating impactful change and putting our mouth where our money is - by collaborating with a grass-root led water impact organisation so we can amplify the amount of water we make accessible to people who desperately need it.
