Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Sustainable Solutions for Your Hair and Environment with Kate Assaraf
Plastic is changing fish biology—and possibly human biology too. Could our everyday products be contributing to environmental and health shifts we're only beginning to understand?
Kate Assaraf, founder of Dip Sustainable Hair Care, joins us to share her remarkable journey from a beauty industry insider to a sustainability pioneer. Her transformation began with a startling discovery while reading about the impact of plastic pollution on fish in the Potomac River. This revelation led her to question everything about our plastic-saturated world and ultimately inspired her to create high-performance, plastic-free hair care products.
We delve into the world of refilleries—stores where you can refill your containers instead of purchasing new packaging—and explore how these community hubs are making sustainability accessible to everyone. Kate challenges our black-and-white thinking about ingredients, explaining why "natural" isn't always better and how thoughtful synthetic formulations sometimes offer safer, more sustainable options. Her approach prioritizes performance first, believing that truly sustainable products must work exceptionally well to create lasting change.
What makes this conversation special is Kate's refreshing honesty about sustainability. Rather than making empty promises or using eco-buzzwords, she's built a business model around helping people buy less, not more—her conditioner bars last six months to two years for most users. We explore how small, consistent changes create meaningful impact and why the wellness journey encompasses both personal and planetary health.
Whether you're a sustainability expert or just beginning to think about reducing your environmental footprint, this episode offers practical wisdom and unexpected insights about making choices that benefit your health and our shared planet. Ready to rethink your relationship with everyday products? Listen now and discover how small shifts in your routine can contribute to a healthier world.
Find Dip at dipready.com or @dip on Instagram and explore refilleries in your area to start your own plastic-reduction journey today.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we have a very special guest. Her name is Kate Aseroff and she's the founder and CEO of Dip, sustainable Health Hair Care, a clean beauty brand built on the belief that sustainability, transparency and integrity aren't just buzzwords, they're non-negotiable. And she's got a great story. And you know, just remember, this is a podcast about healthy living mind, body and spirit, and so hair care, any skin care, all of these sort of concepts are a big part of that. And, kate, welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you here. I'd love to hear about your story. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me here. It's my pleasure. So tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this world of hair care. Sure.
Speaker 2:So I have been in the beauty industry for almost two decades. I've done every bit, from formulation to marketing to sales. And you know, around 10 years ago, when I was pregnant with my first son, I read this book. It was called Boys Adrift and it was about how to raise a son to be a productive member of society.
Speaker 2:It was like all the pitfalls that are happening in modern life, and one of them was, like you know, video games. One of them was like men, fathers and sons don't hunt a lot together anymore. And then one of the things in the book that really just, it wasn't even a big part of the book, it was just a little tiny slice that stuck with me forever was about plastics, and so, if you can imagine, in 2014, I was reading about how the author was talking about how runoffs from a plastic factory in the Potomac River was changing the biology of male fish and allowing them to lay eggs, and so that was something that, for me, that was so, so mind blowing to me. My mom had a PhD in anthropology and she'd always talk to me about evolution. It's a slow process, and here we have, you know, this very fast change in aquatic life, and now we're discovering, 10 years later, the impacts that plastic is having on human health.
Speaker 1:And even without getting political or anything like that, I mean, if you look at sociology and society and how people are today versus 20, 30, 50 years ago, and this whole gender fluidity thing, which I don't even have an opinion about, but it didn't exist when I was a kid, or it was in such a small amount that whatever was affecting it. And I don't know if plastic has anything to do with it, but it might be worth considering.
Speaker 2:It's worth considering. I don't know either, but the author seemed to kind of have a nod to that because of what was happening. Was the plastic bottled water? You know, heyday?
Speaker 1:So I was chugging, chugging, chugging.
Speaker 2:And then I came to this chapter in this book and then I was like, oh, maybe not such a good idea. And you know that that put me on a different course. Suddenly, you, when you see that plastic is everywhere and you know how beauty is packaged in plastic, water in plastic, and then you look at food in plastic and medical equipment in plastic, it's just, it's a flooded it's.
Speaker 2:You can't get away from it and I don't expect anyone to get away from it, but what I tried to do for myself and my family was to find, you know, substitutes for um items that I regularly purchased in plastic, and in that mission I discovered something called a refillery. I think they've been around maybe five, six years, and so a refillery is basically, for anyone that doesn't know, you bring, like your jug of detergent and then you bring it to a place and then fill it. Instead of buying a new jug, you fill it at the store with only what you need to buy or you know.
Speaker 1:I have actually not heard of that and I am like on top of so many things, so I certainly need to explore that. I think that's a fantastic idea. I produce natural products and I've offered that sort of a service myself, but on a real small scale. Where would you find these things?
Speaker 2:They're in every state. Actually, if you go to where I'm so passionate about people getting into refilleries that I sell my hair care in almost all of the refilleries around the country because I want people to go into a refillery, Maybe they're going to buy dip, which is what I sell, but then they can just by accident be exposed to all the other plastic-free options that are out there.
Speaker 1:I'm going to explore this and blow it up.
Speaker 2:My gosh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1:We're about health, right, but that's also planet health, it's everything health, and it's all connected. Health, it's everything health, and it's all connected. And we live in such a disposable world that is such a big part of the problem in so many ways that, if we can just think about you know, in olden times they built things out of clay and metal and glass and things that you just reused over and over and over again, and nowadays everything's one and done and the landfills fill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's everywhere, and so some refilleries have just, you know, body care essentials and you know, plastic-free swaps Like you can. You know you don't never have to buy saran wrap again. They have solutions for that that are plastic-free and like zip that stuff. But you know there are also many refilleries that carry food too. So if you want to go and refill your pasta or refill, like you know, any grains or anything that you buy regularly, they're there for you as well, and I think I'm excited.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go explore. Hopefully there's one close to me in Southern California because I'm oh man, there's so many over there. Yes, I love it.
Speaker 2:You're a good man, you're going to hear about it for sure, awesome. So yeah, that's, I mean like that's a big, a big piece of. So you know, I read this book. It changed my life. I felt like the world suddenly looked. I don't want to say toxic Cause that's not like a a right way to say it is, but it's also I don't want to. If you say toxic too much, it starts to lose its meaning. I agree. And then it starts to be, it starts to like bring it out to life too, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so so you know, I never say like completely plastic free your life, but like plastic, just be plastic conscious, not don't be plastic blind things. So yeah, and I think you know, a big part of sustainability now is there. We had a big blip in sustainability and I think in 2020, 2021, during the pandemic, and sustainability became such a buzzword itself that it lost its meaning.
Speaker 2:exactly, people are so now yeah yeah, everyone's so fed up because everything's called itself sustainable. Everyone big companies made sustainability uh promises and then they quietly like backtracked on all these, all these. Actually, yeah, it's a lot of work like I, you know I love my company and that it's what I think sustainability should be, but that it's not like people are that excited to start a company where the goal is to get people to buy less stuff less often.
Speaker 2:Ignored directors wouldn't be happy about it Because even though I purposely made a conditioner bar so it lasts most people around six months to two years, depending on the length of hair. People are like how are you sustaining a business that way? And I was like I made sure it was so good that once someone bought it they told all of their friends.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with that business model. I make natural products as well and I make them very concentrated and very pure and they come in little containers and they last forever. And people are like, why don't you make it in the big bottle? I'm like, well, it would go bad before it would be finished and it's all natural, so why would I do that? You know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's a very strange thing to explain to someone that you want people to buy less, but the people that get it get it and they appreciate it, and I think that's like a really important thing. It's like I don't need to sell my dip bars to everybody, I just need to sell them to the people that really value that.
Speaker 1:Get it. Yeah, slowly but surely that sort of collective consciousness is improving. Slowly but surely that sort of collective consciousness is improving. People are sifting through all the information and all the things and finding things that work and telling people about them. I think it's starting to happen.
Speaker 2:I think so too, and I don't need it to be so fast. Do you know what I mean? Because once a shift happens too fast, immediately it kind of kind of fall, yeah, yeah it can fall off and so, and so I think this is a true paradigm change I think, yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2:it's one of those things that like requires a lot of people to just slowly, you know, creep into the movement, make a couple changes at a time and then start to like learn with these new changes. Like, for something that is probably relatable to everyone is everyone in America buys paper towels like crazy. They're expensive and they're wasteful and you know you can just use reusable paper towels, which is like a fancy way to call it, let's say, rag.
Speaker 1:Right, I was going to say we used to have wash rags and dish rags as just a staple and you know, you'd have maybe paper napkins, but even then they had cloth napkins as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so now you know, I think I'm probably six years into just not buying paper towels. I've probably had one pack. That's lasted, it's still. You know, it's still going, because I only use it in the rare instances I host people and they want bacon. There you go, that's a paper towel. Yeah, the paper towel is good for that, or French fries, yeah it's the hero for that one specific thing, but every other instance that I would use a paper towel like the rag completes that mission.
Speaker 1:Old t-shirts at all. It's works great, those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think I think this shift is so important and part of part of what I tried to create. I tried to create a hair care brand that was so good that I didn't need to mention the plastic free part of it in the marketing and, um, you know, part of that was really really focusing on performance, you know, and not putting any of the messaging that, hey, this is plastic free, like most of the messaging is actually like hey, this is sold in salons.
Speaker 2:It's not just saying it's salon grade, which is not a regulated term, like right on shelves like this is in almost all the refill stores because they try every version of a shampoo and conditioner bar. And this is in almost all the refill stores because they try every version of a shampoo and conditioner bar and this is the one that they choose to sell because it is so good.
Speaker 1:It works. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that, basically, is like what motivates me and it gets me. It gets me so excited to see someone who's never been in a refill store, never discovered it, go to our store locator and suddenly find one by them, or to find a salon near them that is starting to shift their chemical use, you know, because they're they're discovering that hairstylists are are getting like ill after chronic illness.
Speaker 1:Anything about hair, yeah, especially things like coloring and totally all of that is so friggin toxic. Like people have no idea what they're putting on their skin, that's their brain, which I don't know. If you know anything about skin, it's pretty, pretty permeable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the long term exposure of someone standing over these chemicals and breathing them. They're discovering it's like it's. It's become a real issue. So so if you look at dip and you on the store locator and you find a salon that you didn't know existed but seems to prioritize plastic free products or other, you know dip lives in a world with other, on a shelf with, like other eco-friendly or sustainable products Like I'm happy if you don't choose this one and you choose another one. That's just better for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you came from the beauty industry and that's a pretty broad spectrum of products. You know from skincare, anti-aging, you know all sorts of serums and everything. What caused you to go to the hair side of things.
Speaker 2:I secretly have always loved hair.
Speaker 1:Nice hair.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you you can't see it from the podcast, but it's um, you know when I, when I, you know, a lot of times when I meet people, I notice the hair before the smile I noticed, you know, like I, just I, I've loved, yeah, I've just loved hair my whole life and I've had all different kinds of hair I've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've just loved hair my whole life and I've had all different kinds of hair I've had. I've had a purple beehive for a moment in New York I had. I've had black hair, super blonde hair. I've had even box braids. I've had literally every kind of hair you could think of. I've had it made silver for editorial and I just, I, just I think there's something funny about hair to me, like it's so emotional, like you could have. You could have a white t-shirt and jeans on every day and amazing hair and still feel like a million bucks.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I agree. I used to have real long hair. I'm going through chemotherapy right now, so I don't have any hair right now, but that's emotional. It's way emotional. Oh yeah, no, I had for most of my life. I had hair down the middle of my back and loved it and uh, so it'll be back. But I know, I know where you're coming from yeah, I, I mean that.
Speaker 2:That's another. Another thing is we offer fragrance free products because there are a lot of immunocompromised people going through chemotherapy and you know any kind of extra, anything, anything, yeah products is everything it is.
Speaker 2:It's not that it's risky, it's just that it's not um ended right. So we I have probably eight different SKUs that have no scent at all and and a lot of people that are going through uh, chemo, ivf I don't know any kind of uh like they have. Some people have thyroid issues or any of these, like I tell them to do many things that could be affected.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, like just stay with the fragrance free and you know something that I just want to talk about fragrance. I suspect you have thoughts on it being in the industry.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm an essential oil guy. But you know there's limits to what essential oils can do and how long they last, and all of that.
Speaker 2:Totally, and you know, sometimes something's something I learned like the dark side of essential oils is sometimes they're cold pressed with pesticides on the plant.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, you never know.
Speaker 2:You have no idea what's actually going on your skin, or you know.
Speaker 1:It's a broad brush and, just like everything else finding good sources, getting to know suppliers I mean it's a lot of work to put out a good product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and so you know. A non-traditional choice that I made was using synthetic really like the gold standard of synthetic fragrance for our bars, mostly because I know that there are risks with essential oils and not knowing the suppliers. Of course, if you're buying little bits at a time from a small farm, you can trust. That's one thing.
Speaker 1:But if you're buying something they generally don't produce the volume that you would bits at a time from a small farm you can trust. That's one thing, but buying something they generally don't produce the volume that you would need at a price Right. This is an important thing, I think, for people to hear and I talk about this a lot, and especially with my cancer journey and things like that. People have this notion about natural and health and safety, natural and health and safety. And they also have a notion about synthetic or chemical and health and safety.
Speaker 1:And the truth is everything's a double-edged sword, totally thing. And and just because it grew out of the ground doesn't mean it's not going to kill you. And just because it was synthesized from a mineral or some other compound that comes out of the earth, which is what all chemicals are, doesn't mean it's bad for you. And there are plenty of minerals and chemicals that are inert or basically inert, and and there you can it's swimming them and they're not going to hurt you. And and so these broad brushes that so many of us that are trying to be healthy live by, you come to find out when you start doing real research that you're just fooling yourself in so many ways, so I can appreciate where you're coming from going after something safe and good quality thank you.
Speaker 2:That it's it's a, it's a very, it's a very touchy subject. Fragrance and essential oils are also like you know. There's people that go to the church of essential oils and you're like there's there's some essential oils are amazing and it depends on where they come from. Some are amazing in one respect, but then you know know, they create so much biomass to create, to to make them, or the places where that that plant is grown doesn't have great labor practices. So people are like you know, you know not, they're not treated well that are bringing that oil to you and sometimes the oil is at such a low percentage that you're not getting the benefits that you thought you were getting right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oil labeling is horrible in this industry and people, yeah, call it pure and then you come to find out it's. You know, cut 80 with a carrier and you don't even know what that is so I agree and I you know, this show is all about people learning for themselves how to solve their problems, and I think getting a broad base of information is important and, you know, taking the care to source your ingredients. That's the part that matters.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and really really understanding the nuance between one supplier and another of the same ingredient. It could be totally different, and so it's so nice to talk to someone that understands that, because so often, sometimes, I'm talking to someone that just hears fragrance bad, or essential oils good, and that's it yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, yeah, some fragrance is horrible and you shouldn't go anywhere near it. You shouldn't plug it into your walls and breathe it Like it's all about exposure and some it has, you know, is coming from like a scientist, a phd chemist, who really knows what they're doing and understands regulatory limitations and so it's. It's wild out there I, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:but you know, again and again, even with things like labeling, people will stick anything on their label and they'll say this and that and that doesn't make it so. So really doing that research is is really where the only place you're going to find answers and you know manufacturers that take that care. That's one of the reasons that I would feature you know a manufacturer of a product on a health show is because it matters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to talk about health and refilleries real quick. Yeah, I love so. I know many of our stores. We sold in a few hundred stores around the country just just for refilleries and I know many of these, these people that have opened these stores on you know. I know them personally because people that have opened these stores I know them personally because I spend a lot of time learning about them and investing in them as entrepreneurs. Also, it's a partnership when one of them sells dip, because we're doing it together.
Speaker 2:Mostly, what I love about this movement is that these people are so, so in tune with what should and shouldn't go on their shelves, health wise. Like they really make sure that the ingredients of everything they put on their shelves. Like they do all the homework for you, so you don't have to go in there and and like panic about what's on the shelves. Like some people go into a Target or Walmart and they like are, you know, taking the apps and scanning all of them, but the refilleries those owners are so passionate about ingredients and your health that they do all of the homework for you, and I think that that's something that we should celebrate. And, like you know, instead of clicking add to cart, like get up, get in your car, go to their store and really experience it.
Speaker 1:I'm excited. I can't wait to visit one and get to know these people. And again, this is I don't know how. I never even stumbled upon this in my life. I mean, I've been sustainable permaculture farmer for 40 years. Oh my God, what did you grow? Oh, I still. I have a. I have a nonprofit called Gardens of Hope and we offer what we call therapeutic horticulture and education. So I've got a little two and a half acre botanical garden and a small farm and we grow seasonal vegetables, we grow herbs and flowers and people participate in the process. So it's a healing garden by not only the process of growing it but the things that we grow and harvest that's so cool, I bet I bet for the nervous system.
Speaker 2:Getting in that garden is probably magical and my own healing journey.
Speaker 1:It's been instrumental. And we have, you know, mental health groups that come over, special needs groups come over and everybody that touches the ground benefits.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and it's a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 501 c, three gardens of hope. You bet I'll donate.
Speaker 2:I'll donate when we get off the. I think that's a really, really worthy cause and I think it's really so exciting that that exists.
Speaker 1:I wish it existed for me. You as a sponsor, yeah, absolutely, we'll help you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like you know. I went through like a tough time at one point and what I really needed to do I didn't know about the parasympathetic nervous system. Like didn't know, this was something that hadn't come in into my brain before we talked about it and now just like refilleries yeah, like I didn't came in, I had no idea that that.
Speaker 1:You know, the things that were I needed to heal were like a gratitude journal going outside in a hammock and you know, among the flowers and just hear, hear the sounds of the birds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like not listening to podcasts or music, when I'm walking in the woods and noticing like the light come through the trees, like that. That was something I didn't know was part of the medicine I needed and um and it, it totally blew my mind that there was this whole thing that we never learned in health class. That was vital and crucial to your well-being.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely Well. We're all about it and we love sharing it, and if you're ever in Southern California, I'd love to show you around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I'd love to come see the farm, especially Exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, we're getting close to that bewitching hour. This has been exciting hearing about your story, your products and this is where I give you a couple of minutes to give your final thoughts and elevator pitch and how everybody can get ahold of you.
Speaker 2:Sure, hey. So my name is Kate Assaraf. I own Dip. It is very serious hair care for not so serious people, and what it is is it's plastic free, sold in small stores and salons and surf shops around the country, and it actually works. So you don't have to worry. We don't hire influencers and we don't pay people to pretend that they bought it like the only hype you ever hear from actual customers, and you can find us at dipalreadycom and also at at dip on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, kate, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you. I wasn't sure how this conversation would go, because I just didn't have much thought about it, but I'm really glad to have met you and I look forward to furthering our conversation as we go.
Speaker 2:Me too. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I thank you for your support and we will see you next time.
