Description

As a young girl growing up in Hawaii with a love for the ocean, LOLIWARE co-founder Chelsea Briganti didn’t dream about inventing an alternative to plastic straws. After discovering that design could be used as a tool to create a better world, a cold email to the CEO of Pepsi ignited her career in innovation. Today, Chelsea is on a mission to replace 36 billion plastic straws with edible seaweed. 

“It's estimated that every week even, humans are ingesting a credit card-sized amount of microplastics. It's so serious alongside global warming, it's a really important time to step up with very big ideas to solve these problems. And Loliware is just one of millions of companies that are in the sustainability field that are absolutely critical to creating this ecosystem of solutions.”

In this episode:  

• Chelsea’s life-long love of the ocean and how it shaped her industrial design career
• The cold email to Pepsi’s CEO that ignited Chelsea’s career in design and innovation 
• How Chelsea followed the energy to create LOLIWARE after a design competition sparked consumer demand for edible alternatives to single use plastics 
• The challenges LOLIWARE faced with scaling after appearing on Shark Tank
• LOLIWARE’s pivot from cups to straws
• How LOLIWARE plans to replace 36 billion of the world’s straws through an innovative licensing program 

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