Turning The Tide On Microplastics

Quinn: [00:00:00] What are microplastics doing to us? And how do we stop putting them into our water, and our bloodstreams, and our food? That's today's big question, and my guest is Julia Yan. Julia is the co-founder and CEO at Baleena, a closed loop, consumer-facing laundry startup working to tackle ocean microplastic pollution.

Yeah, it's a big deal. Julia is a recent graduate at UPenn, and with her two co-founders, some funding, including from our friends at 776, and a bunch of big name partners, they're trying to tackle one of the microplastic inputs. Your washing machine. Microplastics are not great. But they never make it onto the top ten list of concerns people have before an election or ever.

Economy, healthcare, guns, crime, war, [00:01:00] heat, all those things. But they should. Because they're so prevalent that we have found them on the bottom of the ocean and on the top of mountains. We have found them in deserts, in our crops, in our soil. We have found them in adult bloodstreams and in unborn babies and placentas.

And that's all in an age where over the past 60, 70 years we're eating more and more ultra-processed food and we are eating it out of and drinking it out of plastic and we are wearing plastic. And we're all looking around at our decaying health and comorbidities and shorter life expectancies and going, what the hell is going on here?

So it is an enormous, wildly complicated problem where I'm not making as many assumptions as I usually would here because it is so complicated, but the implications are becoming more clear. The good news, like carbon emissions, [00:02:00] we can choose to stop it. It's just going to take an intentional systemic approach and people like Julia.

Welcome to Important Not Important. My name is Quinn Emmett, and this is science for people who give a shit. In these weekly ish conversations, I take a deep dive with an incredible human like Julia who's working on the front lines of the future to build a radically better today and tomorrow for everyone.

And along the way, we'll discover tips, strategies, and stories you can use to understand and unfuck our rapidly changing world. Let's go. Julia Yan, welcome to the show.

Julia Yan: Thanks for having me.

Quinn: You're very welcome. I'm just realizing this room, which looks fancy, it is not. It is about a four by four, you could call it like a kidnapping room, basically, like with all the different things and like the Amazon sound stuff on the walls.

I'm realizing I wore a shirt that's the exact same color as my painted wall. So I don't know if [00:03:00] the youths will green screen me or not, but anyways, this is so great. It is so lovely to have you on the show. Lissie Garvin over at 776 has been so great to share basically, you all are among the second iteration, right?

The second class of fellows, I believe they call you. And it is so inspiring, humbling, terrifying. All of the things to, basically, she sends me this two page list of, hey, here's the new folks. Let me know if you want to talk to anybody. And you read them and you're just like, what? Who the, how the hell does someone even start figuring something like this out?

So it's amazing. And we were so excited to read about what you're working on, which is really important right now. But it feels like one of those things that the more we find out. It's going to feel really important. It is one of those things I think about when I, how they do the polling of everybody every year and go, what are the top 10 things you care about in this election?

And microplastics is not on the list, but it should probably be in the top three if we actually really thought about it. But there's so much other shit going on every day. So [00:04:00] anyways, it is a delight. I'm so excited for you to blow me out of the water with all of these things, literally. Julia, I start with one important, ridiculous question.

You said you cheated and listened to a few episodes, I guess that goes out the window, but I'd like to ask, Why are you vital to the survival of the species. And the longer I do it, it really sounds ridiculous, but I would love to hear your feedback.

Julia Yan: Yeah, I did my research going in. But I think it's a really interesting question.

And I did a little bit of thinking, I slept on this. So I'd have at least something to say. I guess the first thing I think, like what, I would say like my response is rooted in is I really believe that individual actions, even if it's just coming from one person can really lead to collective meaningful change.

And so yes, I am just one person. But I hope that maybe the things that I'm putting into place or, the words I say, or the conversations I have can have a ripple effect on a larger amount of people and eventually, the entire species. So I guess the first part of my response is [00:05:00] I'm super passionate and I spend a lot of time and the free time that I can trying to empower other young women that maybe want to pursue entrepreneurship or want to do something unconventional.

I would say I had a pretty unconventional journey to get to where I am today. Coming out of college doing entrepreneurship, and so I do want to try to motivate and persuade other young women to take that chance if it's something they really believe in and to want to pursue that path. And so that's one thing.

And maybe the people that I influenced through that avenue can then go and change the world in other ways beyond what I'm doing. And that leads to overall change. And I guess the second thing is just Baleena as a whole, like what we're doing. I hope it does change the world. We're working on microplastics in water and I think this is an issue that actually affects like everyone, it's in all of us.

It's in, our blood, our lungs, water, salt, seafood, beer. And so it's like something that feels super ubiquitous. And so hopefully the changes that we can make within that kind of niche avenue do lead to overall, like change for humankind, but that's pretty optimistic.

Quinn: I love [00:06:00] that. I love that ambition.

It's fantastic. I have so many things I already want to come back to here. Usually. We're going to put a pin in about six of them including, I was just thinking about, do you know who Carl Sagan is? I had a quote at one point, I'm going to completely mangle it, something about we're all stardust.

No, we're all microplastics. It's great. You're right. It is ubiquitous. It literally is in all of us. So it couldn't be more important. I want to come back to the technicals of that and the why of why you're working on all that. But we usually don't spend too much time talking about how you got here, your life journey, this and this, unless it's directly applicable to what you're doing.

But you did mention you had a bit of an unusual journey to get here. And like we were saying offline, it is really important to me to help listeners understand why you are doing this work and why you're doing this. So could you fill that in a little bit? Tell us a little bit about your journey because you graduated pretty recently, but what happened before that?

How did we get here?

Julia Yan: Yeah, I guess this whole journey into climate started when I was in high school. This was [00:07:00] around, I was 15 or 16 years old. So like 2015, 2016, and it was like peak Flint, Michigan water crisis. I remember just like sitting in front of the TV and feeling super outraged, honestly, that things were going so slowly.

I felt as though we'd been stuck in that cycle for years and years at this point. I was back in high school. I had a strong interest in science. I'd always been a tinkerer, but I didn't know how to apply that. I just liked to build things. And so I figured like, why not devote some time, some resources to trying to figure this out.

And so I worked on water filtration, which is what I do now, but at the time it was for heavy metal filtration. And so how do we get lead out of contaminated water? I thought it was really fun. I thought it was really interesting. I was super, I think, motivated to do it, it didn't really feel like work, but to me, I went to college and I was like, okay, now it's time to find what I'm going to do for work.

And so I studied chemical engineering for a semester to realize it wasn't what I wanted to do. I went to material science engineering. Which is, I would say adjacent, but more focused on like matter. And [00:08:00] I was more interested in like nanoscale materials and nanotechnology. I just thought that stuff was really cool.

I love quantum. And so I did a little minor pivot in college. Maybe it's because I am like an older sibling. I'm an older sister. The kids of two immigrant parents or maybe because I went to Penn, which is a very professional school, quite competitive. I feel like I was really pushed towards roles like investment banking and consulting and things that at the end of the day, I think aren't super aligned with my personal vision, but I felt that pressure.

And so I went that path. I went to consulting and I did a whole summer internship, like one of my most pivotal internships, my junior year. And maybe I was just on a specific project or a certain role that gave me a glimpse of this only that made me very disillusioned, but I felt like this was pointless.

Like to me, everyone always jokes, like what is consulting? I thought it was like, we listen to clients and they tell us like all their thinking and what they want to do. And then we just take it and repackage it. And then just give it [00:09:00] back to them in a nicer way to help them say yeah, you can lay off these people.

Or yes, this requires this kind of reorganization and we give them justification for it so they can go back to their employees and say okay, we brought in this external group and they say, we need to lay you off. I guess for me, I was this doesn't feel like what I want to do, at least not with like my career, just starting out.

I was just about to graduate college and I felt like a cog in the wheel and I remember like back in high school, how much I enjoyed the work that I was doing. It didn't feel like work again. It was more like a passion project. And so I came back to it and when it came time for like us to create the senior engineering capstone project.

And we decided let's build something, let's tackle this issue. And I was really driven to pursue water filtration again and serendipitously led us to starting our own venture from this like conceptual lab idea. And now here we are, a year into it, I'm 22 years old and I don't see myself doing anything else at least for the near future for the next few years.

Quinn: [00:10:00] That's all incredible. Thank you for sharing it. It is both so unique, but also, yeah, it feels so predictable in so many ways. I went to Colgate University a thousand years ago. Everything was in black and white. But I feel like, I think I've told this story and I saw this classmate recently again, and we were joking.

Liberal arts school, really wonderful, pretty small, in the middle of nowhere, very cold, we graduated in 2005, so pre 2008, everybody's going into finance, in something, I don't even know what half those words, I didn't at the time know what half those words meant, whether they were econ majors or not.

That's where they went. That's where the job offers were. That's where the alumni were. That's where the money was. Want to start making it? Move to New York or Chicago? Sure. I was an atheist religious studies majors who focused on religious warfare. And I remember my friend majored in Greek language, basically.

And we were both watching the TV, and it was graduation week, and there's some CNN thing. It was like, top ten most [00:11:00] lucrative college majors. And needless to say... Greek and religious studies were not on that list. And we were like, Oh no, what have we done? But at the same time, I think now, and I've got three kids, as I alluded to, and my 10 year old who thinks he's 25 is constantly asking wants to do this, wants to do that.

What am I going to be? And I was like, you're going to be 50 different things. And as much as I hope you shepherd Baleena into cleaning up everything forever. You've already done something else, and it's, all of those things are so helpful to getting you on the path that you feel like you're intended to be on where you can answer the question that is our business here, which is, how can I help? I want to go back just a moment. So you said both your parents are immigrants. Where do they come from?

Julia Yan: Oh, yeah, they immigrated from China and they're both scientists as well. So I guess that's like how I got my start in this natural gravitation, maybe, to wanting to be in this field.

Quinn: So even though they were scientists, they were pushing you a little bit towards the [00:12:00] go and make money side?

Julia Yan: I don't think they explicitly did that, but maybe I felt this burden that comes from knowing what they sacrificed to be here and their journey. I should want more stability for myself.

And I don't know even though that is the case and I still do think that is something important. I just realized like time is almost more valuable to me now. And like time, there's this urgent need and it's like, why work on anything else with the limited time that I have at this moment in time when like climate is such a huge issue and something that like we were born into, like Gen Z, as a generation and kind of feels like we're the last ones to be able to solve it at least to create really meaningful change.

So that's how I feel now about the whole like stability and financial stability versus being really passionate about what you work on. Like I, I am leaning towards, let me do something that I actually love to do and feel that I need to do. At this moment in time.

Quinn: I totally get it.

What are their specialties?

Julia Yan: Yeah, so my dad is in chemistry, analytical chemistry, and my mom's like in biology, but it borders on like paleontology. Loved dinosaurs growing up. She'd go on [00:13:00] these like fossil digs and come back from Montana, and it was like the coolest thing ever.

Quinn: Oh, that's awesome. I did a conversation.

A few months back, I don't know, time means nothing anymore, with Riley Black, who wrote a really wonderful book about, basically, she took as much as humanly possible of the information we have right now, which of course changes every month, and then doesn't change for years, about what happened in the seconds, the minutes, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, after the asteroid hit.

And it's, the prose is so beautiful, and the conversation is so wonderful. And same thing, I'm just like, how cool would it be to just work on dinosaurs? Like, how great is that? That's awesome. That's really cool. All right. So you had some scientific influence there. You weren't, it didn't just come out of nowhere.

Julia Yan: Yeah, I guess not. I think definitely growing up, like being immersed in labs and like when I didn't have school and like wasn't in daycare, I would just be in their offices and hear all the conversations. No idea what was happening, but I think that definitely maybe unconsciously has led to [00:14:00] where I am now.

Quinn: What about your siblings? Are they running in the other direction or?

Julia Yan: So I have a younger sister. She is just about to go to college in a couple weeks, actually. And so she's going the computer science path, something that I wish I had more talent in, but I'm super proud of her. She like makes video games in her free time.

Quinn: So in her free time, sure. Why not? Why not? That's super cool. This paints a much fuller picture of sort of the where you came from and what you, what was endemic to how you grew up and how you spent time. Your stories of spending your childhood years bouncing around a lab at, it's like I'm old enough now and I'm, a general sports fan to hear second generation baseball players or whatever, and they're like, I just grew up in the locker room.

Like my dad and all the players treated me and I took batting practice and now I'm really good. And you're like sure. I guess that's what you saw, what you're a part of. Obviously, there has to be a certain amount of talent and a certain amount of drive to do it, but it makes sense to know that this was the nurturing environment you came up on.[00:15:00]

So let's dig into this. Tell me what you have created and tell me why, because we can dig into, we can spend two minutes talking about how widespread the problem is but I think everyone pretty much gets it. Microplastics are in virtually everything, which means they're in all of our water and our food, and it, we have found them at the top of mountains, at the bottom of oceans, in deserts, and we've also found them in our bloodstreams, people who've been alive and eating and drinking them and inhaling them for years, but we're also finding them in things like placentas.

So tell me a little bit about how you got to, this is the thing I want to do, and then sort of your scientific process of the thing you created.

Julia Yan: Yeah, sure. I guess this gets into our founding story at Baleena, and it started when we-

Quinn: First of all, hold on, pause. Greatest name of all time, by the way.

Baleena, I love it. Blue Whale, favorite animal. This is such a great name. It's so good.

Julia Yan: Yeah, I'm glad you got it. It came out of actually in college me sitting all my roommates and some friends down at a kitchen table and just throwing [00:16:00] ideas around, and that one kind of stuck. We added the A, actually, because all female founding team, and a lot of the Latin and Spanish like words have that as a conjugation, but that was like our inspiration.

Quinn: So great.

Julia Yan: Continue. Founding story. So we were seniors in college. This was 2021 just after the pandemic. And the reason we came together as a team really was because we had spent years of classes, material science at Penn is a very close-knit department, only about 30 people in our class. And so every class basically we spent together and we wanted to create something bio inspired and that was like what really drew us as a team to become a unit.

Bio inspired meaning like we wanted to be looking towards nature for the root of what are we going to build? Like, how are we going to model what we want to do off of something that already exists in it? It like performs well. Yeah, and so we came together and at the time, being a material scientist, I think plastics is a huge component of what we learned because manufacturing nowadays is so dependent on synthetic materials and a lot [00:17:00] of material science, at least in our department is focused on like the environmental implications and how can we best address that.

So it was in the back of our minds pretty much the whole time. And we were compelled to tackle this because we had a year in that moment. We had a year. We had a little bit of funding, like 500 dollars. And we figured what can we do that would create something more tangible? We didn't want to just do research and create a research paper at the end.

We wanted to create something that was more device centric and usable. And so we went to who we thought at the time were like, the experts on this, we went to the water department, the EPA and we're like, what are you guys doing to solve this? Like where it's current state and how can we fit in?

And essentially the takeaway there was like they, of course, they know it exists. They're aware of it. And they're content with where they are right now. And wastewater treatment plants as a whole, they can filter for microplastics with about, 80, 90 percent efficiency. But a lot of the smaller microplastics do slip through.

And there's been quoted like 40 percent of microplastic fibers can end up in the water streams anyways. [00:18:00] And a lot of the sludge that comes out of it just is applied as fertilizer, so it's not really a catch all solution anyways. But they were like, this is working for us and we don't have the time and really the resources to divert more towards microplastics.

There's just so much happening on the water level. And so we figured like, why not do something about this that we ourselves could use. At the time, we were college students, we rented or we lived in dorms. We wanted an easier solution that people like us, college students, eco conscious young individuals would feel compelled to purchase and create habits around and actually like start creating a difference.

And so that's our start. It definitely has come and transformed a little bit along the way. I actually do have some prototypes like on my desk. I can show you, but we started out with like a spherical thing where people just toss it in.

Quinn: It's like a dryer ball.

Julia Yan: Yeah. We modeled it off the dryer ball.

It has like the nubs that help it crawl out of clothes if it gets stuck. It was like two parts. And inside we had like our C sponge, which is the inspiration for our filter. And I would say it [00:19:00] worked to some degree, but we thought we could do better just because we were trying to understand, like, how does a wash machine, how do they work?

Where's the water flow coming from? How do we model that movement and really maximize efficiency? And so we started moving towards what if we could stick it to the side of the machine? What if we change the shape of it? What's in a ball? And so we've like slowly come across like different versions and like tested and iterated and we've landed right now on a version that actually attaches to the drainage holes of the washing machine.

This is really just through like experiments and seeing does it work better when it's free flowing versus actually stabilize on the side? Where in the machine can we make a universal attachment method that, front loader versus top loader, Samsung, Whirlpool, like whatever it is, we can make it work.

And drainage holes is like pretty much the one thing that is pretty universal. The distance of course changes the size of them, but we can create something that stretches and expands to meet that need. And so here's where we are now. It's like a two part system, outer shell, inner filter, and they work in tandem to one capture, but also [00:20:00] track and retain all the microplastics that happen in a load of laundry.

So it doesn't end up washing away with the effluent into the wastewater treatment plants into the oceans, into our waterways.

Quinn: Amazing. So you've got it solved. You're done.

Julia Yan: I would say, I think the overall issue as a whole is we recognize that like consumers shouldn't have all the onus. And while we did start with DTC, like we want to create a solution for consumers to use and households to use, we've realized over time over the last year that this problem is so large. And a lot of changes happen upstream in the supply chain. So when a piece of clothing is made like a t shirt, a lot of microplastics are actually shed in manufacturing that in the garment testing and the actual fiber manufacturing, textile manufacturing, and everything that happens before it actually gets to the consumer also leads to shed.

And at the end of the day, they're making more of the decisions as far as what materials to use and how to incorporate them and how to even regulate and standardize fiber shedding [00:21:00] and fragmentation. And so our broader vision isn't just stop here. I think it's one thing to create a filtration device for consumers, but we hope that by doing so by creating a customer base amongst US households or even beyond the US, we can then draw these businesses and brand attention to the issue and convince them like consumers want this. So you should be applying these practices and best practices to your own manufacturing steps. And, maybe you should start like washing garments before you sell them because the pre-wash stage is really important as far as be able to capture a ton of microplastics.

And so I guess the overall takeaway is I don't think this is the end. I think we see this going much further. Like, how do we at the end of the day get into like the suppliers and the manufacturers and help brands make their right decisions from the get go instead of putting all the responsibility back on consumers.

But consumers can have a small part to play that again leads to like large or meaningful change if we give them something that they can do right now that's actual.

Quinn: I love that. One of my least favorite things on the planet is the [00:22:00] gatekeeping between individual actions and these collective or systemic actions.

On the one hand, it's very easy to say individual actions turn into systemic actions, that's what voting is, or marching, or this and this, which definitely doesn't always hold up. On the other hand, it is measurably how these things often work because we are social beings, because of that's the way marketing works.

That's the way any of these things work. If they're done intentionally, we have so much we can learn from how other products and services and movements have been marketed and grown and been successful or unsuccessful, almost more importantly. Since the advent of advertising and marketing and organizing all these things, which are inherently very dependent on one another.

We had a conversation recently with a gentleman, Matt Rogers, who started a company called Mill. And Matt is also one of the original designers of something called the iPhone. And then he co-founded Nest, which looked at the thermostat, which was a nightmare. And decided to make it sexy and usable and intuitive and smart.

And that just instantly became the measuring stick for everything else at that point. Because once you saw it, once you used it, you were like, Oh, wait a minute, why would I ever use this [00:23:00] other thing? And... Food waste, a large part of it, is actually on the consumer side and it is a really stupid thing we keep choosing to do.

Either buying too much or letting it waste or having issues with expiration dates. We don't want to eat ugly food, kids don't eat it, whatever it might be, we just throw it in the trash. Which one, just wastes food and two, creates this huge methane problem and production problem and all of this stuff. And what I appreciated about, similarities between you and Matt is, I had to ask him, I said, you've done all these incredible industrial design things. You've made a ton of money. You worked in political progressive support in a variety of ways through insight.org. I said, why did you make a sexier trash can?

Why did you have to do this? Composting is out there. It's problematic. It's not, it's imperfect. It's good. And he said, basically, there aren't too many people out there who designed the iPhone. And not to [00:25:00] toot my own horn, but I should do this. If there's a problem like this that is so obvious that is in everyone's life, like you're talking about, and I can apply my sort of Liam Neeson, very specific set of skills to it, then I should do it because it is a consumer thing.

And as much as basically they've made these devices where you put the food in and like compost overnight, it changes. But there's is different is it heats it up, chops it up, and then it turns into chicken feed that they sell to these farms so farmers can buy it. And there's less methane and all these things.

It's incredible. The whole system is a big thing. But his point is yes, we have to fix all these different pieces of the supply chain. Obviously the food supply chain and food waste, but this is a thing that can actually make a measurable difference and it's social. I have one. And how many people walk into my house and go, what the hell is that?

What does it do? And then my wife and I give them like the Tupperware show and they go now I want one and you could do that with a washing machine, right? That doesn't change the fact that manufacturers should [00:27:00] stop making clothes out of plastic. But you could make a measurable difference. Sorry for my sort of manifesto there, but it's important to keep finding these pieces again, for people who are out there listening, going, wait a minute. What's another problem like this? Where we can make a dent.

Julia Yan: Yeah, exactly. And I actually have friends that work at Mill.

Quinn: Oh there you go. You gotta tell me to shut up halfway through. You get it.

Julia Yan: You made a comparison between us, but no, I agree.

I think as far as things that people always ask, it's like, why are you so focused on consumers? And shouldn't there be a bigger change? And more measurable change happening earlier before I think we agree that at the day, that's where we want to go, but we have to start somewhere. And we see consumers just as the better starting place because people are asking, we want to help resolve that eco anxiety.

All people that are like, I want to have people come up to us, like at events that are like I hear what you're saying. It's so shocking that clothes are made out of plastic. I didn't know that before, or I'm starting to rethink, how I think about fashion and clothing, my choices, what can I do?

And we want to give them something [00:28:00] that they can do right now, while everything still is like moving so slowly, like policy, regulation, it's coming, but it definitely takes time. And, at the like manufacturing level, at the brand level, we talked to these brands and the washing machine manufacturers, and these changes take so long to implement and so long to test and verify that we want to create something that can be a solution in the short term. It's not a silver bullet solution, but it's something that at least can help resolve a lot of people's fear and anxiety and give them something that feels real and tangible and does make a difference because laundry is a huge emitter at the end of the day. Even though there are other points of the supply chain where it is being emitted.

Quinn: Of course there are, but like you said, if you can, and we're going to get to your actual device more in a moment, what it's made of exactly how it works, this and that, how can someone apply it? Can they buy it? All that jazz. There's really something to be said for, like you said, we gotta start doing stuff now.

It's much easier to get to consumer now, whether that's D2C or whatever it might be, whether there's city incentives or whatever. [00:29:00] But we also have to do it all. And that's kind of Matt's point with that. And that's the point with climate or public health or whatever it is. The answer, and this is how we drove down lung cancer rates, which is still one of the biggest killers.

But we didn't just do it through court cases. We also did it through regulation. We did it through policy. We did it through marketing. We did it through putting the scary pictures on the pack. We did it through retraining doctors and regulating marketing and all. We got to do all the stuff.

That's the way it works, that's what we did with the ozone layer, it's the only way we find success in these things, so this is so important, because it is, and this is what I always come back to when people go, I read about the jet stream slowing down, what can I do? I'm like, you can't do anything about that.

But climate change really is the heat on your back, the water you drink. The food you eat, you can do things about those, and that's where you're going to see the most change on the local level at home, which will make you feel like you have a foot in the door to go do more. It'll make you feel like you have a leg [00:30:00] to stand on to go then look at manufacturers and say, Hey man, I put this thing in my washing machine.

The least you can do is stop making your clothes out of plastic, right?

Julia Yan: Yeah, no, exactly. And we're also trying to amplify those efforts. I think a lot of consumers will talk to us and be like, I feel like a drop in the bucket. And I know individual actions are just like one thing, but we are talking to the brands.

We're talking to the manufacturers to make sure that they have a pulse on this and are seeing what's happening. And they told us like, we understand this is an issue. We want to start applying things, but we want to gain your trust and credibility first. If you want to see that you can get a market and consumers and that consumers do want this to consumers want change, and then we'll feel more compelled to apply this.

So I think it's two ways. I think one, we're trying to empower consumers to try to fight this and to push back against brands and especially fast fashion. But we also want to push the brands themselves and get in that door. And so we're like the bridge between the two, like trying to facilitate these relationships, trying to facilitate these conversations to make the meaningful impact all the more meaningful and to amplify what's already happening.

[00:31:00]

Quinn: Yeah, it's a lot. When I talked to Matt and I said now you've made the chicken feed. Did you think that now you got to go build all these relationships with farmers and build up the policy and he was like, yeah, I'm aware. It's not great. It's a big, I didn't just get to design the sexy trash can.

I had to decide, am I going to do all of it? And, it's really important that you, like Matt, get your device correct, right? And then get it into people's hands, and then get it into more people's hands, and then prove that it works. So that you do have a leg to stand on, so you can do the arguably harder work, right?

But this piece has to come first. So let's talk about this piece. You were talking about, you're in this, not final version, but where you are it's relatively universal considering, like you said, there's 7, 000 different variations on these machines. What does it look like? What is it made of?

How does it work? How do you produce it now? How do you produce it going forward? How do you scale it up? All of that.

Julia Yan: Yeah. Okay. So I guess I'll answer this within two parts. There's like an [00:32:00] outer shell component and an inner filter. And so the outer shell is a bit more straightforward.

Right now we're 3D printing this using PLA. We get questions about oh, this is plastic. Are you not just shredding more plastic into the water when it's being used. And this is where I think material selection really comes into play. And so we don't see this as the final state. We do want to move to like injection molding and looking towards other materials, whether they be biodegradable or at the end of the day, more, like intentional as far as the environmental impact we've thought about, moving away from plastic entirely or just going towards bioplastics.

This is still a little bit in flux. And this is why we have a lot of customers in our beta testing and feedback we get just to gauge like what is happening in the machine over all these uses. But that's like the overall flow and the path we see for the outer shell. For the inner filter, we are more focused on how do we emulate, as I said before, like the C spun structure.

It's like a 3D porous structure, super torturous. What I mean by that is once the fibers, it's almost there's like a [00:33:00] maze of these pores and I guess if there were like rooms in a house, and once the fibers get entangled, it's hard for them to come back out just due to the level of like the porosity for one as well as just the density of these sponges. So that's like what we're trying to model our solution off of. We are using cellulose based materials because we found this really cool startup in Sweden, actually, called Charitex that's able to break down textile waste into cellulose components and everything else, and then send everything else, all these plastics that they've broken down towards other applications.

And so we see a vision and a model for our own inner filter that's based on, we don't create a filter that filters all these microplastics, but at the day, you can then separate the components out. You can get back to your cellulose derivative, you can get back to the microplastics and everything else you've collected, and then re-spin those cellulose materials back in new filters, like a circular model.

And then find solutions for the microplastics, which at the end of the day, it's the biggest issue right now for all these other competitors in the market. It's what do you [00:34:00] do once you collected all this and where does it go? And so we are basing our inner filter on our conception that circularity is the future of this industry, a fashion of like microplastics solutions and how do we get there? So that's the basis. Right now we're working with different universities and labs in the RTP area in North Carolina, as well as other manufacturers to try to do this at scale whether that be like melt blowing, melt spinning, or electro spinning, we are trying to scale this up, but I would say that is the current status and where we see this going.

Quinn: That's pretty cool. Yeah, once you start getting into factories and injection molding and things like that's where you start, it gets exciting, but also pretty complicated, right? How do you start to build those relationships? What do you, human wise, relying on to start finding the folks that could do that for you.

Is it alumni? Is it through 776? Is it cold outreach? I'm so curious, because again, that's a big leap to go, the [00:35:00] traditional thing is like, we made this in our garage with our 3D printer! Now how do we do it? Software is entirely different, and that's the beauty of software. It's like cheating, right?

You make it boop, goes to everybody. That's not the way hardware works. So talk to me about that actual part of it. Like, how are you finding those folks, and how are you gaining their trust?

Julia Yan: Yeah, these are questions we asked ourselves when we first started this journey. This being our first full time jobs, we're first time entrepreneurs.

We're like, where do we even start? We have this idea, but hardware is a whole new field for us. And so it started on campus. While we were still at Penn there's a ton of like maker spaces and venture labs. And so we'd start our early prototyping there. They'll let you print for free.

That was really great. There's like people there to help you. It's like hand holding in a way and we're like, just help us get off the ground. And then we did a variety of accelerators and incubators. Firstly, because we were like, let's get a better grasp on entrepreneurship and how we're going to build a business model around this, but also because they had a lot of resources for us in terms of we'll connect you to this manufacturing partner [00:36:00] or this like design group or these consultants here in Philly.

And we were like we need that because we desperately need a mentorship. We needed people that we could balance our ideas off of, brainstorm with, but also just be inspired by people that had gone this path before, maybe a couple of years ahead of us and had done a Kickstarter campaign or had launched and shipped something that we can then follow their footsteps a little bit and try to see what they did well and where they would, go back in and change things. So that's how we started. We just reached out to a bunch of these partners that we were connected to cold outreach is super key for us because we're still trying to build our networks.

And so we cold email all the time, just like other founders that I would say are a little bit further than us. So everything's still relevant, still fresh, and we just get their take on it and see who they work with. And so we're slowly over time, I think, building these things and people I think are, they tell us like, Oh, we love your passion, your energy.

Maybe that's what makes us at least a good partner to start with I think we're also very coachable and maybe that's another [00:37:00] reason, but that's how we get our foot in the door. I think it's just like leaning into the, we're young, we're just learning. We want to learn, please teach us kind of mindset.

Quinn: Sure. I will tell you, even when you're not young anymore, like me and everything hurts all the time. My wife is the most incredible human on the planet. Partner, mother, friend, all of the things. But she's also a full time, very successful screenwriter and producer. And she's incredibly talented. She works very hard.

Her writing is very good. But I will tell you, and she will tell you, and we tell our children this all of the time, that she probably gets half of her jobs because she is energetic and a team player and is very coachable and is very excited and just sees the overall measurable outcome at the end. And what do we have to do to get there?

And the measurable outcome is not I write a great script. It is that this movie actually come out. And for it to come out, it has to get made, which requires hundreds of people and millions of [00:38:00] dollars. But to even get to that point, it requires so much more. So the best thing she can do is just be awesome to work with.

And she'll get new jobs, but also repeat jobs with people who go this movie did this way or whatever. But when we do the next one, we're going to call her because it was just great. And that can go so far. And so I encourage you to hold onto that as much as possible because hardware, especially, and I have brothers who did a health food company and having to make food that is both nutritious, but it's food.

Things can go wrong in manufacturing. It can poison people. It's a hard journey. So the more you can hold onto that, the more I think that really does stick with people who just go I just want to work with Julie. That's it, whatever she's making, I'm in. So tell me about on that note, working with co-founders, how is that going? How did you all agree to set that up? What was that conversation like? Was it obvious and how did you all decide your roles going forward?

Julia Yan: Yeah, I think this is really hard for us at the stage we were in. This was our [00:39:00] last year of college and I think for all three of us, I'm not sure we thought entrepreneurship was gonna be our first job out of college.

I had always wanted to pursue entrepreneurship, but I thought it was like a later stage thing. Once I get established, in life I've worked these jobs in industry and I get this really great idea and I build this team, let me come back to it. And so it was serendipitous, like the way that we found ourselves in these roles.

And like the kind of support that we got from Penn, from outside investors, from everyone to get started. But the start really came from like a prize at Penn. We, with our like senior design project, which was at this point really just a ball. And we had thought through like business model a little bit, pricing.

We were like, maybe there's something here. Let's just shot in the dark, apply to this prize. It's called the President's Prizes. There's like engagement, innovation, sustainability, different categories. And essentially it's 100k plus 50k per person as living stipends, just to go off and make an impact, do whatever you can in this next year.

Kind of no [00:40:00] restrictions. You just have to work full time for a year on your idea. And we did it. We were like, let's just see what happens. Worst case we don't get it. And we end up just continuing the jobs that we already had lined up after college. My co-founder, one of them wanted to go get her PhD.

Another one wanted to, work in like the US patent office. We had different aspirations, I would say, then where we are now. But we applied, didn't really expect to win. And then we ended up winning one of these prizes and we were like, okay. Let's just do it. Let's take this risk now. What better time?

Like we talked to our mentors and we were like, are we too young to do this? Are we too inexperienced? They were like, this is the time to do it. And if I were in your shoes, like I would definitely a hundred percent go back and take this and seize this opportunity. And so we were like this feels once in a lifetime for us.

Let's take it. And it's just a year. So if it, we crash and burn and we fail, we can just pick right back up where we left off. And so we deferred our offers. We deferred like the grad school option and we did this and now a year has passed and we're still here because things like really just fell into [00:41:00] place for us.

Like we found our footing and we've done more and more work as far as trying to build this network, trying to get more funding for ourselves, and it's gone just surprisingly well, all things considered, considering how little we knew going in, but you'd ask like how we decided our roles.

I think we just all had different interests as well. Like I had more of a business interest, I would say coming from consulting. I also had gotten a minor in engineering entrepreneurship. And so, I like the actual facing part. I like the pitching, like the storytelling. And I like the financial models.

I guess I like the parts that made CEO make sense given our team structure. And then I have a co-founder who's a COO and she's very like, logistically minded, very practical, likes to handle the behind the scenes a little bit and the internal stuff. And so that made sense. And then we had our CTO and she's just loves being in the lab, like loves research and she was the one that wanted to get her PhD in bioengineering.

So for her, like that was a really natural fit. And I guess at the end of day, I can just credit this all to luck a little bit, [00:42:00] serendipity, but also just being in the right place at the right time and like being open to taking the opportunities that we were given and making the most out of it.

Quinn: That's awesome.

When do you foresee having to make your first hire, bring somebody on board besides a mentor or someone informal?

Julia Yan: We just had a summer intern, actually. So I don't know if that counts as a first hire. She was only here for two months, but it was a little taste of that. And it made us realize we could handle this.

Like for us, it was a little intimidating to be managers of more than just ourselves. That was already a big thing, like trying to figure out how to manage yourself and manage a company and trying to add on to that plate felt like a lot this last year, but now we're in a space like we just had an intern.

It went really well. She handed our social media and like our branding and marketing. I think we've realized like maybe it's time. I think we've gotten the confidence we needed. We've built out the skill sets. We know where our gaps are that like are higher, should happen in the next few months. We do want to hire more into the engineering [00:43:00] side, so we can really bolster that effort.

But I think we feel more and more ready, even though this is still like a huge leap for us. It's crazy to think about. We were just interns like all our internships in college, and now we're about to be like creating intern programs and hiring interns and hiring actual employees.

Quinn: It reminds me again and forgive me, but in sports you don't see very often now, but 30, 40 years ago, there would often be someone who is a player who became player coach and was still the coach, but actually also played on the team.

But then there were some that became the player. And in fact, you know what, I think this just happened at a college, I was just reading about this week. A young woman was the team's best field hockey player, she graduated and said, I think I should be the coach and they gave her the job and she's like what does that mean to now being a position authority over?

And this is a little more different than yours. She said, these people were my teammates three and a half months ago. How do I keep that rapport, but establish myself as, Hey, I'm [00:44:00] still the coach and I can still sit you or start you or, give you constructive criticism. Learning to manage is a hell of a thing.

Julia Yan: Yeah, still on that learning journey for sure. I don't think we have it all figured out, but I think having this year to test it on ourselves has been super great. I think learning to be kinder to ourselves has been a really key takeaway. Learning like to get out of that planning mindset. Like we're scientists, engineers by training.

We love to plan and research and be fully aware of all the facts before we go. And it's like shifting that to the entrepreneurship mindset where it's you have to go, you have to iterate quickly, you have to test and experiment and you have to be open to failure. So it was cool. It was cool that we learned all these things.

And we had an intern and we just offboarded her and she was like, what can I take to my next job? How do I improve? And we're like, here's like all these things we've learned and we want you to apply this and like this will help you go so far.

Quinn: Yeah, that's awesome. So what would you say is your biggest obstacle today?

Like what is written on your wall in your notebook, wherever you keep it? Is it technical? Is it organizational? Is it relationships? Is [00:45:00] it something scientific? I'm curious.

Julia Yan: I would say it's technical because we're like knee deep right now in R&D and we really devote a lot of our efforts to let's get this out the door.

Let's get this to beta testing. We're currently doing like a series of like friends and family, mentor tasks where we send people the device and have them use it. How do we go from here to where we want to be, by early next year, we want to launch, we want to actually have a product that's selling and start making more of a community around our product and create a larger impact that way.

And so right now our major milestone, our major goal is like, how do we scale our beta test? Scale our manufacturing to get there. And so we have circled, in our calendar is like, this is our launch date. Here's when we want a soft lunch. Let's build all the things we need to get there.

Quinn: What about things like sales infrastructure?

Have you even started to think about all that goes into that?

Julia Yan: Yeah, it's crazy. I think because we're planning for a limited release launch, we've started to do a little bit of the trial and error there. Like before we get to full scale launch and working with the [00:46:00] brands we want to work with, like funnelin our product with Patagonia or Arc'teryx, like we do have to start somewhere.

And so it's a lot like logistically, transportation, shipping, how do we manufacture, how are we even going to price this? How do we work with like the zero waste stores you want to work with? The kinds of distributors we want to work with. Like all of these are questions we're asking ourselves now, and it's a lot, but it's been a fun series of experiments and trial and error to get there.

Quinn: Can you tell me a little bit, and you just reminded me, and I saw it in my research this week, tell me about these relationships you have with Patagonia and Arcteryx. What are they? How did they come about? Those aren't easy to get.

Julia Yan: Yeah. I guess going back to a previous thing I was talking about, like cold emailing, it's been pretty huge just for us to like find someone on LinkedIn or we find their email somehow by pure luck and guessing and we're like, Hey we're recent Penn grads and we're building this thing. Here's a reason the impact going. Can we just talk to you? And so that's where a lot of these relationships came from, just like wanting to learn and educate ourselves.

And we felt the best way was to go to the brands, to go to the stakeholders, [00:47:00] these policy makers and retailers that are capable of creating larger scale change. And so Patagonia responded. We got connected to the right people and they've been really great mentors to us. Like we meet with some of their team just to understand like what's the status.

And they're one of the pioneers within this like outdoor athletic clothing retail industry. They're actually like doing a lot of work tracking microplastic shed and what materials are shedding more. They're trying to get back down to suppliers and trace back to, where's this coming from?

How do we create an impact here? How do we change what we're doing as far as like practices manufacturing goes? And so they're like a really great partner for us as far as like having a really great grasp on like their own supply chains and what they can do to be better and wanting to invest in that.

And then Arc'teryx is another partner that's been really pivotal for us. They actually do a lot of technological work, like garment testing and washing. And so we have an LOI with them to essentially use our [00:48:00] filters in their washing stuff. And so they do a lot of like lab testing because for them, it's like, how do we create, this high tech garment and in the back off their minds they’re thinking like, how do we do that while at the same time thinking about, the effect on the environment and how do we test our materials and create with intentionality so that the responsibility isn't on consumers to make the right choice if we're making the right choices. They are really great in that aspect and we also talk with them all the time and are working to officially launch this pilot later next year as far as let's get into Arc'teryx, let's get into the repair centers and design centers and start making our way upstream as we had wanted to do one brand, one partner at a time.

Quinn: I think that's awesome. It makes so much sense. They're trying to do the work anyways, right? So they might as well work with you if not actually use the evolutions of your product to get there. That's really cool. I'm basically head to toe in Patagonia at this point, so I'm fully on board.

That's fantastic. Okay. [00:49:00] So I have taken up so much of your time here. You are just, it is delightful to hear this mission and your enthusiasm for it and all the different pieces you're trying to take on. It is something else. It is a lot of work. It is awesome, but it is necessary. I feel like I finished so many of these conversations and just say we need you.

How can we help and good luck. I have a last few questions I ask everyone if you're cool with that. And then we'll get you out of here. Does that sound good? We alluded to some of this stuff a little bit, but when was the first time in your life when you realized you or a group of people organized together formally or informally had the power of change or to do something meaningful, whatever that sort of means to you.

And I guess what it comes down to is like, when was the first time you moved the needle? And were like, Oh, that's interesting. Look what I can do or look what we can do. What was that?

Julia Yan: So my freshman summer of college, I got the chance to go to Argentina on this [00:50:00] like engineering like social impact project where we made solar water heaters on like the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

And it was a team of, I want to say like 10 of us, like freshmen chemical engineers that didn't want to just sit in a research lab over the summer, we wanted to actually do something hands on. And that was the first time where I felt like the stuff I was learning and the research I had done, while really interesting and impactful personally for the first time I felt like we were making a real difference on real people.

And we basically worked hand in hand with these families in Buenos Aires. And we would cut up all these water bottles and climb onto the roofs and install these water heaters. And it just really felt to me like the first time where I was like, these are real people we're helping and the impact that we're making is in the near term really going to make a difference like we would turn on the shower, the first time it's like they had hot water and hot running water and they had water.

Quinn: And it was not there the day before.

Julia Yan: Yeah, and we could see those results like in real time and I think that was the first [00:51:00] time where. Although I've had an interest in doing this it felt really real to me in that moment.

Quinn: I love that. I have friends who, and friends of friends who've spent a lot of time in the Peace Corps and things like that, and it is questionable sometimes at the end of the day when I close my laptop and go, what did I actually do today?

It's part of the reason I like doing the dishes, because I take a big pile of things and I bring them down to nothing. There is something to be said. Obviously just helping people, but in making something that directly affects them, that wasn't there, and like you said, all of the co-benefits from water, clean water, hot water provide reliably.

And powered by the sun is incredible and to do that on a very personal level is amazing. And, as we try to deal with energy poverty and things like that around the world and go no, you don't need fossil fuels. We have ways to do this now. We just, need to scale them up and the manpower and the funding and all of that.

Anyways, that's incredible. Thank you for doing that work. And thank you for sharing it. Two more. Next one. Who is someone in your life who has [00:52:00] positively impacted your work in the past six months? And you cannot say your co- founders.

Julia Yan: I guess I alluded to this. I would say our social media intern, Nina. She was here in the last two months, so I think she made a really big difference.

Not just on the company, but just like on how we feel as ourselves as founders and what we think we are capable of. Really thankful that she bared with us these last few months and spent her summer working at a startup with us.

Quinn: That's so cool. I love it. I would have been so excited.

I'm very sad I did not get the invitation. No one is worse at social media than I am. Okay, last one. In all of your free time, which I imagine is so much, even just post college in general, but what is a book you have read in the past year or so that has either changed your mind on something or opened your mind to maybe a perspective or an idea that you hadn't considered before.

We have a whole list up on Bookshop. The people love it.

Julia Yan: Okay, I would say I read a book last month. It's called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. And it's fictional, but it's yeah, you've read it?

Quinn: Yeah, so good.

Julia Yan: What I really resonated with is just seeing these two [00:53:00] kids. They're also in college when this kind of starts.

They have a childhood backstory, but they create this video game of just like a passion for gaming and how gaming has helped them got through so many obstacles as kids and like it takes off and they had to deal with all the implications of that. It felt like what happened with us.

Obviously we're at a much smaller scale and we are not at the level of like fame and prominence that they receive in the book, but it was cool. Cause I think entrepreneurship feels pretty isolating sometimes like a lonely journey, but reading a book about yes, two fictional characters that go through that was I think eye opening in the way it's I don't think we're alone.

A lot of struggles that we're facing are faced by other people as well. And seeing them like overcome that and grapple with, like working in male dominated fields and being young for their industry and all the things that come with creating your own company and business like that, I think was impactful for me. And so love that book, would recommend it, even if you just want to read a good book.

Quinn: Yeah, it's just a good book. But like you said, it says so much [00:54:00] about video games, which are both demonized and trivialized, even though they're enormous, it says so much about co-founders, it says so much about relationships, and childhood, and immigration, and it says so much, all of these things and it's just a good book.

It's really wonderful. I love that you chose that. Have your co-founders read it? I'm curious.

Julia Yan: They have not, but I did get my sister to read it. She's the one who likes playing video games in her free time, and I was like, you should read this. This could be maybe in a couple of years.

Quinn: Yeah, sure, sure.

Yeah. That was a special one. Great choice. I don't know if that's actually on our list. Good one. This has been wonderful. Julia, what questions did I not ask? What would you like to share that maybe I didn't, or if there's anything you'd just like to say, what did we miss?

Julia Yan: I guess something that's coming up that I don't know if anyone wants to follow our social media to stay updated about, but I'm about to go on like a sea expedition. Like we're going out to see an SF. It's called like a microfiber pollution and textile solutions expedition. We're going to collect samples out at sea and understand like the count, the characterization, like what's [00:55:00] happening in the oceans, how much of this is microplastics and what's the composition of that.

But also it's like a bunch of solutionists coming together, like not just entrepreneurs, but also like nonprofits and policymakers. And people of all like walks of life that are super passionate about this issue coming together to try to brainstorm solutions. And so that'll be a really exciting thing for me personally, but also something that you can stay up to date with as far as trying to follow along our journey, our social media.

But yeah, super excited about that. And something that I want to spotlight, I think 5 Gyresm is a really great nonprofit and they're leading the effort and something that we really want to point people's attention to.

Quinn: That's really rad. How long are we talking a day, a month? What is this?

Julia Yan: Oh, it's just a couple of days. So my first expedition, I didn't want to commit to something too long and find out I have like sea legs or something, but yeah, I guess the start of our journey and trying to work more hand in hand with nonprofits and our coalition of partners is this. And so I'm really excited.

Quinn: That's super rad. [00:56:00] Will you send me the link to that after we after we hop off? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's really awesome. This is really great. So where can people follow Baleena? God, that's such a great name, where can we follow you online, et cetera, et cetera.

Julia Yan: So we're most active on Instagram, started growing our following at baleena.co. We also have a website, same thing, baleena.co, and that's where you can actually sign up for our waitlist and be one of our first testers. And we're also people from there to become part of our like tide changers, which is our sort of like advisory group of customers that provide more detailed feedback and get more personal interactions with us as our journey continues and we start to iterate.

But yeah, I would say those two are our major ones. We're also on LinkedIn and TikTok, but still building those.

Quinn: Awesome. Tide changers. You're like a marketing guru. This is amazing. That's so exciting. I'm on the list. I can't wait to get my hands on one. The amount of laundry I have to do. Holy cow.

It just, it never stops. I don't understand why are their clothes [00:57:00] dirty all the time. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you doing this work. I appreciate you doing this work and so enthusiastically trying to build but also insert yourselves into this coalition of people who are just seemingly, as they say, on the edge, with problems slash solutions, which is usually folks who are going, Hey, I know all this other stuff, but also bells are ringing over here.

And you're going, I think we have a pretty big piece of the puzzle here, and we're going to try to fix it, but hey, how do we all do it together? So I think that is very special and important. So thank you for sharing.

Julia Yan: Yeah thank you for having me and for the kind words. It's been a blast today.

Quinn: Awesome. You're the best. You're the best.