While living overseas, I was shocked by the mounds of plastic in places where you don’t expect! Remote areas like the Himalayas in Nepal and the Chocolate Hills in the Philippines or the shores of Hong Kong and Africa are littered with single-use plastics. These plastics are accumulating FAST.

I moved to BC and was distressed by the daily garbage at my previous workplace. There were buckets full of disposable coffee cups and lids. So, I started a campaign called “Mugshot” encouraging my colleagues to take a selfie with their own reusable mugs.

After I learned about the limits of the mainstream recycling system, I started shredding and melting plastics in my living room to demo the material’s potential. Then the pandemic exposed the vulnerability of our supply chains. I figured out how I could create a domestic, circular solution to plastic waste. Flipside Plastics is born!

With the help of a provincial grant, I moved Flipside to a workspace in downtown Victoria. I hired a small team who collected tossed coffee lids from cafes using a bike and with a manual injection molding machine, we transformed them into one-of-a-kind soap dishes that address your frustrations with big-box store brands.

At 8.5 months pregnant, I had to balance looking after my well-being and moving Flipside forward. I secured a manufacturer in BC so we could have better product consistency and the ability to covert more waste into goods. After months of testing, and Roe’s coming birth, we launched the revised iteration of the soap dish and called it Riptide.

We grow and evolve as we learn, never losing sight of our mission: to offer you uniquely designed Canadian-made home goods that look beautiful, create peace of mind, and reduce plastic waste.