Bathing Culture is Disrupting the Bath and Body Industry Through Sustainability

In episode 86 of the Disruptors for GOOD podcast, I speak with Tim Hollinger, co-founder of Bathing Culture on using No New Plastic to create their line of natural and sustainable bathing products.

Tim Hollinger first began working at an NPR affiliate radio station in Upstate New York, before launching into a long career as a serial entrepreneur in the health and lifestyle space. With many highs and lows along the way, these business ideas included a healthy lunchables startup, an urban gardening website, and an aquaculture company.

When Tim joined a team that created a WhatsApp to scale businesses, he solidified a personal ethos that would ultimately dictate all of his business decisions; he saw that there is a critical and urgent need for the industry to evolve and transform in our lifetime to address the environmental crisis.

This rang close to home for Tim, who has had a lifelong affinity for all things outdoors – from gardening, skiing, and yoga, to competing in triathlons and ultra distance running, to cooking with sustainably farmed local produce.

He realized his next venture needed to serve the environment that had always played such an integral role in his life. Tim teamed up with his childhood friend Spencer Arnold to manifest this mission into their radically clean, radically sustainable personal care company: Bathing Culture.

San Francisco-based bath & body brand Bathing Culture is designed for the adventurous, the design-driven, and the sustainably-minded.

Founded by childhood friends Tim Hollinger and Spencer Arnold, the duo was searching for a non-toxic body wash that could hold up to their active & dirty lifestyles – surfing, climbing, and mountain biking from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands.

They found that run-of-the-mill body washes just couldn’t keep up. Existing products typically stripped skin of moisture, were full of toxic synthetics, didn’t deliver an effective clean, or were housed in ecologically harmful and aesthetically uninspiring packaging.

Enter Bathing Culture: an homage to the joyful act of bathing and its centuries-old influence uniting cultures around the globe and across generations.

Through Bathing Culture, Tim and Spencer hope to motivate customers to take part in this age-old tradition, bathing not only in the literal sense, but also bathing in all that the world has to offer, inspiring peace, community, health and happiness.

Featuring everything your bathing ritual needs, the collection is highlighted by its hero product, the Mind and Body Wash: an organic, biodegradable, all-purpose & concentrated soap that makes you feel like you’re jumping into a cold river on a hot day and smells like the redwood forest canopies at dawn.

Better yet? While it was an admittedly expensive investment for a young brand (and a choice that sometimes results in imperfect, smoky bottles), Spencer and Tim have pledged to use #NoNewPlastic – from their packaging to shipping materials.

They’re one of the few companies to use bottles made from 100% pre-existing recycled material, sourced locally in CA. Featuring purely plants and minerals, with no toxins, sulfates, parabens, synthetic fragrances, or dyes, Bathing Culture is truly Radical. Self. Care.

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