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Sarah Gleeson Wants To Trap Microplastics in Your Laundry
An easy to use in-washer microfiber trapping device

Welcome, climate friends đź‘‹
Today, we’re here with a water based consumer product tackling microplastics from our laundry that makes its way into our water, soil, and marine life.
Here’s how we break it down:
Introducing the startup
Detailing their business model, traction and founding team
Why do we need this now?
Finally, how you can help them!
âť“I need your help
We’ve seen a lot of response from startups interested in a feature in The Climate Scout, so we’re considering sharing more than one startup a week, but I wanted to hear from you all first! Let me know below 👇
- Angelica đź’ś
Featured Startup: Baleena

A microfiber trapping filter for laundry
Baleena builds easy-to use, highly-efficient, in-drum microfiber trapping devices to reduce microplastics emissions at the point source — laundry. With every load, microplastics fibers shed from synthetic clothing are being transported out of the home via wastewater, released into the ecosystem, and ultimately find their way into our oceans, drinking water, and ingested by marine life.
đź”— Check them out: baleena.net

đź“Ť Headquarters
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
đź’˛ Business Model
Baleena’s GTM strategy is multi-pronged:
Selling to the individual consumer market via B2C channels: eCommerce, eco-stores, & bundled with outdoor clothing products
After traction and credibility amongst consumers, they’ll target resale/rental brands, selling B2B as they iterate and scale their core tech for wet cleaning commercial machines in the U.S
Finally, they plan to expand globally to capture a portion of the apparel manufacturing market, building plug-and-play solutions for their large scale washer and dryer plants
🚀 Traction
Won grant and accelerator funding, raising a little over $460K total
Received LOIs from Arc’teryx and The Community Ecostore
Partnered with Patagonia, Ocean Wise, Big Blue Ocean Cleanup, 5 Gyres, Plastic Pollution Coalition, and Circular Philadelphia
🤝 Founding Team
Baleena is female founded and was born out of a capstone project for Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Beth Gleeson - Co-founder & COO
Julia Yan - Co-founder @ CEO
Shoshana Weintraub - Co-founder & CTO

đź’§Why Now?
Microplastic contamination is a growing environmental concern that is found in water sources, soil and ingested by marine organisms contaminating the base of the food chain leading to increased human exposure to microplastics (Verla et al., 2020; Mercogliano et al., 2020).
Synthetic textiles release around 35% of the microplastics that enter into the environment (Boucher & Friot, 2017), primarily shed during the washing process in laundry machines, making laundry machines and wastewater treatment plants primary sources for microplastic contamination.

Synthetic textiles are not going away any time soon, so Baleena aims to stop the microfibers from entering the ecosystem after shedding by building filters that can be used in laundry machines to catch and filter out the microfibers, preventing them from leaving the home with wastewater.
Want to read more from our interview? Check it out here!

🙏 How Can the Community Help?
Advisors - Baleena is looking to speak with experts in the water filtration industry - know anyone we can connect them with?
Investors - Baleena wants to chat with investors in the consumer products space
Beta Users - Baleena is seeking beta users! Sign up for their waitlist to test out their microplastics filtration device 🎉

If you’re a founder or investor with an early stage climate startup and would like us to do a feature please reach out to [email protected] - we’d love to hear about it!
If you enjoyed today's issue, forward this email to a friend!
Made with đź’ś by Angelica @ The Climate Scout

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