Huppy: Cathy Tran + David Phan

Years in Business: We launched on Earth Day, April 2020!

Fave Board: 9-0’ Torq

Instagram: @huppy  

What inspired you to start Huppy? We’re both big nature and ocean people. We love to surf, scuba dive, swim, and be outside. For us, it only makes sense to do and support a consumption that is sustainable and saves the environment. We started Huppy because we wanted to make it easy for people to switch over from everyday plastic. Plastic, especially toothpaste tubes that cannot be recycled, lasts forever, end up in our ocean and our food chain as micro-plastics! We started with oral-care because it is one of the simple switches you can make that has such impactful outcomes. We brush our teeth twice a day, everyday (some more, some less!). Imagine the impact of that!

What is Huppy’s mission statement? Huppy’s purpose is to drive social and environmental change for a sustainable world.

How does managing Huppy influence your lifestyle? We’re a sustainable company and we really try to model that — but it can be really changing sometimes! We’ve learned “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” We recycle whenever we can, use up all of our existing products first before throwing it out and switching to more sustainable products, and always pack out what we pack in. In addition to being mindful of our product consumption, we are now more conscious of the foods we eat and follow more of a plant-based lifestyle.

In what ways are you striving to be a more ocean-friendly company? Everything you find at Huppy will be either 1. Recyclable 2. Compostable. This ensures a zero-waste process and that every little detail is ocean friendly — from the shipping stickers down to the water based ink!

What are your main obstacles in running an ocean-friendly company? The hardest part has been reinventing items that have been around for years to ensure they are earth-friendly. Sustainability has been a huge obstacle from sourcing plant-based materials to turning toothpaste into a tablet so that we could ditch the tube. We’ve thoroughly researched the best packaging and sourced it. Plant-based packaging is generally not as reliable, so we had to get creative and dig deep for materials that would work for us.

What is your big vision for the future? We’ve started with toothpaste, but we have plans to reshape the entire oral-care industry with eco-friendly products!