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Podcast 493: Truly Free from Toxicity

Welcome to the Life Enthusiast podcast! In this episode, Martin Pytela sits down with Steven Ezell, CEO of Truly Free, to uncover the hidden dangers that may be lurking in your household products. Steven’s journey began with a health crisis involving his newborn son, igniting a personal awakening that led to the creation of Truly Free — a company dedicated to refillable, plant-powered cleaning solutions. His story will inspire you to take a closer look at what’s hiding under your sink.

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MARTIN: Hello, this is Martin Pytela, the health coach at Life Enthusiast and with me today, Steven Ezell. He is the CEO at Truly Free, and we have been using this product for some time with great deal of pleasure. Steven, welcome!

STEVEN: Martin, I am so excited for this conversation. This is going to be great.

MARTIN: Yeah, well, Life Enthusiast, 25 years of helping people. Our motto, restoring vitality to you and to the planet. Well, this is more about the planet, but the you is also important because the number one problem in our modern industrial world is toxicity.

STEVEN: No doubt, no doubt. And I’ve dedicated my, dedicated my life to solving that.

MARTIN: Yeah, exactly. Could you tell a bit of history? How did we get here?

STEVEN: Sure. Well, I guess my journey on this low tox world started off, geez, almost 17 years ago. I have five kids now, but when my firstborn son was just a couple weeks old, he broke out in this horrific rash. It looked like I literally dunked him in boiling water. He was just a couple weeks old. And I was getting him undressed, getting ready for his bath, and he was screaming and I thought just because he didn’t want, he wanted mom, it wasn’t me. And when I saw he had these, again,  this rash was so bad from his neck all the way down to his ankles. I called over my wife, my wife’s a NICU nurse, so she’s used to working with very, very sick infants in the neonatal unit.

And when I saw my wife freak out, I freaked out. And we bundled them up and straight to the pediatrician. And then the pediatrician was like, wow, this is really bad, and sent us to a pediatric dermatologist specialist. And then they prescribed Amy, my wife, because she was breastfeeding with all these prophylactic antibiotics and steroids, and then him with steroids and antihistamines and all these things. And obviously, we knew no better. So we’re on our way to the pharmacy to fulfill all these prescriptions and a family member who has always been a very naturally minded person heard through mom, this is what’s going on. And she called and asked me a question that changed my life.

And we were just a few blocks away from the pharmacy and she said, what are you using for laundry detergent? I’m like: “Laundry detergent? No, no, liike, my son’s sick. We’ll talk about laundry some other time.” And she’s: “No, no, because this stuff that you get at the store, people and especially children can have an allergic reaction to these chemicals. And I was like: “Are you serious, that’s possible?” She goes: “Well, before you give Amy and the baby all this stuff, why don’t you just wait a day and just strip his clothes.” She gave me this homemade concoction. So we went to the store and got all this vinegar and borax and all this kind of homemade stuff.

And we fill up the bathtub, filled it up with all of his bedding and clothing. And the next day he was fine. And I’m like, wait a second. So laundry detergent made my kid sick. So from that point I became a full blown eco conspiracy theorist, what else is in the laundry room? What’s under the kitchen sink, what’s on top of it? And then I was sent on this mission. So we became very eco, non toxic, organically minded back in 2008. And I was in the restaurant business. I built restaurants for a living. And that was my career path. And then years went by, we moved to Michigan. I didn’t want to do restaurants anymore. And I met this grandma selling laundry soap at the farmer’s market that was really, that was safe and great ingredients. And I want to buy in the company. And one thing led to another, in 2015 pivoted online and now what started off with one refillable laundry jug, a concrete mixer from Harbor Freight I used to deliver the orders to the post office in the back of the car, has now become one of the largest non toxic manufacturers in the country. And we started this movement.

MARTIN: All right, so let’s just back down. You’re throwing these very large concepts straight in. I think what’s really important here is of course, all of us in this industry end up being convinced by some kind of an emotional event that drives us forward. My story, your story is really cool because it saved your kid from a life of misery just by understanding that it was actually the industrial toxins in the laundry product. I mean, what a turn of your life’s journey took a massive turn right there.

STEVEN: Yeah, and ill never look back. And again, we were green before green was cool. And living non toxic and feeding our kids and ourselves organic and local foods way before it was cool. Now it’s cool, but we were doing this way before it was cool to do it.

MARTIN: Yeah. So, okay, so what all do you now do? Like, let’s just say that the premise is let’s get the cleaning products in the house free of toxins. That’s the mission, right? 

STEVEN: Yeah. so Truly Free Home represents a full stable of non toxic and refillable plant powered cleaning products. From laundry to dish soap, to dishwasher soap, to surface cleaning to anything that’s really, laundry room, the kitchen sink, on top of the kitchen sink, the bathroom, anything in the cleaning category, we have seemingly piece by piece, reinvented with a safe alternative.

MARTIN: Right.

STEVEN: And that’s been the mission for trulyfreehome.com for many years. And we also have truly free market.com which is a, an alternative marketplace for great brands. But our main focus of Truly Free Home is to set the world free of toxic chemicals.

MARTIN: Right. This is a big deal. So if anyone listening here now has any conscience will understand that we live in on this planet Earth. And it’s a whole lot like an aquarium in the sense that whatever we ingest, we are ingesting it from the planet, from the aquarium. But when we are finished with it, we drop it in there, right back into the aquarium. Yes, we are pooping into our own nests, so to speak. So it’s really important for all of us to understand that whatever we put out is going to stay with us and it’s going to stay with us for the next generation.

STEVEN: Absolutely. We’re in a closed system. 

MARTIN: That’s a good word, yeah.

STEVEN: Right. And nothing is created from nothing. And most things that come out of the earth return to the earth very easily. It’s when they start getting compiled with other things that are synthesized that things get very, very crazy. And I think Martin, I think we’re in a very interesting time in human history where 50 years ago, 80 years ago, it was all about creating things that work. And I think in the pursuit for efficacy and cost effectiveness consumerism was driven by, I want the cheapest thing that gets the job done. It doesn’t matter what the job is, not just cleaning, but anything. What is the most economical way to accomplish the task at hand?

STEVEN: And I think we’re at this inflection point in consumer behavior where people still want things that work and they still want to get the job done, whatever that is, whether it’s cleaning or getting dressed. Whatever that is, I want the best experience. And yes, I’m also concerned about the economic value. But now I think so many people are waking up to at what cost? And the cost is more than money, right? What cost to my health, what cost to my life, what cost to my local community? At what cost to the planet?

MARTIN: Well, you put in three wonderful and important things. One is the inflection point, right? With each added chemical, with each pound of the toxic stuff added to the planet, it’s geometric. And at some point you hit the hockey stick, the inflection point where stuff starts taking off.

STEVEN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah, we’re living that moment now in our industrialized societies. It’s, upon us, it’s here now. And I think it’s really important that every consumer understands that wherever they put their dollar, their money, that’s what grows. So if you want more toxicity, carry on and buy the stupid products. But if you want the next generation to survive or thrive, then we need to change.

STEVEN: I couldn’t agree more, Martin. I’ve used this analogy on stages all over the world, so I’ll use it again because I think it’s still very pertinent. And that’s this story of spinach. Many years ago, spinach was a leafy vegetable. And then over time in this consumerism driven industrial age, spinach got heavily genetically modified and was ridden with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etcetera etcetera in order to get this commodity of spinach. And then what happened was a bunch of hippie granola crunching growers said we’re not going to grow this, we’re going to grow organic heirloom seed based, non genetically modified spinach. And that started to take root in farmers markets and CSAs and co ops and health food stores until there was so much press that was coming out on this genetically modified herbicide, fungicide ridden spinach that market share started shifting from large agro chem agro producers to these very small micro producers of spinach locally. And what happened was large scale producers like Costco and so forth said well wait a second, either we find a way to pivot right to grow at scale organic like heirloom, non GMO spinach, or these hippies are going to kill our market share.

So it wasn’t. So now you go to the store and where spinach, organic spinach used to be two, three, four times the cost of regular conventional spinach. Now it’s even cheaper. The store is mostly organic spinach. And it’s not because farmers became philanthropists. To your point, so many people started voting with their dollars and demanded this product. So then what happened was the industry found a way to scale that product. Right. So now organic spinach is normal. And that’s because a bunch of people voted with their dollars and the industry pivoted. They had to or they would lose. And I think that’s where we are as a society in so many industries, not just the agricultural industries, but in every industry. We’re seeing this major pivot to where entrepreneurs that are finding a better way are either going to take market share from the people that are hurting people or these large scale companies are going to find a way to pivot. And we’re seeing that happening now.

MARTIN: Right? Yeah. Agree. The pivot point is around 20% of the market.

STEVEN: Yeah.

MARTIN: So if collectively we clean thinking granola crunching crowd, well we don’t have to be crunching granola. I wouldn’t touch wheat if you beat me.

STEVEN: Yeah, I don’t like granola and I don’t drive a Subaru. But that’s, I know what the point is.

MARTIN: The point is we care about the planet. There are two modalities. One is called the plunder and the other one’s called the sustainer, or I don’t know what the word would be. But the hunter gatherer society was able to sustain itself without destroying the environment.

STEVEN: Yes.

MARTIN: And then came the industrial modality of plunder where you show up, rape the whole thing, take everything without care. You kill all the bison or you take down all the forests, whatever, after us, the deluge. We don’t care.

STEVEN: Yeah.

MARTIN: That mindset got us rich and toxic. We’re now going to be dying of toxicity unless we change our ways. It’s that dramatic. It’s that important to actually get the message.

STEVEN: You know Martin, many people don’t think about cleaning products, laundry, can these really affect the human genome? You know there was a study done by Mayo and Cleveland Clinic and they showed that, and there’s multiple now peer reviewed studies at scale where the average healthy umbilical cord of a healthy full term child that’s born, they take that cord blood, the umbilical cord blood and it’s tested and the average woman has 400 household chemicals in the cord blood.

MARTIN: Yeah, no surprise there. You touch it, it’s on your skin. You touch it, you handle it, you wear it. This membrane is semipermeable.

STEVEN: So lotions and potions and cosmetics and skin care and laundry care and air fresheners. And the list goes on. The chemicals that we’re breathing straight past the blood brain barrier, perfumes, carcinogens, estrogens, the list goes on, hormone disrupting chemicals. And we’re literally, like you said, ingesting, breathing, bathing in this soup of toxicity. And nobody’s exempt. Nobody.

MARTIN: Yeah. The important point here is if we don’t turn a corner, if we don’t take the fork in the road to the healthy side, we are actually going to end up off the cliff.

STEVEN: No doubt. And it sounds like doom and gloom, Martin, and it is overwhelming when you think about the vastness. But every micro decision that we make, one little decision, right? What produce do you buy? What protein? What farm? What cleaning product, what skincare product? What sunscreen? Every little micro decision impacts you at a very, very large scale. So you don’t be overwhelmed. Like you’re listening to this, you’re like, oh my gosh, this is the first time I’ve ever heard this. Or maybe it’s the hundredth. Like just every little micro decision has a compounding effect.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. All we need is that you switch your laundry powder. Just that one thing. You can pick up the other products later. We want you to change your entire house. We do. But just take the one thing.

STEVEN: Yeah. And for Truly Free, my advice to people, I want to be here creating value. This isn’t a pitch session. I’m not trying to, but wait, there’s more. And sell you Truly Free. There are some great brands that are doing really cool things. I happen to believe that we’ve always been on the cutting edge of green chemistry and create the best products that work the best in the safest way.

But look at back labels. If a company is not willing to be transparent on the ingredients, don’t support them. We made a business decision years ago. Right. Like we would not that we would be. We would literally disclose every ingredient on our label and not hide behind patent and trademark loopholes and fragrance loopholes that we would just tell people what’s in everything and do your own research. But there’s so many companies that can hide ingredients in these classifications and we just refuse to do so.

MARTIN: Yeah, would you please name some of the ones that are actually contributing to the problem? I mean, we, most of us have heard of phosphates, right?

STEVEN: Yeah, so there’s some ingredients. So phosphates, and phosphates are not necessarily that toxic to the human genome. 

MARTIN: It’s a runoff problem. Right.

STEVEN: It’s a runoff problem. So what phosphates do is they create this really downstream effect in water treatment in well water. They have more of an environmental impact than a human impact. The things that have human impact are the classes of chemicals that are highly synthesized; perfumes, fragrances, ultra UV brighteners, surfactants, those are the bubble things that make bubbles that are ethoxylated. So there’s a process in making cleaning products called ethoxylation. And the byproduct of this process of making these cleaning agents is a main compound called 1,4 dioxane, which is a Class 1 carcinogen. So you have these classifications of chemicals that are estrogenic. So they’re hormone mimicking. So they disrupt people’s hormones, they’re carcinogenic, they’re irritants for breathing in or skin. This is why so many people, when you go through the department store at the mall and what’s the first main department is the perfume aisle because they want to waft you in. And these chemicals, many of them are literally like mimic pheromones that are given off when having intercourse. So it tricks the mind into thinking that it’s very seductive. Well, these chemical compounds are not like the opposite sex having intercourse between husband and wife. We’re literally mimicking these estrogens and these hormones. And it’s really toxic because it passes right through the blood brain barrier. So people get headaches, migraines going in the cleaning aisle at the department at the supermarket because we’re literally tricked into believing that efficacy is through the smell and it’s really not. So things that smell super pungent, the majority of them are very, very toxic. And companies that are making these perfumes and clean, they don’t have to disclose what are their ingredients under patent and trademark law. So they can classify all these ingredients into perfume. That’s why if you look at the main leading perfumes that you can get or colognes at the department store, the ingredient is Parfum.

But there could be 700 chemical compounds that they’ll never, they don’t have to tell you what’s in it. And UV brighteners that, you know. That’s why like the leading laundry detergents and fabric softeners are green or blue because they’re designed to leave this blue or green film on your fabrics to trick your eyes into believing that your fabrics are brighter than they really are. But really all it is is an optical illusion. But these chemicals are designed to stay on your sheets and fabrics. Many that even when you go clothes shopping, never ever, ever wear brand new clothes without washing them in something that. Why? Because they’re literally sprayed at factories in India, in China, overseas where they don’t have regulations. We don’t make many textiles here in the US anymore or in Canada. Most textiles are made overseas and they’re sprayed with fire retardant chemicals with UV brighteners.

MARTIN: Yeah. They fumigate the darn things before because of the tropical fungal problems that they would get because humidity causes fabrics to get mold.

STEVEN: Detoriate. Yeah. So now you know, and people, oh, I got new clothes. No, you need to wash your new clothes more than your dirty clothes. Your dirty clothes that you wore out in the yard or out to the gym that stink are safer to wear than brand new clothes. So people just need to hear this stuff more. That’s why I appreciate the work that you guys do with Life Enthusiasts and educating people

because it’s so important. People never heard of these things before. Right. Like handling receipts when you go to the grocery store or the restaurant. The chemicals that are in receipts. 

MARTIN: Teflon.

STEVEN: Crazy. Right? So we just,

MARTIN: Would you, Steve, would you please name some of the chemicals so that they people can actually look at the label and say “I don’t want that.”

STEVEN: Yeah, so anything. The problem is you can’t do a lot. There’s not a lot of companies that disclose them. But I’ll give you some ideas. When you see ionic or non ionic surfactants as a classification, if the companies are not willing to disclose which surfactants, automatically assume that they’re toxic. Most companies don’t even list that they have UV brighteners on their products. So if you see blue or green, don’t buy it. If you see fragrance, don’t buy it.

If they’re not going to disclose what fragrance oils or perfumes that they are using in their product, if they’re not willing to disclose what perfumes or fragrances, don’t use it a lot. A very large scale, probably the most popular is SLES, Sodium Laurel Ester sulfate or F, ether or ester sulfate. That’s a class, it’s an ethoxylated surfactant. It’s a derivative of SLS Sodium Lauryl sulfate. These are either skin irritants or very dangerous. So I would stay away from afoxylated ingredients, so the problem is Martin, most cleaning products that you read the labels don’t actually list the ingredients.

MARTIN: Ah.

STEVEN: So the biggest one, name the ingredients. I can give you a list of hundreds of them but you’ll never find them out because unless you go to an MSDS sheet and even there they can hide. It’s just really, really challenging. So I would say instead of what to stay away from, just go after and research the brands that do list their ingredients and and make your decision accordingly.

MARTIN: I would go simpler. Smell it. If it has a smell to it, don’t get it.

STEVEN: Yeah, that’s very, very true. And that’s almost all of our products we make unscented for that reason. Some products we do use plant based fragrance oils and essential oils because so many people demand that sensory experience. So we create it for them in the safest way that we possibly can. But even still we still create unscented versions of virtually every one of our products just so that you don’t need anything to smell like anything for it to work. It’s completely vanity.

MARTIN: Right. You don’t need to appreciate the smell of lavender and all of that.

STEVEN: Yeah, but the smell of lavender or eucalyptus or lemon verbena, although very nice smells are not going to get your dishes any cleaner or your clothes any cleaner or your countertops any nicer. It’s strictly only there for a sensory experience. It doesn’t do anything to provide a better experience.

MARTIN: Laundry, we need to get rid of oils, we need to get rid of microbes and probably wash out the proteins that are on it. Right.

STEVEN: Yeah. And that’s like most microbes and germs I would say, in an alkaline environment where there’s soap can’t survive in an aqueous alkaline environment. And that’s what almost all cleaning products do is provide that high alkaline environment. So most things can’t survive in that environment anyway. Right. So that’s why washing your hands with soap is even more efficacious than a sanitizer. Right.

MARTIN: So, let me ask you this. You have actually taken on this size and volume and shipping costs problem. Right. I really like the fact that you are sending the liquid soap, except you’re sending it in powder.

STEVEN: This is honestly, and we pioneered back in 2015. So we’re all, we’re at this for virtually a decade now. It’s only taken us a decade to be an overnight success, I joke around. And this is actually how we’re able to compete with all the chemical giants and how we’ve been able to grow at such a large scale. Because all the mainstream goo that you get at the store, there’s a lot of cost in packaging and these plastic bottles and labels and there’s lots of cost in shipping all this liquid around the planet.

MARTIN: And it’s heavy.

STEVEN: Yeah, it’s heavy. So that’s actuall how we, so when I built my first website in late 2014 and 2015, we’re about to turn the website on and I was curious, how much does it cost to ship 4lbs 50oz of liquid laundry detergent from Northern Michigan around the country? And what we saw was that it averaged around $14 to ship this laundry jug around the country. We planned on selling at the time our laundry soap for $15. So it costs $14 to ship a $15 product. And I said, this is the go out of business strategy.

MARTIN: Yep.

STEVEN:Because people are not going to spend $29 for a jug of laundry soap. And literally, I feel like God gave us this crazy idea and his vision for refillable cleaning products. So when you buy the blue goo at the store, it’s 94, 90% plus water. So we just ask crazy questions, what if we didn’t ship the water? And what if this plastic that was destined to float in the ocean, you know, we gave a lifetime warranty. So that came, that was the genesis of refillable cleaning products. And that was the eureka moment, now this expensive packaging, now the person gets a laundry jug once and they could keep it for life because it doesn’t go bad.

Instead of shipping water, we’ll just ship you the concentrated active Ingredients and you add, whether it’s laundry soap and it’s powder or liquid glass cleaner. So we’ll just ship the concentrated refill. You don’t need to ship water. You already have it in the kitchen sink. So you add a refill, you add water, you shake it up and you’ve got a refillable product. And  it started off with this crazy idea. We’ve now saved tens of millions of pieces of plastic from ever being produced. Because now if you went to the club store and got 250 loads of laundry in this big thing, you’d have to back brace and just lug it to drop it on the counter. You need a pallet jack, yeah, to get laundry soap. Where now, that all fits inside your mailbox.

MARTIN: Right on. Yeah. And of course on our end, we help people make low surface tension water. We sell these little ceramic gadgets that actually help people lower the surface tension and lower the cluster size of the water. So it will be even more effective than just basically,

STEVEN: No doubt. It’s an amplifier for those technologies. Ceramic technology is phenomenal.

MARTIN: Great. Okay. And of the other things. So you have dishwasher soap?

STEVEN: Yeah so dishwasher soap has become one of our top three most popular products. As I made that one, the hardest product for us to create was laundry. And the second hardest was dishwasher. And the reason being is the largest ingredient in your washing machine when you’re washing clothes or doing your dishes is your water. Right? So you’re putting 5, 10, 20 gallons in your washing machine. You’re putting 2, 3 gallons of water in your dishwasher, but you’re only using a cap full of product. So the biggest challenge is to get the job done and treat the water.

So yeah, so our dishwasher soap, man, it’s, it is. And we’ve had this thing tested independently for years. It is the best performing plant based dishwasher soap on the market, period, end of story. We outperform all the toxic little jelly potty type, I have to be very, have to be careful with the words that I use since I’ve not made a lot of friends in the chemical industry, but all of those jelly potty type things outperform the mainstream stuff and gets the job done. And we don’t leave a toxic residue like those other products do.

MARTIN: Fantastic. And what else would you like to highlight?

STEVEN: The biggest thing is if you’ve listened to this podcast for this amount of time, right, you’re one of us, right? You’re one of the weird people. Just continue to swim upstream, vote wisely with your dollars. Support the companies, the brands, the farmers, the growers that are making a difference. And the more you vote with great small businesses that are helping people, the faster that our movement scales and we change the world together.

MARTIN: Couldn’t say it better. Restoring vitality to you and to the planet. That’s our mission, Steven. We are going to include the promotional link right in the notes next to the podcast and we’re going to help people get direct from factory to consumer shipping of these wonderful products.

STEVEN: It’s awesome, Martin. Thank you so much for your work especially, I know you can listen, people have been listening to this podcast for years. You know, we’re headed, we’re recording into the holiday season. Give the gifts to people, your friends and family that are making a difference, right? This is a great opportunity for us to educate our loved ones, people that we work with, our family, our children, our parents, aunts and uncles is to give the gift of whatever that is non toxic or organic or healthy living vitality. This is the opportunity for us to make a big difference. When so many people are buying in this time of year as we’re heading into the holiday season, like making those differences, it’s a really, really big deal.

MARTIN: It truly is. We have to save the world. This is our opportunity. It’s not the save the world the Superman style, but I tell you, one laundry load at a time, you are making a difference.

STEVEN: Amen.

MARTIN: This is Martin Pytela, Life-Enthusiast.com, thank you for listening.

STEVEN: Have a great day.