YYC Feature: ECO-BEAVER BOX
Anna and Neha are helping people transition to a waste-conscious lifestyle, ‘one box at a time’.
Anna and Neha’s created their subscription box to spread a simple message: Eco-friendly living can be both fun and affordable! The pair teamed up to offer locally made eco-product boxes for a budget-friendly price. Eco-Beaver boxes include beautiful products like beeswax candles, silicon & metal straws, handmade reusable grocery bags, and more. They ‘put a little love’ in each box by including their own handmade items—Anna makes tea cup candles out beeswax, while Neha makes produce bags! Neha and Anna are the type of entrepreneurs whose enthusiasm speak multitudes because, despite their pressing concerns about humanity’s impact on the environment, they are committed to spreading positivity. Hearing them express hope for the future as young, female leaders is exactly the type of energy that will move us forward! Launching their business this year, the pair are just getting started, and we’re excited to see the impact they make on the YYC community and beyond!
Congrats on starting on your business journey! What are your backgrounds?
Neha: “I just graduated university of Ottawa in criminology. Now I work as a youth worker at the boys and girls club in a Group Home! I grew up in Golden BC and learned about being eco-friendly from a young age. My family is from Punjab, and we always practice upcycling clothing growing up. Today I’m helping them create a more conscious lifestyle”
Anna: “I'm a new teacher! I don’t have any background in sustainability per se, but the person who got me interested in this is another teacher in the school where I worked. The school had a good recycling and composting program. I didn’t know anything about composting, but the whole experience taught me that it’s an easy yet effective practice”
“Sustainable living to me means connectedness. Being connected to yourself, others, and the planet in the sense that whatever we put out there, we’ll receive. If we’re putting pollution out there, we receive pollution back”
Where did the idea for ‘Eco-Beaver Box’ come from? Why did you decide to launch your company?
Anna: “I came up with the idea and approached Neha with it. We wanted to offer sustainable products that tied in local businesses. Our goal was to offer something that wasn’t too expensive— it needed to be affordable so that it would be accessible to everyone”
Neha: “When I was approached with the idea I thought it was a cool way to reinvent what sustainability means. You see bloggers doing it and sometimes it can seem like this glamorous, unattainable goal to live a ‘conscious lifestyle’. An affordable subscription box is a way to show people that they don’t have to spend huge amounts of money to alter their lifestyle choices”
What does sustainable living mean to you?
Neha: “Sustainable living to me means connectedness. Being connected to yourself, others, and the planet in the sense that whatever we put out there, we’ll receive. If we’re putting pollution out there, we receive pollution back. It's all about connectedness. Why buy something if your neighbour has it?”
Anna: “I agree! It reminds me of the olden days: if it isn’t broken, you don’t need to fix it. Reuse it! We should strive to increase the interconnectedness we have with plants, earth, and each other”
What types of companies/products will your box be featuring?
Neha: “We want to aim for our products to be local in order to reduce carbon emissions. Lots of local companies are doing great things in Canada, why not buy something from them? We want to support makers of all kinds. We’re also going to be offering things that we’ve personally crafted— for example I’m making produce bags, and Anna is making tea cup candles out of beeswax”
Anna: “Small businesses are struggling and we want to support them. We also are committed to being mindful of our packaging as we do so. We’re going to avoid wastefulful packaging in any way possible by, for example, using scarves, produce bags or reusing things like flyers that would have otherwise been thrown away”
In the last five years, what new belief or habit that has improved your life or business?
Neha: “I’ve started a personal blog to express positive energy. The blog is about environmentalism, criminal justice reform, and other social justice issues. I’m also prioritizing my own health more than I used to because if you’re not healthy you can’t give to other people." Check out her blog at trashtalking4solutions.org
Anna: “For me it’s been about realizing how easy it is to become sustainable. Every little thing you do in your life can create positive change”
Are there any books that you recommend?
Neha: ‘From The Ashes’ left me speechless. It’s a fantastic book about intergenerational trauma, resiliency, racism and overcoming adversity. It’s a memoir by a Métis-Cree man— while his generation didn’t attend residential school, he suffered the impacts from it nonetheless”
Anna: “I have a lot of books I could recommend! One of them is Marie Condo’s ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’. It’s about how finding what brings you joy directs you to making more minimalistic choices! I also love Victorian Gothic Literature— Oscar Wilde’s ‘The picture of Dorian grain’ is a short read but packs so much in! It’s a dark read but very surreal!"
Find them at: https://www.ecobeaverbox.ca/