The Getting Real With Hilary Show with Hilary Arnow Burns Title: S2EP62, Yalda Shahriari and Ruslan Maidans, Saving Water and the Planet and Getting People Clean Yalda Shahriari and Ruslan Maidans are a power couple who are creating a groundbreaking product that can be used all over the world. NOWATA will clean your hands without water in a safe, environmentally friendly way. After using popular hand sanitizers during COVID, Yalda and Rus decided that these options were not what they wanted their children to use. In their spare time, they experimented with different formulas, trying to find one that fit their criteria. They were told over and over that it wasn’t possible, but they didn’t give up. In this interview they tell the amazing story of what it took to create NOWATA. Their product will launch this month. Go to nowataclean.com and sign up for their mailing list. This is exciting for our kids, our planet and humanity. Thank you both for your vision, courage, perseverance, humility and action. Their Story: During the pandemic, my wife and I became addicted to hand sanitizer. But we quickly realized we could do better. We're nature lovers - which is what inspired us to move from Northern California to Rhode Island in 2020, and then to Stonington, Connecticut last year. When our hands got dirty hiking, sanitizer wasn't helpful; we needed soap. But to wash soap off, we needed water, which isn't always available outdoors. So we got to work. I majored in chemistry at UNC Charlotte, which - after about a year of experiments - allowed me to develop a prototype for a soap that, upon extended contact with the skin, evaporated and turned into dirtballs that fell away. Our friends loved it; so did the customers at our the Newport Dunkin who sampled it after we bribed them with free coffee. But there was still a problem: The prototype was made of synthetic ingredients; we wanted a plant-based, natural, biodegradable, and safe-if-ingested formula. So I spent the next 3 months experimenting in my basement. After exhausting all the ingredients available to a layperson like myself, I reached out to nearly 100 different cosmetic company formulators who had access to more powerful chemicals; I contracted 6 of them. After 16 months of experimentation, one of the formulators came up with a soap that did exactly what we wanted. We then hired two separate manufacturers to produce 5,000 units. It only took us 4 years of work and $100,000. We started selling our soap on our website last month. We named it Nowata. Why? Because we're from New England, where people don't pronounce the final "r". Website: nowataclean.com #hilaryburns #gettingrealwithhilary #YaldaShahriari #RuslanMaidans #NOWATA #biodegradable #chemistry #determination #patent #plantbased #handsanitizer #PHD #dentist #handsanitizer #DunkinDonuts #consumerfeedback
