120
Janette Spiezio
Founder, Sustainable Haus
Janette Spiezio is the founder of Sustainable Haus, one of the largest independent zero-waste refill stores in the U.S., and co-chair of Beyond Plastics New Jersey. She spent 30 years in corporate life before building the business. She's also a co-author of Lead with Empathy, alongside Chris Voss.
Starting on the living room floor
Janette's movement began with a question: why are there ingredients in household products that no one can pronounce?
After three decades in corporate life, she started making her own clean powder laundry detergent and sewing reusable napkins from thrifted fabric on her living room floor. Friends were skeptical. Farmers market days were sometimes rained out. She kept going, and the effort grew into a store carrying thousands of products.
Key Takeaways
Trust beats transactions. Slow customers down, teach the mechanics, and talk them out of impulse buys.
Let people change at their own pace. Small swaps beat lifestyle overhauls.
Show the economics. Ditching disposable paper towels can save upwards of $3,500 over a decade.
Small product shifts add up. One swap kept 15,000 single-use plastic bottles out of landfills.
Local bans can become statewide law. Beyond Plastics NJ turned municipal takeout-plastic bans into legislation.
Education beats planned obsolescence. High-efficiency detergent takes about one tablespoon per load.
The anti-sales philosophy
Janette sells by slowing people down. She teaches how everyday essentials actually work, like solid shampoo bars and wool dryer balls, and she talks shoppers out of impulse buys until they've built habits that last.
"You just let people make change at their own pace."
She doesn't push abrupt overhauls. She favors incremental changes with visible payoffs, like the $3,500 a household can save over ten years by dropping disposable paper towels.
Education over obsolescence
Many shoppers carry expectations shaped by post-WWII planned obsolescence: use it, toss it, buy more. Changing that takes patient teaching.
Janette shows customers that high-efficiency detergent needs just one tablespoon per load. She explains how salon-grade shampoo and conditioner bars last far longer than most people expect.
Small actions, collective ripples
Individual choices add up. A single product shift, Janette says, kept 15,000 single-use plastic bottles out of landfills.
The same logic scaled into policy. Her grassroots organizing led to Beyond Plastics New Jersey, where hyper-local bans on disposable takeout plastics grew into landmark statewide legislation.
— Janette Spiezio, Ep. 120
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