Companies We Love: Wisdom Supply Co.

At Meliora Cleaning Products, we’re nerds. We’re mostly nerds about cleaning supplies but we also nerd out about sustainability and our fellow B Corps.

For our New Year's Resolutions, we bought ourselves a bunch of Wisdom Supply Co. products and have become smitten. 

Who is Wisdom Supply Co.?

Wisdom Supply Co. curates and designs products that prevent waste, for good. Every product they feature is designed at its core for reuse, repair and authentic recyclability. And what they mean by “authentic recyclability” is that the materials the products are made of have real value on recycling markets. Plastic for example, is technically recyclable but for a litany of reasons, lacks value and often comes at a cost to recyclers. Wisdom Supply Co. designs and curates products with waste haulers in mind.

All of their products are all conscientiously made, and also consciously packaged and shipped. One example is their cardboard binder is currently the only binder on the market that allows you to easily remove and recycle the cover, which requires a screwdriver and a few minutes to update and reuse it. Other products include things like plastic-free folders, paper-only planners (our favorites), unpainted pencils and recyclable aluminum pencil tin sets with natural rubber erasers.

About their history

Wisdom Supply Co. was founded by Heather Itzla and Nikki Kozlowski, two plastic waste activists with grave concerns about the scope and scale of global plastic pollution. After years of clean-ups, data collection, and public education efforts, Heather and Nikki came to the conclusion that the most meaningful way to address the issue of plastic pollution is to turn the tap off on plastics entirely.  

Realizing how back-to-school shopping, starting at a very young age, encourages the rote purchase of disposable plastics, Heather and Nikki approached a local school with a plan to significantly limit the amount of waste per student year after year. They stocked each classroom with waste-less school supplies for students to use as needed. Together they’ve developed a program that not only prevents massive amounts of plastics from entering the waste stream, but creates convenience and peace of mind for their customers as well.

Picturing all of the student's families not walking out of big box office supply stores with countless plastic bags filled with plastic and vinyl destined to become landfill or pollute waterways, compelled Heather and Nikki to turn what started as an activist/volunteer effort, into Wisdom Supply Co., a B Corporation on a mission to reduce plastic waste on an exponential scale.

Their eco-friendly pledge

Large seabirds known as albatross have the dubious honor of serving as the canary in the coal mine when it comes to plastics in the ocean. Despite the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s listing of nearly all species of albatross as threatened, one particular bird has persisted against the odds – she is known as "Wisdom" the Laysan Albatross, and is the oldest wild bird ever recorded.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “she is at least 66 years old and a world renowned symbol of hope for all species that depend upon the health of the ocean to survive.” 

Wisdom Supply Co. named their entity after Wisdom the albatross and have dedicated their business and the work they do in honor of creatures that are caught up in the fallout of our disposable culture.

Plastic pollution is causing environmental harm worldwide. With roughly 769 tons of plastic ending up in our oceans every second around the clock, it’s well past time to cut our reliance on cheap, disposable plastics. The Wisdom Supply Co. mission is to disrupt what they call the “shelf-to-shore pipeline” and replace it with systems that prevent plastic and vinyl from entering the global waste stream, for good.