Our Mission is simple: To distribute products that are well-designed, sustainably made and inspire individuals to be the change they want to see in the world.
“I want to help create a healthier, more vibrant world for my children and that means getting involved to protect it,” says Florencia Ramirez, a 35-year old University of Chicago graduate who now lives in a California coastal community where she devotes herself fulltime to raising her three small children and reducing the amount of water wasted millions of times a day by Americans when they shower.
“I never thought twice about it when I turned on the water in my shower every morning until I read an article urging us to shorten our showers,” says Ramirez. “At first, it seemed trivial until I saw the data and it was staggering.” On average each person uses 11,232 gallons of water per year. This translates to roughly 1.5 trillion gallons of water used for showering in the U.S. per year-- or enough water to fill up Lake Erie.
Ramirez went online and found Ripple Products an Australian company that has been manufacturing shower timers for five years. She began an email discussion and soon agreed to help introduce their entire water conservation line to the United States. Her next step was to found Azul Conservation Products. So far, Ramirez’ company has sold the shower timers and water collection buckets to retailers, universities, municipal agencies and hotels in the U.S., Canada and Central America. The Ripple Products shower timers have sold over a million worldwide in 2008 alone.
Azul Conservation Products is expanding to include new conservation products that are sustainably made and inspire conservation. Azul is launching a series of picture books that speak to why it is important to save water for a young audience. These books will be available custom branded..
“At first, I thought it was important to sound like I was in an office but with small children that’s impossible. Now, I own the story I’m in --- a stay-at-home mom with an in-home business who wants to weave in and out of being a mother and a job aligned with a higher purpose. In fact, every day as I cold-call people as my kids run around playing, seeing them is what inspires me to keep going. It may seem like what I’m doing is a drop in the bucket but if we all help out, those buckets will add up to lakes, rivers and beyond.”
