How Pleasant State is Reducing Plastics in Households Australia-wide

This clean, green duo is on a mission to reduce our use of plastics and toxins, one household at a time.

In 2019, Pleasant State CEO and co-founder Ami Bateman was suffering daily headaches. “I would use a cleaning product that had ‘organic’ in the name and I’d spray it in my home and my headache would escalate to a migraine,” she says. Thus began her mission – together with co-founder Sian Murray – to create a “just add water” cleaning range that was not only healthy but also zero-waste and, crucially, actually worked.

“When I finally found a chemist to try and make the products, he said, ‘I can do two but I can’t do all three,’” she says, laughing. “So I told him, ‘You’re going to do all three.’ And he did. He later admitted it was the toughest gig he’s ever had.”

The result: Australia’s first concentrated cleaning bars that dissolve in tap water (think Berocca but for your kitchen bench). They’re compact enough that a pack of 15 – which can be delivered in a five-centimetre-deep box half the size of a sheet of A4 paper – will last an entire year. Plus, customers receive 25 per cent off future orders when they subscribe for refills.

“Pleasant State is Australia’s first B Corp certified cleaning brand and to date, we’ve saved more than 150,000 single-use plastic bottles from going to landfill,” says Murray. “We’ve also generated more than 75,000 litres of toxin-free cleaning solution and we donate 1 per cent of all sales to [environmental organisation] Take 3 For The Sea, which is more than $45,000 since launch.” Pleasant State products are now in 20,000 homes across Australia and New Zealand, with daily sales averaging more than $3500 and the million dollar revenue mark surpassed in well under two years. But as exponential as growth has been, Bateman and Murray are in agreement: this is just the tip of the iceberg. “We’re ready now to take on retail,” says Bateman. “We plan to go mainstream and get our products closer to where our customers are shopping day-to-day.”

To facilitate this jump, former Unilever CFO and current Carman’s Kitchen COO Wendy Rattray has joined the team in an advisory capacity, as has Mathew Nelson, EY’s Oceania chief sustainability officer. “We’re supported by amazing people,” says Bateman. “Combined with our customer support, we’re really excited for the impact we’re about to make.”

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