Inspiyr spoke with Kevin Brodwick of thinksport, a company whose purpose is to create safe, alternate products for everyone from babies to athletes. Kevin shared his story of building thinksport, and his views on how consumers can protect themselves from cancers and other chemical-causing diseases when purchasing everyday products.
“The reality is that 95% of cancers have been linked to environmental causes. Skin cancer for example is the most dominant cancer, but also the easiest to defend against.”
Tell us the story behind thinksport. How and why did you start it?
While working for a lab funded by the National Institutes of Health, I became aware of just how wide-spread the issue of chemical hazard existed. Specifically, we focused on endocrine disruptors leaching from consumer products. What we found was that it didn’t matter where the products were being made, every country was producing products with questionable ingredients. We approached many of the big corporations to lead them to alternatives, and when they pushed back, I decided it was time to launch a company that was solely focused on creating safe products for everyone from babies to athletes.
We launched thinkbaby 6 years ago and quickly followed it with the launch of thinksport. As a company we first focus on using safe ingredients and materials. We use the Precautionary Principle in everything we build. Materials have to be well vetted before they are used in any of our products. We don’t jump on some material just because it is free of a chemical that is known in the media. But simply having a safe product is not enough. So our next steps are focused on building in as much functionality and sustainability as possible. And it doesn’t make sense to then price the products out of reach of all consumers. As an example, most insulated sports bottles are upwards of $30 to $40. We sell ours for only $20.
thinkbaby and thinksport continue to bring about safe alternatives to products in the market that we know are fraught with problems. Our goal is for someone to walk up to our product and say, “that’s thinksport, they stay up late worrying about chemicals, so that I can focus on the other million things going on in my world.”
What’s the problem with most containers and sunscreens on the market today?
When we entered the market, a majority of ...
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My friends and I are looking into your company. It would be nice to see you on Good Guide.
I liked your write-up and appreciate what you are doing to help make consumer products as safe as possible, but your banner has an unfortunate grammatical error which sends the wrong message. Your header says, “…other Chemical-Causing Diseases,” when it should read “…other Chemically-Caused Diseases” to make sense since diseases don’t cause chemicals. Just wanted you to know.
P.W – you’re right…fixed! Thanks for alerting us.
-Inspiyr