Kristi Lord and Lindsay Droz met at a mutual friend’s wedding and dreamt up high-performance, plant-based, sleek-looking cleaning products. “Lindsay worked in the medical device field, and her wake-up call came when she was pregnant with her first child and cleaning the floor. She noticed a warning label on the cleaning product, cautioning against using it around pets, but no mention of potential harm to a crawling baby,” Lord shares. “Meanwhile, I had been in finance for over two decades, and my ‘aha moment’ was realizing that my six-month-old son’s skin issues were made worse from various household and personal care products.”
Meanwhile, the available plant-based options on the market didn’t quite cut it—and neither did their aesthetics. “We wondered why something so integral to daily home care didn’t align with the aesthetics of modern homes or make you feel good to use, especially with the rise of Instagram and Pinterest-worthy content,” Droz says.
And this is how L’Avant Collective started. Now, the duo uses their own nontoxic products—including cleaners detergents, soaps, candles, room fragrance—that match their homes aesthetics (traditional and classic for Linsday, modern and mid-century for Kristi). “We merge home design and style with top-notch performance to provide a memorable, nontoxic, eco-luxe cleaning experience,” Droz says.
What advice do you have for consumers to make the swap to nontoxic, sustainable cleaning products?
Striving for perfection is hard when trying to make the switch to a cleaner lifestyle, and we aren’t perfect! We suggest taking small steps. Just like making a switch to a few organic food choices each grocery trip, the changes can be small, but they add up to big health changes over time. Take an inventory of the products under your sink. Start with a product that is used the most frequently.
What is the difference in ingredients between traditional cleaning products and L’Avant Collective products?
In the past, using eco-friendly cleaning products meant sacrificing performance, but not anymore. We spent three years formulating L’Avant and insisted our products meet or beat the leading market household cleaners as well as making sure they were free from parabens, phosphates, phthalates, triclosan, and artificial colors. With every product we create, we ask ourselves—how does this fit into our home and how does this make us feel to use it?
What is the process of creating a product?
We found a talented chemist on LinkedIn who shared our passion for making plant-based products perform as well as their conventional counterparts. This chemist had previously worked with top-tier green cleaning brands, making her the perfect fit for our mission. The formulation process involved countless iterations and testing, spanning nearly two years. She taught us that in order to create a high performing plant-based product, higher quality and more concentrated ingredients were necessary. We subjected our formulas to third-party lab tests, pitting them against well-known conventional cleaning products such as Dawn, Joy, 409, and Tide. We persevered until we either matched or exceeded their performance. One of our first proudest moments was when we received the lab test results confirming that we had achieved our goal with our dish soap. It was a very difficult formula to perfect and we both knew at that moment that we had created a game changer.
What’s the biggest “red flag” in mainstream cleaning products?
Trust your eyes and nose! Most mainstream cleaning products do not include the ingredients on their packaging. This is because there is no regulation requiring it. And even if they did, these ingredients are hard to read and understand! An easy, quick way is to avoid cleaners with dyes. Dyes (think bright blue, green, and yellow) contribute nothing to the effectiveness of the product and can be a skin irritant, as well as harmful to the environment. In addition, take a quick sniff test. Does it burn your eyes or throat? This is your body telling you that there are potentially harmful ingredients inside.
How did you come up with the sleek design of L’Avant products?
We happened to stumble upon, through an Instagram rabbit hole, an up-and-coming, incredible packaging designer who was freelance at the time. She brought our vision to life perfectly. It took over a year of design work to create a chic and sustainable custom glass and PCR (post-consumer recycled) plastic refillable bottles that belong on countertops, not under the kitchen sink. Aesthetics and efficacy are not mutually exclusive, at least not for L’Avant.
Are there any other swaps you have made to lead more sustainable lives?
Lindsay: As much as I would love to go 100% plastic free, 100% is too big of an obstacle for me at this point in my life. I am trying to bite off one product at a time in my home that moves away from plastic. I removed all my plastic dishes, cups, food storage containers and moved to glass and ceramic. Other changes I have made come in through my beauty and skincare products. After doing much research on the products I was using on a regular basis, I was astonished at the ingredients that were included in my products. I switched to skincare products such as Doctor Rogers (the face wash is next level), Josh Rosebrook, Indie Lee, and Kari Gran. As it relates to makeup, I am obsessed with Gucci Westman, Ilia, and RMS Beauty. Since switching to more natural products for my skin and beauty routine, my skin has never been better.
Kristi: As mentioned earlier, we don’t subscribe to perfection, but we try to make small changes over time. It allows us to have continual dialogue with our children as they see us making these choices for our home. Our current home is run on solar and my husband and I both have electric cars. We look to buy used, interesting furniture pieces and refurbish them instead of buying new. This not only saves money, but adds interest to our space and keeps these items out of the landfill.
Why did you collaborate with Boll & Branch?
They had been searching for a laundry product to recommend to their customers to use on their incredibly high-quality, organic bedding and towels. Through their own lab testing, they knew mainstream cleaners broke down the fibers of their products over time. There are many synergies between our brands, with high standards for quality and care. We love partnering with brands such as Boll & Branch because of their commitment to providing the highest quality products that improve health, wellness, and the environment.
What product can you not live without?
Lindsay: Our Dish Soap is my absolute saving grace. I am not going to lie. I don’t like doing dishes. That has changed however since developing our dish soap. Because it works as well as Dawn (as shown in competitive third-party tests), yet smells like a five-star resort (the Blushed Bergamot scent is my favorite), I now actually enjoy doing the dishes. I catch myself just smelling the soap and smiling because it makes me happy. Doing the dishes before never made me smile!
Kristi: Our Multipurpose Cleaner! We love to call this the gateway drug to L’Avant. It is truly a one-stop shop cleaner that I can use on my surfaces, toilets, floors, and car—and can even use to spot treat stains on clothes. But best of all—it is a product that not only my husband enjoys using, but my kids do as well. Caring for the home is a collective action, not just a chore for mom!
Any cleaning hacks?
The Multipurpose Surface Cleaner works wonders on white sneakers to make them look good as new. Our Dish Soap also cleans makeup brushes and jewelry! Multi-use products save you money by reducing the amount of products needed under your counter and better for the planet with less waste of discarded bottles.
