The Hidden Health Risks & Habits You're Exposed To Every Day & What Everyone Should Know Ft. Clara Sieg Of Loonen

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:00)
Clara Sieg is the co-founder and CEO of Loonen, a company rethinking the most foundational thing we consume, which is water. There is such a story here when it comes to overall health and wellness, what we're consuming. And this episode is a perfect blend of what this show is about. It's health, it's wellness, it's entrepreneurship, it's business building, it's branding. With that, Clara, welcome to The Bossticks.

**Michael Bosstick** (0:18)
How did you take interest in the subject of water to begin with?

**Clara Sieg** (0:22)
So water was part of a bigger shift in our household. I now have a two-year-old, but I had a very long path to getting pregnant. I ended up going through IVF, and I like to learn a lot. And so I started doing a lot of reading about what I could do to sort of support the IVF process because it was a period of life that felt like pretty out of control and like I had very limited agency outside of taking shots and sort of meeting those protocols.
And so I looked at lifestyle changes to pair with that, and I learned a lot about plastics and endocrine disruptors.
And they're bad for fertility. And so I went through our house and you know, you can't fully eliminate them from your life. It's just impossible. And there are a lot of good things that come from plastics, right? You think about medical innovation and all that sort of stuff, great. But in terms of what you put in and on your body, on a day-to-day basis and what you're breathing around your house, you can make real impacts in the way that you live your life that lets you kind of set it and forget it and do 80-20 the rest of the time. And so I started doing that in our own house, right? Like the food that we eat, for the most part, we eat organic. We don't store it in plastic, we store it in glass, and we don't use nonstick. And then moved over to beauty and personal care. And you know the brands that have sort of explained what phallates and bisphenols and these things are, and synthetic fragrance, and given you an easy button solution. And the same goes for home cleaning. Like we use a lot of branch basics and vinegar at home. And then I got to the water set, and it was a lot of plastic and plastic-lined aluminum. And in the glass set, very little transparency on what's actually in the water. And we were living in a rental at the time, and couldn't put an under counter filtration system in. I just, I was doing all this counter top filtration and like mineralizing it. And at some point, just felt like I was living in a water production facility.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:26)
So for most people, is it like, when they're thinking about water, if you can do that filtration system, is that a smart thing to do for most people?

**Clara Sieg** (2:33)
Yeah, I think we always talk about Loonen as part of the solution, not the full solution, right? Because water is something that's so foundational to life.
We have reverse osmosis filtration system under the counter, where we cook from. We mostly drink Loonen at home, obviously. But even in the kitchen, a lot of people think like butter or oil or salt is the main ingredient, but water is the top ingredient, right? What you're cooking your rice in, what you're cooking in your pasta and etc.
And so that whole process, I ended up in water and was like, oh my God, and you know this, when you're pregnant, you're supposed to drink an insane amount of water. When you're breastfeeding the same thing and your fluid levels grow up by over 50% when you're pregnant. I just became sort of obsessed with that. And then when I went back to work, I transitioned my daughter from breastfeeding to bottle feeding. And I was super conscientious about the formula that I chose. And then the main ingredient you mix into it is water. And that for me was sort of the moment where I was like, I think I really want to do something about this.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:37)
Well, I think like when it's funny when it comes to water, and I'm not going to talk about any other water companies now because I've given them enough love. They've been on this table for years. But you'd think, green bottle, you would think that they, like you hear that they're premium and they're in glass, and it's spring, and you think you're doing the right thing, and then you read all these reports that like maybe they're not what you thought they were. And to your point, I think that there's been like a little bit of a duping from the entire industry where consumers believe they're buying a premium clean product in this category, and then you realize it's kind of just like everything else but in prettier packaging.