How I Created A Collapsible Metal Straw And Raised $1.89M on Kickstarter

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

I’m Emma Rose Cohen, CEO and co-founder of Final, known for the reusable, collapsible FinalStraw that revolutionized sucking.

I found my passion in sustainability while I was studying at University of California Santa Barbara. It was the first time in my life that I came face-to-face with how the single-use culture, when concentrated in a small location, can have a massively devastating impact on the environment. I began organizing beach cleanups with a group of friends. Soon enough, we were attending city council meetings dressed as mermaids and offering the councilmembers plastic filled sandwiches.

At this point, I realized I wanted to formalize my work experience. I earned a master’s degree in environmental management and sustainability at Harvard. I also spent four years working in waste minimization at Los Alamos National Laboratory. But government work doesn’t suit a mermaid. So, I traded in the government credentials and began working on my passion project — FinalStraw.

In the last year, we’ve sold 300,000 straws, preventing approximately 27,000,000 single-use straws from entering the environment.

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