Not many people measure business success by counting plastic bottles. Brianne West does.
Or rather she measures success by counting plastic bottles her company, Ethique, has saved from joining billions of others in the planet's struggling environment.
Ethique is unique - it claims to be the only company in the world producing shampoo, conditioner and other beauty products in solid bars as opposed to liquids contained in plastic bottles.
The 29-year-old West has become a bit of a cause celebre and has attracted attention from the likes of Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, the Huffington Post and Forbes - and last year was named one of the top 100 global thinkers by the US Foreign Policy (equivalent to our Foreign Affairs ministry).
While most business owners gauge success by revenues, costs and profits (and so does West), she says her business also began and continues because of a long-held, strong commitment to the environment.
That commitment is obvious as West, based in Christchurch, talks about the 1 million plastic bottles she intends the globe not to suffer as she grows her business - and consumer acceptance of beauty products that do not come in a plastic container.
"It's our goal to save a million plastic bottles by 2020 - and we're well on the way; we are up to 160,000 now," she says. "I know it sounds a bit grandiose to talk about saving the planet but business should not just be about money and commerce. I certainly have never thought about it solely in those terms.
"I am not trying to save the world by myself, of course not. But I figure if what we do is seen as important, and if it starts to gain acceptance, it will trigger other businesses to do the same thing.
"We have to stop transferring responsibility for saving our environment to consumers-businesses need to lead the way by adopting practices that show they are responsible for their product for its entire life cycle."
A quick look at the statistics confirms the enormity of the task. New Zealanders throw out 50 million plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles alone every year. In the US, 3 billion are thrown out every year.
West's Ethique is one of three SMEs selected by the Bank of New Zealand for its Supersize SME programme. The bank launched the scheme in conjunction with NZME and Newstalk ZB to find SMEs with growth ambitions which can be mentored to reach the next level of business success.
She pitched her growth plans to an expert panel, including Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking, BNZ's Director of Partners Shelley Ruha and The Icehouse CEO Andrew Hamilton before being selected.
She is keen to get help to grow the business to the next level - though she has been doing pretty well on her own in the four and a half years since Ethique was started. The publicity gained from write-ups in Forbes and Huffington Post was followed by social media posts by Spears and Kutcher.
That sparked a 452 per cent growth in sales - a spike she says Ethique has managed to maintain. When we speak, she is in the US on business; that country is now responsible for 14 per cent of sales and she is looking for a distribution partner for New York and Seattle.
Clearly the company is poised for more dramatic growth, particularly when you take into account how it started - in West's shower.
She dropped a shampoo bottle, losing much of the contents and, in her chagrin, thought how stupid it was to contain such a product in plastic when it could be produced in solid state and in a form which lasted much longer than a liquid in a bottle.
"I thought, 'what madness'," she says. "Somewhere between 65 per cent and 85 per cent of shampoo is actually water; for conditioner it is more like 95 per cent - and yet water is obviously present in your shower."
The environmentalist in her clicked in too. Water is a commodity under pressure in various parts of the globe and saving it is a task close to her green heart. Couple that with a shampoo, conditioner and other products that do not need plastic packaging - and she had a business opportunity.
In her second year of a science degree, West worked long hours to teach herself what the various ingredients of a shampoo do and how they could be combined into a bar a bit like a bar of soap, far more concentrated and longer lasting than bottle-based products.
That was four years ago and she now has solid beauty bars offering body washes, face creams as well as shampoos and conditioners and has even branched out into household cleaning products and pet wash. All products are natural and come from ethical sustainable sources.
Biodegradable cardboard packaging completes the product - even though it is many times more costly than plastic.
"But only about one if five people consistently recycle so there is a massive amount of plastic being forced out into the world," she says. "So I have been lucky enough to find a role that not only stimulates me mentally, it has a real effect on the world around us."
Follow the journey on The Mike Hosking Breakfast on Newstalk ZB and at SupersizeSME.co.nz