I started an environmentally sustainable company at 17…

About me

As a member of the Australian Diving Team I have the privilege of travelling around the world competing and all too often see the effect of plastics. That’s why it was so important for me to combine two of my passions in one - environmental sustainability and business.

At the age of 17 I started Tsarian, selling single use wheat straws. My goal is to sell the straws all over the World, but taking one step at a time. I currently supply Amazon in the USA, Local cafes here in Sydney and The Great Barrier Reef.

As I am under 18 and can’t ‘own’ the company, I asked my mum if she wanted to come on board and help out. Having mum on board is great as we can bounce ideas off each other and while I’m at school Mum can fulfill the orders. This company is also perfect for supporting my diving, because I can run it from any corner of the globe, as long as I have wifi and a computer.

My journey to environmental awareness

Australia is great at taking initiative to clean up our country, even with just simple things like each household having a recycling bin. I remember in primary school we would have people come in and educate us on the impact we all have on the environment. I believe education is the best way we can protect our environment, most Australians would love to help cut down their environmental impact, but might not know where to start.

We all know about the small things we can be doing to help, like bringing our own bags to the shops, reusable drink bottles and coffee cups and avoiding buying single use plastics.

But there are also some bigger initiatives that we can get involved in, and for me that’s why it was so important to be a part of Clean Up Australia Day. We are so lucky here in Australian to have such a beautiful country and we want to keep it that way.

Developing the Tsarian product

I was looking into metal straws as a solution to our straw problem and found two things: firstly the metal straw market is saturated and secondly we have no solution to single use straws. Plastic straws have terrible effects on our environment, and paper straws are great until you actually put them in your drink. This is when I came across natural wheat straws. Wheat straws have been around for hundreds of years, as farmers would use them after harvesting their grain as it was a byproduct.

Once I found this out, I started my research and found some amazing things like they are gluten free and unlike plastic straws, which after hundreds of years break down into micro plastics, wheat straws are biodegradable.

After testing the straws and multiple samples I got to the product we provide today. During the development process, we found out that wheat can vary from B to A+ grade, but if you get low quality wheat the straws won’t work properly. Providing a premium product became paramount to Tsarian, so we only sell the A+ grade straws.

For more information on Tsarian, or to purchase some of our straws - click here