How an Eco-Friendly Entrepreneur Spends Her Sundays

New York Times

26-04-2025

Sarah Paiji Yoo started her career in finance and then founded several start-ups, mostly in the fashion and beauty worlds. But during parental leave after the birth of her first child, she realized how many microplastics her family was inadvertently consuming.
'I started to have mixed feelings around pushing people to buy more things, when I didn't feel like they needed it,' Ms. Yoo, 40, said. 'On the other side of becoming a mother, I realized I still loved working, and I still loved early-stage company building, but I just needed more meaning in the work that I was doing.'
So in 2019 she co-founded Blueland, reimagining household cleaning products to eliminate single-use plastic packaging. She appeared on 'Shark Tank' (and scored a deal) that same year.
Her company sells tablets that can be mixed with water in reusable bottles to make things like hand soap and cleaning sprays, or dropped directly into a dishwasher, washing machine or toilet. The tablets come in compostable paper packaging.
Ms. Yoo is originally from Cerritos, Calif., and moved to New York City 19 years ago. She met her husband, Kenneth Yoo, at a bar; nine months after their first date, the two were engaged. They had their son Noah in 2017. Colin followed in 2020. The foursome moved into a five-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side the next year.
MORNING SNUGGLES I don't need an alarm clock on the weekends — I can definitely rely on my kids to wake me up. These days it's around 6:30, maybe 6:40 if we're lucky. They run into our room and we usually bring them into bed, not only because it's a nice moment, but Ken and I are trying to squeeze in an extra few minutes in bed.
RUNNING SOLO A new thing that started this year is I go for a quick solo run. I turned 40 last year, and I think it's just hitting me that exercise is important: being strong, not falling when I get older, and just being able to be around as long as I can. We live right by Riverside Park and it's always a good reminder that, wow, Manhattan is an island! I feel so grateful to live less than a five-minute walk from the water.
COFFEE AND CROISSANTS I'll run for 20 minutes and then I'll swing back to pick up my reusable mugs to bring with me to the coffee shop. There's a new French bakery that opened up nearby called La Farine Patisserie et Café. I love that it replaced a gigantic Starbucks.
For the kids, it's a chocolate croissant and a plain croissant, one for each. I will do a baguette with butter and jam. One of the best parts of the weekend is I allow myself to buy coffee. It just tastes better when somebody else makes it.
PLAY BALL We are a baseball family through and through. My husband played Division I; he was a pitcher in college. So, many Sundays for our family in the spring are occupied by a good amount of baseball. Noah plays Little League, and Colin plays T-ball. Noah's games are usually in Central Park or Randall's Island on Sundays.
ECO-FRIENDLY ERRANDS On Sundays, we have this loop that we do. First, there's the farmer's market by the American Museum of Natural History. There are a few stands that we always hit up for our fresh produce and flowers; Wood Thrush Farm is my absolute fave. We used to bring our compost to the market, but now that the city rolled out the smart compost bins, we stop at one on the way. And if we have any textiles that we wouldn't donate, we hit up the textile drop-off at the farmer's market.
Ken and I both wear contact lenses and they aren't recyclable by the city. What can be recycled with the city is anything that's hard and firm, but anything that's soft has to go through a different recycling stream that's not available curbside. There's an optometrist near our house where we can drop off any used contact lenses. And then we also drop off plastic film, bags and bubble wrap at the Fairway in our neighborhood.
There's still a lot of plastic that, unfortunately, is not recyclable, even with flexible plastic recycling. For example, the kids want animal-shaped Cheddar crackers that come in a chip bag with that inside plastic lining. I think these are things that, in my heart of hearts, I would love for Blueland to also tackle — but probably not in the next, realistically, 10 years.
GARDENING If the kids don't have a birthday party or play date, we might stop by the West Side Community Garden. I'm a member, even though we don't have our own plot yet. It's a requirement as a member to volunteer four hours a month. I'm on the flower committee and composting committee.
I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM Ken and I are firm believers: Weekends are for eating ice cream. Noah loves gelato; he loves Amorino. I love Salt & Straw, and that they encourage sampling. It's also nice because they do the metal spoons for the sampling. I would not feel comfortable if they were like, 'Oh, here's another single-use, disposable spoon.' Colin and Ken love Gelateria Gentile. If we have time, the kids will scooter and we'll just hit up all three.
SOAP TEST When we can, Ken and I try to do a date night on Sundays. Typically, his parents come in from Queens. When we get home, I'll do some cleaning — as much as they're family, it's still my mother-in-law! During that period, if there's anything I'm testing, I bring in my sons to help. It's kind of fun, because my older son is old enough to be interested. We might be dissolving new hand soap scents or trying out new laundry tablets.
DATE NIGHT We love doing date night at, like, 5 p.m. The world is your oyster at 5 p.m. because you can get a lot of reservations. Our ideal date night is omakase and a foot massage. We'll typically go to a local walk-in massage place — one of the ones where you just kind of sit in a chair in the open — and get a foot massage. And then we'll be home for bedtime.
EARLY TO BED I like to go to bed on Sundays very early, with the kids. I'm admittedly really bad about getting enough sleep during the week. I'm trying to embrace that we're still in the moment of time where the kids still want to snuggle in bed and still want me in their beds. It just feels so warm and it helps put me to sleep in a way that I think I struggle with during the week.