A custom, soft, dry premium  wipe made of 100% repurposed cotton blended fabric is among the three finalists for this year’s World of Wipes (WOW) Innovation Award. Designed to be 100% pure, Earthlys Not Yet Wet wipes is a dry wipe that can be used as a baby care product or a general cleaning tool,  according to company founder and CEO Rochelle Serna.
 

“I definitely started out with a baby in mind and I would say that is the main market but this is a very versatile product. Not only is it sustainable but it can be used for many tasks,” she says."My main goal was for it to be as pure as possible."

Originally, Serna set out to develop a wet wipe but after about a year of developing different formulations and hitting too many road blocks, she decided a dry wipe might be a more viable option. The result is a dry wipe that is made of repurpose cotton.

With a background in child wellness and family studies and a longtime proponent of clean nutrition, Serna became interested in the childcare market after she became a mother and saw a real lack of truly natural diapers and wipes in the market. She started her journey toward makinga baby wipe by calling cotton farmers which eventually led her to Lawson Gary at T.J. Beall who educated her on the full process of turning a piece of cotton into wipe, and to Spuntech Nonwovens.
 

“(Lawson) was such a wealth of knowledge and he has really helped me understand this market,” Serna says."And, Spuntech really treated me like family and worked with me on every challenge."
 

Once the wipe was created, Serna’s next challenge was packaging. “I have a real problem with the fact that you have to throw a package away every time you use it—it means more garbage, use of more resources, etc,” She said. Instead, Earthly’s are packaged in 100% cotton package that can be washed and hand dried and are shipped in plastic free shipping. “We try to eliminate waste in every part of the process.”

Earthly's NOt Yet Wet wipes are available through subscription.