Mines alum turns environmental engineering experience into zero-waste personal care products

Julie Smith ’95, MS ’04 knows exactly what happens after you rinse a product—your shampoo, your toothpaste, even your dish soap—down the drain.

Two decades spent working in Coors Brewing Company’s water and wastewater systems taught her that most treatment plants can’t fully break down everything in a typical bottle of your favorite everyday products. Today, she’s applying that knowledge at Aspire, the bulk-refill company she founded to make organic, natural alternatives that don’t carry the same environmental cost.

Long before she was formulating Castile soap and tooth powder, Smith was working in the oil and gas industry while earning a chemical engineering degree from Mines. But even then, she knew that kind of career wasn’t for her long-term.

“I knew I wasn’t going to stay in the oil industry,” she said. “And I knew that chemical engineering was going to give me more versatility going forward. And that turned out to be the absolute truth.”

About halfway through her career, Smith made the leap to Coors. Although the brewery wouldn’t hire her as an engineer since she didn’t have food industry experience, she started in the water and wastewater lab, working her way up to plant engineer and eventually energy engineer. While she was working in the water and wastewater lab, Coors also helped her return to Mines to earn a master’s degree in environmental engineering with a water and wastewater track.

“The last nine years of my career as the energy optimization engineer was all about reducing energy and water and waste,” she said. “It was the environmental sustainability position for the brewery.”

That expertise became the foundation that Aspire was built on.

“I know exactly from my water-wastewater background exactly what personal care products do to our environment and wildlife,” Smith said. “I know what happens when they go down the drain and go to the wastewater treatment plant. If they have synthetic petrochemicals in them, those do not break down completely in the two days that it takes to go through the plant and end up in receiving water bodies. That’s what made me start Aspire.”

Smith launched Aspire in 2015 while still working at Coors, partnering with her niece to develop recipes for their first products. Everything she makes, from soap to tooth powder to lip balm, is made with organic and essential oils, sourced as close to home as she can manage, with an eye toward eliminating waste at every step.

“Our house is zero waste. The brewery, when I was there, went to zero waste, so I know what it takes—what we have to do, what we have to avoid,” Smith said. “I’m keeping it local and reducing the carbon footprint of transportation just in doing that.”

Smith is candid that running a small, mission-driven company hasn’t been easy—building a loyal customer base has taken longer than she expected. But she believes engineers are especially well positioned to shift how people think about their everyday purchases. 

“Engineers are seen as smart people. When we talk, people do listen,” Smith said. 

It’s the same logic behind her advice to others who may be weighing whether to chase a business idea of their own: don’t wait for certainty, follow what you care about.

“I think going with your passion is important,” she said. “We spend too much time at work to not love what we’re doing.”