She started at the bottom, now she’s changing the way we go to the toilet
From the Kiwee Lifter to BDèt to Toru Roll, Billie Jo Hohepa-Ropiha has found her niche creating toilet-based innovations – but that wasn’t always the former journalist’s plan.
“Dad was an inventor,” says Billie Jo Hohepa-Ropiha, recounting her childhood in the Northland settlement of Moerewa. It’s a US rust belt-style factory town, full of Māori families whose multiple generations have lived and died within a 5km radius of the Affco meat processing plant for the past hundred years.
“Dad worked at Affco, both my grandparents worked at Affco, my mum worked at the local Four Square and I got my first job at the local Four Square.”
Northland entrepreneur creates alternative to wet wipes
23 Dec, 2020 04:00 PM
4 minutes to read
Entrepreneur Billie Jo Hohepa-Ropiha and New World Regent owner Eric Rush with the B-DÉT product she came up with as a solution to stopping wet wipes going into wastewater pipes. Photo / Tania Whyte
Mike Dinsdale is Northern Advocate deputy editormike.dinsdale@nzme.co.nznorthernadvocat
A Northland entrepreneur may have found an answer to the damage caused by the millions of wet wipes flushed down toilets and clogging up wastewater treatment plants.
In New Zealand the damage and removal of the wipes from wastewater pipes costs $16 million a year.