Tibbe Verschaffel

Tibbe Verschaffel's public voice centers on a single conviction: that plastic, and specifically microplastic, has quietly moved from an environmental problem to a health problem, and that nobody with capital wants to prove it. He frames Planet B's blood-testing research as filling a gap the market refuses to fund: "Geen enkel bedrijf wil dit funden want het is tegen hun eigen winkel, wie gebruikt er nu geen wegwerpplastic?" . When the results came in, showing 96% of tested Belgians carrying microplastics in their blood, he described it as personal and alarming rather than abstract, noting he tested his own sample and found particles in it . He is explicit that this is uncomfortable territory: "het is activistisch, het is negatief, het is iets dat we liever negeren," and he leans on an old line from a friend, "Een steen heeft zich nog nooit verlegd door ernaar te roepen," to justify acting instead of waiting for institutions to move . The same impatience shows up in his talk framing: microplastics were "ooit een milieu- of oceaanprobleem, nu is het een gezondheidsprobleem," and he draws the analogy to asbestos and PFAS being underestimated for years .

That research obsession is inseparable from his business philosophy: he wants Planet B to look like a company with nothing to hide. He rejects the "house of brands" model used by Unilever, P&G or Henkel, where a scandal can be quarantined inside one brand while the rest of the portfolio stays clean. Planet B deliberately uses "endorsed branding" instead, tying WONDR care and POWR.care visibly to the parent so that "elke euro omzet = impact" and the group can't hide behind its sub-brands . In the BRAUZZ merger conversation this becomes an explicit critique of the "big boys," who he says "hebben wel 99% van de markt met vervuilende producten" while smaller sustainable challengers fight each other over the remaining sliver; his answer is to team up rather than compete, on the logic that "Alleen ga je snel, samen kom je ver" and "Onze missie is gewoon groter dan onze ego's" ¹³. He is candid that the staged online "beef" with BRAUZZ was a deliberate marketing tactic, engineered so the audience would arrive at the merger idea themselves, and he treats that kind of stunt as ordinary craft rather than something to apologize for, since in his view "Business blijft de grootste competitiesport die er bestaat" and "Een idee is eigenlijk niks waard. Execution is everything" ¹³.

On the actual commercial mechanics, his position has stayed consistent across sources: sustainability is never the sales pitch. "Wij verkopen geen duurzaamheid... we gaan een shampoobar verkopen van Wondr omdat het veel beter is voor jouw haar," he says, citing research that consumers decide on price first, personal benefit second, and sustainability only third ¹⁴. That same logic drives his structural critique of packaging and recycling economics: virgin plastic, aluminum or cardboard is almost always cheaper than recycled material, so as long as everyone is chasing margin percentages the cheapest option wins by default, which is why he wants EU rules to go further and mandate "alle verpakking die op de markt komt 100% gerecycleerd" . He makes a parallel point about aluminum versus plastic recycling: Belgium's supposedly strong 50% plastic recycling rate only exists because it is subsidized by taxes, whereas aluminum recycling actually has a business model behind it because it saves 95% of the energy of virgin production, which is why Wondr's refill system is built around aluminum rather than glass or plastic ¹³¹⁴.

He is equally direct about supply chains and channel choice. Selling through the traditional long retail chain forces everyone to take a cut, which forces ultra-cheap production, which in his framing "altijd means sacrificing health and sustainability"; cutting out that middle layer is what frees up margin to make genuinely healthy, plastic-free products ¹³. That thinking extends to his stated long-term ambition to move away from being "vastgeroest zijn in de supermarkten van deze wereld" and build toward direct-to-consumer sales and flagship stores, explicitly comparing the move to how "Nike wegtrekt uit de Foot Lockers" ¹⁴. The 10-year plan he lays out is concrete and specific: strengthen the current brands, raise funding to acquire other sustainable brands into the Planet B family, run a crowdfunding round so consumers own shares, and aim for an IPO, because he wants "een bedrijf van de consumenten voor de consumenten" ¹⁴. He calls this goal "overambitieuze" without backing away from it, and elsewhere admits to a certain useful delusion about it: "Ik ben wel een beetje crazy in the coconut, denk ik, en de juiste naïviteit erbij om te denken dat ik de wereld wel echt kan verbeteren" ¹⁴.

Running underneath the strategy talk is a recurring belief that ordinary purchasing decisions are political acts. "Jouw aankoop is een stem," he tells his Love Tomorrow audience, arguing that companies and industry only change when consumer buying habits change first . He makes the same argument in interview form: "Wij geloven heel hard dat de consument de catalysator is voor de verandering," and connects mass small-scale consumer choices to eventual political pressure, since politicians follow public sentiment ¹⁴. This is also where his more personal, almost sentimental register shows up, as when a stranger's message about switching from an Ecover bottle to a POWR refill "letterlijk tranen in de ogen" gave him, prompting the internal mantra "everything is content" and a new behind-the-scenes format called "Life on Planet B" . He treats these small consumer conversions and the big blood-test campaign as two sides of the same project: proving the health case with hard data on one hand, and making the sustainable option the cheap, obvious, benefit-driven choice on the other.

On execution and leadership, he is unusually blunt about testing discipline and self-knowledge. His operating principle is "Test it small en scale it when it works," including deliberately charging even a token price for samples so that only real prospects respond, rather than trusting gut feeling ¹⁴. He credits his team explicitly for covering his own weaknesses, saying "de mensen rondom mij zijn daar miljoenen keren beter in en zonder hen zou ik niks zijn," and frames self-awareness and setting ego aside as a core entrepreneurial skill ¹⁴. He also pushes back on easy category claims when they're wrong, even about his own competitors' shared category: responding to a critical Test-Aankoop