Wild Planet Foods founder and CEO Bill Carvalho explains why his company sources pole and line caught tuna to eliminate “bycatch,” the species caught in nets and tossed overboard because it was not what the fishing vessel wants to sell. Bycatch accounts for up to 22% of the fish caught by net fishermen, according to Oceana, a nonprofit working to protect the world’s oceans. Wild Planet also focuses on smaller species, such as sardines, mackerel and anchovies in an effort to protect the ocean foo...
Jun 13, 2022•37 min
Water is everywhere on this planet — 71% of the Earth is covered with water — but freshwater is in dire short supply. We talk with Jon Freedman, Global Government Affairs Leader at SUEZ Water Technologies & Solutions and a lecturer on water and water policy at the University of Pennsylvania. SUEZ specializes in water treatment and management, working with governments and companies on water recycling and desalination projects. We discuss the viability of distilling and filtering waste water t...
Jun 10, 2022•37 min
Our guest today, Dr. Danielle Bernal, is a veterinarian at Wellness Natural Pet Food. She recommends switching to plant-based foods and is here to discuss the health benefits and animal health issues to track when adopting more plant-based foods for your dog. The American Pet Products Association reports that about 90 million dogs lived in U.S. homes in 2019, and ownership jumped during the pandemic. According to UCLA research, pets consume about a quarter of the meat produced annually in the Un...
Jun 08, 2022•27 min
Meet Dr. Marcius Extavour, Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President of the XPRIZE Circular Carbon Network, talks about state of the carbon capture industry and winners of the first round of the $100 million circular carbon challenge funded by Tesla founder Elon Musk. They recently awarded $15M, which was split among a group of 15 promising teams working to make carbon capture and removal scalable and efficient at the gigaton level. Marcius shares details about the winners and what technologi...
Jun 06, 2022•39 min
Meet Doug Peacock, wilderness warrior, author and the inspiration for Edward Abbey’s well-known character in The Monkeywrench Gang, George Washington Hayduke. Doug Peacock’s new book, Was It Worth It: A Wilderness Warror's Long Trail Home, contemplates a life spent in nature as well as the partnerships in wilderness living and defense he had with Abbey and others in the environmental writing world. His 1996 book, Grizzly Years, which recounts his 20-year relationship with grizzly bears, is one o...
Jun 03, 2022•32 min
Maddy Rotman, Head of Sustainability at Imperfect Foods, a delivery service for sustainably sourced produce and packaged food that would otherwise end up in landfills as food waste, joins the conversation to find an end to one of the largest sources of easily avoided greenhouse gas emissions. More than a third of the food humans grow each year goes unused. Project Drawdown estimates that we could reduce CO2 emissions by 90 to 101 gigatons annually simply by cutting out 50% to 75% of food waste. ...
Jun 01, 2022•30 min
A lawn may be beautiful but it can take a heavy toll on the environment, accounting for between 30% and 60% of residential water use in the United States. Rob Moir, Ph.D., is president and executive director of the Ocean River Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts. ORI works with residential lawn owners to heal damaged ecosystems by restoring coastal areas to lessen the destructive impacts of climate change. The benefits of a natural lawn reach far beyond reduced local water pollution, eliminatin...
May 30, 2022•31 min
Alice Bodreau, Strategic Partners Manager for Europe at the Ellen Macarthur Foundation joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss the new Circular Economy Glossary. She led the development of the glossary in partnership with IKEA to help provide a common language for different industries to explore and activate the circular economy. We wanted to learn more about their approach to the building circular systems and future efforts to extend the reference for wider application. Alice also explains how the the...
May 27, 2022•32 min
Kevin Loria joins the conversation to talk about his recent Consumer Reports article about PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), in grocery and restaurant foods, Dangerous PFAS are in your food packaging. The magazine found PFAS in the majority of 100 food packaging materials they tested, including off-the-shelf foods at grocers and Burger King, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and other restaurants to-go packaging. Sometimes the chemicals were introduced in the manufacturing process acc...
May 25, 2022•26 min
Our guest, Bill Niaura, Director of Sustainable Materials and Circular Economy at the Bridgestone Americas Technology Center, is working to create a circular economy in tires. Tokyo-based Bridgestone, the world's largest tire company based on revenue, recently announced a new partnership with carbon recycling firm LanzaTech to introduce a technology that gasifies — breaks down — the rubber in tires to feed to bacteria. The process produces ethanol, a fuel that can also be used to make plastic an...
May 23, 2022•40 min
Markets are characterized by competition over exclusive control of resources, but as our guest today, Frank Dalene, writes in his new book, Decarbonize the World: Solving the Climate Crisis While Improving Profits In Your Business, “here’s the problem: we are all part of the same planet. We all live in the same closed environment. We all have the same atmosphere. We all breathe the same air.” Frank joins us to today to discuss how business and regulators need to rethink their approach to markets...
May 20, 2022•42 min
Alexander Gillett, chief executive officer at HowGood, discusses the 15-year effort that produced the largest database of product sustainability data. HowGood announced a new round of funding today, and Alex shares how they will use the funds to expand their coverage and enable companies to get insights into the Scope 3 CO2 emissions associated with their supply chains. The Stone Ridge, N.Y.-based company's HowGood Latis plaform covers more than 33,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials along ...
May 18, 2022•35 min
Roian Atwood, Senior Director of Sustainability at Tractor Supply Company, joins the converstaion to discuss the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the country’s approach to stewardship of the lifestyle it refers to as “life out here,” which could help forge important changes of habit in those communities. Tractor Supply Company has aligned its very aggressive sustainability targets with the Paris goals of cutting overall emissions by 50% by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2040, a decade befor...
May 16, 2022•34 min
Mitch welcomes back Rick Wayman, CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR), for a conversation about the twin threats of climate change and nuclear war. Vladimir Putin’s reckless war on Ukraine, which has come with repeated threats to use nuclear weapons, came at a critical juncture in the response to climate change. The 2020s is a make-or-break decade for halting emissions growth and starting on the path toward zero emissions — and this year is considered critical to a collective glo...
May 13, 2022•37 min
Heather Florio, CEO of Desert Harvest, a maker of aloe vera-based nutritional supplements, will introduce a refillable smart bottle this summer. Desert Harvest is moving away from single-user plastic pill packaging in favor of compostable plant-based refill bags and smart bottles that feature Bluetooth connectivity and an app that helps customers manage refills and keep the packaging out of landfills. The container will be available for use with other medications, and can help caregivers track w...
May 11, 2022•28 min
Designing the future of civilization is no small task. Our guest Michael Jansen, founder and CEO of Cityzenith, is a pioneer of digital twin technology. These emerging computer models are poised to transform how we test our assumptions about the impact of new designs and policies before making the changes in the real world. If you've heard of the Metaverse, Cityzenith's Urban Digital Twin 3D virtual models will sound familiar. Instead of providing an escapist fantasy world where avatars can danc...
May 09, 2022•38 min
Jacqueline Claudia, CEO of Smarter Sorting, joins the conversation to discuss the use of product information to expedite recycling and reduce food waste at retail stores. The company offers a tool, the Product Intelligence Platform, that retailers can use to catalog and accurately sort materials in the back of their stores. The platform also produces greater efficiency and accountability in the recycling system. Retailers working with Smarter Sorting can also inventory what they recycle and repo...
May 06, 2022•23 min
Water is life. It is also one of the primary elements needed for manufacturing and, of course, freshwater is necessary to support every aspect of daily life, including carrying away our sewage. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Americans consumed 322 billion gallons of water a day in 2015, the last year for which data has been reported. Our guest, Prakash Govindan, is cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Boston-based Gradiant, a global clean tech water technology provider that offers...
May 04, 2022•33 min
Brian Ringer is the founder and CEO of Seattle-based Emerald Technology Group, which recently launched the GetGreen app, a coaching tool for sustainable living. The recent flood of interest and press coverage of sustainability has created an opportunity to get more people thinking and acting sustainably. But we’re still in the early days of a transition from being sustainably naive to becoming sustainable natives accustomed to considering and reducing our environmental impact every day. GetGreen...
May 02, 2022•30 min
Carbon Neutral Consulting's Stephen Crolius returns to Sustainability In Your Ear to discuss the impact of Vladamir Putin's Ukraine invasion on the oil and natural gas markets, as well as humanity's path to a post-carbon econ0my. He previously joined us to explain the role of ammonia in how-carbon seaborne shipping. Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine is a terrible human tragedy that will have long-term environmental impacts. In the wake of the invasion, people and governments are focused on gett...
Apr 28, 2022•34 min
A new paper from the World Economic Forum, called Scaling Investments in Nature, warns that if humanity does not change the way we extract and use the resources of planet Earth, the economic impact of climate change could cost society $44 trillion in lost value by 2050 (that represents 46% of 2021 global GDP). But simply by making reasonable investments to reduce global warming and create regenerative businesses, as much as $10 trillion in new economic value can be created by 2030. Our guest, Dr...
Apr 27, 2022•33 min
Besides food, humans have probably been talking about the weather longer than anything else. In our increasingly chaotic climate, weather information will be more relevant to every decision we make. Nick Cavanaugh, founder of SensibleWeather.com, a Santa Monica, Calif., provider of climate risk information, joins the conversation to explain how weather data can help anticipate how weather will impact our everyday lives. Sensible Weather’s first service is focused on lowering the risk from weathe...
Apr 25, 2022•27 min
Learn about the role of green hydrogen, which is refined using renewable energy, in decarbonizing heavy industries like steel and cement manufacturing, as well as how it will fit into the transportation sector. Our guests are Aidan Tuohy, the lead author of a new report about green hydrogen, and his colleague Jeffery Preece, director of Low Carbon Resources Research and Development at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent, non-profit center for public interest energy and e...
Apr 22, 2022•39 min
Leslie Adkins, Vice President of Marketing and ESG Development at Trex, joins the conversation to discuss how the company pioneered a recycled alternative to lumber for decks, fences and other applications. Trex was founded in 1996 on the premise that there must be a better use of the “mountain of single-use plastic film packaging generated every day that is not being recycled.” The company developed a process for making a wood decking alternative that consists of 95% recycled polyethylene film ...
Apr 18, 2022•29 min
The transition to more sustainable shopping is underway, and we’re pleased to welcome eBay’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Renee Morin, to discuss what the Ecommerce giant is doing to make the its marketplace more sustainable. Buying used is one of the most effective ways to reduce your environmental footprint because nothing new needs to be manufactured. Of course, getting reliable used products shipped to you can be challenging — and long shipping routes can add to the product’s carbon footpri...
Apr 16, 2022•28 min
Meet Victor Dewulf, cofounder and CEO of Recycleye, a London-based company that makes machine vision systems and robots capable of separating waste on the high-speed conveyor belts at materials recovery facilities (MRFs). Recycleye also hosts Wastenet, the largest databank of images of products and materials that can be used to train computers to sort waste, which is some of the most dangerous work in a recycling facility. The results are cleaner, better sorted recyclables, as well as greater tr...
Apr 15, 2022•27 min
The rise of electric vehicles comes with hard choices. The availability of cobalt and lithium needed to make batteries, for example, may be so limited that we must begin new mining projects to make enough batteries for the EV fleet of the future. We talk with Trent Mell, CEO of Electra Battery Materials, whose goal is to make North American battery manufacturing self-sufficient and circular. The company is developing two projects, including a Battery Materials Park that will process and recycle ...
Apr 13, 2022•36 min
Meat production accounts for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions in the human food supply. Meat represents 57% of greenhouse gas emissions generated by feeding people, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Food. Yaakov ("Koby") Nahmias, is the founder and president of Future Meat Technologies, an Israeli company that grows meat from animal cells in bioreactors. Future Meat recently achieved an important goal, producing meat for less than $6 a pound its meat — it cl...
Apr 11, 2022•40 min
Maen Mahfoud, founder and CEO of Replate, uses technology to connect sources of surplus food to non-profits that can get it into the hands of people in need. Humans waste an immense amount of food because it has been difficult to move surplus produce, meat and packaged foods to the places where it can be used before it spoils. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans waste between 30% and 40% of the food produced annually, some due to spoilage in the fields and transportation,...
Apr 08, 2022•37 min
Wes Carter, president of Atlantic Packaging, a Wilmington, N.C.-based maker of sustainable boxes, shipping solutions, recyclable mailers, and six-pack carriers, explains the complex supply chains that feed our lifestyle. Atlantic Packaging is working to reduce its environmental impact and waste at every step between a manufacturer and the home. Listen to this wide-ranging conversation to hear how the adoption of sustainable sources of fiber in packaging and six-pack rings make these traditional ...
Apr 06, 2022•35 min
