Four out of 10 shoppers chose sustainable products and services in late 2022 despite the economic downturn. But higher prices are making them think harder and longer about their spending, which means they welcome more information that helps them make environmentally responsible decisions. Naba Sengupta, senior manager at Deloitte Advisory’s Sustainability, Climate & Equity practice, discusses the results of a new consumer research survey, The Cost of Buying Green, Part 2. He explains that, c...
Feb 06, 2023•39 min
How we think and feel about the climate response, whether optimistic, pessimistic, cynical or pragmatic, shapes our perceptions of possible solutions. Too often, we argue over emotional perceptions and not hard climate data. But hard data is sterile, it doesn’t necessarily engage the passions that move us to act. So, we tell stories, often focusing on what can go wrong. Author Justin Bean wrote What Could Go Right to counter the "doom and gloom" media coverage that makes every day feel like a cl...
Feb 03, 2023•36 min
What do the response to climate change and the Y2K computer bug , which required hundreds of thousands of technology workers to spend several years fixing in the 1990so prevent catastrophic errors when the date turned over to Jan. 1, 2000, have in common? Both are complex problems that reach into every corner of our lives. Y2K showed humans they can overcome huge challenges using self-organizing groups that span companies, nations, and many languages. Meet William Ulrich, president of Tactical S...
Jan 30, 2023•51 min
Anne Popkin, president and chief operating officer at Newday Impact Investing, joins the conversation to discuss Environmental, Social and Governance, or “ESG,” investing. More than $8.4 trillion has been invested in ESG-related equities and bonds as of the end of 2022, according to Bloomberg. And it will be a hot topic for investors, Congress and the federal government, as well as several southern states, notably Florida and Texas, who are at war with ESG because it represents , in the words of...
Jan 27, 2023•37 min
Richard Hirschhorn and Mona Chun, co-creators The Circular Design Glossary , introduce the new guide to understanding the future of furniture design. It was developed by mebl | Transforming Furniture, where Richard and Mona are founder/CEO and chief operating and sustainability officer, respectively, in partnership with the Sustainable Furnishing Council . Our homes are the center of our lives and a primary source of CO2 emissions. The Ellen McArthur Foundation has estimated that 80% of the envi...
Jan 23, 2023•47 min
Urban-rural and youth-elder divisions in society represent some of the most difficult challenges to having a robust conversation about how to reduce emissions and waste, what we value as a society, and the path to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society. A just future will be codesigned by all of us to some extent, but we need to reconnect to move from division to collaboration. Richard McCarthy, coauthor of Kuni, A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection with Tsuyoshi Sekihara d...
Jan 20, 2023•52 min
Patricio Grassini discusses the potential to feed the world without more deforestation and conversion of wetlands to agriculture. He is Sunkist Distinguished Professor of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Co-leader of The Global Yield Gap Atlas Project , the world’s leading database describing 13 major food crops. If the human population continues on its current growth path, the World Resources Institute estimates we will need 56% more food without expanding farmlands, which are...
Jan 16, 2023•40 min
Staying within the Paris Climate Accord’s 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, at which potentially devastating climate changes will occur, requires ending deforestation before 2030. But as of 2020, the world was still losing about 38,600 square miles of forest annually. Meet Allan Traicoff, Chief Commercial Officer at Emergent , a nonprofit that creates incentives for and connects businesses to natural climate solutions in countries that protect tropical rainforests. Emergent focuses on identifying “high...
Dec 23, 2022•41 min
Buildings are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The $5.8 trillion-a-year building and construction sector, including ongoing operations of buildings, is responsible for 38% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions according to the United Nations’ Environment Program. Meet Håvard Haukeland, cofounder of Autodesk Spacemaker and a senior director at Autodesk, the pioneer and leading provider of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and other design tools used by architects and builders — Au...
Dec 19, 2022•33 min
Wanting to be sustainable is easy. Acting sustainably requires substantial effort, it takes time and no shortage of expertise to identify products and services with a low- or no-carbon footprint, and shopping for the best price on green energy, efficient appliances, and solar or other sustainability investments is difficult. Tony Wessling, the marketing and communications leader at YellowTin, joins the conversation to discuss the company's new artificial intelligence-poweredgreen lifestyle shopp...
Dec 16, 2022•33 min
You may not see the evidence every day, but the electrification of our economy is well underway. In this episode, meet Damir Perge, CEO of Miami-based Amptricity, a maker of solid-state battery technology, an electronic storage system that provides enough power for 8 hours of home backup electricity. Ampricity’s batteries can be recharged 11,000 times — at one charge cycle a day, which is more frequent than most homes will require, these batteries should work for at least 30 years. Amptricity ba...
Dec 12, 2022•39 min
The clothing we wear is a source of carbon emissions and landfill waste. Sarah Pinner, cofounder and CEO of Beni, introduces a new plugin for Google’s Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers that helps shoppers find reused alternatives to new clothing. Beni makes thrift shopping easy with digital helping hand, and the team is working to add environmental impact information to make choosing the lowest-impact option simple. Reusing clothing is an important step to reducing our carbon and waste footprin...
Dec 09, 2022•35 min
Google's circular economy leader, Mike Werner, explains the many renewable energy, waste reduction, and internal strategic changes that have established parent company Alphabet at the forefront of corporate sustainability. Google achieved carbon neutrality for its search engine operations in 2007 and a decade later had matched 100% of its energy use with renewable energy credits. It pioneered reusing server and data center equipment and components, and currently diverts 78% of its data center an...
Dec 05, 2022•34 min
Meet Sean Wittenberg, founder of the seafood company SafeCatch. He started the business with a mission to source safe and sustainable tuna and other fish after his mother was diagnosed with mercury poisoning when she adopted a diet that included frequent servings of canned tuna. Sausalito, Calif.-based Safe Catch offers a wide variety of fish products in cans and pouch packaging, and the fish is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, the provider of the familiar and often controversial MSC...
Dec 02, 2022•41 min
Michael Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS), introduces the Climate Solution Accelerator program, a 90-minute video-and-quiz program that explains the essential ideas in climate science, sustainable business, and the policies and paths out of the crisis. Earth911, Jump Digital, and the RSGS have partnered to make the program available in North America. More than 90,000 people globally have used the Climate Solution Accelerator to learn about climat...
Nov 28, 2022•35 min
Erin Levine, the resource recovery manager at World Centric, a maker of compostable packaging and tableware, returns to the show to share ideas about a low-waste holiday season and discuss the evolution of composting in California. The holidays are a time for family, community, faith, and fun, but they are also some of the most wasteful days of the year -- Americans toss more than a third of the food grown annually. Erin recently contributed an article to Earth911, Tips for Planning a Sustainabl...
Nov 25, 2022•28 min
Meet Garry Cooper Jr., cofounder and CEO of Rheaply. Garry is an accomplished investor at Longjump Ventures who has been recognized as an innovator by Forbes, Chicago Business Magazine and Crain’s. Much of the waste in our world is the result of overstocking and excess inventory in business and government— as much as $600 billion in surplus goods are lying unused in some of the largest organizations in the world, including universities, hospitals, and industries that span the planet, like constr...
Nov 21, 2022•40 min
Learn how businesses can accelerate the decarbonization of their operations and contribute to eventually removing that can help drawdown the more than 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by humans during the Industrial Era. Discover some of the complicated details of how carbon markets, credits, and allowances work with Jason Grant, chief operating officer of Climate Vault, a non-profit that purchases and manages carbon allowance and credits to support carbon capture and sequestration tech...
Nov 18, 2022•35 min
Brad Pedersen, cofounder and chairman of Pela, joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss the company's sustainable products. We recently spent a couple of months testing the Lomi home composter from Pela, a Kelowna, British Columbia-based maker of compostable phone cases, low-carbon and low-waste sunglasses, and now appliances for a sustainable life. Pela launched as a maker of phone cases made from flax and a plant-based biopolymer that can be safely composted at home or in an industrial composting syst...
Nov 14, 2022•43 min
Join us for an impassioned conversation about the potential for recycling progress with David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, a social enterprise that partners with consumer products companies to create incentive programs in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa that help prevent plastics from reaching waterways, seas and the ocean. He joined us earlier this year returns to share an update about the company's progress. Plastic Bank has partnerships with SC Johnson, Henkel and others. Plastic ...
Nov 11, 2022•36 min
Learn how to assess the green credentials of companies. Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Adam Kramer, CEO of nZero, a carbon tracking and reporting company, and Scott Martin, Vice President and Head of Global Commercial Business at 3Degrees, which provides carbon strategy consulting, decarbonization program development, carbon sequestration and renewable energy credit advisory services. The companies recently partnered to offer a comprehensive carbon reporting and management solution. Their wide-rangi...
Nov 07, 2022•42 min
Thomas VanMatre, VP of Global Business Development at Satellogic, a geospatial analytics company, joins the conversation to discuss the potential uses for satellite imagery and data for developing insights into our planet and ecosystems to end climate change. The company has launched 26 low-earth-orbiting satellites to date and will expand to more than 200 by 2025 in order to democratize access to high-resolution images and analytics. They developed microsatellites that are less than two feet wi...
Nov 04, 2022•25 min
Discover how our food production and even our yards and gardens can play a role in reducing CO2 levels. We're joined by Ben Cloud, CEO of Biodel AG Inc., a Maricopa, Arizona company that recently introduced Sequester, a soil treatment that restores the soil’s ability to capture and hold CO2 that also promotes improved plant growth. Sequester is available for farming applications and for home use. A $12.81 8 oz bottle of Sequester can be used to improve the carbon sequestion capability of up to 2...
Oct 31, 2022•33 min
Robert Pasin, chief wagon of Radio Flyer, discusses the benefits and process of becoming a B Corp. Radio Flyer makes, in addition to the wagons we know from our childhoods, tricycles, scooters, inflatables, adult ebikes and a suite of Tesla electric toy vehicles. It became the first global toy and ebike brand to become a certified B Corp., the emerging corporate form that recognizes business can have an environmental and social mission in addition to the goal of turning a profit. Achieving B Cor...
Oct 28, 2022•30 min
Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business' Responsible Business Coalition returns to the conversation to discuss how and why business should encourage the widespread adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. This low- and no-till, pesticide-free approach to farming can restore soil health, build new topsoil to replace what has been lost to run-off and wind, as well as provide food and raw materials with substantially lower environmental impacts...
Oct 24, 2022•43 min
Ben Cohen, founder and CEO of Quoll Intelligence, explains how homeowners can assess the climate-related risks for their home and community. Quoll is a service for homeowners “dedicated to helping homes and homeowners become more resilient.” It delivers a climate risk report for single-family homes that explains the likelihood of sea level rise, flooding, wildfire and other climate impacts. Quoll can help assess a home when shopping or to plan a maintenance program that keeps your home prepared ...
Oct 21, 2022•40 min
Mike Phillips, CEO of Sense, a developer of home energy monitoring and management devices, discusses the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on home energy and EV charging in the United States. When the $369-billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed in early September the stage was set for a race to reduce U.S. emissions by 40% compared to 2005 levels. Each of us can play a part, but it involves learning how to tap into incentives for EVs, home solar panels, home energy improvements, an...
Oct 17, 2022•35 min
Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of Re:Dish, joins the conversation to discuss making cafeteria, institutional and restaurant food service sustainable. Re:Dish provides reusable food service items, collecting, returning them to a dish washing facility each day, and delivering a fresh supply to its customers, which include corporate and school cafeterias, hospitals and . Re:Dish containers offers several #5 plastic (polypropylene) clamshell and round meal containers that are rented on a per-use basis to i...
Oct 14, 2022•39 min
Ewaste recycling falls woefully short of the levels necessary to reduce the need for mining and producing new raw materials that involve toxins that frequently reach the environment. We talked with John Shegerian, cofounder and CEO of ERI, a Fresno, Calif.-based ewaste recycler with 8 U.S. processing locations that serve every ZIP Code in the country and partnerships with recycling companies in 40 countries. John explains how ERI manages recycled electronics, the importance of choosing R2- and e...
Oct 10, 2022•41 min
The story of a sustainable world will unfold in many places and across many websites, social networks, and video channels. Jane Velez-Mitchell, a former Headline News/CNN reporter and anchor, launched UnChainedTV to provide a dedicated source of video storytelling about vegan living, the environment, and animal welfare. It offers free video programming through an app for iPhone and Android devices, as well as on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire Stick, and LG and Samsung smart TVs. The network covers s...
Oct 07, 2022•41 min
