Sustainability In Your Ear

Christian Schiller, cofounder of cirplus, talks about the company's digital marketplace for circular plastics. Think of it as Match.com or Tinder for European plastics recyclers, including companies that collect post-consumer materials and those that sell processed recycled plastic for use in new products. Cirplus connects sellers with buyers and collects fees for speeding the transaction along. S...

Author Eve Darian-Smith discusses her new book, Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis, which describes and analyzes the environmental policies of authoritarian governments, including the Trump and Bolsanaro administrations in the U.S. and Brazil, as well as Australia’s recently deposed Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. She is chair of the Department of Global and International...

Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business Responsible Business Coalition, discusses the school's recommendations for sustainability and transparency in the fashion industry. He explains findings in Accenture's recently released a report, Scaling ESG Solutions in Fashion, which identified seven areas of focus required for sustainable changes to the fashi...

Nick Zamanov, business director at San Jose-based Cyber Switching, a maker of electric vehicle charging technology, joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss choosing the right EV and how to grow electric vehicle charging capacity. The company launched in 1994 and has developed charging solutions for offices, local governments, apartment buildings, universities and other charger installations. Nick also re...

Douglas Heske, founder and CEO of Newday Impact Investing explains how to invest for positive environmental outcomes during a bear market. He recommends treating deflated stock prices as an opportunity to add sustainable companies to a portfolio, and shares details about his firm's new Ocean Health ETF (NYSE: AHOY), which focuses on companies that prevent ocean plastic pollution, encourage sustain...

Meet Alicia Marseille and Katelyn Armbruster, who lead the Sustainable Earth small business sustainability education program for Arizona State University's Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Service. They are working to turn the economy toward sustainable practices with free courses for the nation’s 32.5 million small businesses. These firms, which account for 99.9 percent of the companies in th...

James Crooks, Ph. D., an environmental epidemiologist with National Jewish Health’s Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics in Denver explains his research on  the impact of wildfire smoke on the ozone concentrations at ground level in Colorado. Elevated ozone levels contribute to rising incidence of asthma and diabetes, among other conditions. Dr. Crooks found that while ozone increased only...

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 focuse...

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 recycli...

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 pandem...

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 scala...

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...

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...

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 clim...

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 syst...

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 r...

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 tire...

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.” Fran...

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...

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 Pari...

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 s...

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 landfi...

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 virtu...

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 re...

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 O...