ECO SPEAKS CLE

Send us Fan Mail Meet our fellow Cleveland podcaster, Maci Nelson . Maci is a landscape architect, the creator of The Land+Scape Nerd podcast , and a project manager for LAND Studio , a non-profit that connects communities through art and public spaces. In this episode, Maci shares what it's like to design for urban outdoor spaces and the importance of relying on residents' voices to dri...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff McNaught owns Edgewater Surf , a surf shop in Rocky River, where he sells a variety of new and used paddleboards, surfboards, and windsurfing gear. The shop also serves as an informal community hub for styrofoam™ recycling. Jeff started this program to provide a local recycling option for the bulky EPS (expanded polystyrene) found inside paddleboards and encasing appliances,...

Send us Fan Mail For this episode, I hit the trails with The Cleveland Hiking Club to discover what drives this all-volunteer-run organization with over 1,200 members. The answer? Cool people who are passionate about encouraging and promoting outdoor recreation and making it accessible to anyone who wants to join in. In my interview with the club's Community Engagement Coordinator, Kara Girvi...

Send us Fan Mail Holden Forest & Gardens is seeding Ohio's forested future through the Holden Seed Bank at the Holden Arboretum , which will soon celebrate its first anniversary. In this episode, we speak with Seed Bank Manager Kim Lessman about how this "restoration" seed bank works, how she became its manager, and how her work forms the core of new climate-fighting reforestati...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we share the recording from our recent May networking event at Great Lakes Brewing Company. This event featured a discussion about greenspace with three local leaders working on expanding greenspace in our urban core and increasing access and opportunities to experience nature through outdoor recreation, especially for our historically underserved communities. Our...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Sunny Simon , President of The Cleveland Vegan Society , joins us to talk about veganism and VegFest 2024 , coming to Cleveland's Huntington Convention Center on Saturday, June 22 . It's the largest Vegan festival in the Midwest, and it will be delicious, fun, and informative for vegans and non-vegans alike. The Cleveland Vegan Society created VegFest ov...

Send us Fan Mail Can you build a house with mushrooms? You can if you are Chris Maurer , an architect, a mycologist, and a visionary. Chris is the Principal Architect at Redhouse Studio , an architecture firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. Chris and his partners are working to revolutionize how we house ourselves, not with bricks and mortar but with bio-bricks, a carbon-sequestering fusion of fungi myc...

Send us Fan Mail Jim Ridge is the founder and executive director of Share the River , a non-profit that promotes Cleveland as a waterfront city and sharing everything that makes it a vibrant and engaging space for residents and visitors. In this episode, Jim talks about his upcoming Blazing Paddles Paddlefest   on June 22, where hundreds of recreational paddlers and racers will paddle the commerci...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we celebrate Earth Month and the power of local environmental action with the Cleveland Heights Green Team , its co-founder Catalina Wagers, and volunteer Suzanne Zilber . The  Cleveland Heights Green Team was founded in 2021 and is very active, with over 300 volunteers. They have a full calendar of events planned for Earth Month, and during the rest of the year,...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we welcome returning guests Patrick Kearns with Re:Source Cleveland (formerly Refugee Response) and Michael Bartunek with Ohio City Farm to update us on the exciting developments at Ohio City Farm and with its operator, Re:Source Cleveland. Rachel Ramos , who manages CSA sales for the farm, also joins us to tell us about the diverse array of fresh produce availabl...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we bring you the conversation from Eco Meet CLE, a Cleveland sustainability event on February 20 featuring local innovators reinventing northeast Ohio textile production. Rather than today's exploitive and resource-intensive system, we can grow a regional, circular system that fosters economic integrity, ecological stewardship, and connection to people and pl...

Send us Fan Mail Cleveland Metroparks has always been a preserver and protector of our valleys and the waters that run through them. In 2013, it opened the Watershed Stewardship Cente r in Parma's West Creek Reservation with a mission to enhance and protect our urban watersheds through scientific discovery, education, and sustainable actions. In this episode, we speak with the center's m...

Send us Fan Mail Northeast Ohio can be proud of its sewer district, not only for the skill with which it manages our wastewater and protects our water resources but also for the skill with which it connects with the public, especially its Twitter followers. How did the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District amass more than 60,000 die-hard Twitter followers here in Cleveland and across the globe? I...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Victoria Avi , owner of Venture Forward Strategies . Victoria has many rich stories and insights from her 17-year sustainability career and her personal life. Victoria immigrated to Cleveland from Azerbaijan when she was just 16 and navigated language, high school, and finally college, where she found her passions for graphic design and the environment. What does it take to w...

Send us Fan Mail On December 21, 2021, Greg and I launched the first episode of Eco Speaks CLE to elevate and connect the greater Cleveland environmental community by speaking with those doing inspiring and impactful work. Forty-seven episodes later, as we celebrate two years of Eco Speaks CLE, we are grateful to each guest and each listener. You have become our friends. We hope this first episode...

Send us Fan Mail Medwish International in Cleveland, Ohio, has been making a world of difference since 1993 by recovering, repurposing, and redistributing surplus medical supplies around the globe. This urgently needed humanitarian aid also helps the environment by keeping life-saving resources out of landfills. In this episode, we speak with Executive Director Britta Latz about how Medwish has be...

Send us Fan Mail We all love a good find at a vintage store and have done our fair share of donating or selling stuff we no longer want. These sustainable actions fuel a booming industry called the secondary market for consumer goods. But how much do we know about the consumer resale market? How can we make good decisions about where we donate, and how can we be savvy shoppers in the resale retail...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we bring you the conversation from Eco Meet CLE,  a sustainability event held this October at Great Lakes Brewing Company. The theme of the evening was local food. Over 100 people joined us for food, beer, and a conversation about our local food system with a panel of guests that helped us explore the meaning of the term food system , the various roles within that...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Eco Speaks CLE, we speak with New York Times bestselling author and climate journalist Jeff Goodell . Jeff has covered climate change for over two decades at Rolling Stone and is the author of seven books, including his latest book, T he Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death On A Scorched Planet . This is an engaging, thoughtful, and human book filled with st...

Send us Fan Mail What if there was a way to save thousands of innocent birds from lethal collisions with our urban glass structures each year? In this episode of EcoSpeak CLE, we head to Lake Erie Nature and Science Center to speak with wildlife rehabilitation specialist Tim Jasinski , one of the founders of Lights Out Cleveland . Tim shares the challenges migratory birds face in navigating the da...

Send us Fan Mail Whitnye Long Jones is a nature enthusiast, community engagement specialist, and environmental justice advocate. She channels these passions and skills into the non-profit she founded in  2017 called Organic Connects . Whitnye runs Organic Connects with her husband, Jefferson Jones, a lifelong outdoor educator, and outdoorsman. Together, they provide environmental education, outdoo...

Send us Fan Mail Emily Pek is a flower farmer and the owner of Frayed Knot Farm , a small flower farm in Newbury, Ohio, where she produces beautiful, diverse cut flowers and herbs that share stories, bring joy and support equitable and regenerative farming. In this episode, we visit Emily on her farm and discover her journey to becoming a flower farmer, the family roots and community behind her fa...

Send us Fan Mail Evergreen Recycling , based in Clyde, Ohio, is one of North America's largest recyclers of plastic PET bottles and its mission is to make single-use plastic a thing of the past. With four facilities across North America, Evergreen leads the industry in bottle-to-bottle recycling. In our conversation with  Michael Sandoval , Evergreen's corporate purchasing manager, we ta...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we explore the world of beekeeping with Denzil and Sheila St. Clair. Sheila and Denzil have been happily married and very busy for 52 years, keeping bees, raising children, operating their bee business , and founding the Greater Cleveland Beekeepers Association (GCBA). Greg and I caught up with them on a Wednesday evening at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds , where...

Send us Fan Mail Eddie Olschanski i s on a mission. Five days a week, year-round, Eddie can be seen fishing for trash in his kayak on the Cuyahoga River in the Flats. Outfitted with just a life jacket, a trash grabber, and garbage bags, Eddie and his volunteers have plucked over 50,000 lbs of trash from the shipping canal, the last place the trash can be removed before it drains into Lake Erie. Ed...