Flanigan's Eco-Logic

Rei Vardi is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eon, a car rental company that is "building a mobility platform."  Rei explains the genesis of his business and what can now be seen as an exciting, disruptive business model: He was a college student in Boston. When his father planned to turn in the family Tesla, Rei was determined to keep it and pledged to make the payments. To do so, he re...

Sam Teicher is the Co-Founder and Chief Reef Official for Coral Vita, a company he and a graduate school colleague formed in 2015 given their great concerns with coral reef decline. Sam makes clear that fully half of all coral reefs have been killed, and 90% are expected to perish by 2050 without concerted global interventions. Sam and his colleague, Gator Halpern, decided to take action and to bu...

Hugh Broadhurst is the Chief Operating Officer for Aclara Resources, a company focused on sustainable mining of rare earth minerals, followed by the separation of ionic clays laced with rare earth minerals, and selling these to a host of users, notably electric vehicle makers and others in need of high intensity magnets. Applications for the 17 rare earth elements include electric vehicles, wind t...

Matt Harper is the President of Invinity Energy Systems, the maker of vanadium-flow batteries. Matt was on the podcast in 2022 and now provides an update. A strong alternative to lithium-ion batteries, the benefits of flow batteries produced by Invinity are numerous: "Unlimited cycling" (30-year lifetimes with 20,000+ cycles); they can discharge 8 - 10 hours every day; they have zero fire risk; an...

Chéri Smith heads up the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy. She'd been on the podcast in 2022 explaining the Alliance's operation then. She and Ted discuss the change in presidential administrations and its affect on tribes. While the Alliance is 100% supported by philanthropies, purposefully exempt from the volatility of changing administrations, the tribes that the Alliance supports were heavily...

Ben Lochtenberg came to solar for good reason: He sees solar as an elegant energy solution, one that will keep on giving for years. His mission as the Founder and Managing Director of Xero Solar is to tap solar as a "perpetual" energy source and to promote a transition to a more resilient world. Xero is working to create a brighter future for all, through residential solar services as well as prog...

According to David Kilzer, the fusion of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics is the biggest leap for mankind since fire! David has seen dramatic evolution in automation in his 50-year career... influenced by the rise of personal computers, the internet, smart phones, and now AI. He believes that AI-power humanoid robots are a huge game changer, and one that will increase the quality of life...

Ebenezar Wikina lives in Rivers State, Nigeria. His father's love of books and magazines coupled with his early career in journalism are the roots of his thirst for learning and his dedication to reform government policies. His passion is taking national, long-term goals and bringing them to success in local governments... the six Nigerian states and their subregions. This, he believes, is where c...

Ben Airth is the Policy Director for Freedom Forever, the largest residential solar company in the country. Freedom Forever installs solar systems in 30 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. For Freedom Forever's management, Ben tracks state regulations, state legislation, and federal policies to guide program development and sales. The conversation begins with a discussion of the...

Dr. Bonnie Nixon is the Sustainability Director for the Long Beach Container Terminal (LBCT), one of the world's busiest and greenest ports. The terminal handles 3.5 million, 20-foot containers annually. Its 4,200 foot long wharf can unload three of the largest container ships in the world at once. Air quality is an issue that drives Bonnie. She grew up in an industrial community in Northern New J...

After growing up in England and Egypt, and a 25-year stint in Australia, Nigel Mason moved to Bali, Indonesia. There he met his wife, they ran a restaurant and a rafting company, and became highly concerned about the plight and extinction of Sumatran Elephants. Visiting Sumatra, seeing the gross attack on its forests, the dire consequences of deforestation for palm oil that displaced elephants, or...

Richard Savoie is the CoFounder and CEO of Adiona Tech, a high-tech logistics company that helps suppliers of both B2B and B2C -- business and consumer services -- optimize the efficiency of their delivery fleets. Richard's passion for and contribution to sustainability is pronounced. Since 2021, his firm has enabled delivery fleet operators to save millions of miles of travel, hundreds of thousan...

Millennial Potash has a big mission... to feed the world's growing population.  Global population growth is expected to rise from 7+ billion currently to some 12 billion by 2050. Millennial Potash is in the fertilizer business. Potash is a form of potassium - potassium chloride. It is considered the king of fertilizers. It strengthens crop roots, enhances water retention, replenishes the soil, and...

Sammy Roth is a diligent investigator and journalist who has established himself as one of California's leading climate columnists. He explains that he has used the power of the media for his entire career, since elementary school. From an early age he recognized the big voice that one could have as a journalist reaching the masses. He began to focus on the environment and sustainability when he w...

Bill McKibben is an author and activist who Ted met in 1990 after the release of Bill's New York Times best seller, The End of Nature. In that book, he raised awareness about the reality and perils of global warming, now known as climate change. Since then, Bill has written 20 books and has earned over 20 honorary doctorates from colleagues and universities. He also is a recipient of the Right Liv...

Alix Lebec is the Founder and CEO of LEBEC. She grew up in Paris, then her family moved to South Korea and China. She was educated in Paris and in London, and now lives in Miami. Ted notes at the onset, "You are truly a global citizen." She and her colleagues are working on global solutions. Her specialty is innovative finance for sustainable development. LEBEC's mission is to democratize access t...

250. A big number. A lot of podcast episodes! Flanigan's Eco-Logic hit this major milestone in December. Sierra Flanigan and Skye Flanigan, Ted's daughters host this milestone edition. They draw out the good, the breadth of topics and featured guests... and even some of the biggest blunders! "So what does this milestone mean to you Dad?" Ted thanks his daughters for urging him to shift from publis...

Andrew Arentowicz is the Co-Founder and CEO of 50:50 Foods, a firm devoted to making healthier burgers. Drew explains that his company's burgers are made up of 50% beef and 50% vegetables. Concerned about the ravages of Amazon rainforest slash and burn practices -- to raise cattle for beef -- Drew and his colleague went to work in their own kitchens to make burgers that taste just as good as their...

Heather White is the founder and director of the non-profit OneGreenThing. She and her colleagues are focused on helping people of all ages overcome eco-anxiety, and more specifically climate anxiety. Rather than being paralyzed by the enormity of it all and the gloom and doom of myriad threats to our natural world, she has developed a philosophy of empowerment. For those interested, she provides...

Tom Chi is an inventor, entrepreneur, and investor with a deep knowledge of astrophysics. He was a founder and executive at GoogleX working with autonomous driving and AI when he first became alarmed by climate change. A coral reef near his Hawaii home died in less than eight weeks. Mass bleaching and reef collapse took away the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, every color of the rainbow dim...

Andrew Rothman, the Wildlife Campaigns Director at Environment America (EA), had good and timely news: He is pleased to report that just this morning, the U.S. Congress approved an extension to the pilot program that has funded 35 wildlife crossings projects in America. The six-year extension will bring $1.2 million through the Department of Transportation to local planning efforts and infrastruct...

Amanda Begley is the Associate Director for Watershed Health at TreePeople, one of LA's largest and most influential non-profits. TreePeople is now 52 years old, originally founded by Andy Lipkis to plant trees to absorb pollution and clean the air. Amanda explains that her nature-based work with watershed health is a reflection of Andy's message of creating functioning community forests to heal t...

Kari Hammerschlag has spent the past 30 years promoting healthy food. She's been advocating for healthy farming practices and working with schools and institutions to serve healthy food. As the Deputy Director for Food and Agricultural Policy at Friends of the Earth (FOE), she is passionate and clear: For years, our federal government has bowed to the wishes of agribusinesses and the agrochemical...

Jigar Shah is the first person to be on Flanigan's Eco-Logic three times. Ted digs right into his current work at Multiplier, his new firm focused on advising clean energy startups to navigate financing and operational challenges. Jigar talks about "exits" and helping entrepreneurs determine the best time and way to sell their companies so that their innovations can scale. The clean tech sector ha...

Ralph Bianculli explains that it all began in the late 1990s. He was a paper and plastics industry executive and wanted to change the trajectory of wastes. He recounts about that era... marked by incessant foam coffee cups and all manner of single-use disposables. Now he manufacturers and sells 370+ products... all of which are made from natural, organic materials, and all of which are easily comp...