Business for Good Podcast

How often do you use Google's services? If you're like me, it's many times per hour. So you may think you know all about Google.com. But how much do you know about Google.org ? In short, Google.org is the company's foundation that gives away $200M a year in grants both to social enterprise startups and to nonprofit organizations seeking to use technology to advance their missions. For all you star...

You've likely noticed that there's been an explosion of investment into the animal-free food space, with producers of alt-meat, milk, and eggs advancing weekly. But why isn't there anything comparable happening in the animal-free materials space? Sure, we've had plastic-based leather alternatives (aka pleather) for a long time, but in terms of products not derived from animals or fossil fuels, wha...

It's often that we hear about some really cool and promising new technology that's allegedly going to change the game, but only once that tech is scaled and commercialized. In this episode, however, we're featuring a start-up that not only has a very cool technology, it's already commercialized it with hundreds of customers, including some very big names in the fashion world.  Mélanie Broyé-Engelk...

How often have you wished that more billionaires used their money to do good in the world? Well, you're in luck, because in this episode we talk with British billionaire Jim Mellon. In recent years Jim's been most well-known for his work on human longevity research, which we discuss. But he's also become fixated on ending the factory farming of animals. As a result, Jim has learned an immensity ab...

Our oceans are in dire trouble, and a big part of the reason is because we're killing so many aquatic animals for food. But if you want hope, look no further than Monica Talbert, whose story is sure to inspire. Monica was born into the seafood industry, and for years has been running her family business, Van Cleve's Seafood, from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. But as you'll hear in this conversati...

Landfills are, well, filling up. We're running out of places to put our trash, and the trash we've landfilled won't decompose for centuries.  But, what if we could take a lot of trash and seed it with fungal cultures that would eat it and render it no longer toxic within just a few weeks rather than having to wait centuries? That's exactly what Mycocycle is planning to do, and we've got their CEO,...

Typically on this podcast, we showcase entrepreneurs and business titans alike who are using the power of commerce to try to solve serious social problems. Occasionally we've had on nonprofit leaders, and in this episode, we've again got a very special guest who also is not a grinding entrepreneur. But this guest is someone who's inspired many mission-oriented entrepreneurs, myself included, along...

Did you know that two of every five births in America are unplanned?  That's not to suggest that an unplanned baby is going to be an unloved baby, of course, but family planning does tend to offer advantages, especially for families with fewer means, since high birth rates make it particularly difficult for children to escape a vicious cycle of poverty. (See more from the charity Having Kids .) Sm...

Founded in 2017, New New Age Meats is practically old school when it comes to cultivated meat companies.  In mid-2018, the nascent startup debuted its first sausage made with cells from a living pig who the company biopsied at a nearby farm. Rather than being made entirely of animal cells, that historic sausage was part animal and part plant, and that's the point, according to co-founder and CEO B...

If you've ever heard of Bolt Threads , you may know them as one of the OGs in the space of growing animal products without animals. After all, since they were founded way back in 2009 they've been creating spider silk via synthetic biology and fermentation. But the company's headlines these days typically don't relate to spider silk at all, even though it's still an important part of the company....

Of all the major meat companies, none has embraced plant protein in the way Canada's largest meat company, Maple Leaf Foods , has. Not only has the company acquired two well-known plant protein brands— Field Roast and Lightlife —but it's dramatically expanded those brands' reach, enabling more meat consumers to enjoy these products.  In fact, Maple Leaf has put nearly a billion dollars so far into...

You've heard the old adage: Humans plan, and God laughs. That truism could nicely describe Irina Gerry's life, which has been pretty remarkable so far. She started out growing up in communist Russia, but with fate helping to defy odds, Irina ended up coming to the US and attending Harvard Business School. She eventually worked at one of the biggest symbols of capitalism on the planet: Procter & Ga...

If you're a regular listener of the show, you likely already know that reducing humanity's reliance on animals for food is one of the most pressing challenges the world faces at this moment. But meat demand just keeps rising and we're raising more animals for food today than ever before. One thing keeping meat alternatives merely as alternatives is that plant-based meat is still sold at multiples...

We may hear a lot about solar power and renewable energy, but sadly, our civilization is still voraciously addicted to fossil fuels. Even in a technologically advanced country like America, nearly all — about 90 percent — of the energy we use still comes from non-renewable sources. This not only causes serious environmental damage to extract from the earth, but also is a leading cause of climate c...

Most start-ups fail. Many that don't fail still don't have spectacular results. Chris Bryson, however, defied the odds by founding and running a company that was so successful Instacart acquired it for a reported $65 million . Rather than retiring to a tropical beach with regular daiquiri service, Chris charted a different course for his new life. Instead of leisurely enjoying the financial fruit...

Meat from a cow who's eaten an entirely grass-based diet is typically called "grass-fed meat." So when you're making plant-based meat with wood as your feedstock, is it called "wood-fed meat"?  No matter what you call it, Arbiom has raised about $30 million to produce it. Arbiom CEO Marc Chevrel is taking wood and subjecting it to a yeast-based fermentation that allows him to, within just one week...

This is of course a historic election for many reasons, one of them being that there's very high concern about how the votes will be counted. We're just days away from the final day to vote and we've got news stories about the Russians and Iranians gaining access to certain voter records in the US — it's crazy! One need look no further than 20 years ago when disputes over how to count the ballots...

This is a special episode, because the guest holds many interesting titles for our purposes: Toni Okamoto is the founder of Plant Based on a Budget , a successful author, the creator and former co-host of this podcast, and...she happens also to be my wife. And Toni has a new book coming out! This is her third cookbook, entitled The Friendly Vegan Cookbook , which is coauthored with Toni's business...

When this podcast was first launched in 2018, the very first guest was Whole Foods Market CEO and co-founder John Mackey. In that episode , we talked about his book Conscious Capitalism. Well, John has a new book out now, Conscious Leadership, and to commemorate our 50th episode, he rejoins the podcast for a second conversation and rest assured, John does not disappoint. In this episode we cover a...

Think about how many plants there are: hundreds of thousands of different species. Yet when you look at plant-based meats, nearly all are made of one or more of just three of those plant species: soy, wheat, and pea. And there's good reason for it: those plants are relatively cheap and plentiful, they taste good, and they function quite well as alt-meats under certain conditions that have been stu...

Think about how much metal you use in your life. Your phone. Your canned drinks. Your car. Well, for every ounce of metal in our lives, there are several ounces of often-toxic sludge left behind from the extraction process at the mine. In other words, in a car there might be a ton of aluminum, and to get that aluminum for that one car, there's enough red mud--the industry term for the waste produc...

Normally on Business for Good, we focus on companies using innovative commerce to solve serious social problems. In this episode though, we're focusing on a less traditional type of business: the life of a solo-preneuer. That's to say, the life of a business person who isn't trying to build a team and grow into a huge company, but rather someone who goes it alone and makes a business work essentia...

Maybe you own some things from Goodwill or at least have donated unwanted items to them. But when you think of Goodwill, what comes to your mind?  Maybe you think it's just a chain of thrift stores selling used goods. Turns out, not true. Goodwill is actually a nonprofit organization focused on helping the homeless and others experiencing hard times. And it just turns out that the charity happens...

Oftentimes when Westerners think of India, we tend to think of it as a land of vegetarians. It's true that India has given the world some pretty awesome vegetarian food, and it's also true that per person meat consumption is low in India relative to America. But the hard truth remains: the majority of Indians are not vegetarian and their per capita meat consumption has been skyrocketing in recent...

There are few people with more credible voices on police reform than Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.  As you'll hear in the interview, Adams talks about how his experience of being beaten by the police while in custody as a black teenager led to him become a police officer himself for two decades, and then ultimately to a life in politics.  After serving in the police force, Adams was elect...