Flanigan's Eco-Logic

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...

Dr. Jon Creyts is the CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and joins Ted from RMI's Innovation Center in Basalt, Colorado... high in the Rocky Mountains. The Center "sails on the sun" Jon explains, a net positive building that produces more energy than it consumes... demonstrating off-the-shelf, cost-effective technologies. He calls is an emblem of what we can do... even in the cold of high mount...

Tom Szaky's journey is fascinating, one of extreme innovation. His firm, TerraCycle, recycles ~400 different products and materials. Ted asks right off the bat, "Do you really recycle soiled diapers, cigarette butts, shoes, juice pouches, and chewing gum?" Tom quickly makes clear that everything can be recycled... at a cost. He has clearly used his ingenuity to develop revenue streams, for instanc...

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) produces less than 1% of all food in America, and consumes more energy than all open-field agriculture in the country. According to Ted's guest Dr. Evan Mills, CEA could increase and consume some 7% of national energy use... more than data centers, all enclosed malls, air travel, cement making, or chemical production. These findings are the highlight's of E...

Chance Claxton is a serial entrepreneur, a brand builder. Her most recent works involves  axial flux motors, known as pancake motors. They are lighter weight, lower cost, and highly efficient electric motors. Her company, Orbis Elecric, has been working with the VW Group and other automotive OEMs to put these motors inside wheels. They can be positioned in two rear wheels or in all four wheels for...

Having completed "The Impossible House" project, Robert Fortunato changed his career and switched from the corporate world of mergers and acquisitions to helping others tap into the green movement. He is now a green building advocate, an experienced practitioner, consultant, and educator.  This episode is a follow-on interview. Episode #230 documented his inspiring green home construction project....

Georges Dyer is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Intentional Endowments Network (IEN), a non-profit, peer-learning network that helps endowed institutions make their endowments socially responsible. Of the 3,500 - 4,000 colleges and universities in America, some 2,000 have endowments that are valued at ~$900 billion in aggregate. These academic institutions -- as well as asset manageme...

Dr. Jason Huang is the co-founder and CEO of TS Conductors, a firm that manufacturers advanced conductors for electric utilities. The TS conductors, or transmission lines, carry up to three times as much power as conventional transmission lines (wires). They also cut power line losses by up to one half, often at a negative marginal cost... meaning they cost less than conventional lines and boost c...

Joyce Coffee heads up Climate Resilience Consulting, advising cities and states and others on resilience to climate change. She explains to Ted that she learned early on in Chicago, that the impacts of climate change can be unpredictable and fierce. After 750 souls there lost their lives there in a heat wave, mostly black and brown citizens, she knew that she was going to focus on adaptation, and...

Henk van Alphen was born and raised in Holland. After serving in the army, he sought adventure and travelled to Canada where he and his girlfriend took a float plane into the wilderness, built a cabin, hunted and fished, and lived off the land for a year. It took them seven days to walk back into civilization. Henk then went to college in Canada and began to work part time for a mining operation....

Ted Flanigan first met Gene Rodrigues in 1998. Ted was Director of Efficiency Solutions at LADWP; Gene the Director of Energy Efficiency at Southern California Edison. For years, Gene was the voice and the face of energy efficiency, his sincere and happy demeanor on local television in the evenings. Ted and Gene begin with a reflection that Ted recounted of Gene's mother making sure that Gene knew...

​Rebecca Tickell is an actor, singer, writer, producer, and environmental activist. Born in Ohio in a farming community, her roots are deep in agriculture. After moving to Vermont with her mother, at nine years old she became a movie star, playing a leading role in the Christmas-classic Prancer. She was instantly famous, appearing on the Today show and the Tonight show, among others. From that ear...

Clean Power Alliance is in its eighth year serving cities and unincorporated areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, providing power to over one million electric meters in 35 cities and county areas with a generating capacity of 3,400 MW. This episode of Flanigan's Eco-Logic features Ted Bardacke who has been its CEO throughout this tenure... creating the nation's largest community choice aggre...

Rinaldo Brutoco has been at the helm of the World Business Academy for over 38 years. He founded it to focus on the role that businesses should play in solving humanity's greatest challenges. The Academy promotes the responsibility of business in relation to the moral, environmental, and social concerns of the day. To spur change, and where markets are not acting fast enough, Brutoco and his non-p...

Robert Fortunato and his wife needed to expand their home in Hermosa Beach, California to welcome a child and incorporate two home offices, and they wanted it to be healthy and sustainable. After traveling the world, Robert wanted to incorporate best practices.. like the clever and complete use of materials in island countries demonstrated with coconuts in Sri Lanka, to passive solar design akin t...

Bob Freling has been the Executive Director of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) since 1997. Its mission is to design, fund, and implement solar energy solutions to benefit those in poor communities without access to the electricity grid, helping others to overcome energy poverty. SELF provides energy access in the developing world and has an impressive track record of providing more than 750 s...