HAPPY PLANET

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday! I was tempted to call this week’s episode “Unhappy Planet” because in it we  grapple with what happens when your startup doesn’t go as planned.  When I learned that Courtney Boyd Rey shuttered her seaweed startup AKUA, I reached out to see if she would come on the podcast. Given that over 90% of startups fail, and even 75% of those backed by venture capital...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Happy Planet Podcast, host Abigail Carroll interviews Slater McLean, co-founder of Oliver Charles, a sustainable sweater company. Slater discusses the significant environmental impact of the fashion industry and how Oliver Charles is addressing these issues using natural materials like yak wool and seaweed-based fibers. The company employs an innovative 3D k...

Send us Fan Mail In this podcast episode, I welcome Damien Demoor, a French engineer and ocean innovator based in France, who introduces his company, Greenov, and its groundbreaking product, the Subsea Quieter.  Demoor discusses the significant threat of underwater noise pollution caused by maritime activities, detailing its detrimental effects on marine life, including mammals, fish, and ecosyste...

Send us Fan Mail Innovative Fish Feeds: Reducing Aquaculture's Environmental Footprint In this episode of the Happy Planet podcast, I speak to Alessandra Romano, the entrepreneur behind Ittinsect. Allessandro discusses his novel aquaculture feed supplements derived from insect proteins, which aim to accelerate fish growth with lower environmental impacts.  The conversation explores the ineffi...

Send us Fan Mail In this podcast episode, Abigail interviews Benjamin, founder of Azul Bio and participant in the Ocean Pitch Contest by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance.  The discussion focuses on Benjamin's startup, which aims to save coral reefs from extinction caused by ocean warming. Benjamin explains the importance of coral reefs for ocean life and human livelihoods and describes Azul Bio...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Happy Planet!  Our guest this week is William Calvert, co-Founder and CEO of the NYC based startup, Return to Vendor. William is a fashion designer and entrepreneur who has lived in Paris, and Italy and designed for the likes of Balenciaga before getting the fashion-tech bug about 10 years ago.  His first foray into the field led him to create fabric out of down for an...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  The weather has been so beautiful in Maine lately that I am going to bring you all here to my home state. Today we’re going to speak to Marianne Naess, a Norwegian native living in Maine who, with her husband, has co-founded Katahdin Salmon, a soon-to-be scaled salmon aquaculture farm that intends on bringing Norwegian quality salmon to the Northeast corri...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  Could eating farmed redfish be the answer to building coastal resilience in Florida? Founder Megan Sorby would like to think so.  Megan and her husband co-founded Pine Island Redfish. True to its name, they grow growing the much-loved but highly protected redfish for the commercial market on Pine Island, a Florida Island with an agricultural tradition. And...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  Pack your bags, we're headed to Kenya! This week we'll be speaking to Anga Mbeyiya , a South African seaweed entrepreneur whose company, Ole Blu, is transforming seaweed into biostimulants to help rural farmers adapt to climate change. While her company is still young, it's also already having a big impact both socially and economically. The...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  If you live on the coast, this is a podcast you might want to pay special attention to. Matt Campbell, President of NatrX , is joining us today to talk about his nature-based solutions for building coastal resilience.   Thinking you need to protect your community from rising sea levels? Rather than building a wall along the coastline, Matt thinks you might...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  This week's guest, Elizabeth (Liz) Muller is Co-Founder of Deep Isolation . While living in France, was impressed by France's nuclear power program, which provides nearly 70% of the country's power, with zero carbon emissions. The problem was, and it still is, the waste.   Today, over 490,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is located in above...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!   With all of the good work that oysters can do for the planet, filtering water, preventing erosion, reducing acidification, mitigating storm surge and more, entrepreneur George Birch wanted to see if an oyster living in the water doing all of those good deeds could be more valuable in terms of dollars or euros than an oyster on your plate.   George's...

Send us Fan Mail We are kicking off the season with the unstoppable Brian Skerry .  Brian is a world renown photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine wildlife and underwater environments. He has won the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition no less than ELEVEN TIMES. He is a National Geographic Society Storytelling Fellow and author of a dozen books. Brian’s 2021...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday !  Before I introduce our guest today I want to thank you for your support over the past year. Because, yes, today’s podcast concludes our first year of programming!  To celebrate we venture into Africa. We will be speaking with Klaartje (Klara) Scarde the Co-Founder of Mwani Zanzibar, a seaweed based cosmetics company based in Zanzibar, Tanzania. I would ha...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday!  This week we are joined by Vincent Doumeizel , a French native from Burgundy who is Director of the Food Program for Lloyd's Register Foundation as well as an expert on everything seaweed. Vincent has spearheaded the Global Seaweed Coalition , which "is a global partnership established to support the safety and sustainability of the seaweed indus...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday !  We are headed to Iceland today to meet Thor Sigfusson the Founder of Iceland Ocean Cluster, an innovation hub he founded in 2011 to focus on marine startups. Since then Ocean Clusters have been popping up around the world, including the New England Ocean Cluster right here in Portland, Maine.  It’s a real delight to have Thor on the show as he has been at...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday ! We've talked quite a bit about renewable energy on this podcast and we've also looked at old technologies that are coming back, often with a modern twist. Our guest today is starting a business that checks both of those boxes. Miles Keeney-Ritchie, founder of Aloft, aims to reduce ocean transportation carbon emissions by installing their automate...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we are hopping over the Atlantic to speak with Louise Skajem and Aura Murillo, two young, UK-based women designers who are innovating in a marine area I never imagined I would discuss on this show: funerary services. These young women are full of life and will challenge everything you have ever come to believe about funeral directors. Their company, the aptly named Resting...

Send us Fan Mail You may recognize today’s guest from episode 5. We’re here with Bernard Hidier, the French expat living in Maine who co-founded Finsulate the non-toxic antifouling solution that looks like velvet and mimics a sea urchin.  Bernard is back with us because somehow he has managed to co-found and co-manage more than one company at the same time. “Kids do not try this at home!”  If you...

Send us Fan Mail We are going to kick off the fall season with a chat with Dan Watson, the UK-based founder and CEO of a fisheries startup called SafetyNet. I first met Dan through Harry Wright’s accelerator Bright Tide, where I am an advisor. Then I wound up on his mentor team for another accelerator run by Boston-based Sea Ahead. I can’t wait to see where our paths next cross! One of Dan’s most...

Send us Fan Mail Fashion and smelly seaweed may seem like an odd pair but one company in North Carolina is spinning them together - quite literally! Our guest is Laura Hayes and she is the Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager at Keel Labs.  Keel Labs makes a natural silky yarn that is composed of about 70% kelp! While they are not the first to try to make fashion fibers out of seaweed, when it co...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday ! We are travelling to South America this week ! Our guest, Daniela Allerbon, is CEO of Aquit, a company specializing in natural proteins that can be used to replace antibiotics in fish farming. Aquit was founded by researchers in Chile and Daniela recently joined the team as CEO from Buenos Aires, Argentina. We learn a lot about antibiotics and fish farming...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday !  Our guest today is Jeremy McKane, Founder of Ocean Currency Network whose mission is to create an ocean map with real-time ocean data. The goal is to map 30% of the ocean by 2030. Sound ambitious? It is. But as Jeremy say in the podcast, if we can’t see the problems, we can’t fix them. Getting real time data will give us the information we need to find so...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are going to dig into seafood with our guest Jennifer Bushman. She’s going to help us better understand how the bounty of the ocean fits into our diets as well as our national food security plan and a healthier planet.  Jennifer Bushman is a sustainable seafood expert, communicator, and strategist who has been championing ethical aquaculture for more than two decades. She...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast marks our 30th episode which seems like something to celebrate! So thank you for tuning in! If you like what we’re doing here, please spread the word.  We have traveled the world together on this podcast, but today’s guest is located right here where I am, in the great state of Maine! Stuart Davies joins us today to speak about ORPC or the Ocean Renewable Power Compan...