HAPPY PLANET

Send us Fan Mail Happy Planet Wednesday !  Many of you, especially those who love the Caribbean, are aware of what is now called the sargassum belt, a 5,000 mile long belt of floating sargassum seaweed mass that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico all of the way to Africa, hitting the South East coast of the United States along the way. In normal doses, sargassum is a healthy macro algae that provid...

Send us Fan Mail The fashion industry is at odds with the survival of our planet.  Ten percent of total global carbon emissions derive from the fashion industry, as much as the whole European Union. The industry is polluting our rivers, streams, and oceans. Meanwhile some 80% of our discarded textiles are either incinerated or wind up in trash heaps each year, usually in places like Ghana which ar...

Send us Fan Mail You may recall that in Episode 12 we spoke about hydrogen fuel cell stacks. It was a very popular episode so I wanted to dig into the theme a bit more. As such, today we’re going to dig into green hydrogen itself. Just a reminder that GREEN hydrogen is hydrogen derived from a renewable-energy powered electrolysis process that splits water molecules, H20, into their components H2,...

Send us Fan Mail As I think you know by now, I believe technology can solve most things - but sometimes the right tech just can’t come fast enough, and in the meantime, the most innovative tool at our disposal may be good old fashioned dialogue.  Such is the case in Maine where a dwindling population of the large and lumbering North Atlantic Right Whale has pitted lobster fishers and environmental...

Send us Fan Mail Our guest today is Benjamin Sorkin, Founder of Flux Marine, a Rhode Island-based company innovating electric outboard motors. I was invited to visit Ben’s shop back in January following a conference organized by the Blue Venture Forum. I was impressed by what I saw.  Ben and his team have taken electric propulsion technology a long way from when I first looked for an electric outb...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re going to dive into the world of marine research.  Our guest is Deborah Bronk, President and CEO of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a Maine-based marine research institute specializing in ocean microbes like algae, plankton, viruses, and bacteria. Bigelow Laboratory is a relatively small institute but it's growing fast and having a global impact. Under Debor...

Send us Fan Mail A number of listeners have reached out with questions about how to get involved in angel investing.  So in this episode I speak to one of the most experienced and articulate angel investors I know.  Our guest is Adam de Sola Pool, a Venture Capitalist by trade who now has over $1M in angel investments of his own. I met Adam through a blue technology angel investment group in Bosto...

Send us Fan Mail When you think about GOOGLE, ocean innovation may be the last thing that comes to mind. But Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy have been great friends to the ocean and climate, pouring millions into the sector through their Schmidt Family Foundation.  Our guest today is Mark Schrope. He is the Director of Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, an offshoot of the Schmid...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s podcast touches upon two themes that are close to my heart: my college town of New York City and oysters! Our guest today is Murray Fisher. He is the man behind two fairly recent, but already iconic, NYC institutions. In 2002, Murray founded the New York Harbor School, a public high school revolving around New York City’s river. Then in 2010, he co-founded the Billion...

Send us Fan Mail This week we’re going to address the planet’s plastic problem. These petroleum-based materials only became mass produced after WW2 but as we heard from our very first guest Bill Curtsinger, as early as the 60s micro-plastics were already being identified as a concern in the remote waters of Antartica. It was about that time that the 1967 movie, The Graduate came out in which a wel...

Send us Fan Mail I am really excited to introduce you all to Steven Fox, a founding Partner of Propeller VC, a new early stage venture fund that invests in and builds ocean-climate companies that use science and technology to address the climate crisis. Propeller is the brainchild of Hubspot Founder Brian Halligan and it was designed to be the venture partner for Woods Hole Oceanographic Instituti...

Send us Fan Mail There are a few things that separate winning startups from those that crash. Some of them are pretty obvious: Good leadership. A Good Market Fit. Sufficient Cash on hand to grow. But you also need a good story. And that’s not always easy for entrepreneurs to formulate, especially in an increasingly crowded field like climate or blue innovation where the big picture corporate missi...

Send us Fan Mail This week we meet Edwina Tanner and Jill Storey of Whale X, an Australian company competing for Elon Musk’s X Prize, a multi-year competition resulting in the awarding of $100M to the best carbon removal project.  Whale X’s solution? Fertilize the ocean with synthetic whale poop. Before you write that off as silly, know that they are currently in 60th place out of 1,000 applicants...

Send us Fan Mail This week we are going to speak with Rob Cobbold, COO of Beach Collective, a company that is building a digital platform that merges some of the most abstract and immaterial aspects of the web, like Cryptos and NFTs with some of the most tangible and physical activities on the planet, like community building, ocean conservation, and trash pickup. Beach Collective is disrupting wha...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s guest, Christophe Maier, Founder and CEO of Lagosta . Christophe was raised in Switzerland, on lake Geneva, but once he discovered the Mediterranean he couldn’t get enough of salty waterbodies!  Fast forward to adulthood and Christophe raises spiny lobsters , not for the European luxury food market as he originally expected, but for the pharma market which is turning o...

Send us Fan Mail We’ve spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs from around the world in the past few months and there is one thing they all have in common - a corporation. The precise structures of corporations will vary from company to company and country to country but a relatively new corporate certification is working its way around the planet and creating a global standard for how businesses should...

Send us Fan Mail Watch out NEMO there’s a new clownfish in town and he’s a lot smarter than you are! Today we are talking to Liane Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Aquaai (Uh-qu-why)- which merges the words aqua and the term AI together.  Liane has an incredible bio including stints in war reporting and television producing. And she knows a good thing when she sees it. She put Alan Bordain on TV. T...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s guest, Tore Enger, Founder and CEO of the group TECO 2030, is pioneering the fuel cell stacks designed for green hydrogen in trucking and shipping, industries traditionally reliant on diesel fuel. After speaking with Tore, my worldview on renewables started to broaden. I’d love to know what you think after you listen to the episode. Please feel free to email me with yo...

Send us Fan Mail This week I am delighted to introduce you to the entrepreneur who inspired this whole podcast , Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda, Founder and CEO of Urchinomics. I met Brian through our last interviewee, Harry Wright. Brian was participating in one of Harry’s accelerator programs in the UK. I knew Brian was on to something when I met him. And apparently so have a lot of other people since th...

Send us Fan Mail Today we cross the pond and speak with Harry Wright, Founder of Bright Tide, a UK-based consultancy helping businesses achieve their milestones and sustainability goals through hackathons, accelerator programs, and advisement.  Harry is particularly interested in fostering the nascent blue carbon market where carbon sequestration can be much more impactful, but where it’s notoriou...

Send us Fan Mail This week we meet Nanette Medved-Po, a Philippine entrepreneur who began her career as an actress and became a regional celebrity thanks to her role as the local version of Wonder Woman. Since then she has employed her education, smarts, and star power to help others and the planet. Nanette is a board member of the WFF Asia and was named one of Forbes’ Heroes of Philanthropy. Most...

Send us Fan Mail As promised, Happy Planet is kicking off 2023 with an interview with Patrick Breeding, the young founder who says he’s building Maine’s next “unicorn.” And he’s doing it with a lobster based skincare product that is flying off the shelves.  His company is Marin Skincare, a Maine-based company founded by couple Patrick and his girlfriend Amber Boutiette who met at the University of...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Chip Terry, Founder and CEO of BlueTrace, a Maine based software company aiming to digitize the seafood industry where the vast majority of tagging, tracing and reporting is still done with pen and paper.  Smart and funny, Chip was a lot of fun to interview. But his story also resonates with many entrepreneurs because the problem he is solving now is not the one he set out to...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Lisa Scali of Ocean’s Balance, a seaweed-based food startup specializing in staple pantry items. This is a particularly fun episode for me because Lisa and I met in graduate school at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) many years ago. Since then our paths have crossed again and again with us both ending up in Maine aquaculture!  And to add...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s episode of Happy Planet we meet Bernard Hidier, Co-Founder of Finsulate.  The serial impact-entrepreneur shares his story of how the sea urchin inspired his company’s totally unique approach to marine anti-fouling.  Bernard is a French-born entrepreneur living in the US. He’s a brilliant, energetic serial entrepreneur who is as philosophical in his approach to busin...