Mindful Businesses

When Tharun Kumar saw the lake where his housing complex empties their sewage burn for 14 hours non-stop, he decided to do something about it. He started asking around and realized that the overburdened municipalities had transferred the sewage treatment responsibilities to the home owners. We chat with Tharun Kumar, founder and CEO of EcoSTP Technologies - an IT professional who wanted to be the...

Every year, 15 Million trees are cut down to produce paper, build homes, and make furniture. From this, millions of tons of wood waste are generated annually. A portion of this waste is recovered and sold to downstream markets to make particle board or wood pellets for energy. The remaining sawdust is either burned - contributing to air pollution - or sent to landfill. Though biodegradable, sawdus...

When we initially recorded this episode in June of 2021, our host Vidhya Iyer and Jennifer Zeitler - Founder and CEO of  Let’s Goat  Buffalo, really connected and promised to visit each other. But little did either one of them know that in a year their paths would cross again - when Vidhya and her family relocate to Buffalo, NY. The two met for the first time this summer, but bonded like old frien...

As a corporate leader what if you were told you could increase employee retention by over 30% by using behavioral and attitudinal nudges to bring improvement in both their commitment to ESG and their own company ecosystem, while keeping their most valuable asset – their people – engaged. With more than a decade of experience, WeSpire employee engagement consultants partner with organizations to cr...

We talk with Shameek Ghosh, co-founder of Trustrace a platform that brings traceability and transparency to the fashion brands such as #Adidas, #Decathalon, and #FjällRaven. It all started when one of his coworkers/friend decided to return to India from Sweden to take over his ancestral property. His friend was dismayed at the destruction that the fashion industry had caused to the lands owned by...

This summer when we visited our favorite beach in Indiana - Indiana Dunes National Park - with its immense sand dunes, we were saddened by how much of the beach had been washed away. What used to be a gradual slope from the road to the water , now required a flight of 20 steps to reach the sand.  Sand and beaches have always shifted and moved, but why are these shifts different. With climate chang...

As we try to reduce the carbon we put out into the atmosphere, these efforts should be accompanied by carbon sequestering and removal. Carbon sequestration refers to CO2 that has been captured from the atmosphere and stored in a durable carbon sink, in contrast to traditional carbon offsets. Today we talk to Elba Horta, head of communications and Antti Vihavainen, CEO at Puro. Earth - the world’s...

You cannot switch on the radio, TV or online news any day  without a mention of sustainability or climate change. One of the early thought leader in this field is Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation. We enjoy always to listen to his words and thought process and decided to re-air this classic episode. Take a listen. ------------------------------------------------------------------...

Summer construction activity is at its peak in the US. And as we look for sustainable alternatives for bricks or pavers or other construction materials, we look Eastwards to one of our guests whose journey I have followed since our last recording. He is a very creative solution made almost entirely of waste and 2.5 times stronger than regular brick. This episode we felt definitely needed an encore...

With all the talk of hydrogen as a green alternative, I wanted to go back and listen to an episode released almost exactly a year ago. It seemed pretty unachievable and different, but now almost viable and scalable commercially.   REVO ZERO is revolutionizing the transportation industry by bringing the most innovative, practical, and cost-effective technologies to support a zero-emission economy o...

As formula companies’ productions are limping back to normal, after the recall, a question some people ask is why can't mother "just" switch to breastfeeding their infants. As most mothers know that it is not that easy to make that switch. Breastfeeding a baby can be hard - it needs support from the family, spouse, pediatrician and most importantly the medical community. Breast milk can be stored...

Next time we grab a packet of honey to add to our tea - we should stop and think how a commodity so valuable and nutritionally dense is given for free. According to Douglas Raggio, founder of Pass The Honey, 70% of all honey is not pure. There is rampant fraud and honey is adulterated by blending with sugar syrups or many other methods of adulteration. In order to address this level of fraud in th...

Today we talk on our show with Dr. Teresa Pruzner and Nick Langan, co-founders of Cerebelly who as parents of infants wanted to make sure that their kids get the best possible nutrition not only for their physical but also for brain development. They were surprised to learn when they flipped over a packet or bottle of baby food the mismatch between the actual stated ingredients and the nutrients i...

Majority of the conversation around fashion waste revolves around finished products that end up in the landfill. But around  12 % that is around 6.3 million tonnes per year is sent by brands to the landfill in the design and development stage. These would be sample booklets with swatches and unused fabric rolls and prior to Fabscrap they ended up in the landfill. We talk with Jessica Schreiber CEO...

Humans are inherently materialistic and seek happiness through objects, but what we get is enjoyment not happiness. Happiness tends to be more fulfilling and long term. Happiness often comes by connecting with your community, by sharing stories and creating trust. That is what The Buy Nothing Project does. We talk to the amazing Rebecca Rockefeller, co-founder of The Buy Nothing Project, who start...

Our planet needs greenhouse gases (GHGs) that help trap the heat and keep our planet warm and without which, the earth would be a very cold place. There are four major components of greenhouse gases (GHGs) - Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and fluorinated gasses. But why are GHGs a problem? As the GHGs increases it heats up the planet - even 1.5 degrees C increase is enough to cause signifi...

The Nobel prize winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman, said the business of a business  is making money - but within the acceptable social norms. Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth School and he was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, looks into how “social norms” have changed and how the businesses need to adapt to ad...

Alicia Wallace is the COO of Kazi, a Mindful Business she founded after years of working in emerging economies and seeing the need for job creation at an everyday living wage. Today, Kazi is the largest artisan employer in Africa with nearly 6,000 artisans who support 24,700 dependents. Nearly all the artists are women. Through the process, the artists become self-sufficient businesspeople, improv...

It is really hard for a young person to their build credit.  How does one navigate the complex and opaque credit rating system? We chat in this episode with Roger Morris, Co-Founder and COO of Zoro Card that hopes to help the 100 million Americans with subprime credit build credit with debit cards. Zoro Card began not as a company, but as a cause. Millions of Americans can’t access affordable cred...

In the United States, 90% of the lettuce is produced and shipped from California to the rest of the country. When we combine the impact of this long journey on the environment, cost and 30% loss in farm produce - makes vertical farms close to consumption a viable alternative. In this episode, we learn from Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technology about Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) wh...

Financial insecurity can be expensive, living paycheck to paycheck and with overdraft fees, penalties, higher interest and mortgage rates. Seven out ten households in America live paycheck to paycheck. Ram Palaniappan , founder of Earnin, noticed that one of his employees had to get payday loans to pay her expenses.  Though she had worked her hours she got paid only after two weeks and her bills w...

Today we talk with Jordan Rubin, CEO and co-founder of  Ancient Nutrition, who encountered health challenges as a young boy turned towards food to solve his illness. He talks and educates us about what are superfoods and what would be a super plate. Super foods can be fruits, vegetables, plants, spices and even fungi. How is his company different? They practice regenerative farming and believe in...

Today we have on our show the passionate and even maybe maverick Jonathan Lundgren, director and founder of Blue Acre Farms and Ecdysis foundation. The word ecdysis means the process of shedding the old skin and that is what Blue Dasher farms wants to do by operating regenerative farm and scientific research hub designed to help foster a revolution in our food system. Blue Dasher Farm combines cut...

We have on our show Marc Plinke, founder/CEO, and Miriam Schaffer Marketing and Communications Specialist of Ceres Greenhouse Solutions. Inspired by the Roman Goddess of Agriculture, Ceres is a company devoted to growing plants. Their core team consists of engineers, architects, builders, plant experts, designers, and tinkerers. Founded in 2011, Ceres Greenhouse Solutions aims to reinvent the trad...

"Out beyond ideas of right angles and hard lines, there’s a bio-ceramic dome. A place where nature, community, and healing come full circle. We’ll meet you there." - Morgan Bierschenk, founder and CEO of Geoship, a homebuilding cooperative, owned by the people. Bioceramic domes combine the geometry/math of Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller with the material science of Rustum (Rusty) Roy - Geoship's Found...