Once Upon a Planet

The recycling system is broken. Did you know that only 9% of what we put in blue bin programs is actually recycled? Our guest today is on a mission to address this issue. In today's episode, hear how Ashley Gorrie and her company, Unwasted, are taking a stand to clean up recycling by harnessing the power of design and discarded plastics to create functionally beautiful furniture. When asked why sh...

Did you know that each year, 17 billion pounds of office furniture ends up in a landfill? This statistic didn't sit well with today's guest, so she decided to do something about it. Today, we welcome Brandi Susewitz - she's the CEO and Founder of Reseat, the first online marketplace for second-life office furniture, and the first step toward a more sustainable, circular industry. In this episode,...

Are you familiar with sustainable finance? ESG investing? Impact accounting? No? That's ok, neither were we - that is until we met Ken Pucker. Ken is the Advisory Director at Berkshire Partners and a Senior Lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University - he is also the former COO of Timberland. In today's episode, Ken helps pull back the curtain on sustainability reporting, the myth of susta...

Ginger Krieg Dosier is the co-founder and CEO of Biomason - and they have a goal to help save our Earth, one brick at a time. Taking inspiration from marine ecosystems, Biomason aims to eliminate the need to emit carbon to produce building materials - developing a way to grow cement bricks and tiles with bacteria in order to replace traditional cement, the production of which, she says, generates...

Our guest today is Jeff Frost - he's a material specialist with Brightworks Sustainability and co-founder of mindful MATERIALS collaborative; an industry-led initiative to make it easier for building professionals to select products with health and environmental attributes. Jeff is recognized as a national subject matter expert on how building material choices affect human health, climate change,...

Today, we welcome the Founder & CEO of Humanscale, Bob King. During our discussion, Bob reveals how combining sustainable principles with business acumen has led to industry-leading success. We also explore the problems, complexity, and difficult decisions required to create true progress in sustainability as a manufacturer - including the urgent need for all manufacturers to adopt material transp...

Porter Fox, author of "The Last Winter,” trekked the world to tell the story of what he’s seen firsthand — a winter that’s shrinking. Fox is a lifelong skier, so he has a personal interest in cold, snowy weather. But less winter and less snow doesn’t only mean less skiing; it could also spell the end of the natural world as we know it. In today's episode, Porter Fox explains what he learned by cri...

Season 3 of Break Some Dishes is here and we are so excited to be back! In today's episode, we take look into our crystal ball to see what 2022 has in store in the world of sustainability. We also preview our lineup of incredible guests, as we go deep with people who are trying to upend the status quo and find solutions for our planet. But that's not all - we are also BREAKING some news today too!...

Verda and Jon gather up some of their favorite people for a fun presentation at NeoCon, a big furniture/interior design show. These guests represent some of our favorite episodes over the past year, and we had a blast putting them all together in the same room - like a fun, amazing person stew! Listen to this group talk about design through a lens of climate change and unique design perspectives....

Are we filling our landfills with furniture? We are so accustomed to buying cheap furniture because it's easy and accessible, but why aren't we investing in pieces that will last our lifetime and get passed down to the next generation? Should we treat furniture like art, or family heirlooms meant to be passed on, each piece carrying its own recorded history of ownership? Dave Bryant and Judd Rosen...

Finally, the interior design profession has come together and created an amazing pledge to impact climate change! This is long overdue, as the potential for interior designers in every segment of the industry is huge! Listen in as Jon and Verda talk with Avi Rajagopal, Editor in Chief of Metropolis Magazine and Gary Wheeler, CEO of ASID as they explain what they want to achieve with this pledge. W...

In this episode, Jon and Verda talk with Annie Bevan, Executive Director of Mindful Materials. We are all affected by the materials in our built environment. Can Mindful Materials finally be the "Easy Button" to understanding what we're putting in our spaces? Annie thinks so! Mindful Materials is industry owned and led and really wants to be a resource for all designers out there. We need manufact...

Jon and Verda join Jane Abernethy and Annie Bevan in talking about material transparency on a panel with our host, Mortarr CEO Abby Murray. Jane Abernethy is Chief Sustainability Officer for Humanscale and Annie Bevan is the Executive Director of Mindful Materials. Who better to talk about material transparency than these two? Are we paying attention to what goes into product? Some of us are, but...

This episode of Break Some Dishes finds Verda and Jon talking to an amazing activist by the name of Auden Schendler. Auden has been the Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Ski Company for over 20 years, and his voice carries an amazing message, actually more than one. We love Auden because he truly offers a unique perspective on tackling climate change. While he began speaking primarily abou...

Jon and Verda talk with Joey Roth about more than just coffee. Joey is an industrial designer who is focused on vessels, crafted from materials that get better with age. Joey wants to design product that people want to fix rather than replace. How long will it last? How long will it be valuable to us? These are important questions. Joey designs better coffee pods that will compost, not sit in land...

Jon and Verda talk to a textile designer!! Finally, we get to break dishes with Lori Weitzner, renowned textile designer and environmental activist. Lori introduces us to the idea of "cultural sustainability". How can we preserve the old way of making things while bringing it to scale to serve our industry? Lori tells us to understand what is in abundance, and focusing on that material. She's work...

This episode's special guest is Greg Norris. Currently Chief Scientist for the International Living Future Institute and Director of the Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net Positive Enterprise at MIT, Greg Norris is one of the top LCA experts in the country. Amongst his most impressive projects is the creation of "Hand-Printing", where it's not just about choosing to be less bad, but tryi...

In this episode, Verda and Jon talk to Marcus Erikson an ex Marine and scientist on a journey to understand what happens with all of our plastic. He has tracked it down the Mississippi, to the world's oceans and finally, into the desert, where it is killing camels. Our plastic trash is everywhere, literally. Join us as we talk with someone who is passionate about exposing it's whereabouts. One par...

In a departure from our usual science lased, data based episodes, where we chat with environmental engineers, scientists and deep subject matter experts, today we get to chat with one of our own kind! Doug Shapiro, Vice President of Research and Insights at OFS will share his own personal insights and those of OFS. Join us in learning how a company like OFS, who makes furniture, can create harmony...

Jason McLennan started the International Living Future Institute. He created the Living Building Challenge, followed by the Living Product Challenge, the Living Community Challenge, The Red List, and the Declare Label just to name a few. Oh, and he also has written 7 books, but otherwise he's a bit of a couch potato and needs goals. When he's not creating new green standards, he's running his own...

Todd Bracher and Tina Cheng are industrial designers in Todd Bracher Studio, but they are so much more than that. They are design strategists, game changers and innovators, and they challenge clients to break some damn dishes. With a multi-disciplinary team, they bring science to design. They are philosophic and thoughtful as well, and their science is not without poetry and art. Todd tells us tha...

Brian Kelly wants to preserve the legacy of our trees. He is a photographer and archivist. Maybe even a tree whisperer? These silent sentinels are hundreds and even thousands of years old and are dying faster than ever before due to human activity and climate change. He is trying to capture their essence as quickly as he can before they are gone. Their legacy is what Gathering Growth, his foundati...

Petrice Jones is a successful actor. In fact, we would say he's officially "made it" in Hollywood. So, now he only needs to sit back and watch the money roll in, right? But Petrice is not that kind of actor. He's an activist, so when he saw something, he did something. Petrice noticed the pile of plastic water bottles that accumulated on set while he worked. So, he set out to change the industry b...

Molly Morse is CEO of Mango Materials. She's also an engineer with a PhD. Wanna guess what she's up to? Get a load of Molly- she's making a biodegradable plastic! That's right...a plastic that doesn't last forever in our environment and wind up in our oceans. And as if that isn't amazing enough, she makes it with methane, a greenhouse gas that is even worse than carbon! That's right, she's taking...

Algae can be a good thing. It produces more oxygen and captures more carbon than all the forests in the world combined. A rise in global temperatures, excess nutrient runoff and human activities create harmful effects of algae blooms which pop up everywhere as a visible reminder to the invisible issue of water pollution. Enter this episode's resident hero, Ryan Hunt. Ryan's company Bloom, makes fo...