Once Upon a Planet

Bryan and Rebecca Pape are co-founders of MIIR, a design forward and generosity driven drinkware company with a social and environmental mission. A certified B Corp and 1% for the planet member, MIIR choses people and planet over the demands of Wall Street. What does that mean? Since 2010, they have partnered with some of the most respected nonprofits in the world to fund long term, sustainable pr...

Verda is excited to finally talk with someone in the art world! Air Copeland is a surfer, an award winning indie writer, producer and director. He's also worked at 5gyers , an institute focused on ocean plastic pollution. He's now Executive Director at Compound, a community art center in Long Beach, California. He will talk about the power of art to create change and build community. Art has the p...

In today's episode, Jon and Verda talk with Royce Epstein, with Mohawk Group and Rebekah Matheny, of The Ohio State University. Rebekah is our first educator, and they are educating the new student generation about the value of Life Cycle Focus. Generation Scrap, as they've been dubbed, is teaching us how to design resourcefully. This just may be one of the solutions we need to combat the climate...

Scott Fulbright, founder of Living Ink, has harnessed algae, a byproduct of water pollution, to replace ink made from fossil fuels. The ink isn't green though, it's carbon black and he's solving the climate crisis one algae bloom at a time. This green goop provides us with over half of our oxygen supply and pulls carbon from the air, so why not make ink out of it? See Privacy Policy at https://art...

Amanda Kaminski, founder of Building Product Ecosystems shows us how to maintain a circular economy by giving a new life to hard to salvage building materials like gypsum board. Amanda keeps these hugely prevalent construction materials out of our landfills in an effort to curb the carbon footprint of a building. Concrete has one of the highest carbon footprints of any building material. Amanda is...

Our dynamic duo, in an effort to stave off climate catastrophe, decided to celebrate their tenth episode by re-visiting why they think podcasting is important now-why you shouldn't be afraid to shout at the world and say what you feel. We aren't perfect at this right now, but you can't be afraid of mistakes or failure if you want to make an impact. The planet still needs advocates and we think the...

Join us as we talk with Russell Greenberg, founder of RUX Studios. They are a design hub looking to create a better world, one company at a time. With Stickbulb, they are using locally sourced wood from New York City's water towers to create beautiful light fixtures and fix the broken supply chain. Reclaimed wood is a relic! They are also creating conceptual time pieces that deepen our connection...

Jon and Verda break some dishes in episode 8 with Josie Abate, Sustainability Officer at Keilhauer, a gentle, earth kind Canadian furniture company that can design and manufacture elegant, contemporary carbon neutral furniture. What? A carbon neutral chair? You heard that correctly, so tune in to find out how a company like Keilhauer makes beautiful product that helps our planet as well. We'll tal...

Verda and Jon have a bright, young and energetic person on this episode who's doing some amazing work around the globe right now. Can we break him down? Can he melt our brains with chemistry formulas we haven't thought about since our high school chemistry days? The answer to one of those questions is yes, but there are many more in this episode that go into the new super fuel of the environmental...

In our sixth episode, Jon and Verda talk with Lisa Conway, VP of Sustainability for Interface Carpet. Interface, under the leadership of founder Ray Anderson, has led the way in the conversation around embodied carbon. With a new campaign called "Love Carbon", Interface is talking about being carbon neutral and even carbon negative! Can we all start making and using products that take carbon out o...

Stop sucking with The Lonely Whale Foundation! Jon and Verda get to talk to Dune Ives, NGO trailblazer and CEO of The Lonely Whale Foundation about individual action and corporate responsibility. She walks us through the "Stop Sucking" and "Hydrate Like a Mother" campaigns. We'll talk about hero corporations and her work with The Next Wave initiative. And of course, we'll make Dune tell us the sto...

Break some damn dishes on this episode with Jon, Verda and Chad Nelsen, CEO of Surfrider Foundation. We'll talk about the power that surf communities have in driving legislation. We'll discuss the problem with "localism" and how "Surfonomics" is giving coastal communities the leverage they need to save their coastline environments. Chad is an amazing leader who recognized early that if you love th...

In our third episode, Jon and Verda spend some time with Jane Abernethy talking about the toxic ingredients in product that need to be removed, and what this means to your supply chain. Jane is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Humanscale Corporation, and has been a driver in their work achieving the coveted Living Product Challenge Certification, removing Red List ingredients and in creating a...

Break Some Dishes, a podcast by Verda Alexander and Jon Strassner, takes a closer look at some of the environmental crises we face as a global community, and under the lens of creativity and design, talks to outliers who have worked to break some dishes and find solutions. Bad design is bad for the planet. We need to design our way out of our climate crisis! Verda is an artist and designer and Jon...

Bad design is bad for the planet. In today's episode we talk to Oliver Campbell, who runs packaging for DELL Computer. As you can imagine, DELL Computer creates a fair amount of packaging! Oliver has taken on ocean plastic pollution by starting the Next Wave Collaborative, along with the Lonely Whale Foundation and is making packaging from ocean bound plastic. He's also working to use re-captured...

In our second episode, Verda and Jon talk with David Stover, one of the founders of Bureo, a Ventura, California company that takes discarded fishing nets, cleans them and recycles them into nylon pellets which are then manufactured into products. We'll talk about ghost fishing, and what a calamity that is, we'll also talk about recycling and the inevitable need to use materials that fit into the...