Sustainability In Your Ear

Cooper Wechkin, founder and CEO of Seattle-based RyeStrategy, explains how small businesses can start to reduce their carbon footprint. With about 30 million small businesses in the United States, each of them carrying a significant carbon footprint, the sector could make a big difference in the overall U.S. carbon footprint. But as large companies have made many statements about reducing their ca...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Ideanomics CEO Alf Poor about the evolution of transportation. We need new systems for vehicle charging in public transportation and distribution,  more alternatives to cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles and scooters, as well as new approaches to paying for mobility. We may soon be paying just for the distance we travel while the vehicles we use become shared as...

Earth911 explores how creative reuse centers turn waste to productive uses through a new business model that turns discarded craft and DIY materials to new uses. We talk with Nicole McGee, founder of the Upcycle Parts Shop, a pioneering creative reuse non-profit  in Cleveland. And we're joined by Maureen Wise, a longtime Earth911 contributor, who wrote a story introducing creative reuse centers th...

It’s Plastic-free July and we’re talking today with journalist, podcaster and author Amy Westervelt about the surprising resurgence of sustainable plastic claims in the media despite growing public concern. Amy’s first Drilled podcast series this season is about plastic and the machinations of one media manipulator, Rick Berman, who launched the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition among many dodgy camp...

Earth911 talks with Jake Felser, Chief Technology Officer at Freight Farms about the company's "complete farming system inside a box.” It’s a very big box that includes climate controls and monitoring systems to make faming easy for anyone to do.  Freight Farms builds and delivers shipping containers converted into highly efficient hydroponic farms that use LED lighting to grow and deliver fresh p...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe speaks with Yaron Ben-Nun, Chief Technology Officer at Nostromo, which has introduced a fascinating innovation in commercial building cooling, the IceBrick Thermal-Energy Storage technology. Nostromo is an Israeli startup that recently went public and trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange under the symbol SMTO. IceBrick can shift the energy demand to prevent spikes in po...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe chats with Good Girl Gone Green creator and green living mentor Stephanie Moram, looking at the choices for entertaining sustainably this summer. Stephanie's been exploring the many ways we can reduce our environmental impact with an emphasis on making our lives unique and enjoyable. “There is no right or wrong way to become more green,” she says, and we agree. She offer...

How can we track our water usage to recognize how to save water? Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Nelson Pedreiro of Nudge Systems, which makes the Pleco, a smart device that attaches to your water meter to track water usage by category, from toilet flushes and showers to washing the clothes and watering the lawn. It can also identify leaks long before the are visible to the eye. One tech mag...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Jeff Gold, founder and CEO of Altanta-based Nexus Fuels, which processes 50 tons of plastic daily using molecular recycling that breaks the material down into the basic elements of hydrocarbon found in oil so it can be reused in new plastic. It’s the leading edge of chemical technologies for creating a circular economy. Nexus combines waste management and ener...

Earth911 talks with Sarah Dearman, vice president of circular ventures a The Recycling Partnership, about the future of plastic, plastic recycling and the non-profit's new PlasticIQ initiative that provides tools for business to assess and optimize its packaging choices. We discuss the need to simplify our plastic system to make recycling easier and how to make it easy for people to recycle packag...

Earth911 talks with FreeWater Inc. founder Josh Cliffords, who has a radical idea to make water, juice and, ultimately, a wide range of products available for free using the same business model as online services like YouTube, using advertising. Josh shares a vision that includes building in a recovery system for packaging, using aluminum cans and hemp cartons made and filled near the customer, an...

Caspar Poyck, cofounder and senior director of plant operations at hard kombucha brewer Flying Embers shares how the company works to reduce its environmental footprint, including capturing the CO2 generated by its fermentation processes to add fizz to it fruit-flavored kombucha beverages. After the founders lived through the 2017 Thomas Fires in Ojai, Calif., they renamed the company Flying Ember...

Earth911 talks with Daniel Eggers, Chief Commercial Officer at Climeworks, a Zurich, Switzerland-based carbon capture company.  Climeworks launched one of the first commercial CO2 projects in the world, the geothermal-powered Orca project in Hellisheidi, Iceland, and has 13 other locations under development. Daniel explains the power and geological requirements for storing CO2 in the ground, where...

Earth911 talks with Buck Sleeper, director of innovation consulting at EPAM Continnum, a company that specializes in developing products and services. EPAM's recent NXT 2021 Trends Report points out several important trends that can help pivot the economy toward greater sustainability, including new hybrid of global and local economic activity  fueled by digital communities and a new generation of...

Earth911 talks with Professor Daniel Lin, associate professor of operations management at the University of San Diego School of Business. He is advising several non-profits — Earthworks, Global Witness, and Greenpeace USA — that have filed a first-of-its kind complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against an energy company. They argue that Chevron makes deceptive, greenwashing advertisi...

Smart home technology can help save energy, which translates directly into reduced CO2 emissions, especially in the many parts of the country where electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Earth911 talks with Sarah Colvin, senior director of energy partnerships at ecobee, a maker of home monitoring and management devices, including thermostats, cameras and sensors. She explains how smart thermo...

Earth911 talks with author and business advisor David Radlo, an early and successful advocate for sustainable practices about building a sustainable business and connecting with customers who share your company's environmental values. He built premium organic egg brands at Born Free, Farmer’s Best, and Egg-Land’s Best and has lectured at Tufts University and New York University’s Stern School of B...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Doug Heske, CEO of Newday Impact Investing and Philippe Cousteau, founder of EarthEcho International, about the potential to accelerate the transition from the petrochemical economy by investing in sustainable businesses. They have partnered to expand financial literacy in the young and communities of color around the world. They discuss recent criticisms of i...

Earth911 talks with Derrick Emsley, CEO of tentree, a a clothing company making a difference. The company plants ten trees for every article of clothing they sell. Tentree has already planted 56.3 million trees and is working to reduce the environmental impact of its clothing production processes by using wood-based TENCEL fiber, hemp, organic cotton and recycled polyester in its clothing. They ha...

Earth911 talks with George Leonard, chief scientist for the non-profit Ocean Conservancy about the state of the oceans, plastic pollution and particularly the impact of COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) pollution. The organization recently completed its annual survey of beaches and waterways, during which it found 107,219 PPE items — masks, shields, and gloves among other items. We seem...

Earth911 talks with Dr. Oliver Peoples, president and CEO of Yield10 Bioscience Inc., about the company's development of plant-based bioplastic made from flax (Camelina) seeds. Plastic is the most challenging modern material. It is ubiquitous and a major source of pollution, particularly in our oceans. But only about 8 percent of the 8.3 billion tons of plastics produced annually are recycled. By...

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Charles Brennick, director of Business Development and eCommerce at Seattle-based 3R Technology, an electronics recycling company that also refurbishes and resells PCs, laptops, phones and monitors. He explains the two major recycling standards, eStewards and R2, and how devices are handled after people send them. Brennick also outlines the valuable materials...

Stew Lawrence, CEO of CleanWell, a maker of botanical home cleaning products, joins Earth911 to talk about safe and natural Spring cleaning. We’ve been using several CleanWell products; read our review. The company uses a plant-based Thymol disinfectant in its products, which has been recognized to be an antiseptic for centuries. In laboratory tests, it killed 99.99% of germs and viruses, and the...

Expanded polystyrene has proven stubbornly uneconomical to recycle, but Augusta, N.J.-based Foam Cycle has an affordable solution that can be added at any municipal transfer station or community location. Earth911 talks with Foam Cycle founder and CEO Lou Troiano about the self-service foam collection and recycling system his company has installed in several communities around the country. Expande...

Young people are stepping into leadership roles in the climate restoration movement. Earth911 talks with Ashley Meeky, the first youth ambassador on the board of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, a non-profit working to encourage global support for the development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology. A student at Vanderbilt University, Ashley got involved with the o...