Sustainability In Your Ear

On today’s Sustainability In Your Ear, meet Kavita Patel, a principal at MUUS Climate Partners, as we discuss how smart investments and business support can drive environmental impact while generating returns. MUUS Climate Partners invests in early-stage climate technology companies, with a portfolio including battery recycler Nth Cycle, EV charging innovator AmpUp, and innovative air conditioning...

On today's Sustainability In Your Ear episode, discover a transformative approach to rainforest conservation with Dr. Hannah Peck, Deputy Director and Policy Lead at Cool Earth . She brings a decade of experience in the rainforests of Peru and Papua New Guinea with Cool Earth's innovative strategies that prioritize direct support over traditional carbon offset models. Cool Earth challenges the hea...

On this inspiring episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, we reconnect with storyteller, systems thinker, and regenerative agriculture pioneer Douglas Gayeton to explore the latest developments in the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF)—a potentially game-changing tool designed to redefine how we value nature. First introduced during an Earth911 podcast event in 2023, the EBF offers a bold new way...

As federal environmental protections face weakening, a grassroots movement is gaining strength across the U.S., focusing on environmental rights rather than policy adjustments. Maya van Rossum, environmental attorney and founder of the Green Amendments For The Generations movement, returns to Sustainability in Your Ear to discuss that states' response to cuts to federal environmental regulations....

In the race to address climate change, technology often steals the spotlight—solar breakthroughs, carbon capture , electrification, and AI. None of it scales without the right leadership. Green progress depends on the people who can fund, integrate, and lead technology-driven organizations to success. Meet Colin Smith and Kahlil Dumas, co-founders of Execnow , an executive placement firm focused o...

In today’s media environment, disinformation and distraction are pervasive. The most troubling issue may not be misinformation but the critical information that is systematically ignored or underreported. Andy Lee Roth, Editor-at-Large of Project Censored , returns to Sustainability In Your Ear to discuss the top censored stories of 2023–2024, with a special focus on environmental reporting. Proje...

Josh Dorfman—known for his The Lazy Environmentalist book series —visites to share his latest efforts to make sustainability seamless, smart, and scalable. From hosting eco-living shows to launching climate tech ventures, Dorfman’s mission: make sustainable choices attractive and accessible. In the 1990s, while working in China, Dorfman saw the country’s shift from bicycles to cars and realized th...

As trade dynamics shift and tariffs reshape supply chains, construction companies must rethink how they source materials, balance costs, and integrate sustainable solutions. The push for greener, more resilient construction materials is at the heart of this transformation. Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies , returns to the show to share an update. Since his last appearance in October...

Plastic and paper waste from product packaging remains an environmental crisis, with millions of tons of packaging ending up in landfills and the ocean every year. Despite growing consumer demand for sustainable alternatives , many companies still struggle to balance eco-responsible packaging with cost, performance, and branding needs. Discover the challenges and opportunities shaping sustainable...

Humanity is grappling with the effects of climate change, and one urgent challenge is ensuring a stable and sustainable supply of protein for human consumption and agricultural use. That's where molecular farming, an innovative technology that uses the power of plants to produce high-quality proteins, may present a unique solution. Tune into Sustainability In Your Ear for a conversation with Maya...

Climate Change has terrible impacts today, and youth coming of age face depressing prospects. However, they are stepping up to the challenge and could see the fruits of their efforts in a restored climate during their lifetime. Climate restoration requires extraordinary efforts of young people, who are already leading the charge. On this episode, Sustainability In Your Ear introduces another winne...

Meet Garik Himebaugh, the founder of Eco-Stylist.com , a site dedicated to promoting sustainable fashion choices. Garik's journey into the world of sustainable fashion began with a background in peace studies and an MBA, and he discovered social entrepreneurship as a grad student and launched Eco-Stylist in 2018. There, he helps consumers make informed, sustainable fashion choices with a directory...

Practical progress toward a sustainable lifestyle, whether you are an individual or a business, will always be unique to your situation, but you can base your choices on lessons learned by others. Tune into a conversation with Sarah Currie-Halpern, Co-Founder of Think Zero LLC , a consultancy that helps businesses, institutions, and households reduce waste and embrace sustainable practices . With...

We celebrate a milestone episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, our 500th program since we launched in 2018, with an in-depth conversation with Paula Whyman, author of the captivating collection of essays, Bad Naturalist . It's a tale about her purchase and efforts to restore a couple hundred acres of meadowland in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia that had once been a farm and orchard. Paula's...

Start the new year with a dive into the world of biosolids—a potentially transformative way to turn sewage that traditionally is seen as waste into a valuable material for sustainable agriculture. With the appropriate precautions, humans can turn our ickiest stuff into inexpensive fertilizer for farms and homes. Humans have been using their excrement as fertilizers for millennia. At scale, biosoli...

The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law contributed much-needed progress but has not completed the transition — only approximately 21% of total utility-scale electricity generation in the United States comes from renewables. According to the World Resources Institute 31 gigawatts of solar energy capacity was installed in the U.S. in 2023, up 55% compared to 2022. But now we a...

Food production is one of the most impactful forces shaping our environment, responsible for approximately a quarter of annual global carbon emissions, deforestation, and soil depletion, among other impacts. However, a new generation of food and snack companies is stepping up to change the narrative, working to make food production a force for regeneration, sustainability, and environmental stewar...

Being a consumer in an advanced economy—or any economy these days—is challenging because you cannot keep up with the ever-changing range of ingredients and materials in the products at the store. For example, thousands of new chemicals are registered annually . Still, many more compounds that could be harmful are introduced and used in manufacturing. These chemicals can harm our health and the env...

The sharing economy can be a platform for keeping products in circulation and out of landfills until they are no longer usable and must be recycled. If we can get more uses out of things we currently throw away, we can reduce the need to extract raw materials from the Earth. Meet a pioneer in sharing, Daan Weddenpohl, founder and CEO of Peerby, an innovative Dutch platform at the forefront of the...

Sustainability In Your Ear welcomes back oceanographer and author John Englander, who last visited with us in February 2023 . John is the author of two pivotal books on Sea Level Rise, High Tide on Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis , which explores the science behind rising seas and its far-reaching impacts on society, and Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the...

The climate crisis cannot be solved by one person, one organization, one company, or one government. A network of collaboration is being built, and nonprofits often serve as the connective tissue. Our guest today Brett Jenks, is the CEO of Rare.org , a global conservation and development organization dedicated to empowering communities in the world's most biologically diverse regions to sustainabl...

The water crisis is one of the most pressing issues facing our planet, with climate change, population growth, and pollution threatening the availability of clean water worldwide. One company working to tackle this problem head-on is Spout Water. This California-based startup has developed an innovative solution, the Spout Monolith, a sleek kitchen device that produces pure drinking water from the...

The global food system is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for about 25% of annual anthropomorphic CO2 emission, the unfortunate, planet-warming exhaust of our industrial society. But what if we could eat our way out of the climate crisis? Author Mark J. Easter joins the conversation to talk regenerative farming and his new book, The Blue Plate: A Food Lover...

Consumers and grocers who want to verify the quality of the beef they sell are asking for increased supply chain transparency. Vivian Tai, Director of Innovation at GS1 US  visited with Earth911 in February 2024 to introduce GS1's Digital Link advanced universal product code and returns to talk beef transparency with Jayson Berryhill, cofounder of Wholechain, who worked with GS1 to develop a new s...

David Katz, founder and CEO of Plastic Bank , returns to talk with Mitch Ratcliffe about the groundbreaking social enterprise's effort to transform plastic waste into economic opportunity. Plastic Bank has created a “global bottle deposit program " that partners with companies to incentivize the collection of ocean-bound plastic in vulnerable communities. Plastic Bank provides vital income while r...