Sustainability In Your Ear

Meet David Steinman, an environmental activist, investigative journalist, and author who has worked to expose the dangers of chemical toxins in everyday life. Steinman's bestselling 1990 book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet , highlighted the hidden chemical dangers in our food. In his latest book, Raising Healthy Kids: Protecting Your Children from Hidden Chemical Toxins , examines how everyday produc...

More than half the world's population—4.4 billion people—live in cities today. That number is expected to rise to 80% by 2050. Our guest, Nadina Galle, is a trailblazing ecological engineer and author of The Nature of Our Cities . She is an ecological engineer who studies the intersection of nature and technology in urban environments. Nadina developed the concept of an Internet of Nature (IoN) th...

The global push for sustainability has reached a critical juncture, particularly in industries traditionally associated with high environmental impacts, such as chemical manufacturing and mining. These sectors, vital to the global economy, are also significant contributors to carbon emissions and environmental degradation. However, innovative approaches are beginning to transform how these industr...

Rachael Z. Miller is a leading voice in the fight against  microfiber pollution , the plastic smog that trails our clothing like exhaust from a car. You might not see them, but our synthetic clothing sheds millions of tiny plastic fibers that make their way into our atmosphere, oceans, and rivers. It’s been less than a century since the introduction of synthetic textiles — nylon was the first abou...

Meet Emily McGarvey, furniture maker and retailer Room & Board's first Director of Sustainability. The company, founded in 1980, recently became an employee-owned B Corporation. Room & Board has made significant efforts to reduce the environmental impact by engaging 12,000 U.S. craftspeople to make its furniture, achieving 95% sustainable wood sourcing, including using urban wood recovered...

Alison Cove, CEO and founder of USEFULL , works at the forefront of a critical shift in how we approach food service sustainability. By implementing collection systems for reusable food packaging, USEFULL helps university and corporate cafeterias reduce their reliance on single-use plastics and paper packaging. Alison joins the conversation to explain her company's trackable, tech-enabled reusable...

Growing, packaging, transporting, and distributing food is a major source of society’s emissions, accounting for approximately 26% of annual global emissions. Reducing the impact of food production is critical to bringing society back within the planetary boundaries, and Wayne McIntyre, cofounder and CEO of Montreal-based Relocalize, wants to “Decarbonize and hyper-localize food & beverage man...

Tim Sperry is the Founder and CEO of Boca Raton, Florida-based Carbon Limit , the maker of CaptureCrete. He founded the company in 2020 after recognizing concrete’s huge environmental price — it accounts for about 6% of annual global emissions. CaptureCrete is a powder additive for concrete mixes that extracts up to 220 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air per ton, locking it into the concrete as...

For 23 years, Peter Fusaro has been a leading force in the green economy. His exclusive Wall Street Green conference has been a hot ticket for investors and executives looking for sustainable paths forward since 2002. Tis year marks an exciting milestone, as the Wall Street Green Conference will go global with the Wall Street Green Digital Summit on October 15th, 2024. The 12-hour marathon online...

Circular economies grow from the ground up, starting with recognizing that a material used to make a product can be recaptured, reused, resold, and recycled to lower the cost of sourcing raw materials. Mike Baker saw the opportunity to recycle cork for use in the custom insoles and footwear his company, SOLE , makes and launched the ReCORK collection network more than 15 years ago. Since founding...

Cotopaxi was built from the ground up to meet these high goals, but any company can transform itself; it just takes the first step, beginning the critical self-reflection that thoughtful leaders can apply to their business. A certified B Corporation, Cotopaxi was founded in 2014 in Salt Lake City and is known for its sustainably designed outdoor products, Cotopaxi is a market leader in combining i...

Rising CO2 levels have created climate change, the denier's name for global warming. It's the environmental crisis that will shape our species' future. The long story of willful disregard of the consequences of CO2 levels by government and businesses perpetrated through a trail of lies and misinformation is the history lesson everyone needs to know. However, most books about the climate crisis beg...

Join the Earth911 podcast community for a special World Ocean Day conversation,  Blueprints for Coastal Adaptation, keynoted by ocean advocate Ashlan Cousteau of EarthEcho International and Voyacy . Hear nine experts working at the cutting edge of biodiversity restoration, climate mitigation, and financial engineering about how to construct a blue economy that preserves the rich ecosystems at the...

Meet Michelle Carnevale, president of 11th Hour Racing, which advocates for sustainability and ocean health with solutions designed to create a more inclusive future. Michelle recently contributed an article to Earth911, How You Can Help Create A Healthier Ocean By Composting. While it is a growing industry, composting services are still available in too few cities across the United States. Accord...

With the rise of recommerce, parents can find and buy top brands' children's products — from toys and clothing to furniture and car seats — at a deep discount. Our guest today is Shraysi Tandon, cofounder and CEO of Kidsy , a dealer of new and open-box children's products that is growing fast. According to TechCrunch , the company reached an annual revenue run rate of $1 million only a few months...

IKEA is a global retail and furniture giant that has grown up with the modern era, defining a spare but elegant Nordic style that influences many of our homes. Mardi Ditze, IKEA's Country Sustainability Manager, joins the conversation to discuss how the company partners with customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle across its products' lifecycles. Mardi leads the IKEA team that is creating and impl...

Consumer Reports and Breakthrough Energy recently put numbers on the social cost of carbon, calculating the cost for an American child born in 2024  due to climate change. They found that an American child will face $500,000 and a million dollars in higher cost of living and reduced income during their lifetime as the planet warms, life and food supplies are disrupted, and returns on investments f...

The fashion industry is responsible for as much as 10% of annual CO2 emissions and an immense amount of waste that chokes landfills, rivers, and beaches worldwide. Too much of our clothing is made from oil-based textiles, like polyester. Tessa Callaghan, cofounder and CEO of  Keel Labs , has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader for her contributions to plant-based fashion. The Morrisvill...

The Endangered Species Act (ESA), passed in 1973 and signed into law by Republican Richard Nixon, has been a bulwark against unrestrained deforestation and development for over 50 years. It has protected and helped restore 1,700 species that teetered on the brink of extinction but returned to viable populations. Author Lowell Baier was a young lawyer in Washington, D.C., when the law passed and ha...

Tune in to a special Earth Day 2024 episode about accelerating the path to a circular economy. Sustainability In Your Ear Mitch Ratcliffe shares lessons he learned at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's circular economy-focused REMADE conference, which met at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC earlier this month. Scientists and business leaders gathered to di...

The built environment, particularly office buildings other urban facilities, are responsible for 39% of the global energy-related emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. About a third of that impact comes from the initial construction of a building and the other two-thirds is produced over the lifetime of a building by heating, cooling, and providing power to the occupants. Our g...

Youth face the greatest impact of climate change, and will certainly have to live with the consequences of the extractive economy for the longest time. They also have the opportunity to pass along a better world to future generations and Pragna Nidumolu, founder of EcoTeens, is working to make that happen. When she was 14, Pragna launched an organization dedicated to creating dialogue and campaign...

Join Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe for a special World Water Day conversation with model and activist Georgie Badiel and Newday Impact Investing 's Dan Keeler. If you'd like to watch instead of listen to the show, which includes the world premiere of The Georgie Badiel Foundation 's new fundingraising campaign video, visit our YouTube channel . Georgie's team supports a network of village wells in he...

Honeywell International is one of the largest companies in the world, ranking 115th in the Fortune 500 and operating in 70 countries around the world. With lines of business in aerospace, building technology, workplace safety, and digital technology, Honeywell is applying its expertise to reduce its environmental impact. Since 2018, Honeywell has reduced CO2 emissions by 18%, progressing toward it...

Earth Hour 2024, the "Biggest Hour for Earth" of the year, takes place on March 23rd. Since the World Wildlife Fund launched the event in 2007, Earth Hour has symbolized a commitment to the planet by simply turning off lights for one hour. However, despite its noble intentions, awareness of the movement was limited, with only 52% of the global population aware of the event. Our guests today, Phil...