Sustainability In Your Ear

Staying within the Paris Climate Accord’s 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, at which potentially devastating climate changes will occur, requires ending deforestation before 2030. But as of 2020, the world was still losing about 38,600 square miles of forest annually. Meet Allan Traicoff, Chief Commercial Officer at Emergent , a nonprofit that creates incentives for and connects businesses to natural cli...

Buildings are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The $5.8 trillion-a-year building and construction sector, including ongoing operations of buildings, is responsible for 38% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions according to the United Nations’ Environment Program. Meet Håvard Haukeland, cofounder of Autodesk Spacemaker and a senior director at Autodesk, the pioneer and leading...

Wanting to be sustainable is easy. Acting sustainably requires substantial effort, it takes time and no shortage of expertise to identify products and services with a low- or no-carbon footprint, and shopping for the best price on green energy, efficient appliances, and solar or other sustainability investments is difficult. Tony Wessling, the marketing and communications leader at YellowTin, join...

You may not see the evidence every day, but the electrification of our economy is well underway. In this episode, meet Damir Perge, CEO of Miami-based Amptricity, a maker of solid-state battery technology, an electronic storage system that provides enough power for 8 hours of home backup electricity. Ampricity’s batteries can be recharged 11,000 times — at one charge cycle a day, which is more fre...

The clothing we wear is a source of carbon emissions and landfill waste. Sarah Pinner, cofounder and CEO of Beni, introduces a new plugin for Google’s Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers that helps shoppers find reused alternatives to new clothing. Beni makes thrift shopping easy with digital helping hand, and the team is working to add environmental impact information to make choosing the lowest-i...

Google's circular economy leader, Mike Werner, explains the many renewable energy, waste reduction, and internal strategic changes that have established parent company Alphabet at the forefront of corporate sustainability. Google achieved carbon neutrality for its search engine operations in 2007 and a decade later had matched 100% of its energy use with renewable energy credits. It pioneered reus...

Meet Sean Wittenberg, founder of the seafood company SafeCatch. He started the business with a mission to source safe and sustainable tuna and other fish after his mother was diagnosed with mercury poisoning when she adopted a diet that included frequent servings of canned tuna. Sausalito, Calif.-based Safe Catch offers a wide variety of fish products in cans and pouch packaging, and the fish is c...

Michael Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS), introduces the Climate Solution Accelerator program, a 90-minute video-and-quiz program that explains the essential ideas in climate science, sustainable business, and the policies and paths out of the crisis. Earth911, Jump Digital, and the RSGS have partnered to make the program available in North Americ...

Erin Levine, the resource recovery manager at World Centric, a maker of compostable packaging and tableware, returns to the show to share ideas about a low-waste holiday season and discuss the evolution of composting in California. The holidays are a time for family, community, faith, and fun, but they are also some of the most wasteful days of the year -- Americans toss more than a third of the f...

Meet Garry Cooper Jr., cofounder and CEO of Rheaply. Garry is an accomplished investor at Longjump Ventures who has been recognized as an innovator by Forbes, Chicago Business Magazine and Crain’s. Much of the waste in our world is the result of overstocking and excess inventory in business and government— as much as $600 billion in surplus goods are lying unused in some of the largest organizatio...

Learn how businesses can accelerate the decarbonization of their operations and contribute to eventually removing that can help drawdown the more than 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by humans during the Industrial Era. Discover some of the complicated details of how carbon markets, credits, and allowances work with Jason Grant, chief operating officer of Climate Vault, a non-profit that...

Brad Pedersen, cofounder and chairman of Pela, joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss the company's sustainable products.  We recently spent a couple of months testing the Lomi home composter from Pela, a Kelowna, British Columbia-based maker of compostable phone cases, low-carbon and low-waste sunglasses, and now appliances for a sustainable life. Pela launched as a maker of phone cases made from flax...

Join us for an impassioned conversation about the potential for recycling progress with David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, a social enterprise that partners with consumer products companies to create incentive programs in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa that help prevent plastics from reaching waterways, seas and the ocean. He joined us earlier this year returns to share an update abou...

Learn how to assess the green credentials of companies. Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Adam Kramer, CEO of nZero, a carbon tracking and reporting company, and Scott Martin, Vice President and Head of Global Commercial Business at 3Degrees, which provides carbon strategy consulting, decarbonization program development, carbon sequestration and renewable energy credit advisory services. The companies re...

Thomas VanMatre, VP of Global Business Development at Satellogic, a geospatial analytics company, joins the conversation to discuss the potential uses for satellite imagery and data for developing insights into our planet and ecosystems to end climate change. The company has launched 26 low-earth-orbiting satellites to date and will expand to more than 200 by 2025 in order to democratize access to...

Discover how our food production and even our yards and gardens can play a role in reducing CO2 levels. We're joined by Ben Cloud, CEO of Biodel AG Inc., a Maricopa, Arizona company that recently introduced Sequester, a soil treatment that restores the soil’s ability to capture and hold CO2 that also promotes improved plant growth. Sequester is available for farming applications and for home use....

Robert Pasin, chief wagon of Radio Flyer, discusses the benefits and process of becoming a B Corp. Radio Flyer makes, in addition to the wagons we know from our childhoods, tricycles, scooters, inflatables, adult ebikes and a suite of Tesla electric toy vehicles. It became the first global toy and ebike brand to become a certified B Corp., the emerging corporate form that recognizes business can h...

Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business' Responsible Business Coalition returns to the conversation to discuss how and why business should encourage the widespread adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. This low- and no-till, pesticide-free approach to farming can restore soil health, build new topsoil to replace what has been lost to run-of...

Ben Cohen, founder and CEO of Quoll Intelligence, explains how homeowners can assess the climate-related risks for their home and community. Quoll is a service for homeowners “dedicated to helping homes and homeowners become more resilient.” It delivers a climate risk report for single-family homes that explains the likelihood of sea level rise, flooding, wildfire and other climate impacts. Quoll...

Mike Phillips, CEO of Sense, a developer of home energy monitoring and management devices, discusses the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on home energy and EV charging in the United States. When the $369-billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed in early September the stage was set for a race to reduce U.S. emissions by 40% compared to 2005 levels. Each of us can play a part, but it i...

Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of Re:Dish, joins the conversation to discuss making cafeteria, institutional and restaurant food service sustainable. Re:Dish provides reusable food service items, collecting, returning them to a dish washing facility each day, and delivering a fresh supply to its customers, which include corporate and school cafeterias, hospitals and . Re:Dish containers offers several #5...

Ewaste recycling falls woefully short of the levels necessary to reduce the need for mining and producing new raw materials that involve toxins that frequently reach the environment. We talked with John Shegerian, cofounder and CEO of ERI, a Fresno, Calif.-based ewaste recycler with 8 U.S. processing locations that serve every ZIP Code in the country and partnerships with recycling companies in 40...

The story of a sustainable world will unfold in many places and across many websites, social networks, and video channels. Jane Velez-Mitchell, a former Headline News/CNN reporter and anchor, launched UnChainedTV to provide a dedicated source of video storytelling about vegan living, the environment, and animal welfare. It offers free video programming through an app for iPhone and Android devices...

Anna Yona, cofounder with her husband of Engelskirchen, Germany-based Wildling Shoes talks with Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe about making shoes that are easier on the planet. They make a wide range of shoes for women, men and kids, practicing sustainable design and manufacturing using a minimalist design philosophy the produces a light, comfortable and durable shoe. These high-cut shoe, which are ma...

Dr. Ganesan Visvabharathy, founder of Hawthorne Development Corporation discusses the evolution of the built environment and green building standards necessary to achieve a zero-carbon society. A sustainable built environment is the foundation for lower energy use but will take a generation or more to put in place. Hawthorne recently completed two net-zero projects, the Eco Terra complex, a 348-un...