Sustainable(ish)

Hello and welcome to episode 184, and as it turns out, the last episode of the Sustainable(ish) podcast! I wanted to try and get to 200, and I’m annoyed not even to be ending on a nice round number like 185, but often in life things aren’t tied up in a nice neat bow. Long term listeners will know that at times the podcast has been very stop start, and the time has come for an intentional stop. For...

In the spirit of London buses, ie nothing for ages and then two come along in close succession, this week’s episode is another foodie one, hot on the heels of Episode 180 - Food and climate change without the hot air with Professor Sarah Bridle. I’m chatting to Frank Holleman who is the co-founder of Fork Ranger , a platform and app that aims to help us to explore how to eat for the climate. I was...

One of the things that frustrates many people, is a lack of action from governments around the world to protect nature and mitigate the worst impacts of the a warming and rapidly changing climate. The UK government was one of the first to come up with a Net Zero target back in 2019, and declared a ‘climate emergency’ that same year. However the problem with both of these commitments is that they o...

This week’s episode feels a little bit liking coming full circle on an episode from nearly 5 years ago! If you’re a long-time listener, and have an excellent memory, you might remember, way back in 2019, I interviewed the wonderful Tillie Mabbutt who runs Frome Eco Party Kit , renting out a party kit of reusable plates, cups and bowls to avoid the waste associated with disposable partyware. At the...

In this week's episode I'm chatting to Sarah Bridle, who is possibly our first Professor on the podcast! Professor Sarah Bridle is Chair in Food, Climate and Society at the University of York, researching environmental impacts of the food system and potential impacts of the environment on food availability. She is also the author of Food and Climate Change - Without the Hot Air, an accessible guid...

In this week's episode I'm chatting to comedian Stuart Goldsmith . I'm a bit of a comedy fan, so I listen to Stuart's podcast, the Comedian's Comedian where he interviews other comedians about their work and he seems to pretty much be BFFs with everyone on the comedy circuit. It might seem a bit random to be interviewing a comedian on the podcast, but as you will hear, in the last few years Stuart...

In this week's episode I'm chatting to Misha Dhanak, CEO of  Spacehive , the home of community fundraising. We're probably all familiar with the concept of crowdfunding and may have even funded products and projects on platforms like Kickstarter. Well Spacehive is a similar concept, it's a crowdfunding platform, but it's for community projects - so on there you will find things like a cricket club...

In this week's episode I'm chatting to William Eccles from The Commitment. The Commitment is a campaign asking us to commit to voting for a healthy planet. You do this by heading to their website , hitting the "make the commitment" button, and ticking the box that says “ I commit to vote only for politicians who work for urgent action on the climate and nature.”. We discuss in the episode just why...

Advertising. It's all around us. Persuading us to buy stuff we didn't know we wanted, telling us how much happier/more popular/better our lives will be with the latest/newest whatever it is. Most of think that we're immune to it, but studies show just how insidious and manipulative it is, and how it influences our brains at a deep level. Which perhaps wouldn't really matter if we weren't in the gr...

Climate and play might not be two things that we naturally put together. And even less so, climate and 'playfulness'. Climate change is a huge, overwhelming, complext issue and i couldn't be more important. So we need to take this seriously and absolutely need to be bringing our best game, there's no room for messing around, right? Maybe not! I loved this chat with the brilliant Lucy Hawthorne, fo...

This week we're talking schools and climate action! I'm chatting to Jo Pettifer who part of a growing team of Climate Action Advisors from climate charity Let's Go Zero, which is working to help schools in the UK to take climate action, with the ambitious goal of becoming carbon zero by 2030.Jo shares in our chat that apparently around 45% of UK household's have a school aged person within them, m...

This week we’re diving into all things digital with Matt and Will from an organisation called Carbon Fingerprint. For many of us, the planetary impact of our online lives maybe isn’t something that we give much thought to – the cloud is this ethereal thing that none of us quite understand, and I personally can’t even begin to get my head around how the internet works, so have to assume it’s some k...

"If you own a tent you can be a member of Tentshare . If you don't own a tent, you can be a member of Tentshare."Love this quote from Rebecca Heaps, founder of Tentshare -'the Air BnB for tents'! On the surface, camping feels like a pretty eco-friendly option for a cheaper holiday. And it is. However it does involved quite a lot of 'stuff' - the tent, the sleeping mats, the sleeping bags, the camp...

Podcast episode wise it was only 7 episodes ago, but time wise, almost a year has passed since I chatted to Annie Pickering from Climate Emergency UK about their Council Climate Scorecards .In that chat we talked about why climate action from Local Authorities are important,. The operational carbon footprint of most local authroties might not be huge, but their sphere of influence over their local...

Tash Acres is the founder of Earth Runs , an organistaion that rewards activity by planting trees! As you will hear, Tash’s approach to running and physical activity is so similar to my approach to sustainability – anything is better than nothing, it all counts, celebrating the successes no matter how small, and so much more! Now if you're sat there thinking "I’m not into running, this episode isn...

In this episode we’re talking money, and how we can make our money a bit greener. I’m chatting to Dan Sherrard-Smith, who is the founder and CEO of MotherTree – a platform that helps us all to get better informed about the impact of our money when it’s in our current accounts, savings, and pensions, and even when it comes to things like mortgages, insurance and broadband too. We’ve got a few episo...

This week’s episode starts with a confession! This episode was recorded a whole year ago, it was edited, intros were put onto it, it was all ready to go, and I somehow failed miserably to hit publish! I genuinely even thought I had published it until I had an e-mail from Heather earlier on this year asking when I thought it might be published. And I'm so glad she did, otherwise this brilliant inte...

Following on from last week's episode looking into some of the basics of climate science with Dr Adam Levy, this week I'm chatting to another climate scientist, Dr Ella Gilbert , and this time we're diving into the murky world of climate denial! Here's some of the misinformation that Ella addresses for us, using actual science: Climate scientists cherry pick the data and make it all up Global temp...

It's only taken 165 episodes, but I decided that it was about time we did a climate change back to basics type episode, going over the basic science of climate change. Talking about climate change is one of the most important things we can do (check out the brilliant Katharine Hayhoe for a great TED talk around this!) but many of us hold back due to a lack of confidence in our climate knowledge. S...

After a *slightly* longer (9 months..!) than intended break, the podcast is back! No guest today - just a short solo episode to say hello, apologise for my absence and let you know to stand by your beds ready for some new episodes with some fabulous guests! GOOD NEWS!There's also a new Good News section, sharing some of the good climate news happening (because there is some, I promise!). Here's th...

Most of us limit our interactions with our local authority to whingeing about our bin collections and paying our council tax BUT did you know that they have a whole lot of carbon emissions within their influence and therefore a whole lot of potential for a positive planetary impact? But how do we know what our council are doing? And if their plans are any good? And how they compare to the county n...

In this episode we take a deep dive into the carbon footprint of Christmas. Which feels a bit weird right? Christmas is a time to let go a little, and not be so hung up on the consequences of our actions (hence the number of mince pies I may have already eaten..). I feel a bit guilty for flagging up the fact that our Christmas excesses still have an impact. But unfortunately we can't bury our head...

COP 27...What happened? What didn't happen? And why? For those of us in the UK, COP26 in Glasgow last year felt like a BIG deal - it was everywhere in the media while it was running, and schools, businesses and organisations were all keen to get involved. This year's COP (COP27) has felt very different. And I found myself struggling to follow what was going on, and getting a handle on any outcomes...

You might not want to hear this but...Christmas is coming! We’re about to enter silly season for consumption with Black Friday and then the Christmas shopping, so what better time to take a pause and think about the impact of what we’re buying, and how we might be able to make our money do good stuff at the same time as buying good pressies. I’m chatting to Sian Conway-Wood who is the founder of e...

Wouldn’t it be great if everything we bought had a label on it telling us what it’s carbon footprint it? Then we would be able to make informed choices about the things we were buying and the impact they had. Today I’m chatting to Charlie Cotton from ecollective about exactly that – what is a carbon footprint, how is it worked out, how feasible my grand carbon footprint labelling dreams are, and i...