The Indisposable Podcast®

To kick off a new “back to school” series, we begin with the student perspective – those who will be, and in many ways already are, leading the reuse movement. Host Macy Zander sits down with Bay Area high school students Amanda Yu (Stanford Online High School), Kaavya Baliga (Menlo School), and Eileen Liu (Menlo-Atherton High School), who are each deeply involved in reuse and sustainability effor...

Upstream’s previous CEO Matt Prindiville makes a special return as podcast host in order to “pass the baton” to our new CEO – and Matt’s longtime friend – Crystal Dreisbach. Crystal is a Solutioneer whose life goal is to disrupt the status quo of our throw-away economy. With over 13 years of executive leadership experience in developing solutions that prevent waste, her goal is to help shift our e...

Host Brooking Gatewood sits down with G.L., founder of Generation Conscious, which won The Reusies 2023 Most Innovative Reuse Company in Consumer Packaged Goods. Since 2021, Generation Conscious has been laying the ground-work for a student-centered, hygiene-equity focused business that is saving carbon and avoiding single-use waste through campus-based laundry soap refill stations. Learn more abo...

In this insightful episode, host Brooking Gatewood sits down with Lara Seng, Senior Sustainable Living Manager with Sodexo North America. They go behind the scenes into corporate organizing and strategic pilots to discuss how this Fortune 500 company is taking on the challenges of shifting to reuse at a massive scale. Sodexo, with Lara’s guidance, has been one of the longest running partners and B...

Listen back to the latest installment of our livestream series, Indisposable Live®. This one was actually held live, following The Reusies 2023, which was showcased this year at Circularity 23 in Seattle. The Reusies highlighted the theme of cooperation and collaboration needed among different sectors (corporations, investors, NGO/non-profits, communities and government) when implementing and scal...

Alejandra Warren, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Plastic Free Future, focuses on the power of kindness and collective action for social change that protects the planet. The impact of her collaborative work in the reuse community is widely recognized via policy victories in California, nation-wide coalition-building, and most recently at the INC-2 negotiations in Paris. She was also the winne...

World Refill Day is a global day of action to prevent plastic pollution and help people live with less waste. Last year the campaign reached 80 countries and 100 million people, and for this year’s event on June 16th, UK-based City to Sea and partners are aiming even higher: launching the Global Reuse Summit and envisioning a circular future where reuse & refill are the norm. Join City to Sea’s ve...

Tim Wolters is a modern-day “Renaissance Man” of the tech world and co-founder and CEO of CrowdSolve, a startup platform that combines technology and human-to-human collaboration to advance innovative climate solutions. CrowdSolve uses machine learning to help select the climate innovations with the highest potential for impact and momentum, an algorithm that host Dr. Priscilla Johnson aptly equat...

How can we begin to address mistakes we have made in the past and design a more sustainable future? How can we build bridges rather than putting up walls between one another?  Host Brooking Gatewood sits down with Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, world-renowned thought-leader, strategist, activist – and 2023 Reusies judge – to explore these profound questions and how they relate to climate justice and eq...

With growing recognition that the fashion & apparel industry is a large contributor to our waste crisis, we are fortunate to have creative minds working on practical solutions – many of them incorporating reuse models. Host Brooking Gatewood sits down with Lewis Perkins, President of the Apparel Impact Institute and 2023 Reusies judge, to explore these opportunities, which his organization is help...

As part of its environmental portfolio, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) engages companies, policy makers and players across the plastics value chain to ensure an effective waste management system for plastic.  As Plastic and Material Science Program Specialist at WWF, Jess Zeuner is dedicated to helping achieve their ambitious vision of “No Plastic in Nature by 2030” – with reuse as an essential solutio...

Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) does tremendous work to serve the global community of entrepreneurs focused on ocean sustainability with funding, mentorship, capacity-building, and more. Their accelerator program has supported 45 world-leading ocean tech startups with $225M in lifetime funding. And Camila Vega, Solutions Portfolio Manager at SOA, draws on her wealth of experience as a founder, op...

With a background in waste management, Anita Schwartz, VP at environmental consulting company WSP, is only too aware of the massive carbon footprint embedded in our systems of extraction and production of goods. And she’s also taking a close look at the many indirect sources of carbon emissions created every step of the way to the landfill – what are known as “scope 3 emissions.” Along with host D...

Raise your glasses to send a warm but bittersweet farewell to our beloved CEO and podcast host Matt Prindiville. In this episode, we talk about the rare opportunity that compelled him to leave Upstream so he could help build reuse infrastructure in the private sector. Join us to reminisce about some key moments and favorite aspects of Matt’s 12+ year history helping lead the Upstream team and the...

Hailing from The Netherlands, which sits below sea level, Thom Almeida is no stranger to the threat posed by climate change. These origins helped inform his career path up to the present day, where, as Platform Curator for Future of Consumption at the World Economic Forum, he focuses on the challenge of adopting reuse systems from the consumer’s perspective. What systems are they most likely to em...

Kicking off our series highlighting the incredible partners of The Reusies 2023, we’re joined by two GreenBiz team members who are helping organize Circularity 23 in Seattle, WA – where, on June 7, The Reusies will make its in person debut. VP of Circularity, Jon Smieja, and Circular Economy Manager, Kori Goldberg, sit down with our host, Chief Strategy Officer Priscilla Johnson, to discuss all th...

The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative is the industry steward of that state’s nationally recognized beverage container redemption program, helping discharge the responsibilities of beverage companies in complying with the state’s bottle deposit law. They have also started to collect and process refillable beer bottles to get them back to a consortium of Oregon brewers for washing and refilling...

What will it take to accelerate the New Reuse Economy? For Emily Tipaldo, Executive Director of the U.S. Plastics Pact, it starts with concepts close to our hearts: convening and collaborating. The Pact’s Reuse Catalyst program aims to boost emerging and established reuse and refill innovators, and the broader industry, through shared learning, expertise, and amplification.  Lauren Sweeney, co-fou...

With momentum surging in state legislatures to tackle the growing waste crisis, we face a pivotal opportunity to catalyze the new reuse economy. In this special Indisposable Live episode, we explore how best to incorporate waste prevention and reuse into one of the most popular waste policies - Extended Producer Responsibility. In this special Indisposable Live episode, Upstream's Policy Director...

Atlantic Packaging was founded, incredibly enough, by a KKK-fighting  journalist from the South, whose efforts led to the arrest of hundreds of Klan members. Today, his grandson Wes Carter continues to lead the largest privately held packaging company in North America with a strong sense of ethics and a focus on sustainability. He’s launched an initiative to significantly reduce plastic-centric pa...

Should a reuse business focus on its product’s sustainability as a primary selling point? What will it take to compete with single-use? When will we see widespread adoption of reuse systems? Reuse entrepreneur Daniel Velez sits down with host, Chief Strategy Officer Priscilla Johnson, for a lively conversation in which he shares insights gained from launching—and ultimately, closing—Growly, “the m...

How do we ensure healthy, sustainable communities when we live in a system that so often prioritizes profits over people, especially those who are historically marginalized? Jose Bravo, Executive Director of The Just Transition Alliance, spends his days working on this very issue. And while there are no easy answers or quick fixes, one thing is clear: the most effective solutions will come from en...

In honor of Women’s History Month and the amazing efforts of countless women in the reuse movement, host Brooking Gatewood sits down with Upstream Board Members Ashley Craig and Linda Corrado for a candid chat about their own work on reuse – both professionally and personally. Learn about the paths these two women have taken from successful corporate careers in fashion and finance to the joy-induc...

In our first-ever episode of The Indisposable Podcast, we celebrated the passing of the 2019 Single Use Foodware and Litter Reduction Ordinance in Berkeley, California. More than 100 episodes later, host Brooking Gatewood welcomes back Martin Bourque, Executive Director of The Ecology Center, to discuss the organization’s new toolkit to help others learn from this unique model for both policy and...

How do you convince a global corporation to alter its course on single-use plastics? Shining light on the problem can be a good start. In a landmark report released in December 2022, Oceana revealed Amazon.com's staggering contributions to the growing plastic waste crisis – 709 million pounds in 2021 alone. While Amazon’s response has been lackluster, the wheels of change are already in motion via...