The Indisposable Podcast®

The New Year is a time for accountability and making commitments for healthier behavior in the year ahead, right? Well, then no better place to start the year than looking at the US’s new ranking as the #1 plastic polluter in the world. Not exactly a cause for celebration, but where there is culpability there is also opportunity for accountability. Listen in to hear UPSTREAM CEO Matt Prindiville t...

Many of us will be engaging in gift exchanges this December. Whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day or New Year’s, ‘tis the season for buying stuff. But we can still participate in the spirit of the holidays without all the waste! This episode – featuring Kate Nelson ( Plastic-Free Mermaid ) and Plaine Products CEO Lindsey McCoy – explores all sorts of ideas, from reuse gift sets to...

Join UPSTREAM CEO Matt Prindiville as he interviews Tom Szaky, a self-described eco-capitalist, who launched Terracycle from his dorm room at Princeton in 2003. Terracycle works with brands to collect and repurpose their hard-to-recycle waste and operates in over 20 countries, engaging more than 80 million people. Fifteen years later, Tom leveraged his relationships with name brands to create Loop...

Ayleen Farnood and Madhav Malhotra are two high school students in Toronto, Canada, who were concerned by the plastic pollution crisis and curious to learn how to help. Their shared interest sparked a deep learning journey, which gave birth to the Plastic Shift  an organization already getting a lot of public attention. The pair has conducted extensive interviews and research to learn from experts...

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This episode features our livestream originally aired September 24, 2020 hosted by UPSTREAM Board member Letise LaFeir. Environmental justice leaders Mustafa Santiago Ali and Miriam Torres join us for a frank discussion about race, the environmental movement, and intersectionality. Get ready for an incredibly rich and educational discussion, and be sure to share this one widely.

Sithara Menon and Valerie Nguyen started organizing as soon as they got into college, and have each seen significant success – from historic California climate legislation to the recent UC-wide ban on single-use plastics. In this episode, we talk with these young leaders about this epic win, what’s next for students working to #breakfreefromplastic, and what they’re learning about digital organizi...

Small businesses have been struggling amidst the constraints of COVID-19, but Vanessa Pope’s story of Mudlab is one of resilience, resourcefulness, and the power of community-based business. In this episode, we learn how this visionary Oakland resident has built a hub for reuse community with creative partnerships, serving locals a lot more than just coffee. We also hear Vanessa’s take on how reus...

With COVID-19 came opportunistic marketing for the plastics industry, resulting in people all over the world using more single-use stuff under the misguided notion that it is “safer.” This summer, over 115 health experts from around the world signed onto an evidence-based statement to validate the truth behind safe sustainability: Reusables are safe during a virus outbreak. In this episode, we spe...

This episode features winners from UPSTREAM’s recent Plastic Free July contest, where we passed the mic to our listeners to highlight your stories of how you are building a #betterwaythanthrowaway.  Our featured winners are Maladen Gayuek, Cofounder and CEO of PlasticScore, an app that rates restaurants on their single-use plastic usage; Jess Blasko, who is developing a COVID-friendly Refill Stati...

From rafting down the Mississippi to a fishing line ring proposal on a sail to the trash gyres in the middle of the ocean, Marcus Erickson’s life is an ongoing adventure story. Also a PhD scientist and activist and co-founder of 5 Gyres, Marcus’s adventures these days are all about doing good through research and activism to address plastic pollution. In this episode we dive deep with Marcus to he...

Many environmental organizations are trying to figure out how to become anti-racist in a space with a longstanding history of both intentional and unintentional racism and exclusion. Many white leaders in our movement are simultaneously grappling with a personal history of ignorance and inaction on the problem of racism in America. In this candid co-interview, Brooking and UPSTREAM’s Executive Dir...

Listen to in an interactive and hopeful conversation about the safety and future of reuse in America with epidemiologist Dr.  Ben Locwin and entrepreneurs Tom Szaky and Lindsey Hoell. We discuss how reuse solutions and systems can help: - save businesses money - get people back to work - protect public health - stop plastic pollution & reduce waste

Like millions around the world right now, at UPSTREAM we’ve been talking a lot about racial justice in America. We’ve been holding in our hearts the countless Black Americans who’ve effectively been treated as disposable in our society and justice system. We’ve been meeting as a team to look at how we can do more and better to support change. And we’ve been looking at how our work building a reuse...

What’s a beautiful disruption? A culture hack? A story war?  How do big events like pandemics change the stories we tell about our world? And how can we help shape that change toward the more beautiful world we want to live in?  Join Dancing Fox co-founders Brian Fitzgerald and Tommy Crawford for this deep dive into the wondrous world of re-shaping social norms. Must-hear episode for all artists,...

The recycling industry has been taking a hit the last few years, and since COVID-19, rates have dropped about 50 - 60%. But the spike in single-use waste and plummet in recycling doesn’t stop Terracycle founder & CEO Tom Szaky from feeling optimistic about the future of reuse in America. Tune in for the latest from Tom as he continues combatting plastic pollution through business models, and get t...

We all gotta eat, and we all deserve the safest possible packaging and access to food. Here’s how you can protect the food coming into your home and support local businesses during the coronavirus outbreak, with a look at greater systems change. In this special feature, we explore food safety and concerns around COVID-19 with Jane Muncke, PhD ecotoxicologist and Managing Director of the Food Packa...

“No idea is crazy enough to change the world... but you might as well try.” This is the motto and mindset of the Make a Change team, a trio of siblings who grew up in Bali and decided as pre-teens to start working on one of the biggest challenges they saw in their community: plastic pollution. The organization uses adventure and social media as a vehicle for behavior and policy change. In this epi...

In this episode we get a glimpse into the future of the throw-away free city with Vessel founder and CEO, Dagny Tucker. Vessel is bring reusable cup sharing systems to cities across the US and helping Americans ditch throw-away culture, one cup at a time.  But for Dagny, a behavior change specialist, designer and ideator, it’s not just about cups. Vessel is all making every day values-aligned acti...

Incredible things are possible when our professional lives align with our personal values. We explore some of them with Berna Tural, who shares how scuba diving took her from a successful corporate career to dedicating her life to solving our plastic pollution crisis. Berna is now Director of Strategic Partnerships & Initiatives at UPSTREAM, where she’s helping us build a better way than throw-awa...

Ready for some inspiration about how awesome the future without throw-away bottles is going to be—and how much is happening already to get there? Meet Samuel Ian Rosen, the visionary ecopreneur with some serious chops at scaling business solutions to real world challenges. After building a game-changing storage solution company, Samuel brought his entrepreneurial problem-solving skills to the issu...

Lucky for us and the planet, pop culture campaign experts have joined the global force of change agents bringing their hearts and minds to the issue of plastic pollution. In this episode we talk with culture creator and social marketer Emma Riley, Strategic Partnership Director for Lonely Whale - the organization that helped put the plastic pollution issue on the mainstream map in a big way with t...

How can we keep plastic pollution a non-partisan issue? Why is this so important?  As elections politics and recycling trade wars heat up in the US, we turn to UK-based strategist Emma Priestland for some perspective. We touch on the topics of global and European plastics impacts, economics, unique lessons from UK politics and policy, narrative strategy, and more.  Emma has been working on plastic...

Activism at its best is not a choice but a call - a response to injustice. Diane Wilson’s story exemplifies this, and in this interview, we get the gift of speaking with this 70 year force of nature and shrimp fisherwoman turned pollution activist. Diane has written many books, won many awards, undergone many hunger strikes and days in jail for her civil disobedience brand of activism, co-founded...

Reusable mugs: you’ve bought and used them, loved and lost and forgotten them, replaced and reused them. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to remember to bring your mug everywhere you go to be part of the reusable revolution? Wouldn’t it be great if cities had cup shares that work like our bike shares? Thankfully, some brilliant innovators are on it! In this episode we talk with Safia Quresh...