Who's Saving the Planet?

Imagine a substance which is as durable, malleable, and practical as plastic, except it's produced through extracting methane from the atmosphere, making it carbon negative, and is fully biodegradable by microorganisms, the same "as a leaf or a twig." No need to imagine it, just hop into a Target and you'll find Aircarbon cutlery on the shelves.  It's been a nearly two decade journey for CEO...

92 million tonnes of clothes end up in the garbage every year. That's more than one full dumpster truck every second. The fashion industry has long been built on a model of planned obsolescence: each season new styles pushed out the now arcane pieces from last year. Except, with the rise of fast fashion, seasons are compressed into weeks, at times days. As these companies push out new product, gen...

Nate Storey, the Chief Science Officer of Plenty , has a vision for the next evolution of agriculture, and it has nothing to do with a farm. At least not the kind humans have cultivated, so far.  Plenty is a unicorn a few times over, having raised over half a billion dollars to recreate our conception of how our food is produced. They have created a means of farming indoors, using hydroponics...

Within our lifetimes, actually within this decade according to our guest today, your grocery store will have three options for a burger: traditional (a la once living cow), plant based, and cultivated meat .  If you're new to cultivated meat yet, you're not alone. But soon, you will, and Leonardo DiCaprio is going to make sure of that.  Our Guest today is Dr. Neta Lavon, the VP of Resear...

Over one hundred million tons of fabric is produced for the textile industry ever year. The scale of that production is hard to comprehend, but for comparison, the Empire States Building weighs about 365,000 tons, so we make about 274 empire states buildings worth of textiles each and every year.  Circ is here to answer the question: what are we going to do with all the clothes made from that...

As e-commerce has swallowed consumerism, we take for granted the speed and ubiquity of shopping online. Get anything ever in a day at most, feels like magic. But, all of those products have a story to tell in the journey they made from factory, to warehouse, to shipping depot, to transport, and finally the last miles to your door. Along that journey, the lowly, but none the less crucial, Yard Dog...

This week Karin Dillie, VP of Partnerships for Recurate, joins us to talk about how they're building the technology for independent brands to resell their products on their own platforms. Love Frye boots? Now you can shop their site and decide whether you want a crisp new pair or one that's been pre-loved, for a fraction of the cost, all on the same trusted Frye website.  The resale market ha...

What if superior clothing retained re-sale value enough to justify a reach purchase, knowing you'd be able to recoup a hefty sum when you were ready to move on? We think that way about cars, why not suits? Why not indeed. Vanessa, CEO and founder of Another Tomorrow joins us to discuss how we can shift our thinking about clothes from a disposable commodity to a durable asset class.  Another T...

Imagine if you could actually see sustainability in manufacturing manifested, immediately and obviously. That's exactly what the team at Circular Economy Manufacturing have done with their creation and launch of the world's first Micro-Factory. The concept is simple: show people what it looks like to build closed loops into manufacturing using a living demonstration. The visionary behind the proje...

This week we return to the world of furniture with Kristin Smith, COO, President, and even an early investor, of Fernish . The EPA estimates that  12.2 million tons of furniture ends up in a landfill every year, a product of our disposable relationship with the furniture we buy and eventually, throw away. Furnish is one of a new crop of companies seeking to break that model through offering r...

Paul Shapiro spent is career working to improve the wellbeing of animals through legislation, activism, awareness campaigns, and civic engagement during his 13 year tenure with the Human Society. The desire to affect positive change led him to write a book on the topic of improving our relationship with the way we cultivate, treat, and consume animals. After publishing his book he was left with a...

Zach Lawless is one of the few people I've met who's gets just as worked up about all the ways recycling isn't all it's made out to be as Jess Miles does. And that's saying something.  Zach founded the GoodGoods to step in where recycling falls short, creating a closed loop process of reusing products instead of the energy intensive, largely wasteful, and often downright duplicitous promise o...

Madeline Fraser came up with the idea for Gemist when she tried to design herself a custom ring. The ordeal proved successful but a headache. How is it that the custom jewelry process is so antiquated? The serial entrepreneur had an idea: let the consumer be in charge. After all, one size does not fit all when it comes to jewelry design. And so she brought the industry into the modern age with a u...

After six years working at Amazon, Sydney Badger had bigger dreams than maximizing efficiency. But, she also had a black-belt in maximizing efficiency. Public Habit is the marriage of expert supply chain optimization and, that most human of things, soul.  Public Habit is a made-to-order clothing company specializing in high end wool and cashmere products. Fashion, as we know it, is built on a...

The answer, at its most maximalist expression, a significant reduction in the 30% of greenhouse gasses released through the production of heavy industry. The people making that hypothesis a reality? Meet Sean and G, founders of Solugen . The chemical industry is a multi-billion dollar dynamo that most consumers rarely, if ever, confront in their day to day lives. We don't spend much time digging i...

Yes, that's a photography pun. I'm a dad, the jokes come with the gig.  KT Merry is an internationally recognized high-end destination photographer who moonlights as a conservationist, traveling the world capturing images of endangered and at risk animals to generate revenue for the organizations seeking to keep those animals this side of extinct. Render Loyalty is her side-hustle and soul-sa...

Extracting metals from the earth is, by nature, not a sustainable practice. We have a finite amount of resources, after all. However, that doesn't mean that all methods of mining are created equal. Anna Bario, one half of the Bario Neal team, joins us this week to discuss how her company created a whole new vocabulary to define sustainability in the jewelry industry. From working with Artisanal Sm...

A net positive product is a new concept: a thing which by virtue of it having been made, has improved the outlook for earth and the humans who live on her. Simple in conception, but wildly difficult in execution. Humanscale, a company which makes office furniture, dedicated itself to becoming more than a company which makes office furniture a long time ago. Today, they have lapped the industry a d...

Agriculture and farming can play a tremendous role in reducing America's carbon footprint and farmers can lead the way in offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. One way of doing this is through Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) — a method designed from the ground up with sustainability in mind. CEA growers include greenhouses, vertical farms, and other indoor farms that combine traditional fa...

Microsoft says it's going carbon negative. You just bought an offset for a flight you're taking (congrats, welcome back). Credit cards have carbon-neutral lifestyle plans in the works. All sounds great, but what does it really mean? And will these offsets actually reduce the amount of carbon they promise?  This week we speak with Margaret Kim, CEO of GoldStandard.org. Goldstardard is one of t...

Generally when Mark Cuban makes you an offer, it's a good idea to take the deal and run. Lindsey McCormick had a different idea. Lindsey is the CEO and co-founder of Bite , the tablet toothpaste company which charged into the oral hygiene scene in 2018 and hasn't looked back since. Only a few months into what was then a project, Bite struck internet gold, going viral with a youtube video that coll...

What if we knew everything about everything we bought? Nuts to bolts, cradle to grave, all of it. Would we make better choices? Would we treat our stuff better? Jakob and August, founders of ASKET, are betting the farm on YES.  ASKET was founded on the principles that we should buy better stuff, less often, treat it with care, and wear it until, well, as long as possible. This is  the an...

Third-generation sustainability superstar Alex Shadrow is our guest. She's an entrepreneur who says it's in her DNA to solve the fashion waste crisis! Better known by her moniker "Sustainabae" — a name she certainly lives up to — Alex tells us the story of her eco-warrior family, how she became a member of Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps, her passion for fashion and why being the COO of...

If we intend to meet our climate goals, we need to decarbonize the transportation sector. That means moving away from fossil fuels to clean energy. But cars are just a tool. Whether a car is filled with gasoline or powered by electricity, without easy access to fuel, a car loses its usefulness. The electric vehicle market has definitely left it’s awkward teen year and is in the midst of its glow-u...

Before Shari Siadat was a children's book author, before she was a corporate executive, or a mother of three, she was a child struggling with the distance between the way she thought she should look and person she saw in the mirror. We all have our own issues with body image, self-esteem, representation, all reflected through an internal kaleidoscope of how we imagine the world sees us. Shari ran...