Who's Saving the Planet?

While Jason Carney is not one to shy away from the responsibility he's shouldered as a pioneer in his field and a leader in his community, he does so quietly, with a measured and learned restraint. Such is the calm you'd expect from a man used to listening to other peoples problems, which he is. But Jason is also someone unafraid of introducing change into a system too often rooted in the old, clo...

Inventor and engineer David Weaver started out at Kodak some 40 years ago cleaning optical equipment by hand. Today, he's at the helm of his own eco-friendly cleaning product company — Aphex BioCleanse Systems. Its water-based active ingredient, Hy-IQ Water, contains no phosphates, surfactants, toxins or pesticides... it's just water. And it kills bacteria quicker without polluting our waters or h...

Getting companies to do things is hard. Getting companies to take climate seriously has been a slow, long, march, with many a setback and all too few victories. It's a fight Bill Weihl knows well, and recently he decided it was time to change the strategy.  For six years Bill served as the Green Energy Czar at Google, followed by another six years as Facebook's Director of Sustainability. He...

Leo Alvarez and his team over at Protera had a busy 2020. Not only did the startup snag $5.5 million in venture capital, it traded its San Francisco digs for a new HQ in the 'City of Lights' — Paris. But what's next on the company's agenda really grabbed our attention here at WSTP: wielding deep learning tech to predict the 3D structure of proteins. The goal is to transform food ingredients to not...

Suicide and mental health are discussed at length in this episode, which could be triggering. If you, or anyone you know is struggling with mental health, the suicide prevention lifeline number is 800-273-8255 . When we first heard that the Air Force was working with the virtual reality company Moth and Flame, we were expecting something along the lines of jumping out of planes at low orbit or pil...

If a tree falls in a city, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Cities across the U.S. are losing their urban canopy. In fact, more trees fall in cities than in our national forests. (Roughly 46 million tons of wood and biomass waste!) Most of the wood that comes down is either abandoned in people’s yards, sent to a landfill or ends up in a burn pile. Ben Christensen is the CEO a...

The magnitude and complexity of the threat posed by climate change can't be solved with one silver bullet. Rather than looking for one solution, Dr. Michael Boesen decided to raise an army of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and developers with the skills required to build the solutions we need. Since it's going to take all of us to save the planet, we might as well start getting all of us in...

Soil erosion, the degradation of the health of soil through over-tilling and rampant use of chemicals, is an existential threat to our ability to grow food, sequester carbon and live in harmony with nature. In many ways, it's the whole ball game- if we're unable to arrest the dependance on techniques and chemicals that deteriorate soil health, then worse agricultural conditions will result in smal...

Here's an age old question: how do you make marketing a force for good in the world? Welcome to the world of Andrew Forman's win-win-win business strategy. Win 1: Generate piles of money for philanthropic causes. Win 2: Provide people an avenue to do some good while also getting the stuff they want.  Win 3: Use companies' intrinsic motivation to improve their bottom line through a marketing s...

Imagine a world where offsetting your carbon footprint was as simple as ordering more butt paste for your newborn infant (relevant, I promise). If we're going create a better world for the generations to come, my baby son Rye included, featured co-host on the intro with myself and Jess Miles,  we better start cleaning up our act today.  Wren is a carbon offsetting platform created by a b...

Let's say you're on the beach one day with your metal detector (as we do) and happen upon a chest of buried treasure, as it were. Your first call is your mom, clearly, but then after that, ring up CEO of Boundless Impact, Michele Demers, and she'll tell you where you can put your money to get a healthy return and save the planet along the way.  Michele has been in the impact investing world since...

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) like medical grade gloves flew off the shelves in an effort to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. But PPE supplies aren't exactly eco-friendly. In fact, 100 billion pairs of single use gloves end up in landfills every year, and they take over 100 years to break down. Fikile Mthwalo came up with a solution — Glubbs. Th...

For a long minute in venture capital world (and on Shark Tank, for those of us playing at home) if you were pitching your new start up, it was useful to say you were the "Uber of X". Whatever X may be, cupcakes, thoroughbred racehorses, custom fitted clogs, you wanted to be the business in the middle that aggregated the sellers and made it simple, easy and efficient to connect to the buyers. Yaniv...

Big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple are guilty of planned obsolescence. They purposely make stuff glitchy so you have to buy whatever new gizmo they roll out. Not only is it annoying because it forces us to spend more money, but it's bad for the environment as devices needlessly end up in trash heaps. Serge Verdoux and his team at Back Market have had enough. They're shaking up the electro...

With degrees in Industrial Engineering, Business, and Fashion Design, Kristy Caylor was well prepared for the world of fashion by the time she joined GAP Inc. in 2004. She led the Project (RED) initiative within GAP, which engaged the private sector in raising awareness and funds to help eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. This initiative revealed the enormous people and planet-saving power when consume...

9.8 million tons of furniture end up in landfills every year, and most of it was pretty crappy to begin with. Jay  is here to change that, and along the way, our conception of how we use, enjoy and own our stuff.  To be clear, the CEO and founder of Feather , Jay Reno, would never claim to be the anti-anything, he's focused on creating forward looking solutions rather than dragging...

Our guest this week is Evan Hanczor, a chef at the sustainable breakfast restaurant Egg and the founder of Tables of Contents. TOC brings people together to enjoy a book passage paired with a meal that really brings imagination to life. The new Tables of Contents book, coming out the first week of February, collects recipes from incredible authors and pairs them with beautiful illustrations. And i...

By the age of 25 Abigail Lorick had clocked a successful career as a Ford Model and was on her way to launching her own brand. From there her career would continue to unfold in the fashion world, as the ghost design behind the WALDORF brand on TV's Gossip Girl and the design director for Stance. When she was approached by a female run private equity firm (more on that later) to create a women's su...

Hydropower already provides nearly 7% of the nation’s electricity. It also holds tremendous potential for expansion! But there are challenges: How can we harness water as a renewable energy resource without disrupting sensitive ecosystems, communities and wildlife? Gia Schneider has an answer. Her company is Natel Energy, which she co-founded with her brother back in 2005. The goal: change the way...

66°North began not so much as a clothing company as it was a means of not dying. In 1926 the company was founded to provide a layer of protection from the elements to their local community of fisherman. Considering it was Iceland, that was no small task.  This week we invite the CEO of 66°North, Helgi Oskarsson, in from the cold, to talk about how he's shepherding a company with values that s...

This week we're revisiting one of our favorite stories from 2020, the crazy duo in South Africa building engines that look like beetles powered by plastic from oceans. We're working on a whole slate of new, wonderful, inspiring stories for you in 2021, thanks fall the laughs (and fish) and see you next year! ----------------------------------------- A mechanical bug just might be the answer to sol...

In 2009 Dr. Harvey Karp was in the twilight of his career as a renowned pediatric physician, beloved professor of medicine, and renowned author of the "Happiest Baby"  book series. While he was working the speaking circuit, lecturing on his Five S's infant calming technique, it occurred to him that the methods he espoused to calm babies (and restore a sense of confidence to parents) could be...

Steve Sakala says there's zero excuse for consumer packaged goods companies to not be plastic negative. Take his work in the cannabis industry, for example. Like most industries, the world of weed has a major sustainability problem. It creates (at least) 150 million tons of waste annually, mainly due to single-use plastic packaging. Steve was with the Peace Corp, traveled the world, learned a lot,...

Do you have a drawer or box filled with old laptops and smartphones? Or  perhaps your electric vehicle is reaching the end of its life and you're  shopping for a new one? What happens to the lithium batteries powering  each of these machines? Ajay Kochhar has an answer. He and fellow  battery expert Tim Johnston launched Li-Cyle — a startup devoted to  recover critical mat...

At the top of this episode, special guest Penelope Barr reminds us: Getting up and living your life well makes you the hero of your story. She's certainly done that. With 20-plus years of tech expertise, Penelope is leading the way to a more eco-friendly world on a local and global level in a very unique way — a video game. Carbon0 is an interactive augmented reality game that takes a positive app...