Earth911.com Podcast-uri

Some of the dirtiest, plastic polluted waters lie at the heart of major cities, in ports, marinas and where wastewater enters the environment. They are hard to keep clean because of constant activity that adds new waste to waterways. The work is wet, cold and dirty, which makes port and marina cleanups an ideal job for robots. Meet Michael Arens, c…

Meet Journalist Esha Chhabra, who spent a decade exploring the world for examples of social ventures, businesses that blend profitability with creating equitable human outcomes for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications. In her new book, Working To Restore: Harnessing the Power of Regenerative Business to Heal…

As the economy turns sour, do shoppers still value sustainability when making decisions about what to buy? We welcome back Dan Smythe, Vice President of Retail and Hospitality Consulting at EPAM Continuum, to discuss the final installment of their Consumers Unmasked project. The four-part study of shoppers’ values and the important factors in their…

Let’s venture into the history of trees, wood, and the axe. Everywhere humans have gone they’ve mowed trees down to make tools, homes, fires, bridges, buildings, even railroad tracks — yes, the first railroads often ran on wooden rails, as author John Perlin explains in a new edition of his classic book, A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the F…

Stories and the way the press reports them shape our perception of the world and the Climate Crisis. While most major media companies have started to pay close attention to climate issues in recent years, often setting up their first environmental or climate desks, these beats are still understaffed to address the complex environmental narrative Mi…

The future of modern life turns in large part on making the packaging and delivery of the food and products we buy more sustainable and, eventually, environmentally neutral or positive. Our guest today, Robert Lilienfeld, is the executive director of SPRING, the Sustainable Packaging Research, Information and Networking Group, a Denver-based think …

If environmentally responsible, sustainable business were baseball, my guest Gil Friend would be as familiar a name as Babe Ruth. In 2011, Gil was named to first class of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals Sustainability Hall of Fame. He is the founder and CEO of Natural Logic, a sustainable business strategy consultancy, and…

Sea level rise due to melting glaciers on Greenland and in the Arctic and Antarctic could force the relocation of 267 million people and entire cities located less than 2 meters — 6.5 feet — from today’s waterline by 2100. Oceanographer John Englander has raised the alarm about sea level rise in his books, High Tide on Main Street and Moving to Hig…

Algenesis is two companies in one, a biotechnology innovator and footwear maker. Making a new, sustainable material often requires the inventor to prove its utility before big companies will embrace it. Join the conversation for a story of discovery and finding a practical application to prove the value of a plant-based, compostable bioplastic foam…

The UK took a huge step toward reducing its single-use plastic pollution. Starting in October 2023, a variety of single-use items such as plastic cutlery, plates, bowls, polystyrene cups, cotton swabs and balloon sticks will be banned. Fines of up to 10% of the UK revenue generated by the business that distributes these items and prison time for re…

How can we reduce the environmental impact from constructing and operating buildings? In 2021, construction and building operations account for 37% of global CO2 emissions, hit an all time high of 10 gigaton of CO2 emissions, about two percent higher than pre-pandemic levels. We talk with Tommy Listroth, founder and CEO of Green Badger, a software-…

How can we eliminate food waste created by restaurants, institutional cafeterias, and retail grocers? According to the National Conference of State Legislators, food waste is a plague in our supply chains. Farms contribute 16% of total food waste and businesses another 39%, while households waste 43% of the food lost before it is consumed. Chris O’…

Four out of 10 shoppers chose sustainable products and services in late 2022 despite the economic downturn. But higher prices are making them think harder and longer about their spending, which means they welcome more information that helps them make environmentally responsible decisions. Naba Sengupta, senior manager at Deloitte Advisory’s Sustain…

How we think and feel about the climate response, whether optimistic, pessimistic, cynical or pragmatic, shapes our perceptions of possible solutions. Too often, we argue over emotional perceptions and not hard climate data. But hard data is sterile, it doesn’t necessarily engage the passions that move us to act. So, we tell stories, often focusing…

What do the response to climate change and the Y2K computer bug, which required hundreds of thousands of technology workers to spend several years fixing in the 1990so prevent catastrophic errors when the date turned over to Jan. 1, 2000, have in common? Both are complex problems that reach into every corner of our lives. Y2K showed humans they can…

Anne Popkin, president and chief operating officer at Newday Impact Investing, joins the conversation to discuss Environmental, Social and Governance, or “ESG,” investing. More than $8.4 trillion has been invested in ESG-related equities and bonds as of the end of 2022, according to Bloomberg. And it will be a hot topic for investors, Congress and …

Richard Hirschhorn and Mona Chun, co-creators The Circular Design Glossary, introduce the new guide to understanding the future of furniture design. It was developed by mebl | Transforming Furniture, where Richard and Mona are founder/CEO and chief operating and sustainability officer, respectively, in partnership with the Sustainable Furnishing Co…

Urban-rural and youth-elder divisions in society represent some of the most difficult challenges to having a robust conversation about how to reduce emissions and waste, what we value as a society, and the path to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society. A just future will be codesigned by all of us to some extent, but we need to reconnect to move fr…

Patricio Grassini discusses the potential to feed the world without more deforestation and conversion of wetlands to agriculture. He is Sunkist Distinguished Professor of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Co-leader of The Global Yield Gap Atlas Project, the world’s leading database describing 13 major food crops. If the human popul…

Staying within the Paris Climate Accord’s 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, at which potentially devastating climate changes will occur, requires ending deforestation before 2030. But as of 2020, the world was still losing about 38,600 square miles of forest annually. Meet Allan Traicoff, Chief Commercial Officer at Emergent, a nonprofit that creates ince…

Buildings are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The $5.8 trillion-a-year building and construction sector, including ongoing operations of buildings, is responsible for 38% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions according to the United Nations’ Environment Program. Meet Håvard Haukeland, cofounder of Autodesk Spacemaker and a se…

Wanting to be sustainable is easy. Acting sustainably requires substantial effort, it takes time and no shortage of expertise to identify products and services with a low- or no-carbon footprint, and shopping for the best price on green energy, efficient appliances, and solar or other sustainability investments is difficult. Tony Wessling, the mark…

You may not see the evidence every day, but the electrification of our economy is well underway. In this episode, meet Damir Perge, CEO of Miami-based Amptricity, a maker of solid-state battery technology, an electronic storage system that provides enough power for 8 hours of home backup electricity. Ampricity’s batteries can be recharged 11,000 ti…

The clothing we wear is a source of carbon emissions and landfill waste. Sarah Pinner, cofounder and CEO of Beni, introduces a new plugin for Google’s Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers that helps shoppers find reused alternatives to new clothing. Beni makes thrift shopping easy with digital helping hand, and the team is working to add environmenta…

Google's circular economy leader, Mike Werner, explains the many renewable energy, waste reduction, and internal strategic changes that have established parent company Alphabet at the forefront of corporate sustainability. Google achieved carbon neutrality for its search engine operations in 2007 and a decade later had matched 100% of its energy us…

Meet Sean Wittenberg, founder of the seafood company SafeCatch. He started the business with a mission to source safe and sustainable tuna and other fish after his mother was diagnosed with mercury poisoning when she adopted a diet that included frequent servings of canned tuna. Sausalito, Calif.-based Safe Catch offers a wide variety of fish produ…

Michael Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS), introduces the Climate Solution Accelerator program, a 90-minute video-and-quiz program that explains the essential ideas in climate science, sustainable business, and the policies and paths out of the crisis. Earth911, Jump Digital, and the RSGS have partn…

Erin Levine, the resource recovery manager at World Centric, a maker of compostable packaging and tableware, returns to the show to share ideas about a low-waste holiday season and discuss the evolution of composting in California. The holidays are a time for family, community, faith, and fun, but they are also some of the most wasteful days of the…

Meet Garry Cooper Jr., cofounder and CEO of Rheaply. Garry is an accomplished investor at Longjump Ventures who has been recognized as an innovator by Forbes, Chicago Business Magazine and Crain’s. Much of the waste in our world is the result of overstocking and excess inventory in business and government— as much as $600 billion in surplus goods a…

Learn how businesses can accelerate the decarbonization of their operations and contribute to eventually removing that can help drawdown the more than 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by humans during the Industrial Era. Discover some of the complicated details of how carbon markets, credits, and allowances work with Jason Grant, chief ope…

Brad Pedersen, cofounder and chairman of Pela, joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss the company's sustainable products. We recently spent a couple of months testing the Lomi home composter from Pela, a Kelowna, British Columbia-based maker of compostable phone cases, low-carbon and low-waste sunglasses, and now appliances for a sustainable life. Pela l…

Join us for an impassioned conversation about the potential for recycling progress with David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, a social enterprise that partners with consumer products companies to create incentive programs in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa that help prevent plastics from reaching waterways, seas and the ocean. He joined us…

Learn how to assess the green credentials of companies. Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Adam Kramer, CEO of nZero, a carbon tracking and reporting company, and Scott Martin, Vice President and Head of Global Commercial Business at 3Degrees, which provides carbon strategy consulting, decarbonization program development, carbon sequestration and renewable…

Thomas VanMatre, VP of Global Business Development at Satellogic, a geospatial analytics company, joins the conversation to discuss the potential uses for satellite imagery and data for developing insights into our planet and ecosystems to end climate change. The company has launched 26 low-earth-orbiting satellites to date and will expand to more …

Discover how our food production and even our yards and gardens can play a role in reducing CO2 levels. We're joined by Ben Cloud, CEO of Biodel AG Inc., a Maricopa, Arizona company that recently introduced Sequester, a soil treatment that restores the soil’s ability to capture and hold CO2 that also promotes improved plant growth. Sequester is ava…

Robert Pasin, chief wagon of Radio Flyer, discusses the benefits and process of becoming a B Corp. Radio Flyer makes, in addition to the wagons we know from our childhoods, tricycles, scooters, inflatables, adult ebikes and a suite of Tesla electric toy vehicles. It became the first global toy and ebike brand to become a certified B Corp., the emer…

Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business' Responsible Business Coalition returns to the conversation to discuss how and why business should encourage the widespread adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. This low- and no-till, pesticide-free approach to farming can restore soil health, build n…

Ben Cohen, founder and CEO of Quoll Intelligence, explains how homeowners can assess the climate-related risks for their home and community. Quoll is a service for homeowners “dedicated to helping homes and homeowners become more resilient.” It delivers a climate risk report for single-family homes that explains the likelihood of sea level rise, fl…

Mike Phillips, CEO of Sense, a developer of home energy monitoring and management devices, discusses the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on home energy and EV charging in the United States. When the $369-billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed in early September the stage was set for a race to reduce U.S. emissions by 40% compared to…

Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of Re:Dish, joins the conversation to discuss making cafeteria, institutional and restaurant food service sustainable. Re:Dish provides reusable food service items, collecting, returning them to a dish washing facility each day, and delivering a fresh supply to its customers, which include corporate and school cafeterias, ho…

Ewaste recycling falls woefully short of the levels necessary to reduce the need for mining and producing new raw materials that involve toxins that frequently reach the environment. We talked with John Shegerian, cofounder and CEO of ERI, a Fresno, Calif.-based ewaste recycler with 8 U.S. processing locations that serve every ZIP Code in the count…

The story of a sustainable world will unfold in many places and across many websites, social networks, and video channels. Jane Velez-Mitchell, a former Headline News/CNN reporter and anchor, launched UnChainedTV to provide a dedicated source of video storytelling about vegan living, the environment, and animal welfare. It offers free video program…

Anna Yona, cofounder with her husband of Engelskirchen, Germany-based Wildling Shoes talks with Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe about making shoes that are easier on the planet. They make a wide range of shoes for women, men and kids, practicing sustainable design and manufacturing using a minimalist design philosophy the produces a light, comfortable a…

Dr. Ganesan Visvabharathy, founder of Hawthorne Development Corporation discusses the evolution of the built environment and green building standards necessary to achieve a zero-carbon society. A sustainable built environment is the foundation for lower energy use but will take a generation or more to put in place. Hawthorne recently completed two …

How can we finance the myriad startups and small business transitions that will bring the sustainable economy to full flower? Our guest, Dimitry Gershenson, is cofounder and CEO of Enduring Planet, argues that the climate crisis has made the human and business response inevitable. Enduring Planet was launched to non-dilutive financing in the form o…

Jürgen Pretsch is the founder of SHÄP, a recently launched rental marketplace that focuses on connecting people with items to rent in local communities. SHÄP works to reduce unnecessary purchases and enable sharing without creating a shipping footprint by bringing neighbors together. Reuse and sharing are the best ways to minimize the environmental…

The flower industry has a heavy environmental footprint but some growers are changing their agricultural and shipping practices. Toine Overgaag, president of family-owned Westerlay Orchids, grower and seller of live orchids, based in Carpenteria, Calif., joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss sustainable agriculture practices in the live plant industry. …

Are the laws of the United States fitted for sustainability? Our guest today, attorney Maya van Rossum, argues that it is time for a new approach, environmental constitutionalism. She is adjunct professor and director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Temple’s Beasley School of Law and founder of Green Amendments for the Generations, a campaign to…

There is momentum around sustainability in society but millions of companies and billions of people are not engaged with the ideas and taking action. Many simply don’t know where to start. We talk about inspiring change in organizations with Susan Hunt Stevens, cofounder and CEO of WeSpire, which develops tools, services and informational campaigns…

Animals are key to our restoration of the planet, Kate Wall and Mark Hofberg of the International Fund for Animal Welfare explain in a report titled Thriving Together: The Critical Role of Animals in Achieving the SDGs. The world’s progress toward a sustainable society has been charted by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a …