Sustainability In Your Ear

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Earth911 Podcast: Safe Catch CEO Sean Wittenberg on Making Seafood Sustainable Dec 02, 2022

Show notes

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 products in cans and pouch packaging, and the fish is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, the provider of the familiar and often controversial MSC “blue check” label. The company tests every tuna it sells for mercury, enforcing standards its claims are 10 times stricter than the Food & Drug Administration’s standard. It also offers sourcing and sustainability information about its practices for each species of fish it sells. We’ll discuss how Safe Catch assesses its suppliers in an era when 10% of the world’s fish stock is described by the Minderoo Foundation as being on the brink of collapse and almost half of fish stocks are over-fished. The company relies primarily on purse seine net fishing, a form of fishing that involves large nets. Sean explores the relationship between the continued burning of coal to generate electricity to the 300% increase in mercury levels in the oceans. We discuss plastic pollution and the recyclability of Safe Catch's can and pouch packaging, which it collects through a mail-in program supported by Terracycle.You can learn more about Safe Catch at https://safecatch.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Learn Business Sustainability with the Climate Solution Accelerator Nov 28, 2022

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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 partnered to make the program available in North America. More than 90,000 people globally have used the Climate Solution Accelerator to learn about climate strategies and train employees to start making informed environmental decisions. The program features globally renowned climate leaders, including the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the late Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. Michael, who is based near Glasgow, Scotland, shares what business has struggled to learn and his impressions of the debates at the recent United Nations Climate Framework COP27 meeting in Egypt. You can learn more about the 148-year-old educational non-profit Royal Scottish Geographical Society at https://www.rsgs.org/
The Climate Solutions Accelerator delivers an informative introduction to the most complicated and urgent challenge our species has ever faced. While there is plenty of evidence of the Climate Crisis in the news and in our neighborhoods, and billions of people are waking to the threat, most organizations and businesses are still trying to get their heads around the problem. The proghow they can respond, changing operations and investments to end CO2 emissions and prepare tp adapt to the disruptions that will continue to become more dire until society succeeds in reaching carbon neutrality and begins to drawdown the more than 1 trillion tons of anthropogenic CO2 emitted during the Industrial Era. You can learn more about the Climate Solutions Accelerator at https://earth911.com/featured-courses/climate-solutions/

Earth911 Podcast: World Centric's Erin Levine on California's Composting Progress and a Low-Waste Holiday Nov 25, 2022

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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 year -- Americans toss more than a third of the food grown annually. Erin recently contributed an article to Earth911, Tips for Planning a Sustainable Holiday Meal. We’ll her ideas about reducing waste and leftover food that too often ends up in a landfill, where they generate 14.5% of U.S. methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere many times faster than CO2.
Erin last talked with us in March, when the state’s mandatory composting law, SB 1383, or the Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, had just been put into practice. We’ll get an update about progress, how it is changing the options for Californians, and progress toward clear definitions of compostability for bioplastics and fiber-based packaging. World Centric has worked to eliminate PFAS, or "forever chemicals," from its fiber packaging and is introducing bamboo- and bagasse-based tableware, which will make the product of industrial composting programs safe for use in agriculture and home gardens. California's statewide composting progress has been slow because of the lack of industrial composting capacity, which creates the higher temperatures necessary to break down many materials. You can learn more about WorldCentric at https://www.worldcentric.com

Earth911 Podcast: Rheaply's Garry Cooper Jr. On Turning Surplus Resources Into Reuse Gold Nov 21, 2022

Show notes

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 are lying unused in some of the largest organizations in the world, including universities, hospitals, and industries that span the planet, like construction and heavy manufacturing. Rheaply.com is an emerging resource reuse marketplace platform aimed at solving the problem by enabling the transfer of resources to where they can be used. The company recently closed a $20 million round of funding and includes investors like Salesforce, Microsoft, AOL founder Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and others -- bringing the total raised to date to $21 million.
The Rheaply platform is a bit like eBay, and focused on creating regional circular economies. It allows purchasing and other managers to list supplies, equipment, materials and other surplus or unneeded assets for sale, the track and connect them to potential buyers to close a sale and arrange for delivery. By bringing together large commercial buyers with supplies within a region, Rheaply reduces the emissions associated with shipping something half way around the world — if it’s available locally, the price and environmental impact are lower. Additionally, the platform can help people inside large organizations exhange assets and supplies instead of disposing of them on a surplus site. Rheaply also provides an embodied carbon tracker that reports on the emissions avoided by choosing items listed in the marketplace. We also explore what other resources Rheaply might sell, including unused employee time and internet bandwidth. You can learn more about Rheaply at https://rheaply.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Decarbonizing Business With Climate Vault and Genpact Nov 18, 2022

Show notes

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 operating officer of Climate Vault, a non-profit that purchases and manages carbon allowance and credits to support carbon capture and sequestration technologies, and Sanjay Srivastava, chief digital strategies at Genpact, a digital services firm provides carbon tracking capabilities for large organizations. The companies have partnered to deliver an end-to-end solution for tracking, managing, and turning a profit by reducing CO2 emissions.
Climate Vault was named a World Changing Idea for 2022 by the business magazine, Fast Company. Jason and Sanjay explain the difference between a carbon allowance and a carbon credit. Carbon allowances let you emit, for example, one ton of CO2 within an overall carbon budget. Genpact's tools track whether the allowance goes unused, so that the resulting savings can be retired or sold. That’s where Climate Vault comes into the picture — they buy carbon allowances and retire them to prevent the emissions, as well as turn that avoided emissions into finding that supports carbon capture and sequestration technology development. In other words, Climate Vault helps companies use one carbon allowance to both retire CO2 and fund the tools that will remove more CO2 in the future. You can learn more about Genpact at https://www.genpact.com and about Climate Vault at https://climatevault.org/

Earth911 Podcast: The Birth of the Lomi Home Composter With Pela cofounder Brad Pedersen Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

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 launched as a maker of phone cases made from flax and a plant-based biopolymer that can be safely composted at home or in an industrial composting system. The Lomi is a countertop appliance that composts food waste, paper, and a growing number of bioplastic products that don’t break down in home compost piles. Pela also donate a share of sales to ocean cleanup and protection projects.
The Lomi earned our Greener Shopping Difference Maker designation for a product that reduces environmental impacts by at least 50%. The Lomi’s environmental performance varies based on how your electricity is generated but even in the worst-case scenario involving burning coal or oil for electricity, the Lomi delivered just over 50% lower emissions than sending the same compostables to a landfill. The methane emissions associated with anaerobic biodegradation in a landfill are eliminated when the material is composted. Brad is also the author of a new book, Start Up Santa, about his career in the toy industry and lessons learned starting a sustainable products company. You can learn more about Pela Case at https://pelacase.com/ and the Lomi home composter at https://lomi.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Plastic Banks' David Katz on Incentivizing and Upgrading Plastic Recycling Nov 11, 2022

Show notes

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 earlier this year returns to share an update about the company's progress. Plastic Bank has partnerships with SC Johnson, Henkel and others. Plastic Bank pays individuals in emerging economies to collect plastic turn it in at more than 600 branch locations. The collected plastic is recycled to make Social Plastic® feedstock, a raw material for making new plastic products. David also discusses the recent Greenpeace report that argues plastic recycling, including new molecular recycling technologies, does not work — it’s an overstatement in our opinion, but the system definitely needs an upgrade.
David's assessment of Greenpeace's conclusion: "Shame on them. It's one thing to say it doesn't work. It's another to say, 'Let's make it better.'" So what can we do? He advocates reducing the use of plastic overall, standardizing any necessary single-use plastic on recyclable materials, and that brands and society find a way to compensate people to collect and recycle the plastic we do use. Making the recycling system work may require incentives — but only 10 states have bottle bills the provide small payments for returning plastic bottles. We talk about what can be learned from Plastic Bank's work in emerging economies. Besides reducing our consumption of single-use plastic packaging, new legislation or private support are needed to turn the corner. You can learn more about Plastic Bank and subscribe to support collection programs that keep plastic out of waterways and oceans at https://plasticbank.com/

Earth911 Podcast: nZero and 3Degrees Team Up to Track & Manage Emissions Goals Nov 07, 2022

Show notes

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 energy credit advisory services. The companies recently partnered to offer a comprehensive carbon reporting and management solution. Their wide-ranging conversation explores how to track Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, manage and use carbon offsets transparently, ESG reporting, and the evolving job roles involved in decarbonizing the economy.
CO2 emissions tracking and reduction is the biggest challenge facing the 21st Century economy. First reducing, then reversing, the rising levels of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere is not a project for one company, but a collaboration that will transform economies. Companies can be more efficient and profitable in the long run, only after their leaders, regulatory agencies, and citizens find a shared language for talking about the problem. For more background on nZero, listen to our July 2022 conversation with co-founder and executive chairman Josh Weber. You can learn more about nZero at https://nzero.com/ and 3Degrees at https://3degreesinc.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Satellogic's Thomas VanMatre on Satellite Imagery's Role in Solving Climate Change Nov 04, 2022

Show notes

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 than 200 by 2025 in order to democratize access to high-resolution images and analytics. They developed microsatellites that are less than two feet wide and just under three feet wide, to reduce manufacturing and launch costs. Satellogic offers climate data and imagery that can be used to analyze climate change as it happens, monitor land use, invasive species and identify illegal activities, as well as track wildfires, extreme weather and other climate-related threats. Because they can refresh images of a location up to 5 times a day, Satellogic’s imaging can track events in real-time.
A few decades ago, satellite imagery was available only to a few governments on the planet. As of September 2021, 7,941 mostly privately operated satellites were in orbit around the Earth, and thousands are being launched each year. Just as computing has accelerated scientific discoveries about how our world works, the flood of information from satellites will increase our understanding of the planet, its environment and ecosystems. Thomas discusses the emerging satellite data industry, job categories that will grow, and how Satellogic is planning to reduce its environmental footprint and prevent contributing to the growing problem of space junk. You can learn about Satellogic at https://satellogic.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Biodel Ag CEO Ben Cloud on Accelerating Soil Restoration With Sequester Oct 31, 2022

Show notes

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 available for farming applications and for home use. A $12.81 8 oz bottle of Sequester can be used to improve the carbon sequestion capability of up to 2,500 square feet of yard and gardens. It is produced using a blend of cyanobacteria — the source of much of the breathable oxygen on the planet. In addition to helping capture carbon, Sequester reputedly reduces water consumption, salinity and nitrogen use by 30%.
Carbon dioxide is humanity’s most pressing problem. Since the dawn of the Industrial era about 250 years ago, humans have pumped more than 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, warming the planet by 1.8 degree Fahrenheit and bringing on the Climate Crisis. In addition to reducing emissions to zero, we need to remove this CO2 to start to cool the planet back to the temperatures in which we and the rest of the species on the planet evolved. You can learn about Biodel Ag and Sequester at https://sequester.ag

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