Sustainability In Your Ear

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Earth911 Podcast: Investing For Clean Water Newday Impact Investing's Doug Heske Dec 06, 2021

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We sit down for another responsible investing conversation with Newday Impact Investing CEO Doug Heske. The topic is investing to ensure enough clean water is available for humans, animals and vegetation around the world. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that $472.6 billion of investment is needed by 2035 to continue providing clean safe drinking water, and the opportunities for conservation are everywhere. For example, McKinsey recently reported that between 14% and 18% of domestic potable water is lost each year just to leaks. Doug shares his insights into the rising interest in water investment, discussing Evoqua Water Technologies (NASDAQ: AQUA), Watts Water Technologies Inc. (NYSE: WTS), Middlesex Water Company (NASDAQ: MSEX), Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) and Heritage-Crystal Clean (NASDAQ: HCCI).
Despite water funding falling $40 billion dollars short of the amount needed to keep pace in 2020, Doug sees growing interest in water and water conservation investing. Newday Impact manages a suite of socially and environmentally responsible portfolios, including a Fresh Water & Sanitation fund. The fund may invest in the companies discussed. We urge you to do your own due diligence before investing in any companies discussed on Sustainability In Your Ear. You can learn more about Newday Impact Investing at https://newdayimpact.com/.

Earth911 Podcast: Nth Cycle's Megan O'Connor Aims for a Revolution in Battery Recycling Nov 29, 2021

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The electrification of the economy depends on reliable access to a collection of valuable but environmentally damaging metals, including lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese. We talk with Megan O’Conor, cofounder and CEO of Nth Cycle, a Beverly, Mass-based startup poised to disrupt the metal recycling industry with an electro-extraction system that can operate in very small facilities spread all over the world. The Nth Cycle process can handle up to five tons of material each day in a very compact facility — only 1,000 square feet, about the half the size of the typical retail storefront. That means in theory that materials could be recycled near the source and reused locally, and with 3D-printing maturing the idea of a locally printed car or EV batter is a very real possibility. The Nth Cycle technology may also help to extract more metal from ore and post-processing waste materials that have been discarded by mining and smelting companies. Nth Cycle recently took second place in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition, a significant accomplishment, and has raised $4.5 million. You can learn more at https://nthcycle.com/.

Earth911 Podcast: Budderfly Delivers Energy-Efficiency-as-a-Service for Business Nov 24, 2021

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The cost of energy-efficient upgrades prevents many businesses from reducing their environmental impacts. We talk with Al Subbloie, CEO of Budderfly, a fast-growing energy-efficiency-as-a-service company, with an audacious solution for businesses that want to be more sustainable -- it pays for lighting, heating/cooling, renewable electricity sourcing and other upgrades, then collects a share of the resulting savings. Budderfly guarantees savings to customers, earning a profit only if they succeed. We’ve talked with other forms of “sustainability-as-a-service” companies, but Budderfly is putting its capital on the line to pay for immediate energy savings. The company is ranked #10 overall on the 2021 Inc. 5000 America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies list, and it came in #2 in the Inc. 5000 energy category. The company serve commercial and retail locations, restaurants, schools and colleges nationwide. You can learn more at https://www.budderfly.com/.

Earth911 Podcast: One Tree Planted's Matt Hill on Reforestation Nov 22, 2021

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Reforestation is hot topic. More companies and people taking steps to plant trees contribute to restoring the environment. Matt Hill is the Chief Environmental Evangelist at One Tree Planted, one of the oldest and largest tree-planting non-profits. Matt discusses the best practices for reforestation programs and how long trees must be monitored to provide supporters confidence that the trees they plant will thrive.
One Tree Planted sees the recent announcement of a global accord to end deforestation and begin to restore land by 2030 at the Glasgow meeting of the United Nations' Climate Change Conference as an important step forward. The organization has planted more than 40 million trees in 43 countries around the world and offer easy options to plant in your preferred region for just $1 per tree. Regardless of the region, One Tree Planted offers a wide range of reforestation projects. You can learn more at https://onetreeplanted.org/.

Earth911 Podcast: Joshua Pearce Explains DIY Solar Installation Nov 19, 2021

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Our guest, Dr. Joshua Pearce has a DIY approach to solar that he recently described an article on Earth911, DIY Solar Now To Pocket Profits From Solar Energy. Solar installations are a powerful step toward reducing your carbon footprint, but it is a big investment that many Americans are hard-pressed to make. Only about 6% of U.S. homes have installed solar, according to Pew Research. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that by switching homes from oil and gas-generated power to solar could save the U.S. $1.7 trillion in reduced energy and health care costs by 2050. The question is how more of us can get solar installed at affordable costs, and Pearce's new book, To Catch the Sun, offers an answer: DIY installation instructions. You can learn more at https://tocatchthesun.com/

Earth911 Podcast: Newday Impact's Doug Heske On Investing After COP26 Nov 17, 2021

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Newday Impact Investing CEO Doug Heske talks with Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe about how to invest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on the outcome of the United Nations' COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. A consortium of banks controlling more than $130 trillion in assets announced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero to direct investments into renewable energy instead of fossil fuels extraction. Will the announcement drive higher valuations of GHG companies?
We discuss eight companies with negative carbon footprints, including AC Energy Corp, which is headquartered in the Philippines, New Zealand’s Mercury NZ, the Canadian energy company TransAlta Corp, Renova, a Japanese renewables company, the Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems, China’s Li Auto, and two American companies, NEXTera Energy and Tesla, where Elon Musk has been on a stock selling spree this week. This is the third in our continuing series about investing for environmental and social progress with Doug Heske. Newday Impact manages a suite of socially and environmentally responsible portfolios.

Earth911 Podcast: Paul Hawken's Vision for Planetary Regeneration Nov 15, 2021

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Earth911 talks with Paul Hawken, a pioneer of living and working sustainably. His work spans ideas, generations, and industries — he is an environmentalist, author, entrepreneur and globally recognized expert on sustainable living. His new book, Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation, continues the work he launched in 2017 with the book Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Every Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul was the founder of Erewhon, an pioneering natural food company, garden and home retailer Smith & Hawken, and Energy Everywhere, a low-cost solar company.
You can learn more about Paul at https://paulhawken.com and Regeneration is available now on Amazon, in bookstores and on Audible. Be sure to visit the Regeneration website, https://regeneration.org, where many if the ideas in the book are available to read. He and his team have outlined more of the solutions to the climate crisis than any other source.

Earth911 Podcast: Obaggo's Plastic #2 and #4 Recycling Appliance Nov 10, 2021

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Earth911 welcomes David New, founder of Obaggo, a counter-top appliance that turns a variety of plastic films into recyclable pucks that do not jam recycling center equipment. Recycling in the United States is unnecessarily difficult. Plastic, in particular, is hard to sort because of the myriad forms its takes – it is often unlabeled, which means one cannot identify what kinds of plastic needs to be recycled – and finding drop-off locations that accept the material you have can be a matter of luck. If your city doesn’t accept, for instance, plastic film, you’ll few or no options. But that may be changing. Obaggo can compress plastic bags and film, including #2 and #4 plastic shopping bags, Amazon’s recyclable plastic bags, food wrapping and cereal bags that are in boxes of your favorite breakfast.
The Obaggo appliance is currently available through Indiegogo for $229 — please note that backing a company on Indiegogo does not always mean you will receive the product. Obaggo offers a potentially groundbreaking change in the recyclability of plastic film. You can learn about Obaggo at https://www.obaggo.com/.

Earth911 Podcast: USAFacts Shares U.S. Climate Data Insights Nov 08, 2021

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Most of us still struggle to get our heads around the science of climate change, but the impacts are clearly felt almost every day somewhere in the United States. In June, 2021, USAFacts reports, 97 million people in the United States experienced hotter than average temperatures, including record-shattering heat in the West. In August, the data shows 84.8 million Americans — at third of the country - were still suffering from higher than average temperatures. Understanding how persistent but distributed the impact of the climate crisis is helps us internalize the need to make changes in our life. Our guest, Tanveer Ali, is a data visualization analyst at USAFacts. The Bellevue, Wash-based non-profit, founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, recently introduced a convenient way to keep tabs on the consequences of the climate crisis, the Climate in the U.S. experience. It provides regularly updated visualizations of a variety of U.S. climate statistics and useful insights into how life is changing for our neighbors. See the dashboard at https://usafacts.org/issues/climate.

Earth911 Podcast: Newday Impact's Doug Heske on Investing to Lower GHG Emissions Nov 05, 2021

Show notes

Earth911 talks about the challenge of making ethical and environmentally responsible investment decisions with Newday Impact CEO Doug Heske. Newday Impact is a financial services company that creates and manages a variety of socially and environmentally themed portfolios, which make it easy to invest to support your values. We dig into choosing stocks based on the greenhouse gas emissions produced by agriculture and agribusiness, with a quick look at the progress at Whole Foods and Amazon.
The news here is not good – industry continues to churn out more CO2 each year rather than less and Newday’s opinion of the companies we’ll discuss today reflects that lack of progress. We focus on Simply Good Foods (SMPL), Xylem (XYL), Darling Ingredients (DAR), Hain Celestial Group (HAIN), Bunge (BG), Novozymes (an OTC-traded Danish company, NVZMY) and the biggest of the big, Amazon (AMZN). Download the Newday Impact app to explore the portfolios and invest.
This conversation, recorded on October 29, 2021, does not represent an endorsement of any company or stock. We recommend you do extensive research before making any investment.

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