Sustainability In Your Ear

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Earth911 Podcast: Meet Dorie Morales, Publisher of Green Living Magazine Arizona Feb 26, 2021

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Every region has its unique sustainable living challenges. Earth911 talks with Dorie Morales, publisher of Green Living Magazine based in Scottsdale, Arizona. The desert region last year broke records last year with 16 days and nights when the temperature stayed above 90F degrees. The region already sees 175 days a year of daily highs above 90F degree days. Morales shares how residents struggle to stay cool, find shade and preserve water, which is especially precious in the Southwest. She cofounded the Green Living and has built a series of regional green living events in addition to the magazine and website. Morales shares details about the upcoming Arizona Green Chamber and Green Building events, which you can join free online. Both offer tips on green choices in business and your personal life.
Visit Green Living to follow its Arizona-focused green lifestyle coverage. They are giving away five free digital subscriptions to people who comment on the Green Living AZ Facebook page. If you are interested in advertising, Morales offers 50% off one month of any advertising package when you send an email to info@greenlivingmag.com.

Earth911 Podcast: PourMyBeer Explores the Future of Self-Service Beverages and Reusable Packaging Feb 22, 2021

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Waste at restaurants and grocery stores contributes to society's overall food waste problem. Josh Goodman started PourMyBeer in 2012 to make beer and beverage dispensing a self-service experience. Now, the company helps serve beer, wine and soft drinks to customers at Whole Foods, Dave & Buster's, Caesars Entertainment locations and military bases in 24 countries. It also won an investment from Coca-Cola's European bottling business to help develop solutions to reduce single-use containers for soft drinks. Earth911 talks with Goodman about how PourMyBeer makes getting a drink quick and safe, even during the pandemic. We also explore how PourMyBeer can participate in new reusable container programs to eliminate single-use plastic waste and the prospects for a delivery system based on reusable beverage containers.

Earth911 Podcast: Loop’s Circular Shopping Expands to Canada Feb 15, 2021

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As shopping from home grows, packaging waste is piling up. Loop offers an alternative, a delivery service for food and home goods that picks up used product packaging, cleans and the reuses it to eliminate trash. Earth911 talks with Heather Crawford, global vice president of marketing and e-commerce at Loop, about the company's expansion into Canada. Loop now offers service in the U.S., U.K. and France -- it's Loop Tote bag is dropped off and picked up by FedEx, and it will soon offer in-store Tote exchanges at Kroger, Walgreens and Canada's Loblaws locations.
Crawford shares how Loop, which was launched by specialty recycling company TerraCycle, designs reusable packaging that can be repeatedly cleaned and refilled with products in order to reduce post-consumer waste. We also discuss the sustainability of online shopping and how, at scale, it can be more efficient than traditional bricks-and-mortar retail shopping. Loop is partnering with several grocery and drugstore chains to introduce in-store Tote pick-up and drop-off services. Both at-home and retail services are essential to reaching consumers who want to remove single-use packaging from their shopping list.
Loop currently offers hundreds of product options and is expanding its partnerships with food and personal care brands to introduce more reusable product packaging. Take a few minutes to learn more at the U.S. Loop store (https://loopstore.com), Canadian store (https://loopstore.ca), U.K. store (https://loopstore.co.uk) or the French store (https://loopparcarrefour.com).

Earth911 Podcast: Talking Eco-Anxiety and Carbon Capture With Dr. Erica Dodds Feb 12, 2021

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Environmental doom hangs over the youngest generations, who need a clear path to climate recovery to regain their optimism. Earth911 talks with Dr. Erica Dodds, chief operating officer of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, a young expert in climate anxiety and international development working to raise awareness about direct air carbon capture technologies. Her organization believes that aggressive investment in scaling up current early-stage carbon capture strategies can restore the environment to pre-industrial CO2 levels by mid-century, long before many expect the technology to make an impact. Her team organizes local youth and legislative learning programs, and they are launching local chapters around the country. Visit their site to get involved.
Dodds explains how ocean carbon sequestration can help humans store massive amounts of CO2. Her compelling vision for a return to the climate in which humans evolved includes the idea that the atmosphere can be mined for CO2 to use as the raw material in low-carbon cement, fuels, and other applications. Carbon capture technologies are expected to create 300,000 new jobs during the next several decades.
We also discuss the overwhelming eco-anxiety afflicting her generation, starting with an introduction to the symptoms of this paralyzing psychological state. People tend to react to climate change by enthusiastically engaging in climate-friendly behaviors and judging severely others who do not participate or by closing their eyes to the problem, literally turning away from the fear that climate change creates. This may be the basis for some of the current political divisions in the U.S. and around the world. Society must find a way to bring people together around actions that can make a material difference in the fight against global warming. Dodds and the Foundation for Climate Restoration are confident that direct air carbon capture can a key component to a brighter future.
The founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Peter Fiekowsky, has appeared on Sustainability In Your Ear to discuss direct air carbon capture and ocean-based sequestration strategies.

Earth911 Podcast: Scott Austin, cofounder of the Olivette Riverside Farm and Community Feb 05, 2021

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As more people look to move out of cities, a new, environmentally-friendly communities may be their next home. Earth911 talks with Scott Austin, a cofounder of the Olivette Riverside Community and Farm, a 346-acre planned "agrihood" along the French Broad River near Asheville, N.C. His team built "a community in which our interactions with water, nature, food, community and lifelong learning are seamless and foster sustainable living." It introduces a unique lifestyle that includes a farm funded through a Community Supported Agriculture program built into the cost of living.
Scott shares the Olivette lifestyle, and his plans for farm-to-table living that values "gardens over golf courses." In addition to being able to pick up fresh berries and produce from the farm, clusters of homes share large gardens and everyone can borrow shared bicycles to get around. An affluent community, Olivette may provide an early model for reimagining towns that integrate agriculture, wilderness and lifelong learning that can be applied in many settings. Austin point similar projects, such as Serenbe, whose founder Steve Nygren we interviewed in December 2019. There are many lessons to take from the experience of these early efforts at reinventing living for sustainability.
To learn more, visit the Olivette Riverside Community and Farm at https://www.olivettenc.com/.

Earth911 Interview: Hannah Bacon, Cross-Country Environmentalist Feb 01, 2021

Show notes

Earth911 talks with Hannah Bacon, a 27-year-old woman who decided to start a seven-month journey across the U.S. to raise awareness about climate change. She will walk from California to Virginia, and we caught up to her in New Mexico after two months on the road. Hannah was inspired by David Wallace-Wells’ book, "The Uninhabited Earth," while flying cross-country. She realized her non-essential travel was harming the planet, so she decided to walk home.
Hannah’s “Miles for Movement” walk started on November 1, 2020, and will continue through the Summer.
All donations to the walk’s GoFundMe page will go to the Sunrise Movement, a youth-focused political action movement whose goal is to mobilize climate activists across the US. It operates more than 400 local programs across the country. Hannah talks with Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe about the importance of promoting a healthy climate for future generations and how people can contribute to the fight against climate change on a day-to-day basis through simple changes.
Follow Hannah’s progress and her stories on the Miles for Movement Instagram page and her blog. Please consider donating to and sharing her GoFundMe page.
https://www.instagram.com/milesforclimate/
https://milesforclimate.org/
https://www.gofundme.com/f/miles-for-climate

Earth911 Conversation: The Climate Policy Debate with Danielle Butcher of the American Conservation Coalition and Kevin Wilhelm Jan 25, 2021

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Join another Earth911 conversation about the critical divides in U.S. politics and climate policy with Kevin Wilhelm of Sustainable Business Consulting and Danielle Butcher, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President of the young-conservative organization, the American Conservation Coalition. We discuss the differences in the right- and left-leaning climate policy debate, the role of generational change in the future of U.S. climate regulations, and the potential for establishing a new center for political discourse. Host Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Wilhelm and Butcher about the role of economic stimulus, educational funding, and the federal government's ability to shape economic priorities through incentives and carbon pricing. Hear how there actually mutually agreeable positions emerging in the climate debate.
Kevin Wilhelm is the author of How to Talk to the "Other Side": Common Ground in the Time of Coronavirus, Recession, and Climate Change and an adunct professor at Harvard University. Danielle Butcher is a leader of the American Conservation Coalition, a non-profit "dedicated to mobilizing young people around environmental action through common-sense, market-based, and limited-government ideals" based on localism, capitalist ideas, and innovation. This is the third in our Conversation series featuring Wilhelm, Ratcliffe, and guests from across the political, urban-rural, generational, and social justice spectrum.

Earth911 Podcast: Dr. William Ripple on the The State of the Climate Emergency in 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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Earth911 talks with Dr. William Ripple, Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Oregon State University and director of the Alliance of World Scientists, who is the lead author of a call for action in response to the catastrophic climate damage the world experience during 2020 in Scientific American. Pointing to record global temperatures, a historically long hurricane season that caused more than $46 billion in damages in the United States, and wildfires that burned more than 4 million acres in California, they declared that “The climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most scientists anticipated.”
Dr. Ripple explains how 2020, which tied 2016 for hottest year on record, saw events that suggest climate change is accelerating. Science-based warnings may have been too conservative, and that the new normal will likely look like a series of catastrophes, with widespread damage happening every year in many regions of the planet, if humanity does not immediately stop the growth in CO2 emissions. He suggests six key areas of action, including a shift to plant-based diets and reducing food waste, a focus on eliminating short-term pollutants such as hydrofluorocarbons used as refrigerants, as well as universal education for girls and women to lower birth rates and encourage wider awareness of climate impacts. We also discuss the pressing need to address climate migration in global and national planning.
To learn more about how you can change your lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions in travel, home energy use, and when you recycle.

Earth911 Podcast: Talking 2021 Home Energy Trends with Sense CEO Mike Phillips Jan 18, 2021

Show notes

Making home energy use improvements can be challenging without information about how the furnace, appliances, refrigerators, and other electronics around the house consume power. The Sense Energy Monitor brings all that data, and information about your utility, solar, and comparable home energy use to your smartphone to help you reduce your carbon footprint and electric bill. Earth911 talks to Sense CEO Mike Phillips about the latest Sense monitor upgrades and his 2021 home energy trends predictions.
Phillips explains the latest upgrade to the Sense and Sense Solar devices, a power quality monitor that tracks dips and spikes in electric current and software that identifies failing electric systems, loose wires, and malfunction appliances based on their power use. We also discuss the Zigbee internet-connected smart home standard that promises to connect smart lightbulbs, thermostats, switches and other devices to a single dashboard on a phone or PC. Phillips expects the transition to electric power generated from solar, wind and other renewables from fossil fuel-fired power will accelerate with the arrival of the Biden administration. He points out the home heating and power produces up to 40% of our personal greenhouse gas emissions, according to Rewiring America and created the Sense system as a foundation for optimizing energy use.
To learn more about Sense and its growing set of software that use the physical energy monitor to alert homeowners to opportunities to reduce use and save on energy, visit https://sense.com.

EARTH911 Podcast: Eyal Harel on the Increasing Frequency of Toxic Algal Blooms Jan 08, 2021

Show notes

Cyanobacteria algal blooms are a growing problem worldwide. As humans use more fertilizer and the climate warms, freshwater lakes are more likely to be overwhelmed by these essential but deadly bacteria. Earth911 talks with Eyal Harel, CEO of Berlin-based BlueGreen Water Technologies Ltd about the causes and adverse impacts of blue-green algal blooms. Cyanobacteria produce oxygen during the day, but at night consume so much oxygen that fish and other lake life die off until the bacteria controls almost all available resources.
Blue-green algal blooms are an example of the fragility of the balance within natural systems. Without cyanobacteria, an early source of atmospheric oxygen, life would not exist on Earth. When it takes over a lake, however, it can cause brain, liver, intestinal and skin inflammation, as well as emit airborne toxins related to rising incidence of Alzheimer's Disease and other illnesses. Harel explains how farm runoff and warming climates have contributed to algal blooms globally, even the Arctic.
BlueGreen Water Technologies makes a treatment, LakeGuard, that can suppress algal blooms without toxic byproducts. With more than 60 million lakes in the world facing an increased risk of cyanobacteria infestation, you'll want to spend a half-hour to learn about the problem, remediation and ways of preventing blooms by changing farming and lawn care practices to reduce phosphorus levels in freshwater lakes. To learn more about BlueGreen Water Technologies, visit https://bgtechs.com.

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