Innovate Eco

Olio is an app that aims to tackle the problem of food waste by in their words: Connecting neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. In the episode I speak to founder Tessa Clarke how the idea for the app started? How did they get from idea to product? How does it make money? And what other benefits an app like this may have such as building up local communities that are starting to disappear in many areas.

The environmental issue of non-biodegradable plastics is more well known than ever before. Despite efforts to recycle more of it a huge 91% of plastics still aren’t recycled, ending up in landfills or in the oceans, taking around 400 years to degrade. One of the ways to disrupt our plastic problem is to make plastics that degrade much faster and this is what the disruptive environmentalists I interview in this episode from startup Mobius are doing. And they are doing so by finding 'wonder in waste'.

A big part of this podcast series is about seeking out new inspiring businesses that are bettering the environment by disrupting the status quo. But what if you have one of these ideas yourself? Where do you start, especially if it is a big idea that seems too big to tackle? Well, I also wonder this quite a lot and so I've tried to find some answers by interviewing a host of another podcast, Jay Clouse. Jay is a business owner himself and hosts a podcast called Upside.fm where they speak to business owners from outside of silicon valley. With this wealth of experience and from business and podcast he provides some excellent tips and insights on starting a disruptive environmental business.

There is a great misperception in our society that others place values of self-interest higher than values of compassion and care. Fixing this perception gap is massively important in the way we approach how we try and influence behaviours regarding environmental issues.

Moving away from innovations and onto new perspectives this week, as I interview an academic who says we need to get down from our ivory towers, stop the finger pointing and start communicating better about environmental issues. This podcast series isn’t just about shining a spotlight on innovators and businesses that are disrupting the way we deal with environmental issues, it is also a chance to speak to people who might offer a different perspective. When trying to influence behaviour around environmental issues, sometimes it feels like no matter how hard we try, the message just doesn’t get through to certain groups of people. With America withdrawing from Paris Climate Accord for example, it seems like things are almost getting worse. But instead of looking for new approaches or different tactics, we too often resort to simply shouting more loudly within our echo chambers. So how do we influence people on an individual and also group level in an effective way and help instill new behaviours? Well for some answers I’ve turned to academia to speak to an academic who is working on this exact thing, to try and get some answers. Dr David Rose is a lecturer at the University of East Anglia. His recent publications include papers such as "understanding how to influence farmers’ decision-making behaviour". And as the agricultural industry is often touted by environmentalists as an area that needs to see some of the biggest changes, I thought this was a good place to start. Prepare for a few bitter reality checks, and of course, Brexit and Trump get a mention to. We also question whether we should be more optimistic about the whole thing.

This weeks episode focuses on two environmental issues, the production of animal feed and also the processing of waste, especially in developing countries. Mathieu Chaix-Bar is attempting to tackle both these problems with a solution sourced from nature. His company Weendle, which is based in The Netherlands use the larvae of the black soldier fly to break down waste and then once complete the larvae is then used as a protein source in animal feed. Their work is mainly focussed in sub-Saharan Africa where increasing urban populations and lack of sewerage infrastructure means the problem is huge.

In this episode, we speak to Louise Wilson who has started the company Conservation K9 Consultancy using the experience she had gained in other forms of detection dog training at home and overseas. Based in the UK the company trains rescue dogs for use in conservation and are also trying to spread the use of dogs in this area further. What does it take to train these dogs for use in conservation and with such a great method available why is it still not used as widely as it could be?

In the very first episode of the Innovate Eco podcast we are starting with a huge environmental issue, biodiversity loss.  I speak to Tom and Tom two university friends who combined one's knowledge of building drones with the others knowledge of conservation to attempt to survey for a group of species that have suffered severe declines globally, bats. We talk citizen science in an increasingly technology-centric globalised world and how this is hopefully good news for the conservation movement