Sustainability In Your Ear

Extended producer responsibility, the idea that manufacturers of products and packaging should take responsibility for collecting and recycling the things they make, is a hot topic in the sustainability and business worlds. One EPR bill has passed so far in 2023, Washington State’s SB 5144, which requires battery makers to be responsible for the environmental management of their products. Meet Scott Cassel, founder and CEO of the Product Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit that advocates and consults to develop circular economy solutions and extended producer responsibility legislation. Scott and PSI were key players in the Washington legislation.A typical concern promoted by companies about proposed EPR laws is the cost to the consumer. However, history shows that, for example, bottle deposit systems improve collection rates substantially. States with bottle bills collect 65% of bottles, while those without collect about 24% -- bottle bills more than double collection rates. Columbia University research estimated a maximum increase in monthly grocery bills of $4 per household with robust EPR programs in place. The environmental benefits of EPR are clear, but the economic impact is most impressive. As part of the economy shifts to managing and moving products back to manufacturers for recycling, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that materials moving job jobs will grow by 6.5% by 2031, or ~861,000 new jobs, and as many as 304,000 new repair, maintenance, and waste management jobs are also exacted by 2031. The Circular Economy is full of opportunity and the potential to create a more equitable nation. You can learn more about Scott and the Product Stewardship Institute at https://productstewardship.us/

Zac Clark, founder and executive director of the HomeMore Project in San Francisco, returns to share an update. The HomeMore Project has distributed several hundred solar-powered backpacks, the Makeshift Traveler, which features a built-in charging station packed with an AM/FM radio, rechargeable flashlight, sleeping bag, and other necessities. When we first talked with Zac in January 2022, when he was a Junior at the University of San Francisco, the Makeshift Traveler was a prototype. Today, the organization has delivered hundreds of backpacks and has extended the program to other parts of California.Homelessness has been on the rise in the United States since 2015. As of 2022, a Housing and Urban Development survey found that more than 582,000 people lived on the street — about 18 people for every 10,000 Americans. Getting off the street requires connecting to wireless services, with all the technology necessary, from a mobile phone, which about 70% of people without housing do have, to chargers and access to information to find resources, treatment for medical and addiction issues, and apply for work. In March, the HomeMore Project completed its first government contract, delivering 60 MakeShift Travelers for homeless veterans in Palo Alto, California. You can learn more about the HomeMore Project and its MakeShift Traveler backpack at https://thehomemoreproject.org/

Making circular living easy for people is the key to achieving our sustainability goals. The take-make-waste linear economy has excelled at making the disposal of products and packaging easy, but only if you consider the landfill an environmentally responsible solution (it's not). Now we need to make collecting and reusing items as convenient as tossing packaging in the trash after one use. James Wilson, the founder of Hickory Corners, Michigan-based reUser, which is working to reduce the volume of food service and takeout packaging waste with reusable containers for college and corporate cafeterias, joins the conversation to discuss building circular services. Currently available at Wesleyan, Trinity, and Cornerstone Universities, the reUser services combine convenient drop-off bins placed on campuses with a mobile app that helps diners track and return takeout containers and understand the impact of their reuse habits. reUser's platform represents the beginning of a collection, cleaning, and reuse economy that could be attached to many linear customer experiences, such as the collection of ecommerce boxes from homes and offices, recovery of hard-to-recycle packaging, and, of course, in the fast food and quick service restaurant industry. There are many steps to master in any service experience, and reUser is an intriguing example of how local circular services could grow. You can learn more about reUser at https://www.reuser.app/

Is there enough lithium in the United States to fulfill the made-in-America requirements of the Inflation Reduction Act's tax incentive programs for new electric vehicles? The International Energy Agency projects that the world will need 1063 kilotons of lithium in 2040. That’s 48 times the volume of lithium used in EVs and electricity storage in 2020. Where will it come from? Our guest today is Jack Lifton, a physical chemist who has worked for the past 60 years on the purification of rare metals for the electronics and energy storage industries. He is the co-chairman of the Critical Minerals Institute, an international professional organization focused on battery and technology materials, and an advisor to One World Lithium, a lithium extraction technology company. One World Lithium has developed a lithium carbonation process that Jack suggests can produce more battery-grade material than more heat- and pressure-intensive approaches. Now that we clearly see the depth of the climate crisis, lithium, the basis for most batteries used in electric vehicles, might be called the most critical mineral on the planet. China currently dominates the extraction and processing of lithium, and has locked up access to lithium and other critical minerals sources in parts of Africa and Latin America. Jack argues that the United States needs to rethink its industrial strategy to focus on STEM skills and low-impact manufacturing processes to make the turn from fossil fuels to electrification, including finding equitable partnerships with countries in the Global South that hold large reserves of lithium, cobalt, and other critical minerals. You can learn more about Jack Lifton and the Critical Minerals Institute at https://criticalmineralsinstitute.com/ and follow his regular columns at https://investorintel.com/

Can companies build circular services into their customer experience to earn a trusted relationship with the 81% of consumers who say they will buy more products and services from brands that help them live sustainably? We often talk about the Circular Economy and its benefits for people and the planet. Still, for many, the circular economy sounds like a lot of additional work to sort and drop off materials for reprocessing. And many people don't like the sound of "reduce and reuse" because the media tells us it means "less and worn out." That narrative needs to change. My special guest is Allen Adamson, author of the new book Seeing the How: Transforming What People Do, Not Buy, to Gain Market Advantage. Allen is a partner with Sustainability In Your Ear host Mitch Ratcliffe at global branding and marketing agency Metaforce.A more sustainable economy will be built on high-quality products that last longer and are energy- and water-efficient, representing new standards of value that include caring for the planet and ensuring resources are available for future generations. In "Seeing the How", Allen proposes employing eight distinct "lenses" to scrutinize a company's marketing, packaging, advertising, and selling strategies. The objective is to attract consumers to novel circular services that promote the reuse of materials and prevent them from ending up in landfills. Alen's lenses -- which include joining forces with other companies and customers, seeing like a concierge, and going the rental route -- are paths to a circular economy with new local layers that make recycling, composting, reuse, donations, and repairs a seamless part of every product experience. Join in a brainstorming session about building sustainability into everything. You can find "Seeing the How" on Amazon and Powell's Books, and learn more about Allen and Metaforce at metaforce.com.

A few states are pioneering the rise of compostable packaging and building a composting infrastructure. World Centric's Resource Recovery Managers Erin Levine and Elly Ventura share the lessons the compostable packaging leader is learning as California, Colorado, and other states introduce composting and extended producer responsibility programs for fiber and plastic packaging. Making packaging sustainable — whether it can be recycled conveniently or composted to return the material to nature without pollutants — is essential to reducing the 292 million tons of solid waste created annually in the U.S. as of 2018. Only 32% of that waste was recycled or composted. World Centric has stopped using PFAS, the controversial "forever chemicals" that make compost that includes food service items unusable in agriculture. The company is experimenting with new bio-based compostable plastics for use in cups and as liners in fiber bowls and takeout packaging.Composting progress is a patchwork -- while there are about 4,000 composting sites in the U.S., only about 10% of those programs offer industrial composting of packaging. California continues to expand its composting capacity after passing S.B. 1383, which calls for curbside pickup of food waste and compostable packaging across the state. On the other hand, Colorado recently proposed limiting composting to food waste — compostable packaging might not be processed in the state. Packaging makers can help by designing products for recyclability and compostability and labeling products to help customers find responsible ways to dispose of them. Erin and Elly explain that standardizing labeling, especially by clearly indicating what materials require the higher temperatures achieved in industrial composting, will help consumers make better decisions when shopping. You can learn more about World Centric at https://www.worldcentric.com/

Over the past two years, the United States made a significant investment to improve industries and protect the environment. The funding in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law could help reduce the country's carbon emissions by 50% in 2030. However, a new debate is happening in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise (R, La.), supports a bill called the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, which prioritizes lower gas prices over developing renewable energy sources. Adrien Salazar, who works for the Global Grassroots Justice Alliance, is here to talk about the strategies of Republicans and Democrats as they try to raise the debt ceiling.The Limit, Save, Grow Act would increase pollution globally, even though the atmosphere can take less than 25 years of our current pollution levels. We must avoid exceeding the planet's carbon budget to prevent the atmosphere from tipping over into disastrous climate consequences. If the bill passes, it would also cancel the $37 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, undo the decisions to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, weaken rules on pollution and emissions, and reduce protections for workers in the energy industry. The bill's impact on the climate is an important topic, but the focus on the debt ceiling in the media is overshadowing it. The Global Grassroots Justice Alliance is a group of more than 60 organizations in the United States that work on social, climate, and gender justice. Learn more about the GGJA at https://ggjalliance.org/.

Electronic waste is a global problem. Despite the immense value of the gold and other critical minerals they contain, 80% of computers, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and other electronics end up in landfills. But we can do better. Meet Aaron Kamenash, the founder and chief innovation officer at Camston Wrather, a Carlsbad, California, e-waste recycler that launched its first “green smelter” facility last year. All the metals, circuit boards, plastics, and other materials in the electronics it receives are recycled. The facility claims its recycling processes are 90% less carbon intensive than legacy waste techniques and reduces water usage by 92% compared to traditional methods. For example, it converts the plastics recovered from electronics into park and campus equipment the City of San Diego uses.Camston Wrather is developing a carbon credits program that will provide companies that recycle waste to track and report the end-of-life and reuse-related emissions, water, and environmental impacts of avoiding sending electronics to a landfill. The revenue generated by carbon credits could also unlock new revenue that can help to finance a robust reverse-logistics infrastructure for electronics. You can learn more about Camston Wrather at https://camstonwrather.com/

How can we sustainably harvest more energy and move it to where it is needed? The United States' annual energy consumption requires about one-quarter of one percent of the 174 petawatts the Sun sends to Earth daily. The prospect of new solar generation capacity created by placing transparent solar cells on windows and other surfaces will transform how we think about power management, buildings serving as largely self-sufficient electric grids, and our ability to place efficiency-enhancing functionality in windows. Veeral Hardev, vice president of corporate strategy at Ubiquitous Energy, a developer of transparent solar technology, joins the conversation to discuss the path to plentiful power, self-powering intelligent devices and vehicles.Ubiquitous Energy's 3 x 5 foot UE Power windows for commercial buildings and homes generate about 200 watt-hours of electricity a day, preventing some heating of indoor spaces by sunlight by capturing about 20% of the energy passing through window glass. The company envisions using its thin-film technology as a power source embedded in greenhouses and partially or fully self-powering consumer electronics and vehicles. Veeral discusses how to make photovoltaics sustainable and reshape the grid to deliver the best value to consumers and businesses. Ubiquitous Energy says it uses abundant materials sourced with minimal environmental impacts. You can learn more about Ubiquitous Energy at https://ubiquitous.energy/

When we talk about solar energy, most of us think of the traditional silicon-based photovoltaic cells that Jimmy Carter famously installed on the roof of the White House in 1977. They have become fixtures in homes, businesses, and large-scale solar farms. But in the future solar technology could generate energy on almost any surface or window. Aaron Bates, founder and CEO of Toledo Solar, a Perrysburg, Ohio, maker of durable solar panels and solar glass using thin-film photovoltaic technologies, joins the conversation to discuss the benefits of American solar panels made using cadmium telluride. The material, referred to as “cad tell,” is a byproduct of other industrial processes that supports building thinner photovoltaic films laid onto the glass. Cad tell is also easily recycled and 60% of the material is recovered today, according to Bates.American-made solar technology is critical to energy independence, as supply chain issues and political tensions with China have led to an 18% increase in the cost of foreign panels. The U.S. installed 20.2 gigawatts of solar energy production in 2022. The nation’s current 142.3 GW of solar capacity can power more than 25 million homes, according to a March 2023 Solar Energy Industries Association report. Toledo Solar windows, which come with a 30-year warranty, promise to add more generation capacity to a building by extending the solar surface area beyond rooftop panels. Combining electricity generated by traditional panels, windows, and other thin-film photovoltaics on buildings could make our built environment energy self-sufficient. But there are many questions about how the U.S. solar industry can grow and the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act’s solar incentives. Aaron discusses the consequences of cutting IRA incentives, which is under debate as Republican lawmakers seek to roll them back in the debt ceiling confrontation. You can learn more about Toledo Solar at https://toledo-solar.com/