Sustainability In Your Ear

Women bring the skills, perspectives, and emotional intelligence necessary to achieving the green transition, addressing food shortages, and equitable financing. Women are 49.7% of the world’s population, but only 1.9% of venture capital investments in 2022 were placed with women-led startups. Patience Marine-Ball and Ruth Shaber, coauthors of The XX Edge: Unlocking higher returns and lower risk, join Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss the power and impact of women in business and other leadership roles. The book shares stories of corporate, startup, nonprofit and many other organizational innovations and improvements led by women, and they make the case that those of us with two X chromosomes bring essential skills that are in short supply in the face of climate change, social disruption, and 20th Century business strategies that are too exhausted to thrive in the 21st Century. There has been progress in bringing women into leadership across society, but it is slow work. Today, 42% of U.S. businesses are owned by women and 19% of startups have at least one female founder. And women are making the educational investments to lead. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2018-19 women earned 57.9% of bachelors degrees,. 63.9% of masters degrees, and 56.4% of doctoral degrees. Patience and Ruth explain several resources to keep in mind as you shop, invest, and vote to create the world your want, including As You Sow, a nonprofit shareholder activist organization, Ethos ESG, a values-based tool for filtering investment options, as well as Patience’s work at the Women of the World Endowment and Ruth’s at the Tara Health Foundation. The XX Edge is available now at Amazon. You can learn more about Patience at Ruth at https://thexxedge.com/

Some of the dirtiest, plastic polluted waters lie at the heart of major cities, in ports, marinas and where wastewater enters the environment. They are hard to keep clean because of constant activity that adds new waste to waterways. The work is wet, cold and dirty, which makes port and marina cleanups an ideal job for robots. Meet Michael Arens, cofounder and CEO of Clean Earth Rovers, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based startup that makes two robotic devices for cleaning and monitoring coastal waters. Media attention is focused on the seven garbage patch gyres in our oceans, but ocean plastic and algal blooms can be stopped close to shore with robotics technology and an investment in preventing pollution, cleaning up oil and nitrogen from farmland and industry. Michael explains the devices, the Rover that can collect up to 100 lbs of waste during an 8-hour shift and the DataPod, a water monitoring buoy that sends data to a mobile app, as well as how the company started, its WeFunder campaign, and where the first orders for Rovers and DataPods will be deployed. You can learn more about Clean Earth Rovers at https://www.cleanearthrovers.com/

Meet Journalist Esha Chhabra, who spent a decade exploring the world for examples of social ventures, businesses that blend profitability with creating equitable human outcomes for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications. In her new book, Working To Restore: Harnessing the Power of Regenerative Business to Heal the World, she describes her journeys and the entrepreneurs and activists people she met in the US, India, Africa, and the fjords of Scandinavia. She describes social and environmental innovations transforming coffee, shoemaking, healthcare, energy, and hospitality companies that are becoming familiar to Earth911 readers. But for many, the reflective, environmentally responsible thinking in Working To Restore may be a revelation.Esha explores additional dimensions of two terms that dominate green business discussion, “regenerative” and “restorative,” weaving the environmental benefits with social impacts that can help low-income people access resources sustainably. She discusses the key role the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals play in setting new social priorities and establishing how we measure the value business creates in society. Working to Restore is available from Amazon, Powell's Books, and local bookstores. You can follow Esha's journalistic work at https://eshachhabra.contently.com/ and https://www.eshachhabra.com/

As the economy turns sour, do shoppers still value sustainability when making decisions about what to buy? We welcome back Dan Smythe, Vice President of Retail and Hospitality Consulting at EPAM Continuum, to discuss the final installment of their Consumers Unmasked project. The four-part study of shoppers’ values and the important factors in their buying decisions has trcked consumer sentiment in the U.S., Britain, and Germany as the pandemic peaked and began to pass. Over the past year, we’ve had members of the EPAM Continuum team on the show to discuss, and Dan last talked with me in March of 2022.The last phase of Consumers Unmasked focused on qualitative responses -- real comments from consumers -- in contrast to the quantitative surveying in stages 2 and 3. The fourth report is full of insights, both from the respondents and experts at EPAM and other organizations. Whether you are at a company interested in consumer values or are a shopper who wants to understand how to express your environmental commitments to companies, there is something useful for everyone in the report. You can learn more about EPAM and find the report at https://www.epam.com/consumers-unmasked-4

Let’s venture into the history of trees, wood, and the axe. Everywhere humans have gone they’ve mowed trees down to make tools, homes, fires, bridges, buildings, even railroad tracks — yes, the first railroads often ran on wooden rails, as author John Perlin explains in a new edition of his classic book, A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization. First published in 1989, A Forest Journey has been rereleased in an expanded, beautifully illustrated edition by Patagonia. And, yes, there is an environmental impact disclosure on the copyright page of the book.John is also the author of Let It Shine: The 6000-Year Story of Solar Energy and other histories of solar technology. His writing is consistently surprising and illuminating. For example, A Forest Journey challenges many current assumptions about the advantages of peoples and nations.It is a challenge to the conclusions in Jared Diamond’s influential history, Guns, Germs, and Steel. John makes a clear case that Northern Europe achieved global dominance largely on the basis of its access to vast forests that, in other parts of the world, had been chopped down during antiquity. The largely barren Mediterranean basin, for example, was heavily forested before humans entered the region. A Forest Journey is available now from Amazon and Powell's Books, as well as local bookstores. You can learn more about John Perlin at https://john-perlin.com/

Stories and the way the press reports them shape our perception of the world and the Climate Crisis. While most major media companies have started to pay close attention to climate issues in recent years, often setting up their first environmental or climate desks, these beats are still understaffed to address the complex environmental narrative Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation, and Andy Lee Roth, associate director of the program, wrote an article for Earth911, Corporate Media Fiddle and the Planet Burns, about the environmental stories that were almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press in 2022. Andy Lee Roth joins Mitch Ratcliffe to talk about the stories and how the press can improve its environmental coverage.For 57 years, the Media Freedom Foundation’s Project Censored has released an annual list of the most under-reported stories of the year. The environment and social justice issues are heavily featured in its State of the Free Press 2023 report. Andy explains how stories about oil subsidies totaling $5.9 trillion a year, smart ocean technology's impact on whales, and the the supression of Environmental Protection Agency toxic chemicals reports were discovered and reported by the independent press. You can learn more about Project Censored and its State of the Free Press 2023 report at https://www.projectcensored.org/

The future of modern life turns in large part on making the packaging and delivery of the food and products we buy more sustainable and, eventually, environmentally neutral or positive. Our guest today, Robert Lilienfeld, is the executive director of SPRING, the Sustainable Packaging Research, Information and Networking Group, a Denver-based think tank that provides expert advice and commentary on creating sustainable and regenerative product packaging. He discusses his work with consumer goods and food companies, the role of packaging in marketing, how ecommerce is changing packaging design, and the potential to rethink commerce' environmental impact using subscription services.When battle lines are drawn in the sustainability debate, we must find a way to address differences to find a path to a sustainable future. SPRING’s approach to packaging is pragmatic and driven by a dedication to dialog based on transparency and respect for everyone in the discussion, whether they agree with one another or not. You can learn more about Bob and SPRING at springpack.net.

If environmentally responsible, sustainable business were baseball, my guest Gil Friend would be as familiar a name as Babe Ruth. In 2011, Gil was named to first class of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals Sustainability Hall of Fame. He is the founder and CEO of Natural Logic, a sustainable business strategy consultancy, and Critical Path Capital, a private equity firm, as well as a recent addition to Earth911’s board of advisors. Since the 1970s, when he discovered the work of Buckminster Fuller, he has worked to increase awareness about the environmental damage created by our extractive way of life, and encourage government and business to take action. Gil plumbed the unexpected as a pioneer of ideas we now take for granted, from the rooftop farm to agricultural policies he developed for California Governor Jerry Brown during the 1980s. During the 2010s, he was the first Chief Sustainability Officer for the city of Palo Alto, California. His monthly Living Between Worlds conversation, a Zoom forum that connects concerned people to discuss the transition from the wasteful economy that created the Climate Crisis to a new, emerging but still undefined society. Watch Living Between Worlds sessions on YouTube. To learn more about Gil and Natural Logic, visit https://natlogic.com/

Sea level rise due to melting glaciers on Greenland and in the Arctic and Antarctic could force the relocation of 267 million people and entire cities located less than 2 meters — 6.5 feet — from today’s waterline by 2100. Oceanographer John Englander has raised the alarm about sea level rise in his books, High Tide on Main Street and Moving to Higher Ground. John runs the Rising Seas Institute and leads regular visits to Greenland to spur awareness of the accelerating loss of its glaciers. We talked with him in 2021, when Moving to Higher Ground was released, and he returns to the show to share an update on the pace of warming, the Thwaites Glacier and Ice Shelf in Antarctica, Greenland's rapid loss of ice, and the preparations necessary for adaptation to a world of constantly rising seas. NASA warns that continuing warming could raise sea levels by 5 meters (more than 16 feet) by 2300. The early damage will be felt across more than twice the expected coastal land than previously expected, according to a January 2023 Dutch research study published in the journal Earth’s Future, because previous satellite analysis misestimated the altitude of heavily forested land. The potential cost of protecting seaside cities and raising port facilities will run into the trillions of dollars. Perhaps that spending can be an opportunity to rethink our infrastructure comprehensively, but in the midst of a crisis people are not prone to be very forward-looking. John Englander's books are available online. Look for Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Seal Level and the Path Forward at Amazon and Powell's Books and High Tide on Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis (Amazon; Powell's Books). You can learn more about John and his work at https://johnenglander.net/

Algenesis is two companies in one, a biotechnology innovator and footwear maker. Making a new, sustainable material often requires the inventor to prove its utility before big companies will embrace it. Join the conversation for a story of discovery and finding a practical application to prove the value of a plant-based, compostable bioplastic foam. Stephen Mayfield, a professor of Biology at UC San Diego and director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology, invented Soleic, an algae-based rubbery foam material that can be used in footwear, surfboards and other products in the place of petroleum-based polyurethane foam. He launched Algenesis, a biotechnology-based materials science company to commercialize the Soleic.But shoe companies did not come running to use Soleic, which biodegrades completely in sea water and compost piles. Along with Algenisis president Tom Cooke, a footwear and apparel industry veteran who had worked for Reef and Vans, Steve launched Blueview Footwear, maker of the world’s first compostable shoe. Steve and Tom join me today to talk about the evolution of Algenesis and Blueview, as well as the many materials Soleic could replace across a variety of product categories. The companies have also developed compostable, plant-based fabrics and a bioplastic waterproofing technology that biodegrades into organic material in a home compost pile. You can learn more about Blueview Footwear at https://blueviewfootwear.com/ and its parent company Algenesis Materials at https://www.algenesismaterials.com/