Earth911.com's Sustainability In Your Ear

The future of the food supply can be more regional and sustainable. Stephanie Hughes recently launched Raw Bulk Foods Online, an Australian source of zero-waste foods delivered from the farm to the customer’s door. “We exist to clean up the planet [by] delivering your everyday pantry items direct from Aussie farms to your door minus all the junk,” Stephanie explained as part of the company's Kicktarter campaign. While not a sustainable choice for U.S. shoppers, because of the overseas shipping involved, Raw Bulk Foods Online is another model for regional approaches to augmenting our food supply.Now that shoppers are shifting their purchasing to foods grown nearer to home and abandoning traditional packaging for environmentally responsible alternatives, Raw Bulk Foods is a useful model for U.S. startups. Stephanie’s team spent a year developing the production and packaging processes they use, which includes a refill program that eliminates single-use waste, before they funded their launch on Kickstarter. Raw Bulk Foods Online raised seven times the $7,335 needed to start shipping food in June of this year. Crowdfunding can be a fast path for launching sustainable alternatives to traditional products and services. You can learn more at https://rawbulkfoodsonline.com/.

Zach Stein, cofounder of Carbon Collective, how to the company's Climate Index can help investors identify ESG investments that accelerate progress toward the zero-carbon economy. Investors can have influence that can reshape business practices. It takes time and energy to understand how companies are changing to reduce their environmental impact, create positive social outcomes and improved transparency and accountability. We also discuss the potential impact of the Securities & Exchange Commission's recently proposed rule that would require companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks with their regular finacial reporting.The Carbon Collective’s basic approach suggests divesting from 20% of companies responsible for 85% of emissions, particularly fossil fuel companies, to reallocate those that capital to climate solution companies. Their tools are open for anyone to learn from, offering insights into companies based on Project Drawdown analysis of their environmental and social performance. Carbon Collective also plans to launch managed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) focused on climate and the social safety net. You can learn more at https://www.carboncollective.co/.

Josh Weber, cofounder and executive chairman of nZero, a Nevada company that tracks Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for large organizations, explains the complexities of tracking corporate greenhouse gas emissions. Tracking emissions is the first step toward business taking responsibility for the previously unacknowledged environmental and social costs of delivering products and services. It will be some time before this information is widely available in useful form for consumers and citizens to help make decisions about the products or services they buy or the government policies they support. nZero’s technology, along with those of other emerging carbon tracking tools, is a critical piece of the environmental puzzle we each need to understand.A study by the non-profit As You Sow of the 55 largest companies in the U.S. found that only three, Microsoft, PepsiCo and Ecolab Inc, earned an A-level grade; Google and Apple received B and B- grades, respectively, and most of the rest, 84% of companies are flunking out of the race to head off climate change. Carbon tracking is mostly restricted to Scope 1 and 2 emissions, the direct and indirect emissions associated with power used by a company. MSCI Research reported in September 2020 that only 18% of the firms it follows are reporting their scope 3 emissions — we’ll explore why these emissions are difficult to track. You can find out more at https://nzero.com/.

Dan Smythe, vice president of retail and hospitality at EPAM, an influential technology and business strategy consultancy, discusses the findings of the Consumers Unmasked 2 survey, which examined changing spending habits and sustainability preferences during the pandemic. He reports that people are actively considering companies’ environmental and social impacts when making purchasing decisions. For example, 46% of survey respondents said they buy sustainable products when the choice is available. Respondents also showed growing sophistication about corporate sustainability and social performance. Listen to a discussion of last year's survey results to hear how consumer concerns are changing.EPAM is telling its clients to design shopping experiences that demonstrate honesty and transparency, now among the most important issues for shoppers. Rising interest in sustainainability and a willingness by 39% of respondents to buy used products to reduce their environmental impact, points to a sea change in the priorities of companies that want to keep their customers in the Climate Crisis Era. You can learn about EPAM at https://www.epam.com/.

Erin Levine, Resource Recovery Manager at World Centric, a Rohnert Park, Calif.-based manufacturer of 100% compostable tableware and food packaging, joins Mitch to discuss California’s mandatory composting law, SB 1383. After passage in 2016, the new law, known as the Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, went into effect after five years of preparation on January 1, 2022. SB 1383 requires all businesses, apartment and condo buildings as well as individual homeowners in California are now required to compost food waste, and the law also aims to reduce by 20% the current surplus of edible foods sent to landfills. It is a game-changing move and raises many questions about the compostability of everyday products purchased in the state.We’ve had WorldCentric on the show several times because of the company’s socially-driven mission and focus on reducing use of unrecyclable materials. They contribute a minimum of 25% of their profits to grassroots community organizations and environmental projects each year and pioneered the Certified B Corporation movement in business. In this episode, we dig into composting: What can be composted? How can composting collection can be improved? What are the different approaches to home and industrial composting we need to understand in order to send compostables to the right place for processing. What composting labels to look for, including the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) label. You can learn more about World Centric at https://www.worldcentric.net/.

David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, shares his vision for a regenerative society built on grassroots recycling programs that help low-income regions build resilient communities. The Vancover, B.C., startup compensates more than 30,000 plastic recyclers in the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, and Egypt. To date, Plastic Bank has stopped over 99 million pounds of plastic waste - the equivalent of more than 2 billion plastic bottles — from entering the world's oceans, and the pace of it collections is accelerating. The people who collect plastic are paid for the material they deposit at more than 511 Plastic Bank branches. Katz's team has partnered with more than 200 companies, including Procter & Gamble, HelloFresh, L’Oreal and Coca-Cola, to create circular economies in plastic packaging.Their next goal is to capture 10 billion bottles, which still represents only 1.7% of the 583 billion produced in 2021, according to Euromonitor. David explains that a shift in mindset from extractive ownership to regenerative stewardship can break the economic mold and bring prosperity in regions where so much valuable material currently is treated as waste. Plastic Bank uses a blockchain-based data collection and reporting system that helps collectors track their earnings and which provides transparency and traceability for the plastic captured. Plastic Bank works with plastic recyclers to convert the collected bottles into SocialPlastic, a raw material for making new products. They sell plastic #1, #2 and #4 to industry to recover their costs. You can learn more about Plastic Bank at https://plasticbank.com/.

Mitch Ratcliffe sits down with Newday Impact Investing CEO Doug Heske to start a two-part ESG investing conversation how to invest to help the future generations meet the unique challenges of the climate crisis and global competition. More than 1.8 billion youth around the world are readying themselves to take their place in their economies and communities. But as we know, today’s challenges are more technologically and intellectually difficult than the ones their parents and grandparents faced. They can be ready for great achievements with the right tools and support, and Doug identifies the companies working to engage with youth around the world.Youth, especially in Africa, need to become skilled at regenerative agriculture, the restoration of the planet and providing equitable access to food, water and other resources. They'll also need new tools to collaborate remotely to solve global problems, and the mental health services necessary to survive and thrive despite eco-anxiety. Today, we’ll walk through a list of stocks to consider if your priority is education and youth empowerment, including Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM), Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM), Chegg (NYSE: CHGG), Stride (NYSE: LRN), 2U (NASDAQ: TWOU), Talkspace (NASDAQ: TALK), Atai Life Sciences (NASDAQ : ATAI), and Compass Pathways (NASDAQ: CMPS). You can learn more about Newday Impact Investing's sustainable development equity portfolio at https://newdayimpact.com/.

Meet Rayansh Bhavit, a member of Edison, N.J.-based RecycleMyBattery.org, a youth-led program that has collected 150,000+ batteries for recycling. Rayansh recently contributed an Earth911 article about the organization's National Battery Day activities to encourage people to recycle batteries on February 18th. He and the 150 kids who’ve participated in RecyleMyBattery have collected more than 150,000 batteries of various sizes, which they send to the battery industry recycling organization, Call2Recycle, for processing.Find out how the movement started and the results of this year’s National Battery Day efforts, and think about starting your own campaign for next year. Getting youth involved in environmental action is essential to creating the sense of empowerment and opportunity necessary to turn the economy toward sustainable outcomes. You can learn more at https://recyclemybattery.org/.

We talk with Marc Cooke, an advocate for wolf protection and president of Wolves of the Rockies, which is fighting to stop wolf hunting in the West. The Grey Wolf faces extinction, again, after a dramatic recovery over the past 50 years. There were as few as 300 left in the United States when they were added to the Endangered Species List in 1970. By 2019 the total North American population had reached 6,000 and small wolf populations had been reestablished in a dozen states. That year, the Trump Administration moved to delist the Grey Wolf that year and hunters went after this beautiful animal with a vengeance. Twenty-five, or about a third of the wolves in Yellowstone National Park, were killed this winter. The states of Montana and Idaho have new laws that could eliminate 90% of their wolf populations. Wyoming allocated 47 wolf hunting tags. We could lose half the wolf populating in just one year.Marc explains the controversy and next steps in the battle to protect the Grey Wolf. There is some good news. In February, a federal court judge issued a ruling that reversed the Trump-era decision to remove the Grey Wolf from the Endangered Species List. That does not mean the story’s over. The ruling could be overturned by a higher court if the Biden Administration decides to start an appeal. Your voice can cout in that debate -- visit RelistWolves.org to send letters to your representatives and the Department of the Interior. Find out more about Wolves of the Rockies at https://www.wolvesoftherockies.org/.

Molly Laverty, Senior Manager of Environmental, Social and Governance at Del Monte Foods Inc., joins us to discuss the company's climate response goals, which include using 25% recycled plastics in packaging. Del Monte Foods is one of the largest food packaging companies in the U.S. and is working to become a sustainable provider of fruits and vegetables through investments in regenerative farming. We talk about the recently released Del Monte sustainability report and its plan for environmental progress, and how the food supply chain may change in coming years. Del Monte's CropTrak system, for example, could provide consumers end-to-end transparency to see into the source and distribution of their food. On the plastics front, only 4% of Del Monte’s total packaging by weight remains plastic-based—the rest is made of paper, metal and glass. By 2030, Del Monte aims to make 100% of its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable.Del Monte is also entering regenerative farming, introducing the use of cover crop to prevent erosion and restore nitrogen and other nutrients in the soil between food crops. The company is also working to breed non-GMO sees that are drought resistant and reduce the need for pesticides. The company banned use of pesticides on their partner farms when pollinators are present to improve biodiversity in the soil and farmland. Del Monte also made progress on other ESG issues, including diversity in the senior executive ranks, surpassing the 50% level for participation by women and people of color in 2021. You can learn more at http://delmontefoods.com.