Sustainability In Your Ear

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.

Dr. Anja Malawi Brandon, an advisor to the Plastics Pact and U.S. Policy Analyst for the Ocean Conservancy, joins Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss three areas for potential progress in reducing our dependence on plastic and improving recycling rates. She explains how the Plastics Pact, a consortium of 100 companies, NGOs and governments, that has a plan for transforming the plastic recycling infrastructure by 2025. The organization recently released a list of "unnecessary plastics" that they recommend be abandoned in packaging. We also talk through the prospects for the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act in Congress; Anja was on the staff of the bill's sponsor, Senator Jeff Merkley (D - OR). And we discuss the recently started meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, of the UN Environmental Assembly to negotiate a global plastics treaty could introduce a framework for changing our relationship to the material.Plastic is a convenience that has turned into a plague. According to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years and plastic production currently accounts for 3.4% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled globally, 6.1 million tons of plastic escape into freshwater environments and 1.7 million tons reaches the ocean each year. Plastic is in our water, our soil, our food and our bodies. You can learn more about The Ocean Conservancy at https://oceanconservancy.org/ and the Plastics Pact at https://usplasticspact.org/.

Wake Smith, author of Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention, shares his assessment of the climate response  the strategies and technologies that can be used to end CO2 emissions and restore the planet to pre-industrial climate conditions. He is a lecturer on climate interventions at Yale and a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He explains that we're not making sufficient progress on reaching net-zero before very late this century and why new institutions are needed to guide policy toward climate goals before parts of the world become barren and unhabitable for humans. Once we reach net-zero CO2 emissions, we face centuries of effort to return to the environment in which our species evolved.We also discuss carbon capture and sequestration and a form of solar geoengineering, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which involves sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to deflect the Sun’s energy. Wake does not advocate extreme measures but urges nations to support research into SAI and other tech that could be deployed to ensure human survival. His comments on how our descendants may feel about us and what he's learned from his students about the importance of tying actions to consequences will get you thinking: Are we doing enough? Is the world we are entering governable with today's institutions? Pandora's Toolbox is available on Amazon and at Powell's Books.

Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day Network, joins us to talk about the goals for Earth Day 2022, which takes place on April 22. This year’s programs will focus on investing in the planet, from making sustainable choices among ESG stocks, as well as how to invest in a better future by getting involved in activism, taking action to create healthy communities, and the changes each of us can make to reduce our impact. We discuss the state of the climate crisis and the results of the United Nations COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, last November. A self-described "imperfect environmentalist," Kathleen explains changes she's made recently and offers 52 ideas to consider for Earth Day 2022.The first Earth Day in 1970 was the largest public day of action in U.S. history. More than 20 million Americans went into the streets to support environmental reform. Following that first Earth Day, Congress and President Nixon launched the Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Air Act, Occupational Safety and Health Act, and National Environmental Education Act, followed two years later by the Clean Water Act. Before those changes, American air and water were far dirtier, so much so it is hard to explain how much it has changed. Only with the arrival of uncontrolled wildfires related to climate change do we have comparably bad air in the United States but for far fewer days per year. This year, we look forward to Earth Day leading to something as big as launch the EPA or Clean Air Act. Follow the plans for this year at https://www.earthday.org/.

Judi Townsend, founder of Oakland, Calif-based Mannequin Madness, is on a mission to keep mannequins in use to reduce the environmental impact of the retail industry. The shop sells full mannequins, dress forms, torsos and butts, limbs, replacement parts and even dog and cat mannequins. Mannequin Madness is recycling more than 100,000 lbs. of mannequins each year and it has grown into a thriving business since it was founded in her backyard more than 20 years ago. Her customers include retailers, artists, and fashion and sports enthusiasts who want to display clothing in thier home.Judi is an example of the many small, local or regional entrepreneurs that can build systems to ensure the continued use of products in a more sustainable economy. We’re going to grow a circular economy from the ground up. We’re going to grow a circular economy from the ground up. Learn from an innovator who is making local and specialized reusee and recycling happen.You can learn more at https://mannequinmadness.com.

Stephen Crolius is the co-founder and president of Carbon Neutral Consulting, a New York-based sustainable business consultancy. He and his team recently released The Ammonia Report, an analysis of the prospects for using ammonia as a maritime fuel instead of heavy fuel oil, the petroleum-derived traditional source of maritime energy. So much of what we buy today is shipped halfway around the world. Sometimes, the components of a product are shipped from the U.S. to Asia, processed and then shipped back. Almost all of that shipping activity burns oil today, which accounts for about 1.8% of humanity's annual carbon footprint, according to the European Commission’s Climate Action office. We need to change the fuels used to power sea-going freight vessels to sustainable alternatives, and several are emerging. One of those is ammonia.Stephen previously served with the Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative and as president of the Ammonia Energy Association. Ammonia has been used in fertilizers since the early twentieth century, a development made possible by the emergence of the Haber-Bosch process for mass producing the chemical, which revolutionized farming. Now ammonia is coming into use as a fuel or an intermediate storage medium for energy that can be processed to yield pure hydrogen in fuel applications. You can follow the developing story of ammonia fuels at https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/.

Newday Impact Investing CEO Doug Heske returns to talk about investing to create a sustainable, circular and equitable economy that we can hand to our children and grandchildren with a sense of pride. This week we’re looking at diversity, equity and inclusion (often shortened to “DEI”), the idea that the dignity and value of every person that must underlie a just society. Doug’s team at Newday Impact has developed methodologies to identify companies that are making genuine progress on DEI issues, as well as screen out companies that, similar to greenwashing, "socialwash" their actual diversity and inclusion performance, and that can make them a long-term risk as an investment.Investors are increasingly factoring assessments of a company’s DEI performance into their decisions. They recognize that hidden debts, whether that’s the loss of economic value from excluding large swaths of the population from full participation in the economy or the latent cost of environmental damage, add up to consequences that can kill not only a company but a market or the planet. We discuss several companies with exceptional DEI characteristics, Lowe’s Companies (NYSE: LOW), Apple (NASDAQ: APPL), Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ: WBA), Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) and a stock we touched on last time we talked, Target (NYSE: TGT). You can learn more about Newday Impact Investing at https://newdayimpact.com/.

Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia.org, discusses the revolutionary search engine that plants trees with each search. He shares his firsthand experiences of deforestation that inspired him to create Ecosia in 2009. The podcast highlights how Ecosia has planted over 143 million trees, contributing to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Kroll also emphasizes the importance of balancing technology and sustainability, prioritizing user privacy, and the rise of social enterprises that focus on environmental and social missions.