Earth911.com's Sustainability In Your Ear

It’s Plastic-free July and we’re talking today with journalist, podcaster and author Amy Westervelt about the surprising resurgence of sustainable plastic claims in the media despite growing public concern. Amy’s first Drilled podcast series this season is about plastic and the machinations of one media manipulator, Rick Berman, who launched the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition among many dodgy campaigns backed by tobacco, plastic and oil companies. We also discuss what's coming this season on Drilled and the potential for consumers to reshape the economy by refusing to buy products delivered in plastic packaging, the opportunities to simplify plastic recycling and new molecular recycling options, as well as the role of Plastic-free July in public discourse about the ubiquitous, polluting material.If you are not already listening to her podcast, Drilled, a true-crime style podcast about climate change, you should subscribe. The new season of Drilled started last week. Amy is also the creator of the Critical Frequency podcast network — it focuses on climate issues — and she has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian and NPR. Amy was a 2016 winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award for her exposes on the hidden environmental and human costs of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada. You can follow everything Amy does at amywestervelt.com and find the Drilled podcast on the Critical Frequency network.

Earth911 talks with Jake Felser, Chief Technology Officer at Freight Farms about the company's "complete farming system inside a box.” It’s a very big box that includes climate controls and monitoring systems to make faming easy for anyone to do.  Freight Farms builds and delivers shipping containers converted into highly efficient hydroponic farms that use LED lighting to grow and deliver fresh produce year-round. Jake discusses the cost of getting started, how many people are needed to run the farm, and how it the built-in automation helps farmers plan a profitable business. Grocers, restaurants, communities and small farms are using Freight Farms installations at 350 farms in 49 states and 32 countries. The company says most of its customers are new to agriculture and operate right in the urban and rural communities they serve.Growing and distributing vegetables locally is one of the most effective ways to lower our society’s carbon footprint. While agriculture contributes about 10% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions each year, the majority of that is from raising animals. By increasing our consumption of locally grown vegetables, we can improve local health and reduce overall emissions from transportation. It’s not easy to grow food in most cities using traditional methods. The introduction of container farms and vertical farming inside buildings can reshape food deserts and create economic opportunity. To learn more, visit FreightFarms.com.

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe speaks with Yaron Ben-Nun, Chief Technology Officer at Nostromo, which has introduced a fascinating innovation in commercial building cooling, the IceBrick Thermal-Energy Storage technology. Nostromo is an Israeli startup that recently went public and trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange under the symbol SMTO. IceBrick can shift the energy demand to prevent spikes in power consumption during the hottest part of the day when air conditioning demand peaks. IceBrick stores cooling energy in the form of ice during off-peak hours and overnight when there is plenty of  generation capacity available. Think of it as storing the converted electricity in ice that can be used for cooling when needed. Unlike battery systems, which are useful for approximately 3,000 cycles of use, or about 10 years and require rare earths and lithium that are currently difficult to recycle, the IceBrick uses water and a glycol formulae to operate without producing any emissions. The system is easily recycled after approximately 20 years of use.Yaron shares the experience of several early customers in Los Angeles, explaining how commercial building owners can lower their energy bills and reduce their building's carbon footprint. He also describes how Nostromo's technology can be applied to reducing the demand on electricity grids to free up energy for EV charging and other critical electrification projects. To learn more about Nostromo and IceBrick, visit nostromo.energy.

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe chats with Good Girl Gone Green creator and green living mentor Stephanie Moram, looking at the choices for entertaining sustainably this summer. Stephanie's been exploring the many ways we can reduce our environmental impact with an emphasis on making our lives unique and enjoyable. “There is no right or wrong way to become more green,” she says, and we agree. She offers online learning program, Find Your Green, for women who want to understand the sustainability questions they should consider when making choices at the store and home.We also cover questions about making your life and community green. What kinds of activities do you suggest and how do you get folks excited about doing environmental activities together? We look at how Stephanie makes changes her life to reduce her impact on the environment and making shopping greener.

How can we track our water usage to recognize how to save water? Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Nelson Pedreiro of Nudge Systems, which makes the Pleco, a smart device that attaches to your water meter to track water usage by category, from toilet flushes and showers to washing the clothes and watering the lawn. It can also identify leaks long before the are visible to the eye. One tech magazine called it a “Fitbit for your water meter.” Nelson explains how to install and connect Pleco to an in-home display or smartphone app that reports your water use in detail.The American West faces an historic drought this summer and water conversation is more important than ever for 57 million Americans in the regions, many of whom may have taken water for granted until now. The good news is that there are immediate savings readily available to everyone because the average family wastes about 180 gallons of water a week, equal to about 10 five-minute showers. Nelson shares how Pleco's creators wanted to reduce their water footprint and are now using machine learning to identify different types of water usage more accurately.The $249 Pleco device straps onto a water meter and uses a magnetic monitor to track usage, sending the data to the home using a wireless network. Unlike most other water monitoring options, it does not need to be added into the home's plumbing.

Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Jeff Gold, founder and CEO of Altanta-based Nexus Fuels, which processes 50 tons of plastic daily using molecular recycling that breaks the material down into the basic elements of hydrocarbon found in oil so it can be reused in new plastic. It’s the leading edge of chemical technologies for creating a circular economy. Nexus combines waste management and energy production using Plastics #2, #4, #5 and #6 to make feedstock, the raw materials, for new plastic or fuel. Gold explains that Nexus stopped sending its recycled hydrocarbons to oil companies to prevent the recycled plastic from becoming air pollution when burned as fuel. Instead, the material can be used in new food-grade plastic, which can recycled again and again. Nexus works with Cobb County, Georgia, and Dow to process plastic from the Hefty Energy Bag program. We discuss the future of plastic and whether it would be possible to begin mining plastic in landfills to produce the raw material for new plastic without drilling new oil. Nexus' business model allows for the company to pay for plastic waste and operate profitably. Gold speculates that consumer incentive programs could be created that pay people for returning plastic, which would enable a circular economy in the material and keep waste out of waterways and the oceans.Nexus this week announced a partnership with Wood, an engineering firm, to expand globally. According to Gold, “Our accelerated plan and strategic relationships with firms like Wood will allow Nexus to advance current production rates to 5,000 tons of recycled feedstock per day, supporting the reuse of over 5 million tons of plastic waste annually with an estimated annual savings of 30 million tons of CO2 emissions when compared with incineration.”To learn more about Nexus Fuels, visit https://www.nexusfuels.com/.

Earth911 talks with Sarah Dearman, vice president of circular ventures a The Recycling Partnership, about the future of plastic, plastic recycling and the non-profit's new PlasticIQ initiative that provides tools for business to assess and optimize its packaging choices. We discuss the need to simplify our plastic system to make recycling easier and how to make it easy for people to recycle packaging and products made of plastic. The Recycling Partnership is one of the most dynamic and important non-profits working to introduce a circular economy in the United States. Established in 2014, it works with communities and business to create solutions for, among other things, recycling plastic and plastic films, as well as developing local recycling and consumer education programs to increase recovery rates.In May, The Recycling Partnership announced a free open-source digital tool, Plastic IQ, designed to help companies that use plastic packaging to develop waste-reduction strategies and put them into practice. It also helps to quantify the carbon emissions created by the use of plastic packaging, which is desperately needed to allow consumers to understand the consequences of their shopping choices. Walmart, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Nestle and other major consumer packaged goods companies are getting ready to use Plastic IQ.To learn more about The Recycling Partnership and PlasticIQ, visit https://recyclingpartnership.org/.

Earth911 talks with FreeWater Inc. founder Josh Cliffords, who has a radical idea to make water, juice and, ultimately, a wide range of products available for free using the same business model as online services like YouTube, using advertising. Josh shares a vision that includes building in a recovery system for packaging, using aluminum cans and hemp cartons made and filled near the customer, and 10 cents of each sale to support building water and sanitation systems around the world. Josh says he “wants to change the experience of giving to charity and giving back to society and make it as simple as drinking a free bottle of water or eating a free slice of pizza.” Here’s how it will work: The company will provide ad-labeled water to customers, such as auto dealerships, gyms and retail locations, which may have a cooler full of carton water, for example, that includes advertising with scannable codes — FreeWater earns its revenue from that advertising. You can also order water for delivery to your home, someday it could be delivered by Uber-like service people who also pick and process the empties for recycling.While it is early in the life of FreeWater, we find this one of the most interesting business concepts we've heard in a while. Josh envisions local production centers, and explains how McDonald's could provide ad-supported food and drink, and use reusable, recyclable and compostable packaging. Since advertising supports tracking of packaging, it can also help track flows within the consumer goods market, which would lead to rapid evolution of efficiencies -- today's economy wastes so much that the savings could deliver immense improvements in sustainability. He estimates that if 10% of Americans decide to choose FreeWater, the 10-cent contributions could provide enough funding to deliver water systems to the approximately 800 million people around the world who don’t have access to clean water and up to 3.6 billion people who experience a month of water shortages each year. It's a big idea facing many challenges, including the further commercialization and offering many permutations that could be applied in different food and goods markets.  Don't miss the interview. The FreeWater story will get you thinking. It's a radical idea that just might work.

Caspar Poyck, cofounder and senior director of plant operations at hard kombucha brewer Flying Embers shares how the company works to reduce its environmental footprint, including capturing the CO2 generated by its fermentation processes to add fizz to it fruit-flavored kombucha beverages. After the founders lived through the 2017 Thomas Fires in Ojai, Calif., they renamed the company Flying Embers to commemorate the victims of the tragedy and heroism of first responders who helped save the historic building where they started. The fire burned 440 square miles and was the largest wildfire in California history at the time. After confronting the blazing consequences of climate change, Flying Embers has embraced sustainability as a core tenet of its mission. Caspar and his team have worked to reduce the use of plastic in packaging, encourage recycling, and transform what used to be waste into valuable components of its products.For example, Flying Embers used to purchase industrially-made CO2 to carbonate its kombucha, even though the fermentation process generated CO2 they discarded as waste. They captured the fermentation CO2 to use in their drinks, and found it improved the flavor and experience of the beverage. The machine-made CO2 had added a metallic flavor while the natural CO2 provided a rich undertone along with finer bubbles in the kombucha. Thinking in green terms leads to surprising innovations. Caspar also shares his work to replace plastic six-pack rings and introduce recycled and compostable paper packages. If your small firm thinks operating more sustainably is a costly luxury available only to large companies, Flying Embers' experience will challenge that thinking.The company now supports first responders in climate disaster areas and contributes Learn more about Flying Embers, its wide range of hard kombucha flavored with fruit and spices, along with hard seltzers and beer with home delivery available in nine states at https://www.flyingembers.com/.

Earth911 talks with Daniel Eggers, Chief Commercial Officer at Climeworks, a Zurich, Switzerland-based carbon capture company.  Climeworks launched one of the first commercial CO2 projects in the world, the geothermal-powered Orca project in Hellisheidi, Iceland, and has 13 other locations under development. Daniel explains the power and geological requirements for storing CO2 in the ground, where it forms carbonate minerals — when turned to rock, the CO2 stays in the ground virtually forever. The Hellisheidi plant will sequester 4,000 tons of CO2 annually — and you can support the project by subscribing to monthly sequestration services that range from $8 to $55 a month.We also dig into the future of carbon capture, when CO2 will provide the raw materials for fuels and advanced materials, among other things. Daniel shares a vision of a circular economy for carbon that mines the air to keep global CO2 levels falling toward pre-industrial levels over the next 50 to 100 years. In the long run, carbon capture technology could provide a global air conditioning system of sorts that keeps CO2 levels below 300 ppm, our species' environmental sweet spot. He suggests that reforestation and other natural solutions are essential, and that technology can be useful as a tool to manage CO2 emissions that remain.Learn more about Climeworks and its personal carbon sequestration subscriptions at https://climeworks.com.