Earth911.com's Sustainability In Your Ear

Arguments against embracing sustainable choices often suggest life will be less prosperous. Philosopher Kate Soper argues that the first step toward a sustainable lifestyle is changing the things we appreciate. Modern life has made us frantic and despite technical advances, people work more than ever, particularly in the United States. Soper's new book, Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism, suggest that consumerism has many downsides that, if recognized, will allow people to rethink how they value free time, work-life balance, and the avalanche of choices that define modern life. We can find new joys in more time, slower travel and lower levels of anxiety. Soper, who is emerita professor of philosophy at London Metropolitan University, is known worldwide for her analysis of needs and consumption, and she has turned to examine humanity's relationship with nature in recent years.Soper's idea is to embrace an alternative hedonism, a different approach to values than consumerism encourages. Less stuff doesn't mean one is impoverished becuase it takes so much work to earn enough to keep up. For example, by the end of the 20th Century, Americans were spending twice to support their lifestyles as in 1948. As inequality has increased, people have pursued more to support the illusion they are keeping up with the wealthy, who are held out as examples of success because they can buy more than other people. But consumer success is not the only possible defintion of success, Soper argues. After COVID-19, our normal expectations have been disrupted. Low-wage workers have been deemed "essential" while others were allowed to stay at home, safe from contact with the virus. Supplies of food and luxury goods have been interrupted, changing how people spend and save their money.Can we use the lessons of the last year to begin a transition to a new set of values? Soper suggests that a culture war aimed at the absurd suggestions advertising promotes can help break the spell of more stuff for stuff's sake. She advocates people making free choices based on scientific information with less emphasis on consumer succes. Stories and advertising that express the value of using less, reusing more, and enjoying a slower pace can help to reshape people's expectations. She discusses the role of government, how to uncouple progress from prosperity, and the challenge of organizing socially and politically to make changes that lead to a sustainable economy. Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism will be released on November 10, 2020 and is avalable now on Amazon.

More algae blooms and red tides are affecting the grassy coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. David Wolff, founder of OceanHabitats Inc., recognized the need for natural solutions in the 1990s, when he built the first Mini Reef, a structure that can be placed under docks in coastal waterways and canals that supports plant and ocean life. But the world wasn't ready for the idea and money ran out by 1998. Wolff pursued other businesses, which he recently sold before returning to his Mini Reef project out of concern for the Gulf Coast. Now, more than 4,000 Mini Reefs are installed in the region, filled with mussels, barnacles, and oysters that clean the water.Wolff explains the different sizes and placement options for the Mini Reef, which is available in several sizes to fit together like Lego blocks under a dock. Once populated by plants, crabs, shrimp, and other life, a small reef can filter about 30,000 gallons of water a day. Homeowners have purchased most of the installed Mini Reefs but Wolff has created a donation page to let people who do not live on the coast to support installations. Cities, non-profits, and the EPA are now engaged in assessments of the idea for use in coastal recovery projects. Mini Reefs cost between $237 and $687.The company also makes $187 The Fish Crib, a freshwater lake and pond model that helps young fish stay safe as they mature. It can support up to 300 fish each year. OceanHabitats products work in any coastal area but will mature more slowly in cold water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft National Recycling Policy in October. Earth911 speaks with Adina Renee Adler, vice president of advocacy at the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) about the plan's strengths and areas for improvement. ISRI offered comments about the EPA's focus on job creation as a primary goal and basis for measuring the new regulations' success. Instead, increased collection of valuable materials combined with lower contamination rates should guide policy.We discuss the changes to recycling collection and investments in consumer education that can raise the laggard U.S. recycling rate. Americans recycle between 28% and 35.2% of the materials they buy, depending on the source. The industry supports 750,000 jobs that pay about $36.6 billion in salaries annually, but has become increasingly complex and inefficient as the volume and variety of product and packaging materials has increased in recent decades. Individual state and municipal recycling rules make it difficult for people to understand what they can recycle in their curbside bin or at a local transfer station, and the EPA proposal will do little to reduce the confusion.Adler also shares ISRI's ideas about the importance of transparency and accountability by recyclers to help increase consumer confidence in the recycling system. The comment period for the National Recycling Policy continues through December 4, 2020. You can contact the EPA through Regulations.gov or send comments to your Congressional representative.

EarthFund Global's ambitious plan to finance and accelerate national transitions to renewable energy is starting in Greece, where we spoke with founder Alysia Helming. A veteran of the U.S. renewable energy industry, she founded Santa Monica, Calif.-based EarthFund Global in collaboration with Green Cross International as a non-profit in March 2020 to attempt to meet the challenge of making renewable energy widely available by 2030. In September, Helming's team announced its Greek project, where the team found a country has committed to move 35% of its energy generation to wind and solar this decade. EarthFund, the Greek and European Union governments, NGOs and private enterprise to create new jobs and economically equitable projects that help the population into the green era."We believe that true change starts with communities and individuals," the organization states. "[W]e at EarthFund have made communities our primary focus." Their most ambitious goal is to eliminate the need for coal-fired electricity plants by 2028. Starting with one nation, Greece, as an example, they plan to work in the EU in support of its Green Deal and goal to be climate neutral by 2050 across all sectors of society.Earth911 talks with Alysia Helming about why a non-profit was the right tool for funding energy transitions, the role of female entrepreneurs in the climate fight, and how individuals can get involved and support EarthFund projects. "We believe that true change starts with communities and individuals," the organization states. Do you want to support their work? EarthFund Global accepts individual donations.

The fashion industry is a profligate source of pollution, even when making baby clothing. Lauren Gregor founded Rent-a-Room to help parents find and reuse baby clothing. During the first years of a baby’s life, they change sizes and styles faster than a teenage fashion plate. Gregor, a new mom, decided to follow the fashion rental examples of Rent-the-Runway and StitchFix, introducing a subscription service the provides curated “capsules” of baby and toddler clothes. Available in a 7-item Just the Essentials Capsule and 15-item Complete Capsule, Rent-a-Romper’s customers can return clothing whenever baby outgrows it.Gregor estimates that instead of using and tossing out baby clothes after a single use, Rent-a-Romper can extend the use of an item up to or beyond a half-dozen uses. Lost items or those that parents want to keep do not cost extra. Gregor’s company also offers subscriptions to branded clothing through partnerships with children’s clothing makers.Do you have used baby clothes you’d like to see reused? Rent-a-Romper accepts donations and will provide a prepaid shipping label to make contributions easy. Visit Rent-a-Romper to learn more, or start shopping for your kids today.

Enspire leather is a novel take on recycling one of humanity's oldest industrial materials. Earth911 talks with Frank Fox, cofounder of Sustainable Composites, a Lancaster, Pa.-based company that recycles leather fibers to create new leather that looks, feels, and performs like the real thing. By breaking leather down to individual fibers, the grain of which you can see if you turn over a swatch of leather, Sustainable Composites produces more usable material than traditional leather recovery. The enspire process binds the leather fibers into a material indistinguishable from natural leather. It can be polished or buffed like natural leather and can be used in fashion, furniture, and other applications.Leather footwear, clothing, accessories, and furniture production are very inefficient. Because leather is cut out of treated hides, as much as 75% of the material is thrown out as scrap during the production of the typical leather item. enspire leather is made using naturally occurring chemicals and results only in wastewater that, Fox explains, "is cleaner than when we take it in from the river." Sustainable Composites can make enspire without any waste products left over. "It's more hazardous to process fresh leather than it is to use our material," he added.enspire leather will eventually cost less than general utility leather -- Sustainable Composites collects its leather for free from manufacturers, reducing both the original product waste and carbon footprint in addition to low-carbon production of the next product.

Earth911 talks with Jeremy Schewe, a wetlands scientist who is chief science officer and cofounder of Ecobot, an app company that helps to accurately inventory wetlands. Schewe shares the state of more than 110 million acres of wetlands in the U.S. and progress in understanding the role wetlands play in the carbon cycle, their influences on local weather and environmental diversity, and policymaking to protect these valuable natural resources. Wetlands are estimated to provide up to $14 trillion dollars in environmental services to humans annually by processing CO2, providing a home to fish and game, serving as a source of biological solutions to human disease and food production, and other functions humans cannot perform.Wetlands' CO2 capture capacity is important to reducing global warming and in some regions they serve as a storm buffer. With extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, increasing in intensity, wetlands can alleviate damage from storm surges by capturing rising waters. Each major storm costs more than $2 billion in damage repair and climate remediation. Investing in better tracking of wetlands is essential to reversing the climate changes we already see and feel around us.We explore the state of wetlands mapping and descriptions of what lives in these areas, which can be as large as a river delta or as small as a holler that contains water only part of the year. Ecobot assists scientists when they inventory a location, providing easy entry of plant and animal species present, physical features, and water information. Progress toward a complete understanding of wetlands is really only getting started, Schewe explains. In 2021, the next U.S. National Wetlands Condition Assessment will be released, providing the first five-year view into wetland changes. As humans gain insights into wetlands, they can better manage, restore, and preserve them.

Earth911 talks with Adam Met, bassist of the multi-platinum indie pop group AJR and advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Development Program, about his new podcast, Planet Reimagined and how to start a lasting sustainability transition. Adam and his brothers Jack and Ryan launched AJR as teens. They've produced numerous hits, including their current release Bummerland, while Adam continued his studies in philosophy and international law. He is completing a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law and is the executive director of Sustainable Partners, Inc., a "thought and action think tank" that creates sustainability initiatives around the world. He recently began working with the UN's Sustainable Development program to raise awareness about the many paths to a humane and prosperous green economy.Adam shares his thoughts about the role of celebrity and protest in a modern connected society, and how each person's decisions to be sustainable can be communicated to spread the word about the importance of living within the planet's resources. We discuss bridging the economic and justice gap between the developed and emerging economies, as well as how AJR encourages sustainability on its global tours. We can each be an example and, when communities pull together and communicate their priorities to business and government the world can change.Planet Reimagined, Adam's new podcast, was introduced last week. Subscribe today and Planet Reimagined will plant a tree! His guests during the first season include former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, economist Jeffrey Sachs, March For Our Lives founder Matt Deitch, Allbirds CEO Joey Zwillinger and Keiana Cave, a 22-year-old scientist working on the chemistry of oil cleanups and hormone-free birth control.

Feeling like the world can't survive 2020? Take a few minutes to meet 15-year-old Adarsh Ambati of San Jose, Calif., winner of the Innovation prize in the 2020 International Young Eco-Hero Awards to discover why there is hope. Adarsh and 16 other 8-to-12-year-olds and 13-to-16-year olds were recognized this month for their contributions to global sustainability. Adarsh's story is an inspiration that will get you looking at your world with a new eye for positive change. He's also one of the most well-spoken young people you'll meet. He explains how everyone can take action with clear and inspiring lessons he learned after inventing a neighborhood sprinkler monitoring system at age 11 during California's drought. His inspiration was waste he observed around him on a drive when he saw a sprinkler running during a rare rainstorm in the Bay Area.Adarsh took about a year to develop a Raspberry Pi-based controller that connects water sensors, weather data, local watering regulations, and social media to provide local watering guidance. He trialed the device with 10 neighbors and found that they could have saved 50,000 gallons of water in just two months. His $50 device was a fraction of the cost of competing sprinkler control systems but he went for two years without gaining any traction with local utilities until his project won MagPi Magazine's 2019 Coolest Projects USA competition. The recognition was followed by support from Raspberry Pi CEO Phil Colligan and local utility Lake Canyon Mutal Water Company in nearby Los Gatos, Calif., which is planning to trial the device with its customers. At 15, he's got a successful invention and, as a side-gig, founded Gro-STEMs, a site that sells succulents to provide support to technology training at San Jose's LifeMoves Homeless Shelter and the Aarti for Girls School for abandoned children in Kadapa, India.What Adarsh learned would take a lifetime for many people in Silicon Valley, and we urge you to listen to his approach to innovation and the importance of taking criticism constructively, even when it isn't offered constructively, to develop a successful technology product. He breaks down his three key ideas for sustainable innovation so that anyone can apply changes to the world they find, a world often built on wasteful practices that can be improved. His persistence is an inspiration. You'll learn a lot from him and we hope you come away from the conversation as energized was we did.

Plastic pollution surged along with COVID-19 as the world's human population raced to protect itself from the virus. We talk with Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, one of the largest plastic bag makers in the country. Kelly shares how in-store recycling programs have been curtailed by fears about spreading infections and the continuing increase in plastic usage compared to previous years. Emerald Packaging is working to reduce its reliance on virgin plastic resins, as well as introducing recyclable and compostable produce packaging.Kelly also shares his personal concern that American business has not fully understood the threat from climate change, which he describes as "existential" in scope. If, for example, sea levels rise, the consequences to Emerald Packaging will be disastrous because food supply chains will be interrupted at every port, reducing the sales of vegetables and other produce and by extension produce bags. Kelly urges business leaders and consumers to work to reduce plastic use and to recycle any plastic that must be used. We discuss the recent defeat of California Senate Bill 54, the California Circular Economy and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, which he opposed because it did not provide funding for recycling programs. Yet, Kelly is supportive of the California initiative that will attempt to put SB 54 into law at the ballot box since it will likely include a funding mechanism based in part on extended producer responsibility requirements.That willingness to embrace producer responsibility, which requires companies to participate in collecting and recycling what they make, is encouraging. Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe asked Kelly what percentage of a company's revenue should be allocated to recycling and got a concrete answer: 1%, which Kelly said was a quick estimate. If every business that makes a product that becomes waste at the end of its useful life were to contribute 1% of revenue to support recycling programs, it would go a long way toward revolutionizing the U.S. recycling system. If business refuses to shoulder that responsibility, Kelly said, they will eventually be driven out of business by the consequences of climate change.Surprising and positive comments from a plastic manufacturer. Be sure to give this interview a careful listen.Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.Follow the podcast on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.