Sustainability In Your Ear

Rachael Z. Miller is a leading voice in the fight against microfiber pollution, the plastic smog that trails our clothing like exhaust from a car. You might not see them, but our synthetic clothing sheds millions of tiny plastic fibers that make their way into our atmosphere, oceans, and rivers. It’s been less than a century since the introduction of synthetic textiles — nylon was the first about 90 years ago — but microfibers are already found everywhere on the planet, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the guts and bloodstreams of our bodies and those of mammals and marine life. As the founder of the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, Rachael has dedicated herself to documenting and mitigating the impact of this invisible pollutant, including launching the Cora Ball, a laundry accessory that reduces the microfibers released during a wash.Rachael’s work shines a light on how something as simple as washing our clothes can have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems and wildlife, as the story she shared in a recent Earth911 explains: Polar Bears and Penguins Aren’t Wearing Our Clothes But They Might Be Eating Them. She’s also a National Geographic Explorer who has visited the Arctic and Antarctic to study the spread of microfibers. We discuss Rachael’s pioneering efforts to raise awareness, her innovative solutions, and what we can all do to reduce microfiber pollution in our daily lives. Tune in for a conversation that could change how you think about your laundry routine. You can find out more about Rachael and her work at https://www.rozaliaproject.org/Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.

Meet Emily McGarvey, furniture maker and retailer Room & Board's first Director of Sustainability. The company, founded in 1980, recently became an employee-owned B Corporation. Room & Board has made significant efforts to reduce the environmental impact by engaging 12,000 U.S. craftspeople to make its furniture, achieving 95% sustainable wood sourcing, including using urban wood recovered for reuse in tables and chairs and making 51% of its packaging recyclable on the path to 100% targets in 2025.The global furniture industry is expected to see $765 billion in sales this year, according to a Statista analysis, and $133 billion of that in the United States. Reducing the carbon emissions associated with home furnishings — from sourcing wood and materials near producers to shortening supply chains to minimize the need for shipping — can make more sustainable choices available to consumers. For example, the retail chain Ashley Furniture has the seventh largest ocean shipping carbon footprint among major brands because most of its manufacturing is based in Asia. You can learn more about Room & Board at https://www.roomandboard.com/ Correction: A reference to Room & Board's recyclable packaging progress needed to be corrected. Rather than having achieved 89% recyclable packaging, the company currently uses 51% recyclable material -- its goal is to reach 100% by 2025.

Alison Cove, CEO and founder of USEFULL, works at the forefront of a critical shift in how we approach food service sustainability. By implementing collection systems for reusable food packaging, USEFULL helps university and corporate cafeterias reduce their reliance on single-use plastics and paper packaging. Alison joins the conversation to explain her company's trackable, tech-enabled reusable steel food containers and cups. After adopting Usefull's reusable system, Carleton College saw a drop in its loss rate from almost 60% to less than 1%. This achievement is part of a broader movement toward creating campus circular food service systems to cut waste and foster a broader culture of sustainability. The importance of reusable food service containers cannot be overstated. Single-use plastics contribute significantly to global plastic pollution, particularly in food service. In the U.S. alone, the market for disposable food service containers is vast, with sales reaching approximately $27.81 billion annually. This extensive use of disposables not only adds to the billions of tons of waste generated each year but also exacerbates the environmental impact through the production, disposal, and potential for pollution from these single-use items. You can learn more about USEFULL at https://www.usefull.us/

Growing, packaging, transporting, and distributing food is a major source of society’s emissions, accounting for approximately 26% of annual global emissions. Reducing the impact of food production is critical to bringing society back within the planetary boundaries, and Wayne McIntyre, cofounder and CEO of Montreal-based Relocalize, wants to “Decarbonize and hyper-localize food & beverage manufacturing.”The company is developing technology and a business strategy for decentralized food production using automated microfactories that are placed close to major consumer markets. It promises retailers “full control over their supply chain” in exchange for providing just 1,200 sq. feet of space for Relocalize’s operation. The result, Relocalize claims, will be up to 30% savings on products, 90% less CO2 emissions, and other operational savings because the food does not need to be transported long distances. You can learn more at https://www.relocalize.com/

Tim Sperry is the Founder and CEO of Boca Raton, Florida-based Carbon Limit, the maker of CaptureCrete. He founded the company in 2020 after recognizing concrete’s huge environmental price — it accounts for about 6% of annual global emissions. CaptureCrete is a powder additive for concrete mixes that extracts up to 220 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air per ton, locking it into the concrete as a stable mineral. CaptureCrete’s impact, after accounting for the CO2 it absorbs, is only about 25% of traditional concrete. But this wasn’t Tim's first shot at carbon capture for the built environment. Previously, he developed a paint additive that absorbed CO2 and other pollutants. Carbon Limit was named GreenBiz’s Startup of the Year at Verge 2023.Building and operating homes, skyscrapers, factories, and freeways and generates about 10 gigaton of CO2, or about 40% of the emissions associated with energy use on the planet. The ability to tie carbon credits to building and infrastructure projects is key. When you can sell a carbon removal credit for around $200 a ton, the cost of a building can change rapidly. For example, if you’re building a skyscraper that’s 40 stories tall, you might need 4,000 or so cubic meters or concrete, which represents about 5700 tons of the material. With carbon credits that cost $200 per ton, that concrete represents a potential subsidy for the project of $1.1 million dollars. If we’re talking about a mile of freeway, which requires about 17,200 tons of concrete, the credits generated by CaptureCrete’s absorption of CO2 might be worth $3.4 million per mile of roadway. That’s real money, real savings that can make projects reach break-even sooner during the life of the building. You can learn more about CaptureCrete and Carbon Limit at https://www.carbonlimit.com/

For 23 years, Peter Fusaro has been a leading force in the green economy. His exclusive Wall Street Green conference has been a hot ticket for investors and executives looking for sustainable paths forward since 2002. Tis year marks an exciting milestone, as the Wall Street Green Conference will go global with the Wall Street Green Digital Summit on October 15th, 2024. The 12-hour marathon online event will bring together practitioners, investors, and green-thinking startups from around the world through a virtual platform. From Singapore to Saskatchewan, Sydney to Seoul, the summit will showcase groundbreaking products, services, and ideas aimed at helping the planet and the green economy thrive. You can sign up to attend the 24 hour virtual conference for just $25 and hear featured speakers from around the world at https://wallstreetgreendigital.com/ Energy. Food. Water. Peter explores the foundations of human society, what we work to make available to ourselves and our neighbors so that we can live a peaceful, prosperous life. Each of these essential commodities are seeing rapid, unsettling change and the world order, which was built on burning petroleum, coal, and gas, is already giving way to a new regime of clean, renewable energy. As we measure more human activity, we can create powerful financial incentives to move from wasteful to sustainable, efficient lifestyles and business practices. The question is who will establish the rules of these new markets. That question will not be settled by one government or one industry, because the world is too interconnected and tuned into these issues. There’s a great negotiation underway, led by innovators and policymakers who ultimately answer to every individual citizen when they make a choice at the grocery store, the car dealership, in the voting booth, and at home each and every day. It’s time to learn as much as you can and jump into to the debate. The Wall Street Green Digital Summit global summit will facilitate connections between investors and managers to encourage business success built on sustainable development. Attendees will include venture capitalists, family wealth managers, startups in the green economy, government officials, corporate sustainability officers, and media.Earth911 is a Wall Street Green media partner.

Circular economies grow from the ground up, starting with recognizing that a material used to make a product can be recaptured, reused, resold, and recycled to lower the cost of sourcing raw materials. Mike Baker saw the opportunity to recycle cork for use in the custom insoles and footwear his company, SOLE, makes and launched the ReCORK collection network more than 15 years ago. Since founding in 2008 as a second business of the custom orthopedic insole company SOLE, ReCORK has recycled an astonishing 132 million wine corks and planted over 8,000 cork trees. These milestones are part of SOLE’s broader mission to reduce environmental impact and promote sustainable practices. ReCORK recently contributed an Earth911 article, Recycle Cork To Replace Petroleum-Based Polymers and Foams, about its program.Too often, we hear that one side of the equation — the manufacturer or the consumer — is solely responsible for recycling. It is a partnership that cannot succeed if the first step, putting the material back into the system for recycling, is not taken at home or the office. ReCORK found a way to make that first step more accessible for consumers and businesses by placing collection bins in bars, liquor stores, and consumers. Mike explains how collection must be followed up with by careful material management, including designing it to be easily deconstructed for processing into a reusable feedstock for the next round of products. And the story of the journey of a cork or a PC or an aluminum can is essential to be transparently shared with the public so that people learn they can recycle with confidence — it takes time, which is always in short supply; therefore, it’s critical to let every participant in the circular economy know their efforts were worthwhile. You can learn more about  ReCORK at https://recork.com/, and to check out SOLE, visit https://yoursole.com/

Cotopaxi was built from the ground up to meet these high goals, but any company can transform itself; it just takes the first step, beginning the critical self-reflection that thoughtful leaders can apply to their business. A certified B Corporation, Cotopaxi was founded in 2014 in Salt Lake City and is known for its sustainably designed outdoor products, Cotopaxi is a market leader in combining innovative gear with a solid commitment to social and environmental responsibility. And our guest today is Annie Agle, Cotopaxi's Vice President of Sustainability and Impact. We’ll talk about the company's strategies for sustainable design, circular economy practices, philanthropic initiatives, and more.Cotopaxi supports education, housing, healthcare, climate solutions, and employment in impoverished communities, reportedly having helped more than 4.2 million people. The company's holistic approach to sustainability includes rigorous assessments of environmental, social, and governance risks across its global value chain, and it aims for net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. That includes migrating all its product designs to use recycled, repurposed or responsibly sourced materials by 2025. You can learn more at https://www.cotopaxi.com/Then, take some time to learn more about the sustainable fashion and outdoor gear movement:Regenerative Fashion: Cultivating a Positive Impact on the PlanetEarth911 Podcast: EVRNU’s Stacy Flynn On Creating Circular Fiber For Sustainable FashionBest of Earth911 Podcast: The Apparel Impact Institute’s Kurt Kipka Maps the Path to Sustainable FashionTraceability Is the Next Important Fashion TrendBest of Earth911 Podcast: Fordham University’s Frank Zambrelli on Scaling ESG Solutions in FashionEarth911 Podcast: tentree CEO Derrick Emsley on Sustainable Fashion & ReforestationEarth911 Podcast: Keel Labs’ Tessa Gallagher Introduces Kelsun Kelp-Based Textiles

Rising CO2 levels have created climate change, the denier's name for global warming. It's the environmental crisis that will shape our species' future. The long story of willful disregard of the consequences of CO2 levels by government and businesses perpetrated through a trail of lies and misinformation is the history lesson everyone needs to know. However, most books about the climate crisis begin and remain serious, which makes them seriously challenging to read. Our guest today, David Lipsky, tells the tale with surprising insights and even some laugh-out-loud humor through a modernist collection of compact chapters that will keep you turning the pages of his new book, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.Even though the climate story is gloomy, the book is an entertaining and often infuriating read that starts with the electrification of communication and human life by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, then weaves the threads of scientific alarms raised throughout the second half of the 20th Century, along briefings about the many liars, spin doctors, and industrial lackeys who carried the water that drowned out every effort to curtail CO2 emissions. Lipsky teaches at New York University and is a National Magazine Award winner who turned his attention to climate denial out of frustration with the lack of visibility into the sources and tactics of misinformation about our warming planet. You'll enjoy The Parrot and the Igloo and likely want to see some of its villains imprisoned when you finish the last page. The book is available at Amazon, Powell's Books, and your local bookstore.

Join the Earth911 podcast community for a special World Ocean Day conversation,  Blueprints for Coastal Adaptation, keynoted by ocean advocate Ashlan Cousteau of EarthEcho International and Voyacy. Hear nine experts working at the cutting edge of biodiversity restoration, climate mitigation, and financial engineering about how to construct a blue economy that preserves the rich ecosystems at the boundary of land and sea. The conversation features Doug Heske and Brian Fairhurst of Newday Impact Investing, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Superintendent of the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries, Maria Brown, Sequoia of the Seas filmmaker Natasha Benjamin, Christopher Chin of the Center for Ocean Awareness, Research, and Education, The Blue Community Consortium's David Randle, Reefgen CEO Chris Oakes, and Carter Henne of Sea and Shoreline. You can also watch this week's special episode on Earth911's YouTube channel.This episode is a collaboration of Newday Impact Investing and Intentional Futures.