Episode 46: 2019 Holiday Hodge-Podge

Learn more about the natural environment here!

Episode Intro Notes

What We’ll cover

• Year in review

• Career updates

• Favorite articles from the year

• Sustainable gift ideas

• Interview with Samantha Burch and Annabelle Mercer

• Thank yous!

Year in Review

• Let’s start with our favorite episode from this year:

  • Scott: University sustainability because of the different kinds of guests

  • Jay: Climate advocacy. It’s a topic so many of us want to get involved with and Varshini’s story was super interesting about the Sunrise Movement being the result of intensively studying what made other historical movements successful before launching their own. 

• Favorite fact from the year:

  • Scott: China has more HSR than the rest of the world combined.

  • Jay: Today, our nation’s households and commercial buildings account for 41% of total US energy usage. That means these buildings consume more energy than the transportation and industry sectors!

• We’re at 200,000 total downloads! We’re now averaging just over 10,000 downloads per month, which is up from 6,000 downloads per month this time last year and 1,500 downloads the year before that. Thank you listeners for helping us spread the good word!

• We’ve also received 122 iTunes reviews from you all - double where we were last year! This is fantastic stuff, but we don’t want to stop here. Please take the time to rate and review us. It helps people find the show because the more reviews we have, the more we show up when people search for new content. It could be called your holiday gift to us.

  • Here’s a review from JoshCrist left in the last month. “If you are at all interested in really understanding the multi-layered and complex world of sustainability this is a podcast you won't want to miss! Jay and Scott combine an incredible mix of humor, research and compelling guest interviews to make sustainability fun to learn about (and easy to understand!). Highly recommend listening, subscribing and becoming part of this community!”

• Also, folks who listened to our last episode on sustainable aquaculture will recall us asking if there’s anyone out there that likes fish and dislikes salmon. We thought it’d be far more common to dislike fish generally but still like salmon, as opposed to the other way around. Well, turns out one of you exists! Shout out to Sam H for his unique fish preferences. Sam’s the Chief Sustainability Officer and co-founder of Circle Compost based in Philadelphia.

Career Updates

• First off, we know this is a topic that a lot of listeners want to hear more about. We’re planning on doing an episode focused on careers in sustainability sometime in 2020.

• Jay

  • Those of you who have been joining us over the last year may recall my sustainability-oriented travels through Europe. It exposed me to all kinds of facets of sustainability, both across industries and across the globe. At the end of the day, I was ready to move back to Denver and get back into my urban planning and real estate roots in my hometown. 

• I eventually landed my current role at StoryBuilt, a real estate developer that builds urban-infill, transit-oriented projects. This means that we repurpose and redevelop existing urban land parcels, as opposed to developing out in the suburbs and contributing to urban sprawl. Side plug for my LinkedIn article on how sprawl happens. I’m responsible for acquiring and developing new land parcels in exciting neighborhoods. I’m also helping StoryBuilt develop its overall sustainability strategy for the company with regards to how we embed it in company operations and in our investment strategy. 

• The company is based in Austin and I’m helping launch our new Denver office. It came full circle Scott - I get to use my masters in urban planning and real estate and also exercise my sustainability knowledge from the podcast. Exciting times!

• Scott

  • I’m still on cloud nine about my new role as VP of Sustainability at the Can Manufacturers Institute. CMI is the national trade association of the metal and composite can manufacturing industry and its suppliers in the United States. In short, CMI represents the producers of all those wonderful, infinitely recyclable food cans, beverage cans, and aerosol cans that listeners enjoy.  

  • I have three tasks at CMI:

    • Communications. Promote the can as a sustainable/circular package. So spread the word about its high recycling rate and how most cans get turned into new cans. My experience on the podcast helps!

    • Policy. Follow the policy developments at the state and federal level to make sure the can is not disadvantaged. I get to wear my lawyer hat again!

    • Strategy. Determine who the industry should collaborate with and what it should do to increase the recycling of cans in the U.S. Leading the Beyond 34 recycling initiative gave me the contacts and experience needed to help make this happen.

  • So my graduate degrees, podcast hosting, and my previous roles prepared me for this dream position. Plus, I’m still in DC!

Favorite articles of the year

Scott

These are all from my LinkedIn posts.

• February 2019 NYT article that talked about how the Senate passed 92-8 a sweeping public lands conservation bill. President Trump later signed it. It created more than a million acres of new wilderness; protected a million acres of public lands from future mining; createed 2,600 miles of new national trails; and so much more. Few things warm my heart more than bipartisanship and protecting public spaces that now belong to all of us to enjoy.

• On the social side is an NPR article from February 2019 explaining how New Orleans went from an explosion in homelessness after Hurricane Katrina to reducing its homelessness population 90%. It accomplished this with a threefold strategy. One was organizing an outreach team to engage the homeless wherever they were. Second was establishing a rent assistance fund with the help of Congress. Third was taking a "housing first" approach where you house people as they are (e.g., sober or not) and then provide the services necessary to keep them stable and live higher quality lives.

  • Episode 41 - Equity in Cities

• Two reports on food loss (food lost in the supply chain to create edible food for humans)

  • One is a WWF report titled No Food Left Behind, Part 2. It looks at the amount of loss at the farm for certain processing crops. While loss varied by crop, some of them blew my mind. They saw rates as high as 50% in for leafy greens.

  • Then there is a Santa Clara University study looking at on-farm food loss more generally and found a whopping one third of edible produce—or 33.7 percent—remains unharvested in the fields. Why does this happen? Well, there’s a number of them but two reasons are that farmers plant 25-30% more than what they need to ensure they can satisfy a contract. The other is that labor is expensive. Farmers ask their workers to focus on picking the best produce.

• Two on recycling

  • One Builder Online article from April 2019 looked at recycling for construction and debris (C&D) waste. This is not a form of waste we often think about but there is a lot of it. Building construction generated 169 million tons of C&D waste in 2015. 

  • Another is a Vice News video from July 2019 that shows how Moscow has 12 million people and no recycling system. That’s ten million tons of waste a year that ends up overflowing in landfills that create fumes leading to negative health effects downwind. The government’s plan is to simply ship the waste further away, to a new landfill 800 miles outside the city to a currently pristine stretch of swamp and forest. This swamp is the source of 140 streams. Protesters are organizing at the proposed landfill site but the government is clashing with them. Last I read, the new landfill was suspended but not cancelled.

Jay

• It’s easy as sustainability aficionados to get overburdened by personal choices and individual actions in pursuit of a healthy environment - especially for an issue of this (unprecedented) magnitude. I think we can all relate to the stress we put on ourselves to choose the right reusable container or avoid single-use products. But, I think too much guilt can be a little counterproductive. So, I liked the articles I’m going to share because they helped round out - and challenge - my perspective, over and above the things I’m doing in my daily life to live more sustainably. Heads up, they can sound a little heavy.

• Number one is titled “I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle” by Mary Annaise Heglar. Here’s the subheader: “Stop obsessing over your environmental ‘sins.’ Fight the oil and gas industry instead.” I just love it.

• Heglar’s position is that much of our public energy towards sustainability has been intentionally misled over the years by special interests. She rejects the narrative that “climate change could have been fixed if we had all just ordered less takeout, used fewer plastic bags, turned off some more lights,” etc. Here’s my favorite quote:

• Instead, Heglar encourages us to focus our energies on government and industry so that we’re not “sweeping leaves on a windy day”. She suggests getting politically active to magnify our environmental efforts and not let special interests off the hook. 

• So with this article, we don’t want to minimize the importance of individual action here. Certainly individual action around political involvement is huge. But this article does help remind me to not overly sweat the small stuff and lose sight of the forest for the trees. It’s ok if we have to use some take-out containers if we’re usually pretty good otherwise. Plus, that reminder to get politically involved is pretty convenient as we head into a major election year, yeah?

• Number two is admittedly a little heavier, so listeners get ready. It’s called “What if We Stopped Pretending?” by Jonathan Franzen. Now this article actually got a lot of flack from bigtime climate leaders, but if you’re not aware of the article’s reactions yet, I’d suggest you read it first, see what you think, and then see what others had to say about it. 

• The article’s core premise is that we might be better off by accepting the inevitability of climate change. Franzen details a number of reasons as to why he believes crisis is unavoidable. It may sound pessimistic, and many folks may disagree with Franzen’s position (I find issue with parts of it too), but I think he ultimately distills his argument into a proactive, weirdly encouraging message. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

• “All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning…. In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action.” It’s a really interesting spin.

• He goes on to list examples like securing fair elections, combatting extreme wealth inequality, shutting down hate machines on social media, and supporting free press - among others - as meaningful climate actions.

• Overall I like the way this article connects climate change to every aspect of our lives, since this is an issue that truly touches everything. I doubt many of us are as nihilistic as Franzen is, but I enjoyed the way this article encouraged me to really think critically about how our society could and should function in a warming world. It’s quite a bit to think on, for sure, But I’d encourage listeners to read it for themselves. Let us know what you think about it!

Gift Ideas - disclaimer, no one paid us to join this list!

• Cupanion. Spelled cupanion. This is a company that sells high quality reusable water bottles that gives water to those in need every time you fill up. They call it Fill It Forward. What put this over the top for us to put it in the list is that you don’t even have to buy a whole bottle to partake. You can by a sticker for $5, put it on your bottle, and take part in Fill It Forward all the same. You scan the bar code on the sticker via their app to record your water refill and generate the donation automatically. Learn more at www.cupanion.com.

• Bee Mine Gift Bundle. We saw this on greenheartshop.org, which is a website devoted to sourcing products and curating a collection where all of the products are fair trade, eco-friendly, or have a social mission. In this bundle, we have 3 oz of honey and a wooden honey dipper. The wooden honey dipper was made in Tunisia by Le Souk, which has long-term relationships with producers and pays them more than fair trade requires. The honey was made by Bee Love, which is located in Chicago and gives men and women returning from incarceration a stable work history, marketable skills, and the confidence needed to re-enter the workforce. This whole bundle is only $15. This would make for a cute Valentine’s Day gift too.

• Botanium. This is a self-watering planter that enables you to grow herbs and veggies with soil-less growing technology. It was designed in Sweden with its classic minimalism design. You can plant the seed, plug it in, and leave it alone for weeks. How does it do this? With hydroponic technology. There’s a porous medium that retains air as well as moisture. This is a great environment for roots to grow in. What can you grow in Botanium? Herbs and lettuce like basil and spinach, and also vegetables like cherry tomatoes and egg plant. You can buy a Botanium for 69 euros (about $76) plus shipping. It includes everything but the seeds. Learn more at www.botanium.se

• Brilliant Earth. It’s the global leader in ethically sourced jewelery and that company you see advertising all over LinkedIn and Facebook. It has Beyond Conflict Free Diamonds. These are diamonds that have been sourced for their ethical and environmentally responsible origins. The company donates 5% of net profits to help build a brighter future in mining communities, in the communities the company operates, and beyond. What sold us on including Brilliant Earth here is its use of recycled precious metals such as silver, gold, platinum, and palladium. Examples of its recycled metal sources are existing jewelery, industrial use metals, and electronics components. This means the social and environmental impact that too often occurs with mining, especially gold mining, is avoided. Get this - it takes 20 tons of ore to produce enough gold to make a single ring. We saw a lot of beautiful recycled gold rings in the hundreds of dollars on the site. Learn more at www.brilliantearth.com. 

• The Ethical Silk Company. First of all, is silk production not ethical? Well, one issue with it is that silk production requires the killing of mulberry silkworm larvae. This company solves for that utilizing a mulberry silk production that extracts silk from the cocoon after the moth has left its cocoon. It’s more like a fine linen than the shiny finish of traditional silk. In addition to that, Ethical Silk Company’s products are tailored and printed by hand at a Fairtrade tailor in Jaipur India; it donates 5% of profits to an AIDS center in India and 5% of profits to an organization addressing homelessness in Ireland; its dyes are low impact, and all water used is treated and recycled. So the pajamas are pretty expensive at a little under $300. The eye mask has a much lower price point of $35. Check it out at www.theethicalsilkcompany.com. 

• Last, let’s talk about gifts where you don’t actually give a physical thing. Heifer International is a non-profit that gives animals to families in need so they can provide them with wool, milk, eggs, and more. It works in 21 countries around the world to strengthen local economies and build secure livelihoods that guarantee a living income to local farmers. The charity has been operating since 1944 and has brought 34 million families out of poverty. These animals provide benefits to these families for years. You don’t have to give a whole animal. You can give a share. For example, a full goat is $120 or you can give a share of one for $10. You can also give a full heifer for $500 or a share of one for $50. They have a whole gift catalog you can check out. We also encourage you to check out their website heifer.org to check out their work in a variety of areas including economic empowerment, women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability, risk mitigation, and food security and nutrition. 

  • Scott had on his list socks and goat so this worked out nicely.

• There’s also the option to give the gift of offsets. Two companies have made it easy to buy personal offsets--one in plastic and one in carbon.

  • The plastic one is RePurpose. It’s website, repurpose.global, helps you calculate your impact, offset your unique footprint, and get green living tips tailored just for you. It charges 25 cents per pound for the offset. So, for example, if you use between 12-20 pounds of plastic per month like the typical person, that equates to about $3-5 a month. You choose the organization you want your money to go to and you receive at the beginning of every month real-time tracking of both your social and environmental impact (things like volume recycled, type of plastic, workers impacted). It takes your donation to its certified partners around the world that, for example, divert waste from landfills with cradle-to-cradle production models and provide technology that enables ethical sourcing of plastic waste from the information sector.

  • The carbon one is Terrapass. You could just buy enough to offset what it says is the average amount that a U.S. citizen produces--3,000 lbs of CO2 emissions per month. A gift of one month of offsets is $15, and a gift of one year is about $180. The money given to Terrapass gets distributed to various projects including landfill gas capture, anaerobic digesters on farms to convert methane to energy, and methane capture at abandoned coal mines.

Samantha Burch and Annabelle Mercer

• Earlier this year, we were blessed by two strategic marketing powerhouses, Samantha Burch and Annabelle Mercer. They joined us from Duke University’s Master of Environmental Management program and helped us completely redefine our marketing strategy.

• They set quite an ambitious agenda from the start. Specifically, they helped us:

  • Define our messaging and branding guidelines

  • Develop our target audience profiles, communication strategy, content map, and sponsorship management plan, and

  • Set operational frameworks to keep their work in tact long after they move onto their next roles

• Annabelle and Samantha were sharp, organized, and results-driven from the start, PLUS they even laughed at our bad jokes (which are not limited to the podcast episodes themselves). They joined us to reflect on their work over the last several months - let’s move over to our conversation with them and hear more about their awesome work.

Thanks

-Our many researchers:

• Morgan Abbett

• Adrienne Breen

• Rishali Chaplot

• Shannon Parker

-Social media guru:

• Matt Arends

• And, everyone who’s reached out wanting to get involved! We haven’t been able to engage everyone, but we’re so appreciative that so many people want to help us out.