What better day to release a brand spanking new episode of Sustainacast, than on EARTH DAY 2017!

After an epic gap between episodes, I'm really pleased to bring you this discussion with my good friend Clay Mitchell. I can't thank Clay enough for helping me get this project kick started again, and for such an interesting discussion. You can learn more about him and find him HERE.

It's been a very big gap between recordings, so thanks for sticking with me!

Clay Mitchell, Ph.D is a lecturer at University of New Hampshire and has a depth of experience in business, community & public service which paved the way to his role in education at UNH currently.

In this wide-ranging discussion, we touch on issues related to why words like "green" and "sustainability" have come to carry so much baggage. And how he goes about introducing the topic of sustainability to a room full of passionate university students who may have pre-conceived ideas about what it means.

ABOUT CLAY: 

I first met Clay at a school facility management meeting in 2010 when I was invited to brainstorm with him and some facility and finance management folks on how to creatively finance some innovative energy projects.

Those first discussions turned into numerous executed projects with local towns and government organizations, working through ways to provide power purchase agreements, leasing and energy finance solutions to small scale projects.

Clay has worked with local governments in New Hampshire in the land use planning and energy fields for the last 20 years. He has served as a land use planner and attorney throughout the state of New Hampshire and his work includes the development of innovative zoning approaches to energy efficient design, community re-development of brownfields, and a wide range of innovative zoning techniques to protect open space and natural resources.

When I met him in 2010, he had just co-founded a NH-based company called Revolution Energy LLC, who developed the first 3rd party-financed (through a power purchase agreement) solar array in NH, the first similarly financed combined heat and power (CHP) project and the only 3rd party financed solar hot air project in the country (which he and I worked on together!)

In follow up to my previous episode with Robert Bryce (@pwrhungry), I'm really excited to bring you this deep dive into Nuclear Energy with author Gwyneth Cravens.

It was clear to me from feedback on the previous episode, that there was a need for me to look into Nuclear Energy to help explore answers to some really troubling questions that came my way. Questions like

What do you do with radioactive waste that could last 10,000 years or more?

Health issues of nuclear energy, and living near plants

Nuclear fallout/catastrophic accidents. Isn't it obvious this is a really bad idea?

What you are about to listen to, is my own journey being what I would call "half-way" into the nuclear exploration. Meaning, that just a couple weeks ago I was grossly un-educated on this energy source. I really had no idea about it, and had no opinions about it, and had no reasons to have any opinions about it.

But recently my company did a project on a Naval Shipyard base with nuclear submarines, and it got me thinking - what's the difference between those and a nuclear power plant in terms of public risks?

It turns out that my guest today Gwyneth Cravens was asking the same questions and hundreds more in her journey talking with people all around the globe about the truth behind nuclear energy. As a result of that journey and extensive body of work, she authored "The Power to Save the Word - The Truth About Nuclear Energy".

You can check out Gwyneth's book here, and audio book here.

Consider these facts which I've borrowed from Robert Stone, Director of Pandora's Promise which Gwyneth was heavily featured in.

France now produces 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy. It has the cheapest electrical rates in Europe, the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and per-capita CO2 emissions that are half that of neighboring Germany despite that country’s long-standing commitment to develop a robust green energy sector

If you took all of the nuclear waste created by all the commercial nuclear power plants in the United States and gathered it together in one spot, it would fill one football field from end to end to a height of about 8 feet. The long-lived waste, the stuff that remains radioactive for many thousands of years and that everyone fears and deplores, would only fill the one-yard line.

More importantly, all of the waste from today’s Light Water Reactors can be used as fuel for the next generation of reactors that will hopefully be coming on line in a few decades. In fact, that football field’s worth of waste described above, if used in next generation fast reactors, could power everything in the United States (including the entire transportation sector) for a thousand years!

I hope you grab as much from this conversation as I did talking with Gwyneth, getting much needed clarification on what can only be described as a touchy subject.

My introduction in this episode of Sustainacast is longer than normal, because I want to do my best to set the stage for some very thought provoking discussion on the topic of energy.

Robert Bryce (www.robertbryce.com, @pwrhungry) is the author of many books on energy & the energy industry. Of these publications, his book "Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy & The Real Fuels of the Future" is the reason I contacted Robert to have him on the show. It's an intriguing example of showing the reader how to do the calculations, run the numbers, apply the physics and figure it out for themselves...

He's an outspoken critic of wind energy and biofuels. And his book Power Hungry goes into extensive detail discussing why technologies such as wind and biofuels have some flaws that make them not only a potentially unreliable energy source, but may well be having negative effects in some instances.

Perhaps the greatest challenge that clean energy faces, (particularly wind energy) is the issue of land mass per unit of energy.

Check out this graph from Robert's book (Power Hungry) which shows the comparison of footprint required for various energy types in order to yield the same 2,700 MW volume of energy... staggering.

In addition to the issue of land use of various energy sources, the even greater issue lies with energy reliability of various sources. It's the reason why Robert keeps driving home the fact that America/World has a POWER problem (always on), not an ENERGY problem.

Also consider this graph from his book, which compares energy reliability of various energy sources during summer time.

Since his book is jam packed with data, I've laid out a few helpful pieces of information to help frame the conversation, and hopefully to inspire you to check it out for yourself. It's kind of my "three take-aways" laid out at the start of the show instead of the end.

I hope you find this discussion thought-provoking at the least, and I hope it gets you fired up enough to either read Robert's book or start doing some research and math to run the numbers for yourself.

You can find Robert at

www.robertbryce.com

Twitter: @pwrhungry

John Rooks is the founder of SOAP Group and a recent software startup called Rapport.io

In a TEDex talk a couple years ago, he did a wonderful presentation on "authenticating sustainability" in which he introduces the concept of the "Simulacrum" - Check out the TED Talk here -

The Simulocrum is essentially the copy of an original that doesn't really exist. And John says that this concept can be found routinely in the world of sustainability.

In this episode of Sustainacast, John talks with me about how society gets it's education about sustainability from advertising, and this has therefore become the focus of sustainability for companies (how do we look??). The good news is that it's helped elevate awareness, but the bad news is that people's (and perhaps companies) ideas of what sustainability really looks like is probably not that far removed from going to Olive Garden for authentic Italian food.

John uses tons of examples, speaks from tons of experience and we even get into his newest venture which has begun gaining traction and some nice awards & recognition.

If you have an opinion, or would like to share a comment - please do so at www.sustainacast.com

You can find John on twitter @johnrooks OR @soapgroup

At the age of 19 with some Co-Founders, Daniel Flynn launched a Bottled Water company called ThankYou Water. Not only is this one of the most capital intensive business to start, but it's incredibly competitive and one of the most contentious industries in the world...

But ThankYou Water had a different idea. They took their brand and put 100% of the profits into funding water projects in un-developed countries without access to clean drinking water.

The result is that they've helped over 50,000 people get access to clean water, and now grown their product line to over 30 different products that include water, food and personal care.

In this episode, Daniel Flynn talks with me about the journey of building the brand, and going head to head with some of the biggest consumer brands. And most of all, we go deep into the amazing outcomes and challenges that have come from committing their brand to 100% Impact.

LINKS FROM THE SHOW:

Check out their website at www.thankyou.co

And Check out this fantastic video of ThankYou's campaign to get on the shelves of Coles & Woolworths, Australia's biggest grocery chains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsvzYq2melM

How do you take a mundane product like toilet paper, and use it as a tool to change the world?

Simon Griffiths is the co-founder and social entrepreneur behind legendary Australian toilet paper company "Who Gives A Crap". I sat down with him in his office in Fitzroy, Melbourne Australia to talk about social enterprise and the nuts and bolts behind getting a business off the ground that makes an impact.

In this episode we talked about all kinds of considerations that come into play when connecting your business with a social mission including;

- Balancing Profits vs Benefits

- Deciding what % to commit to

- Corporate structure

- Taking on investment

- What should your mission be?

- Selecting partners to achieve that mission

- Un-expected benefits

and so much more!!

Oh - and make sure you also check out a podcast episode on Small Business Big Marketing where I first heard about Simon Griffiths at http://smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/who-gives-a-crap/

Have you ever thought about what really goes on behind the scenes of some of the largest and most controversial companies in the world?

My guest this week is Christine Bader, author of "The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil"

Christine worked behind the scenes with BP for almost a decade, helping to execute some of the largest and most complex oil and natural gas extraction projects in the world. Unlike "extraction" based work however, Christine's role with BP was focused on human rights and social impacts of the work that BP did in complex and sensitive social and environmental locations. In fact, she was part of some of the earliest and most significant advances in human rights within a company that literally created it's own standards and protocols where none existed.

After many years of important work at BP, she had her heart broken when she witnessed one of the largest corporate disasters in history take place on the international stage. All of a sudden, the company she had grown to love turned into an entirely different company almost overnight.

In her book, Christine shares her journey at BP and the UN doing extremely important work in advancing human rights. This journey has now taken her to a position of advising companies both small and large on how they engage with communities and the environment, as well as how their PR efforts translate to their social mission and brand.

In this episode of Sustainacast, we talk about why she had her heart broken by her former employer. We also discussed what Christine has witnessed working with other "corporate idealists" faced with environmental disasters, human rights issues and public relations nightmares within their organizations.

I read Christine's book late in 2014, and can't recommend it highly enough. It's such an easy read, and a fascinating account of what has to happen to provide us "Consumers" with the "energy we demand". I learned so much about the realities of "Big Oil" from her book, and we touched on some of those points in our discussion this week.

You can reach Christine at www.christinebader.com

twitter at @christinebader

Pick up a copy of her book right here - http://christinebader.com/book/

Have you stopped to consider just how convenient your life is with lighting, and how significant of an impact this has on your lifestyle?

Chances are, you're reading this on a backlit screen or perhaps you're listening to this at night when you should be in bed (but can stay up much later due to lighting)

In this episode I had a fascinating conversation with Jane Brox, author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light.

Part history & part futurist, this episode explored how light evolved in cities versus rural areas, and most importantly what impact lighting has had on how we live our lives.

Sleep deprivation, Wildlife confusion & deaths, grid connectivity, energy use, light pollution, safety - we explored so many different facets of lighting. But perhaps the most critical is that lighting is itself a consumer AND an enabler of consumption... You use significant amounts of energy to "light your home or workplace", and then this allows you (or your workers/family) to continue on consuming energy as if daylight had not ended.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jane as much as I did.

You can contact Jan at www.janebrox.com where you can purchase her book or contact her directly.

Have you ever wondered how decisions about your morning cup of coffee impact farmers, land management and communities in faraway places? I've drunk more than enough coffee to consider this question, so I reached out to Tracy Allen of Brewed Behavior to walk me through the how the coffee industry can and is being designed to benefit small farmers, small communities, top quality and all the while meeting the demands of big consumer brands.

In my chat with Tracy we talked about;

- the problem with typical grower/producer relationships.

- why long term (3 year) purchasing commitments are so important

- how a different model puts 75 cents per dollar in the pocket of the farmer vs 25 cents.

- who is applying "Farmer Direct" business models on a large scale.

- Have we reached "Peak Coffee"? - Is coffee demand outstripping supply or creating major environmental "burden"?

- The impacts of recent pest outbreaks on organic growers

- How to spot a great coffee shop/cafe

- Coffee in my home town of Melbourne Australia!

- Some recommendations for coffee in Maine!

Get in touch with Tracy Allen at www.brewedbehavior.com or on TWITTER @brewedbehavior

 

Some other links to companies we discussed in this episode;

Chick-Fil-A Coffee - http://coffeewithastory.chick-fil-a.com

Thrive Farmers Coffee - The organization behind large scale Farmer Direct coffee with such brands as Chick-Fil-A

Bard Coffee - Portland, Maine: A Great cup of coffee if you are in the area!

Elements Coffee & Book Store - My own local (mainly featuring Bard Coffee)

Have you ever thought about how long it will be before you can no longer afford to take airline flights? Or more importantly how long before the environmental problems with airline and other forms of travel & transportation become too important or significant to ignore?

(NOTE: A blog post with the show notes that relate to travel impact figures etc, is being finished and edited as we speak, and will be live this week of 10/27)

These are real issues that confront us today, and could be a reality for us within only decades.

What will you do when you can't fly to business meetings because the client can't support the travel budget?

What will you do when the goods your business relies upon, or that your business sends to people faces three of four times the cost of shipping and transport?

What does life look like when we can't get to Italy from the USA in 8 hours unless we have some serious money?

- Cruise Liners no longer aimlessly exploring the seas

- Much fewer airlines in business

- Governments no longer able to support the tax breaks

- Shipping that takes weeks instead of days

- Vacation time of 6 to 8 weeks needed to be able to "get away", if you're ever going to be able to "get back" in time.

These, and so many more issues are bound to face society in the future.

Maybe not next week, maybe not next decade, but certainly in the future.

And what is "sustainable travel" anyway? It seems that many consider this to be booking at hotels that reduce their laundry loads, or restaurants that source local foods, or tours that support local business growth (not chains). And then there's bicycling, hiking, walking and other low impact forms of travel. And this is not to speak of the type of travel that seeks to share the wonders of nature, the human spirit and the social impacts of visiting those who we can benefit, or can benefit us.

But there is one thing that ALL travel addicts have in common, and it's the "travel bug". The need to see and experience new places.

I'm not certain that many travel bloggers, travel agents or travel addicts can fulfill their audience, clients and personal needs for travel by staying within the 50 to 100 mile radius that bicycle or other low-impact forms of travel demand.

On the positive side, the result would be a more local economy. But the downside (as I'm sure you've thought about now) would be nothing short of devastating.

So therefore, we must ask ourselves what will become of travel, when it's no longer sustainable to do so?

And that's what I explored this week on sustainacast with travel expert and blogger Edward Hasbrouck of www.hasbrouck.org