A Small Acorn

Amy and Nate explore how and why recycling reduces global greenhouse gas emissions. Before they get into that, they make some homemade recycled paper, and of course tell a few jokes.

In this episode, Amy and Nate talk with Scott Warren - Nate's grandfather and a retired professor of botany at Connecticut College about coastal wetlands and their role in the climate crisis. We learned what coastal wetlands are, the main threats to them and the things that we can do as individuals to protect them. We also talked about some of the cool things you can see in coastal wetlands - like fiddler crabs and egrets (like in the pictures below).

In this episode, Amy and Nate explored how and why conserving water also saves energy (and reduces greenhouse gas emissions as a result). We had a great interview and site visit with Mike Evans at the Class of 1966 Environmental Center at Williams College to talk about water conservation and especially the composting toilets in the building. Parents, be warned - we do talk about poop. (You can imagine how excited Nate was about that.) . While we do tell some jokes, none of them involve poop.  

In this episode, Nate and Amy chat about solar panels: what they are, how they work, and why they're important. This is the final episode of our first season - we'll be back after the new year with more ideas for how kids and their grownups can address the climate crisis.

Nate and Amy talk to seven electric vehicle owners about why they bought an electric vehicle, what they like about it, and whether they have any good stories about almost running out of charge.  The people they talked to owned a range of vehicles: all electric vehicles like Teslas, Volts and Leafs, and plug-in electric hybrids as well.  Keep listening to the end for a few jokes.  

This week we dive in to the climate impact of food waste, discussing how food waste that ends up in landfills creates our old nemesis methane, how reducing food waste cuts down on the resources used to grow food and more. We talked to Chelsea Williams at the Post Landfill Action Network (PLAN) and to Chef Val, the cook at Nate's school. Both gave great ideas for how to reduce food waste and get started on composting.

In this episode, Amy and Nate talk to Dorrie Nang from the Humane Society's "Forward Food" project about why eating less meat and animal products is important for addressing climate change. We talk about the impact of the methane that cows produce, the resources it takes to grow meat, and some ideas for non-meat dishes that we can try.

In the second episode of "A small acorn", Nate and Amy explore the role that trees play in addressing the climate crisis.  Nate gives a great explanation of the carbon cycle, and there are two interviews: Blake Lawrence from Cool Effect about how trees remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and whether some trees remove more carbon dioxide than other trees. Then they talked to Julie Coop, the Urban and Community Forestry Coordinator with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Keep an ear out for Nate's tree joke.  

In the first episode of A Small Acorn, Amy and Nate introduce themselves and talk a bit about why they're starting the podcast: to help kids and their adults find fun and practical ways to address the climate crisis.  The main idea for this week is to use energy efficient lighting, particularly LED lighting.  To get a really physical idea of how much electricity it takes to light a lightbulb, Amy and Nate experiment with a bicycle that has been rigged to generate electricity.  Keep an ear out for this week's joke - it's about fossil fuels.