This week on EnvironMental, we talk to Trish Flaster - a sourcing aficionado with decades of work under her belt dedicated to ethical ingredient sourcing.

She shares her story about being a pioneer in service of understanding different cultures of native people and reciprocating the gift of their plant knowledge in a way that helps them to preserve and sustain their culture.

She gave really great advice about working with suppliers around the world - especially if you're working through translators:

Here's where you can find Trish:  https://www.botanicalliaisons.com/ 

She also gave us a TON of resources to share with you to help you get started with ethical sourcing.

Here's that list (whoa):

http://www.econbot.org// - The Society for Economic Botany (SEB) is about people exploring the uses of, and our relationship with plants, cultures and our environment. They publish a quarterly publication (Economic Botany) and hold talks and conferences throughout the year. 

https://omniactives.com/ - Omniactives helps small businesses bring safe products to market. They develop ingredients and offer plant extracts that are "tested for quality right from the raw material sourcing stage to the finished product stage."

http://www.ssciglobal.org/ - The Supplement Safety & Compliance Initiative is a nonprofit led by brands and retailers to ensure that the supplements they promote are safe, authentic, and compliant to global standards.

https://www.herbalgram.org/ - The American Botanical Council is a nonprofit that offers education around herbal medicines, helps small sustainable herbal businesses network, and has programs dedicated to safe and sustainable herbal supply chains (https://sustainableherbsprogram.org/)

https://www.tagone.com/ - Tag One is a supply chain traceability app that allows small businesses to see every part of their own supply chain and share that information with their customers.

https://supplyside365.com/ - Supply side 365  is "an intelligent, industry hub for health & nutrition professionals to discover, connect, meet, learn and source." You can join this community for free until August of 2021.

https://www.nutraingredients.com/ - Nutraingredients is a William Reed company that is dedicated to sharing resources in the nutrition industry.

This week we're introducing the new topic for the month: Sourcing.

This week we're wrapping up our discussion around deforestation.

Throughout this month, we answered our biggest questions from part one and we learned the right way to ask questions about this topic.

This topic feels like something that we could spend years learning about and join in the fight against the destruction of the world's forests - because there isn't a clear solution to this problem.

As a brand, you should work within the system to fight deforestation directly - whether that's solving the problem with your business model directly, or DEMANDING ethical sourcing from your suppliers.

And as a consumer, look at your bathroom shelves and check out your fridge. Make sure that the brands you're supporting and the companies that you pay money to AREN'T contributing to deforestation. 

It takes more research, and it's ANOTHER lifestyle change, but changing the world starts with changing our own behavior.

Here are the links to the articles that we mentioned in this podcast:

http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C56

http://www.fao.org/state-of-forests/en/

https://treefoundation.org/education/forest-facts/

https://fsc.org/en

#sustainability #deforestation #palmoil #ethicalsourcing

In this episode of EnvironMental, we're continuing our conversation around deforestation with a SECOND changemaker chat this month!

The true source of chocolate is something well hidden by the industry because the big key players utilize some very shady and down right horrific business practices they wouldn't want the public to know about.

In this episode of EnvironMental, we're diving into one needed solution for deforestation with the CEO of Cambium Carbon, Ben Christensen.

Cambium Carbon is dedicated to urban reforestation! (So cool!)

We learned that more trees fall in cities around the US than in the forests and that most of those trees go to the landfill - what the actual fuh?!?!

Cambium Carbon has taken on the problem - and even though they've currently been incorporated for under a year (!) the team has started helping cities all around the USA start building infrastructure for creating a local circular economy for city trees.

They work with cities to create the infrastructure to move and reuse fallen urban trees,  they volunteer to help plant new trees in urban green spaces, and they connect with LOCAL BRANDS to turn that fallen tree into beautiful, valuable products. WOW!

Check out Cambium Carbon at cambiumcarbon.com and reach out to them if you'd like to join their brand market.

This week we continue our conversation around #deforestation by listening to Save the Planet by Almir Narayamoga Surui.

In today's episode of EnvironMental we share what we already know about the topic of Deforestation and what questions we want to answer this month. We have so many questions about this large topic and we're really looking forward to researching it and understanding more about the complexities.

In coming episodes, we hope to answer those questions and more to uncover how we can shift our impact. 

It's the overview week for this month's podcast topic: Sustainable Packaging!

This week we were joined by Greg Barber of Eco Friendly Printer and he taught us all about post consumer waste, bleaches, dyes, and inks used for printing and what options brands have if they're looking to source more sustainable paper and packaging materials.

Greg has over 30 years of experience in the sustainable printing industry and his passion for it is contagious!

If you're looking for better paper and printing options for your brand, get in touch with Greg! Check out their site: ecofriendlyprinter.com

Also special shoutouts to the incredible organization Greg started: http://www.neilswheelsny.com/

Also honorary mentions to the paper mills working to make sustainable paper more attainable:

Mohawk

Neenah

Monadnock

Rolland - The creators of 100% post consumer waste paper!

Let's start with the basics: do we recommend this book?