Once Upon a Planet

In today's episode, Jon and Verda talk with Royce Epstein, with Mohawk Group and Rebekah Matheny, of The Ohio State University. Rebekah is our first educator, and they are educating the new student generation about the value of Life Cycle Focus. Generation Scrap, as they've been dubbed, is teaching us how to design resourcefully. This just may be one of the solutions we need to combat the climate crisis. What sort of treasures can a designer make from materials about to hit the landfill? Rebekah calls this Holistic Sustainability and she wants to spread the word. They're a scrappy duo!

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Scott Fulbright, founder of Living Ink, has harnessed algae, a byproduct of water pollution, to replace ink made from fossil fuels. The ink isn't green though, it's carbon black and he's solving the climate crisis one algae bloom at a time. This green goop provides us with over half of our oxygen supply and pulls carbon from the air, so why not make ink out of it?

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Amanda Kaminski, founder of Building Product Ecosystems shows us how to maintain a circular economy by giving a new life to hard to salvage building materials like gypsum board. Amanda keeps these hugely prevalent construction materials out of our landfills in an effort to curb the carbon footprint of a building. Concrete has one of the highest carbon footprints of any building material. Amanda is working hard to change this!

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Our dynamic duo, in an effort to stave off climate catastrophe, decided to celebrate their tenth episode by re-visiting why they think podcasting is important now-why you shouldn't be afraid to shout at the world and say what you feel. We aren't perfect at this right now, but you can't be afraid of mistakes or failure if you want to make an impact. The planet still needs advocates and we think the design industry will be a huge lever in climate control. The problem? Are designers making the changes right now that need to be made? More importantly, is everyone on board? Because if every single designer is not putting the planet first in making climate decisions, then we are far from fixing things. We think we can find some unique voices that have not been heard in our industry. We think we can find stories that will inspire change.

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Join us as we talk with Russell Greenberg, founder of RUX Studios. They are a design hub looking to create a better world, one company at a time. With Stickbulb, they are using locally sourced wood from New York City's water towers to create beautiful light fixtures and fix the broken supply chain. Reclaimed wood is a relic! They are also creating conceptual time pieces that deepen our connection with the past, the present and the future.

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Jon and Verda break some dishes in episode 8 with Josie Abate, Sustainability Officer at Keilhauer, a gentle, earth kind Canadian furniture company that can design and manufacture elegant, contemporary carbon neutral furniture. What? A carbon neutral chair? You heard that correctly, so tune in to find out how a company like Keilhauer makes beautiful product that helps our planet as well. We'll talk about supply line management, picking good partners and finding ways of removing Red List ingredients from product. Who needs edge banding anyway?

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Verda and Jon have a bright, young and energetic person on this episode who's doing some amazing work around the globe right now. Can we break him down? Can he melt our brains with chemistry formulas we haven't thought about since our high school chemistry days? The answer to one of those questions is yes, but there are many more in this episode that go into the new super fuel of the environmental movement-Green Ammonia. This is going to change the way we fuel our ocean fleets. Green Ammonia is a game changer. Why aren't we all talking about this?

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In our sixth episode, Jon and Verda talk with Lisa Conway, VP of Sustainability for Interface Carpet. Interface, under the leadership of founder Ray Anderson, has led the way in the conversation around embodied carbon. With a new campaign called "Love Carbon", Interface is talking about being carbon neutral and even carbon negative! Can we all start making and using products that take carbon out of the environment? Interface seems to think so!

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Stop sucking with The Lonely Whale Foundation! Jon and Verda get to talk to Dune Ives, NGO trailblazer and CEO of The Lonely Whale Foundation about individual action and corporate responsibility. She walks us through the "Stop Sucking" and "Hydrate Like a Mother" campaigns. We'll talk about hero corporations and her work with The Next Wave initiative. And of course, we'll make Dune tell us the story of "The Lonely Whale".

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Jon and Verda talk with Dune Ives