Sustainability Champions

“We know what causes climate change, and we know how to stop it, what we don’t know is how to pay for the transformation to going carbon neutral.” The words of today’s guest ring true with what we’ve discovered in many episodes of the Sustainability Matters Today podcast: to prevent climate change we need to both reduce humanity’s carbon emissions and offset the emissions we can’t reduce.

There are hundreds of carbon offsetting programs all over the world, ranging from planting trees to capturing carbon dioxide from the air. And if we’re serious about sustainability, we need to be funding these projects even more. We need ways to incorporate carbon offsetting into our everyday lives. UCapture makes this easy.

Listen to Avery Michaelson, Founder & CEO of UCapture and Champion of Funding Carbon Offsets, in the latest episode of Sustainability Matters Today Podcast.

Start reducing your own carbon footprint, for free, when you shop online by joining UCapture: https://ucapture.com/sc

UCapture is a browser add-on that gets 25,000+ partner stores to offset your carbon footprint, at no extra cost, when you shop online.

When you shop with UCapture’s partners, they receive a small affiliate fee, most of which is donated to a carbon offset project that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. UCapture also includes an automatic discount code feature, which applies the best discount code for you. That way when you buy products or services online, you can effortlessly support carbon offset programs while saving money! The Chrome extension is intuitive and simply pops up whenever you land on one of their partnered sites.

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Buildings and their construction produce 39% of global CO2 emissions according to the UN Environment Program. With humanity’s population rising, cities are becoming denser as demand for new property continues to grow. Now more than ever, greater building efficiency is necessary to minimise their carbon footprint.

Keeping heating costs low through good isolation, making sure electricity usage is kept to a minimum by increasing the natural light that comes through, and even designing with natural catastrophes like hurricanes in mind are all practices that are part of a sustainable approach to construction. Planning for the future, to ensure buildings last as long as possible, avoids unnecessary costs down the road. Today’s guest is an expert on these ideas!

In this Episode of the Sustainability Matters Today Podcast, I speak with Mike Brown, “Energy Engineer”, host of the 3P Theory Podcast, and Champion of Sustainable and High Performance Buildings. As an Energy Analyst & Energy Systems Design Engineer with HKS, Mike works alongside architects and engineers to assist building owners and developers create high performance buildings that save energy and are healthy for the environment.

An Engineer in Training, LEED Accredited Professional, and Building Energy Modeling Professional, Mike has been in the green building industry for over seven years collaborating on a variety of projects all over the U.S.. Utilizing building energy modeling and other innovative sustainability tools, he has been able to help building owners save an estimated $7.2M in energy costs and over $1.3 M in water costs on both LEED and non-LEED projects.

Passionate about his profession, Michael is currently involved in many professional organizations including as a Board Member of the Texas U.S. Green Building Council, as a member of the North Texas National Association of Energy Engineers, and the National Society of Black Engineers.

I hope you enjoy the episode! Please subscribe to get the latest episodes and leave a 5-star review if you like what you hear!

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Buildings and their construction produce 39% of global CO2 emissions according to the UN Environment Program. With humanity’s population rising, cities are becoming denser as demand for new property continues to grow. Now more than ever, greater building efficiency is necessary to minimise their carbon footprint.

Keeping heating costs low through good isolation, making sure electricity usage is kept to a minimum by increasing the natural light that comes through, and even designing with natural catastrophes like hurricanes in mind are all practices that are part of a sustainable approach to construction. Planning for the future, to ensure buildings last as long as possible, avoids unnecessary costs down the road. Today’s guest is an expert on these ideas!

In this Episode of the Sustainability Matters Today Podcast, I speak with Mike Brown, “Energy Engineer”, host of the 3P Theory Podcast, and Champion of Sustainable and High Performance Buildings. As an Energy Analyst & Energy Systems Design Engineer with HKS, Mike works alongside architects and engineers to assist building owners and developers create high performance buildings that save energy and are healthy for the environment.

An Engineer in Training, LEED Accredited Professional, and Building Energy Modeling Professional, Mike has been in the green building industry for over seven years collaborating on a variety of projects all over the U.S.. Utilizing building energy modeling and other innovative sustainability tools, he has been able to help building owners save an estimated $7.2M in energy costs and over $1.3 M in water costs on both LEED and non-LEED projects.

Passionate about his profession, Michael is currently involved in many professional organizations including as a Board Member of the Texas U.S. Green Building Council, as a member of the North Texas National Association of Energy Engineers, and the National Society of Black Engineers.

I hope you enjoy the episode! Please subscribe to get the latest episodes and leave a 5-star review if you like what you hear!

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If you’ve ever moved from one apartment to another, you may be familiar with the chaos that comes with packing a life’s worth of possessions into cardboard boxes.

With the millions of families typically moving each year, hundreds of millions of trees must be used to produce the cardboard boxes that are oftentimes thrown away afterwards. This problem also exists - and usually on a significantly larger scale - with corporations that move from one office to another.

Today’s guest is fixing this problem and has saved over 35 millions trees in the process! In this episode of Sustainability Matters Today, I speak with Nadine Cino, Co-Founder and CEO of TygaBox and Champion of Moving Sustainably. TygaBox invented a plastic moving box and dolly system which can stack five boxes at the same height that other systems can only stack four, thereby reducing labour costs by 25%!

In addition to an innovative dolly that doesn’t need you to lift a box, TygaBoxes are built to last; in fact, many of the boxes they made during their initial production in the 90s are still in use today! Since these plastic boxes completely replace cardboard, they result in a 30% reduction of moving costs and 100% elimination of waste-to-landfill.

It’s always important to think of the three R’s of Sustainability: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If we can reduce the amount of cardboard we use by replacing it with materials that are cost-efficient and reduce labor costs, we are already healing the planet!

Listen to our conversation to find out how Nadine went from working in the fashion industry to inventing an efficient moving system and her plans to continue innovating with trackable shipments, and much more!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

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Over the past 10 years, coffee has become an incredibly accessible commodity. Everybody can enjoy the wonderful and varied tastes that come with different intensities and in different forms like an Espresso or a Latte Macchiato. These drinks are now easily made at home, using the little, loud and colourful coffee machine that takes a capsule and makes a perfect caffeinated beverage.

Each cup of coffee we make requires a brand new capsule, which is made from a combination of plastic and aluminium. Even though many of these capsules are recyclable, 80% nonetheless end up in landfills and oceans. In 2018 alone, the coffee industry produced 60 billion coffee pods. The good news is Halo Coffee created a simple solution to avoid pod pollution.

In today’s episode, I interview Sarah Lim, Business Development Director at Halo Coffee, and Champion of Compostable Coffee Capsules. Halo Coffee produces Nespresso-compatible, home-compostable coffee pods, which contain speciality-grade, high-end coffees. The capsules are made from a byproduct of the sugar cane industry and degrade in as little as 28 days in your compost heap or garden. What’s more,  their packaging is also home-compostable and takes only 90 days to break down!

This episode was recorded in April 2020, amid the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Until June 2020, Halo Coffee is donating two boxes of sustainable coffee pods to hospitals in London for each new subscription they receive and is offering special discounts for all NHS workers. During these trying times, it’s great to see the world coming together and supporting each other!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Resources:

Over the past 10 years, coffee has become an incredibly accessible commodity. Everybody can enjoy the wonderful and varied tastes that come with different intensities and in different forms like an Espresso or a Latte Macchiato. These drinks are now easily made at home, using the little, loud and colourful coffee machine that takes a capsule and makes a perfect caffeinated beverage.

Each cup of coffee we make requires a brand new capsule, which is made from a combination of plastic and aluminium. Even though many of these capsules are recyclable, 80% nonetheless end up in landfills and oceans. In 2018 alone, the coffee industry produced 60 billion coffee pods. The good news is Halo Coffee created a simple solution to avoid pod pollution.

In today’s episode, I interview Sarah Lim, Business Development Director at Halo Coffee, and Champion of Compostable Coffee Capsules. Halo Coffee produces Nespresso-compatible, home-compostable coffee pods, which contain speciality-grade, high-end coffees. The capsules are made from a byproduct of the sugar cane industry and degrade in as little as 28 days in your compost heap or garden. What’s more,  their packaging is also home-compostable and takes only 90 days to break down!

This episode was recorded in April 2020, amid the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Until June 2020, Halo Coffee is donating two boxes of sustainable coffee pods to hospitals in London for each new subscription they receive and is offering special discounts for all NHS workers. During these trying times, it’s great to see the world coming together and supporting each other!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

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Happy Earth Day, Champions!

“If you like puns, sleeping and sustainability, potentially even in that order – Sheets and Giggles is the brand for you!” A perfect way to introduce this guest and his company! Today, I speak with Colin McIntosh, Founder and CEO of Sheets and Giggles (and, yes that’s a pun), and #Champion of Sleeping Sustainably.

Sheets and Giggles makes sustainable, 400-thread count sateen bed sheets out of Eucalyptus trees, which don’t use insecticides or pesticides. Compared with cotton, the production of their eucalyptus lyocell requires 96% less water and 30 % less energy! And if those numbers aren’t compelling enough, their sales pitch is simple: “Our Eucalyptus Lyocell sheets are softer, more breathable, and more sustainable than both cotton and bamboo.” And they’re bed serious. 

Listen to this episode to find out about:

I hope you enjoy the episode!

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