Sustainability Champions

Companies and industries realised one thing: consumers don’t buy many products if the products are built to last. On the other hand, short-lived products will be replaced, so building fragile items means companies create additional “demand” and in the end, more profit.

In today’s world, this regular and repeated consumerism has been indented into our lives. From Seasonal Fashion to feeling invigorated when buying new furniture, we’re used to receiving positive feedback from following our shopping urges. These shopping habits are not always good for the planet because of the amount of waste created from making these products.

Take it from Tara Button, marketing expert, and founder and CEO of Buymeonce.com and a Champion of Buying Less, and Buying Better. “BuyMeOnce” sells all kinds of products that are built to last. Whether it’s pots and pans, fashion, healthcare, bed linen, bottles, backpacks or bikes, all their featured products are sustainably produced and chosen because they’re meant to last a long time.

Their code of business is an idea worth following: “We’re demanding longer-lasting products, better guarantees and responsible manufacturing. By offering only the most long-lived products out there, we want to empower consumers to buy less, and buy better.”

As you might imagine, changing our society’s fundamental behaviour won’t be easy. Listen to this episode, to find out more on the origin and future of consumerism!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Resources:

When talking about Climate Change, the elephant in the room is always our carbon emissions. Most of our guests find amazing ways of avoiding pollution altogether, but today’s guest takes a whole new approach:

In this episode of Sustainability Matters Today, I interview Louise Charles, Communications Manager at Climeworks and a Champion of Recycling Carbon Dioxide.

Founded in 2009 with the aim of capturing 1% of global carbon emissions per year by 2025, Climeworks is the first company in the world to absorb carbon dioxide straight from the air with fans and storage devices, in order to ultimately repurpose it. The Switzerland-based company has a direct air-capture technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recycles it into different products like beverages and renewable fuels.

Climeworks offers amazing subscription plans, where you can support their technology, and thereby offset some of your personal carbon emissions. That’s also an amazing gift option!

As of January 2020, Climeworks will be collaborating with Svante Inc. to develop carbon capture technology solutions to transition to a net-zero emission future.

Please make sure to subscribe to the Sustainability Matters Today podcast to learn more about other champions of sustainability like Louise.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

When talking about Climate Change, the elephant in the room is always our carbon emissions. Most of our guests find amazing ways of avoiding pollution altogether, but today’s guest takes a whole new approach:

In this episode of Sustainability Matters Today, I interview Louise Charles, Communications Manager at Climeworks and a Champion of Recycling Carbon Dioxide.

Founded in 2009 with the aim of capturing 1% of global carbon emissions per year by 2025, Climeworks is the first company in the world to absorb carbon dioxide straight from the air with fans and storage devices, in order to ultimately repurpose it. The Switzerland-based company has a direct air-capture technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recycles it into different products like beverages and renewable fuels.

Climeworks offers amazing subscription plans, where you can support their technology, and thereby offset some of your personal carbon emissions. That’s also an amazing gift option!

As of January 2020, Climeworks will be collaborating with Svante Inc. to develop carbon capture technology solutions to transition to a net-zero emission future.

Please make sure to subscribe to the Sustainability Matters Today podcast to learn more about other champions of sustainability like Louise.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Becoming more sustainable involves taking a look at all aspects of our lives and businesses and finding ways to maintain our effectiveness while prioritizing the environment – like reducing waste, emissions and harmful chemicals.

Today’s guest and his company truly embody that sustainable spirit – in this episode, I interview Mark Jankovich, Founder and CEO of Delphis Eco and Champion of Innovative and Environmentally-Friendly Cleaning Products.

Delphis Eco is a leading ecological cleaning product manufacturer in the UK that proudly uses 100% post-consumer recycled plastics for all its packaging. Realizing that the Green Economy is the future, Mark founded the company to manufacture ecological cleaning products for the commercial sector.

Delphis Eco holds two Royal Warrants of Appointment (meaning they’ve provided their products to the British Royal Households for at last five years) and was recently awarded the Blue Patch Sustainable Innovation Business Award for their measurable social and environmental impacts.

Please make sure to subscribe to the Sustainability Matters Today podcast to learn more about other champions of sustainability like Mark!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Resources:

Coffee – the world’s favourite energiser – from the streets of Turkey to the cafés of New York, it’s unilaterally enjoyed everywhere. When brewing coffee, thereby extracting the caffeinated aroma from coffee beans, we end up with a waste product of coffee grounds. And with an estimated 2,25 billion cups of coffee made every day, that leaves us with about 500,000 tonnes of wet, waste coffee grounds. Typically just dumped into general waste bins, this byproduct emits methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

How can we prevent this waste problem from contributing to climate change? Simply denying the billions of morning warriors, late-night labourers and hipster Starbucks writers their coffee would get us into a hot mess. In comes Bio-Bean.

In this Episode I interview Matt Keniston, Commercial Head of Bio-Bean and #Champion of recycling coffee grounds. Bio-Bean offers a range of products, made from these otherwise destined for landfill coffee grounds. They are the world’s biggest coffee recycler, processing thousands of tons of waste into sustainable bio products. To find out what Bio-Bean produces, make sure you listen to this episode!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Coffee – the world’s favourite energiser – from the streets of Turkey to the cafés of New York, it’s unilaterally enjoyed everywhere. When brewing coffee, thereby extracting the caffeinated aroma from coffee beans, we end up with a waste product of coffee grounds. And with an estimated 2,25 billion cups of coffee made every day, that leaves us with about 500,000 tonnes of wet, waste coffee grounds. Typically just dumped into general waste bins, this byproduct emits methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

How can we prevent this waste problem from contributing to climate change? Simply denying the billions of morning warriors, late-night labourers and hipster Starbucks writers their coffee would get us into a hot mess. In comes Bio-Bean.

In this Episode I interview Matt Keniston, Commercial Head of Bio-Bean and #Champion of recycling coffee grounds. Bio-Bean offers a range of products, made from these otherwise destined for landfill coffee grounds. They are the world’s biggest coffee recycler, processing thousands of tons of waste into sustainable bio products. To find out what Bio-Bean produces, make sure you listen to this episode!

I hope you enjoy the episode!

There is so much plastic waste from food packaging – whether it’s the plastic bag inside cereal boxes or plastic milk bottles, berry containers or yogurt cups – it begs the question, can we avoid all this plastic?

While the big scale supermarket chains are slowly catching on, a brand-new breed of shops has come to life: zero-waste supermarkets.

In this Episode of Sustainability Matters Today, I interview Catherine Conway, founder and CEO of Unpackaged, and a Champion of promoting a zero-waste lifestyle. Unpackaged sets up refill stations in stores around the UK, including Planet Organic and Waitrose, and customers bring their own refillable containers to fill them with products from the dispensers. This allows people to only buy the amount they need, limiting food waste while avoiding single-use plastics. Catherine also offers consulting services to help spread the idea of zero-waste stores as far as possible.

We discuss the challenges Catherine encountered when inventing the refill system, her history of advocating the zero-waste movement since 2006, and how mainstream supermarkets are slowly joining their cause and much more!

I hope you enjoy the episode!