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What we call waste is really just misallocated feedstock—raw materials waiting to be cycled back into the next generation of products and packaging. According to research by the World Economic Forum and United Nations Development Programme, the circular economy could unlock $4.5 trillion in new global value by 2030, and investors are racing to capture part of that opportunity. Meet Elizabeth Blankenship-Singh, Director of Innovation at Overlay Capital, an Atlanta-based alternative investment firm whose Waste and Materials Fund is backing both early-stage materials innovators and later-stage recycling operations with established infrastructure. Overlay's strategy involves investing in innovation and implementation simultaneously—in both startups and established companies—to accelerate progress across multiple layers of the circular economy. It offers a window into where smart money sees the materials transition heading.
 
Elizabeth explains that sortation is the biggest bottleneck at the materials recycling facilities (MRFs) your garbage and recycling are sent to after curbside collection. The U.S. is simultaneously the world’s leading exporter of scrap aluminum and the number one importer of finished aluminum, because we've lacked domestic sorting capacity. Overlay has invested in companies like AMP Robotics, which recently closed a 20-year contract with SPSA, a southeastern Virginia municipal authority, to sort all recyclables from four to five cities using AI-driven systems. When you fix sortation, she says, you trigger a domino effect: recycling rates climb, landfill life extends, and margins improve as higher-purity materials command premium prices.
 
Overlay's portfolio also includes next-generation materials companies united by a common thesis: they must be better, faster, cheaper, and more sustainable than what they replace. Cruz Foam converts chitin from shrimp shells into compostable packaging foam. Simplifyber uses cellulose to create biodegradable soft goods through 3D molding, bypassing traditional textile manufacturing entirely. Terra CO2 just closed a $124 million Series B to scale low-carbon cement technology that could cut into concrete's 8% share of annual global CO2 emissions. Each uses abundant, waste-derived feedstocks and has achieved or is on a clear path to price parity with incumbents.

You can learn more about Overlay Capital at overlaycapital.com.

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Amazingly, the same Congressional bill that gutted residential clean energy tax credits also led to a major breakthrough in financing home geothermal systems. Dan Yates, CEO of Dandelion Energy, explains how the Big, Beautiful Bill introduced changes that, for the first time, allow third-party leasing of residential geothermal systems. He shares why this policy change could help ground-source heat pumps grow the way leasing helped rooftop solar. Geothermal heating and cooling is four times more efficient than a furnace and twice as efficient as air-source heat pumps. Yet only about 1% of U.S. homes use it because the upfront costs for new geothermal systems have ranged from $20,000 to $31,000. The new leasing model means new homeowners can get geothermal systems for just $10 to $40 per month on a 20-year lease, which is usually far less than what they save on energy.
 
Dandelion is working with Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the country, to bring geothermal to more than 1,500 homes in Colorado over the next two years. This will be one of the biggest residential geothermal projects in U.S. history. The benefits for the power grid could be even more important than the savings for homeowners. Geothermal systems use only 25% of the peak power that air-source heat pumps need, which is a big advantage as AI data centers increase electricity demand. Yates explains that the Earth works like a huge thermal battery, storing heat in the summer for use in the winter. Geothermal lets utilities reduce peak loads on the grid throughout the year, freeing homeowners from the cost of the most expensive power.
 
You can learn more about Dandelion Energy at dandelionenergy.com.

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The ocean provides half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs 30% of our carbon emissions, and helps control the planet's climate. By 2030, it's expected to support a $3.2 trillion Blue Economy. Yet 70% of proven ocean solutions, such as coastal resilience, coral restoration, and marine pollution cleanup, never move past the pilot stage. These projects often win awards and get media attention, but then stall because funding systems don't connect working ideas with the cities, ports, and coastal areas that need them. Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy, co-founder and ocean lead at Okhtapus, wants to change that. Okhtapus, named with the Persian word for the octopus, uses a model that links what Stewart calls "the three hearts" of successful projects: innovators with proven solutions, cities and ports ready to use them, and funders looking for solid projects.
 
The first Okhtapus Global Replicator will launch in 2026. It will bring groups of proven innovators to work on important projects in specific places, such as a single port city like Barcelona, where Okhtapus already has strong partnerships, or a group of Caribbean islands facing similar problems. The aim is to have enough successful projects that funders stop asking "where are the deals?" and start saying "we've got enough." The platform focuses on late-stage startups and scale-ups, not early-stage ideas. Stewart calls these the "Goldilocks zone"—solutions that are proven enough to copy but still need funding and partners to grow. By combining several solutions for different locations, Okhtapus can offer investors portfolios that fit their needs and make a real difference in cities, ports, and island nations.
 
Stewart has spent twenty years working where climate resilience and policy meet. He was part of President Obama's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, led policy and investments at the Resilient Cities Network, and is now Managing Director of the World Ocean Council. "Ten years from now, if this is done fast enough," Stewart said, "we should have pushed hard enough on the funders and the system to change it. What we don't know is whether we'll get to the solution status fast enough for some of these tipping points."
 
To find out more about Okhtapus, visit okhtapus.org.

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For 15 years, the Dallas-based climate conference the EarthX conference has created space where fossil fuel executives and environmental activists, Republican appropriations chairs and Democratic climate hawks, find common ground. The organization targets three core stakeholders: the corporate world, policymakers, and investors seeking startups where environmental solutions are baked into the bottom line. Peter Simek, EarthX’s CEO, explains how reframing climate action around shared values—stewardship, economic opportunity, and love of the land—unlocks support that crisis messaging alone cannot reach.

The doom story doesn’t sell, Simek explained. “We’re not motivated as a species by doomsday language. It puts people in fight-or-flight mode.” He points out how climate became an identity issue, tangled up in culture-war debates over hamburgers and gas-powered trucks, when the real conversation should center on clean air, clean water, and protecting the places we love. “The EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act were passed during the Nixon administration,” he notes. “There are ways to message this that appeals across lines.”

Simek bets heavily on bottom-up action as EarthX works to build bridges. States, cities, and private capital often move faster than federal mandates, he argues, and they’re harder to reverse with a single executive order. Texas leads the nation in renewable energy deployment because wind and solar make bottom-line sense. “Even as there’s a policy turn against it, there’s still the driving reality that solar and wind are viable energy sources,” he says. A new event in 2026, the EarthX Institute, will focus on two policy priorities: nuclear energy, where bipartisan consensus is growing, and urban biodiversity.

Whether conversations at forums like EarthX translate into policy velocity that matches the pace of climate impacts remains to be seen. Simek says he stays focused on tracking downstream results, specifically the investments funded, the coalitions built, and the policies incubated from the local level up. “It’s about finding those ways in which there’s common sense, common ground, common values,” he says. “Elements to talking about nature and the environment that no one can really disagree with.”

Learn more about EarthX and its upcoming April 2026 conference at earthx.org.

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The raw material for a $2 trillion circular economy is already flowing through recycling facilities. But how do we capture and use it? Rebecca Hu-Thrams, co-founder and CEO of Glacier, is deploying AI-powered robotic sorters at material recovery facilities (MRFs) across the country, processing recycling for one in 10 Americans. Her robots use computer vision trained on more than 3 billion images of waste to identify and sort over 70 different materials—picking 45 items per minute, 24/7, in conditions that would exhaust or injure human workers. As much as 80% of what Americans put in blue bins never gets recycled. The culprit is outdated technology at MRFs, the vast sorting operations struggling with a labor crisis so severe that facilities often refill the same sorting job five times a year. The work is dangerous, with injury rates twice that of construction. Rebecca, a first-generation American who grew up washing margarine tubs for reuse, saw an opportunity to apply cutting-edge technology to what she calls "the most demented form of manufacturing on the planet." The results are tangible. At oneDetroit MRF, an AI camera on a residue line revealed the facility was losing massive amounts of PET bottles to landfill, material they suspected was slipping through but had never quantified. By adding a single sorter based on that data, they achieved a two-thirds drop in PET sent to landfill and earned $138,000 in additional annual revenue.

But Glacier's robots do more than sort. They create an intelligence layer for the circular economy, generating data about what's actually in the waste stream—down to specific brands and packaging designs. Amazon, which has invested in Glacier through its Climate Pledge fund, is using this data to understand what design features make packaging easier or harder for AI to detect, moving from "technically recyclable" to "provably recyclable." With extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws spreading across the U.S., this kind of brand-level accountability will become table stakes. Rebecca notes that EPR has improved recycling rates by over 40 percentage points in parts of Europe. Glacier's vision is to transform recycling from a reactive cost center into advanced manufacturing, built on three pillars: a reliable data layer, consistent automation, and higher-quality feedstock. "MRF managers show up to work, turn on the lights, and hold their breath and wait to see what new, crazy things come down their conveyor lines," she said. "What I hope is true for recycling in the coming years is that producers are making things designed to be really easy to recycle."

We're still in the early steps of a long recycling evolution, but the gap between where we are and a truly circular economy may close faster than the past 60 years of recycling's progress would suggest. You can learn more about Glacier at endwaste.io.

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Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.Americans dispose of approximately 1.3 billion gallons of used motor oil annually, but only about 800 million gallons get recycled, and most of that is burned as fuel rather than re-refined into new oil. The plastic packaging oil comes in is more problematic: most curbside programs won't accept them because residual oil contaminates other recyclables. What happens when the companies that make motor oil embrace extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that require recycling the oil and the containers it comes in? David Lawes, CEO of the Lubricants Packaging Management Association (LPMA), is leading what could become a national model for extended producer responsibility. Colorado just became the testing ground. In September 2024, five major oil companies—BP Lubricants, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Valvoline—founded LPMA as an independent producer responsibility organization.

Colorado gave producers a choice: join the Circular Action Alliance, which manages all packaging and printed paper recycling in the state, or develop their own sector-specific program that demonstrates better outcomes. LPMA chose the independent path, arguing that petroleum packaging requires specialized handling that general-purpose programs can't provide efficiently. Lawes brings two decades of EPR policy experience to the role, including a decade regulating EPR programs in Canada. The program he ran in British Columbia achieves a 96% recycling rate for oil containers—compared to less than 1% in most U.S. states. "This is not about skirting the law or finding an easier pathway," Lawes explains. "It is about meeting the same results in an industry-friendly way."If Colorado's model works, it could reshape EPR programs nationwide. We discuss why petroleum packaging can't be managed through curbside programs, what lessons from Canada's more developed EPR system apply here, and whether the U.S. needs national recycling standards to harmonize the patchwork of state regulations.

You can learn more about LPMA at interchange360.com.

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What if the solution to winter's infrastructure corrosion and environmentally benign home sidewalk de-icing was an invasive starfish being thrown back into Korea's coastal waters? Hando Choi, president of Star's Tech, joins the conversation to explain how one region's invasive species problem can become another's environmental breakthrough. The company developed ECO-ST, a de-icing product made from starfish skeletons that not only melts ice faster than conventional rock salt but also reduces the chloride pollution that causes billions of dollars in damage to roads, bridges, and vehicles every winter.

Meanwhile, in Korean waters, the Northern Pacific sea star has become such a menace to shellfish aquaculture that the government purchases 3,000 to 4,000 tons annually to control populations. Stars Tech upcycles about 10% of that collected material, extracting the porous calcium carbonate structures that give starfish their shape and their remarkable ability to store and release chloride. The technology began as a high school science project when founder and chief scientist Seungchan Yang experimented with natural pore structures to control ion release, eventually connecting that research to the negative impacts of conventional deicers while studying at Seoul National University.

The economic case is compelling once you factor in the full cost of ownership. While ECO-ST runs $465 to $650 per ton compared to $100 to $150 for commodity rock salt, salt itself accounts for less than 5% of most winter maintenance budgets. The Isaac Walton League of America estimates that infrastructure damage from road salt ranges from $30 to $300 per ton used. Stars Tech's simulations based on U.S. municipal data show ECO-ST can deliver up to 5,000% ROI over time when lower infrastructure maintenance costs, fewer reapplications, and ESG compliance benefits are factored in.

ECO-ST is available on Amazon in the U.S. and Canada, with retail partnerships launching this winter. You can learn more about Stars Tech at starstech.co.

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What if the solution to the retail industry's $890 billion returns crisis wasn't better logistics, but better logic? Disney Petit, founder and CEO of Liquidonate, is proving that the most sustainable return skips the trip back to a warehouse and goes directly to a community in need. Americans returned nearly 17% of all retail purchases last year, generating 2.6 million tons of landfill waste and 16 million tons of CO2 emissions. Each return costs retailers between $25 and $35 to process, yet 52% of consumers admit to participating in return fraud at least once. Petit witnessed this broken system firsthand as employee number 15 at Postmates, where she built the customer service team and created Civic Labs, the company's social responsibility arm. Her food security product Bento, which allowed people without smartphones to access free food via text message, won Time Magazine's 2021 Invention of the Year Award. Now Liquidonate has earned recognition as one of Time's Best Inventions of 2025.

Liquidonate integrates directly with retailers' existing warehouse and return management systems. When a product comes back and can't be resold—open box, slightly damaged, or simply unwanted—the platform automatically matches it with a local nonprofit or school that needs it. "It's the same reverse logistics workflow they already use," Petit explains. "It's just redirected toward community good instead of going to the landfill." The platform handles everything: shipping labels, pickup coordination, and tax documentation so retailers can write off donations. Retailers recover logistics costs through tax benefits while communities receive quality products, and millions of pounds of goods stay out of landfills.

To date, retailers using Liquidonate have diverted over 12 million items from landfills, working with more than 4,000 nonprofits across the country. Liquidonate also tackles return fraud by eliminating "keep it" returns, when customers claim they want to return something but are told to keep the item and still receive a refund. "One hundred percent of the time we're producing a shipping label for a nonprofit who wants that product," Petit says. "We completely eliminate that keep-it return option, so we eliminate the returns fraud option." With $900 billion worth of inventory potentially available for redirection, Petit approaches the business through the lens of environmental justice, building a for-profit company designed to prove that doing good and doing well aren't mutually exclusive—they're interdependent.

Nonprofits and schools can sign up for free at liquidonate.com. Retailers interested in partnering can reach out to [email protected].

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Can the industry that taught the world to consume help us learn to consume more responsibly? Luke Purdy, Director of Sustainability at one of the world's leading creative agencies Wieden+Kennedy, is betting his career on it. After 13 years working on major accounts like Nike and Corona at one of the world's most influential creative agencies, Purdy did something unusual: he wrote his own job description and asked to become the agency's first sustainability director. Wieden+Kennedy gave him the job, and in 2023, the agency became the first global advertising network to achieve B Corp certification across all nine offices in seven countries. With brands spending over $700 billion annually on advertising worldwide, the messages agencies craft shape not just what people buy, but how they think about consumption itself.

Luke discusses how he sold sustainability as a business value proposition rather than a compliance issue, why he reports to the CFO instead of the CMO, and how Wieden+Kennedy's carbon removal program for video productions is changing industry standards. He also tackles thorny questions about greenwashing that can guide which clients agencies should work with, arguing that guiding any company toward sustainability is better than refusing to engage.

He shares lessons from helping transform Danish Oil and Natural Gas into Ørsted, one of the world's leading renewable energy companies, and explains why authentic storytelling beats green leaves and clichés every time. Can advertising agencies avoid greenwashing while still growing their clients' businesses? And what does it mean when sustainability becomes culture rather than just compliance?You can learn more about Wieden+Kennedy's sustainability work at wk.com.

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Most Silicon Valley CEOs who cash out their stock options start another tech company. Yishan Wong planted trees instead. After helping build PayPal, Facebook, and serving as Reddit's CEO, Wong concluded that humanity's biggest challenge wouldn't be solved with algorithms or network effects—it would be solved by restoring the planet's forests at an unprecedented scale. Mitch Ratcliffe sits down with Wong to discuss Terraformation, the company he founded in 2020 with an audacious mission: restore 3 billion acres of native forest worldwide—an area larger than the entire United States.

Planting a trillion trees isn't just about seeds in the ground. It's about solving bottlenecks like funding gaps that leave 95% of qualified forestry teams without resources, seed shortages, lack of infrastructure and technology, gaps in tracking and verification. Terraformation built a support system that includes modular seed banks, solar-powered nurseries, open source forest management software, which is called Terraware and a seed to carbon forest accelerator that's modeled on tech startup accelerators. Since founding Terraformation, Wong has enabled the planting of over 4.7 million trees across 394 species, established 19 seed banks and 21 nurseries and created more than 798 jobs. 

"We made Terraware not because this is the most genius piece of technology that will change the world," Yishan explains. "We said, hey, let's just help forestry teams achieve certain basic necessary activities." Unlike commercial timber plantations that prioritize fast-growing monocultures, Terraformation focuses on biodiverse native forests. Native tree species can support an order of magnitude more life than non-native species because they've co-evolved over millions of years. "Trees are the anchor species for a forest ecosystem," he added. "What you're doing is you're growing trees as the anchor species so that all of the other life in that forest ecosystem comes back."

Terraformation recently won the Keeling Curve Prize and the G20's RestorLife Award. The company also received recognition at the Global Sustainability Awards, winning SME Company of the Year. Yishan explains why a former Reddit CEO believes in low tech solutions that are the right approach to climate change, how Silicon Valley's lessons about scaling systems could apply to reforestation and what it takes to build an organization designed to be replicated rather than defended. You can learn more about the company at Terraformation.com.

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