This Sustainable Life

Toxic chemicals leach from food packaging into your food. Some of these chemicals disrupt your hormones. Some cause cancer. Some affect your children more. Some disperse into the environment and harm wildlife.

For 300,000 years, humans lived without plastic. We created this system, maybe thinking only of the effects we wanted, imagining these toxic effects wouldn't happen. Maybe we didn't imagine they could happen. We don't have to create these materials or use them. We are creating more all the time. There's just so much oil, it's so cheap, and there's nothing stopping producers from creating and selling them. Nearly everyone agrees a role of government is to protect you from my taking or destroying your life, liberty, and property, yet businesses and government gain money and power from creating them.

Jane's research and courses inform us of the dangers the producers don't want us to know about. In this episode, she shares how she discovered this problem, what she's doing about it, and details about the problems. She didn't originally intend to go in this direction, but chemicals from plastic were leaching into other experiments she was doing. The producer of the leaching materials didn't tell her. She had to do new research to find out, saw its seriousness, and kept going.

It's scary to learn. Still, while I'd rather live in a world where we don't permit people to poison us and profit from it, as long as we do, I'd rather know than not know.

• The Food Packaging Forum
• Their Crash Course in Food Contact Materials and Health
• The article she co-wrote published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology the day of this episode: Evidence for widespread human exposure to food contact chemicals
• A CNN article on Jane's research that happened to come out the day before this episode: Toxic chemicals used in food preparation leach into human bodies, study finds

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I started a new project volunteering in my community that is also a big life change I wouldn't believe I'm doing except that I am. In a sense I started the project over four years ago and it's only seeing the light of day now.

Sorry I'm writing little about and the episode is long, but for now I wanted only those interested to learn in so you have to listen all the way through to hear the full scope and details.

• The episode I quoted in this one: 366: The Cops, Jocko Willink, and Joe Rogan
• Another episode I mentioned: 506: I lost $10 million on September 11, 2001. Here is what I learned from those who sacrificed and served.

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Jack shares his love for nature and passion to care for it, how central it is to his life, how much of his time and focus he devotes to it. He shares his principles of individual choice over top-down regulation. He especially opposes government subsidy for squashing innovation, including industries he prefers, like nuclear. He's not anti-government.

Listen to the episode for his views in more detail. He is as sincere as they come and has thought the issues through.

I couldn't help wonder how many political conservatives and libertarians care deeply about the environment yet get called "not caring." If they care but approach it differently, if I said they didn't care, it would drop my credibility in their view.

I valued this conversation for his sharing openly. I think we could use more like it. Plus we did the Spodek Method and can't wait to hear how his commitment goes. I predict it will affect his relationships. Heritage is influential. I wonder if it will affect politics.

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Nick and I talk about freedom, liberty, personal action and, however paradoxical to most people, how important personal behavior is in changing systems. Then we talk about markets, regulation, and democracy and how they interact with community norms. Looking at the words markets, regulation, and democracy, they may look academic or abstract, but I think you'll find the conversation fun because it's personal. We don't talk theory. We're talking about how we live and work.

A core of our conversation is where a society or state draws a line between things that benefit some people but hurt others. Some things may make messes but everyone agrees should be allowed, like exhaling or pooping. Others everyone agrees should be illegal, like putting poison in someone's food. But what about putting poison in the air in the process of doing something people like, like flying?

We talked about free markets too.

We also did the Spodek Method. Nick grew up near me, so his description of nature resonated more than most.

• Nick's profile at C3 Solutions

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This episode follows up the last one, on how you can learn sustainability leadership through our workshops, so you can practice sustainability joyfully. You can teach others to, and teach others to teach others.

If the process only led to a few people changing, or even many, it wouldn't be worth pursuing. Unlike almost any sustainability work, it can lead to global cultural change and a joyful, rewarding path to it. It doesn't require sacrifice or deprivation. It may look like it from our current culture, the culture that's lowering Earth's ability to sustain life, increasing isolation, and decreasing health, safety, and security globally, despite our reaching such pinnacles of scientific and technological achievement.

Hear in this episode how we can change the world by having more fun.

Then contact me to learn more and sign up. The next workshop begins September 10, 2024. You'll only wish you started earlier.

• The Sustainability Simplified Entrepreneurship Strategy
• Contact me to learn more and sign up

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If you've listened to a lot of this podcast, you've heard me walk guests through sharing their values on sustainability and acting on them.

Why do they enjoy what most people consider deprivation and sacrifice?

You can learn to do it. A growing team of us teach workshops in sustainability leadership. One is coming up, September 10, 2024.

You can become a leader in a movement to live joyfully sustainably, to change global culture at the last minute.

Here is the recommendation I quote

• The Entrepreneurship Strategy
• Contact me and sign up
• The episode with Trish, who has cancer

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I'd heard of Strong Towns for years, mainly through guest Jason Slaughter's Not Just Bikes video series, and finally joined the community by taking a couple of their courses. I can't recommend them enough. Chuck Marohn founded that community. He found and publicized several of their core discoveries. Some include: North American cities grow based on a Ponzi scheme, the combination of a street and a road fails at both and wrecks everything it touches, cores of cities usually make the most economic sense, and outlying areas usually sap money and vitality.

I invited Chuck because of the overlap between city planning and sustainability. Over half of humans live in cities. Many can't avoid following the patterns of where to live, traffic, where to eat and shop, and how to spend money determined by their urban environment. I often say we don't need more electric cars, we need fewer roads, not that electric cars help.

I also learned from reading about him and you'll hear in our conversation that I wanted to learn from his having started a community running against the mainstream values making a lot of people money. I see him as a role model in this way. We talked about it some, but then got into the Spodek Method, which I think you'll hear he enjoyed.

• Strong Towns web page
• Their courses (I've taken 101 and their Not Just Bikes courses so far and recommend them)

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You've probably listened to Bruce's past three episodes, so you probably know he wants a path to exist that leads people to want to live more sustainably and spread that change to others. It would mean them overcoming their addictions. By them, I mean all of us, since if we order takeout, fly, and drive big cars, we're in the group that has to change.

His experience with addicts tells him it's hard, maybe impossible. On the other hand, while people may be conflicted and may have suppressed many of our emotions around the environment, we love nature.

In this episode, we hear the Spodek Method finally clicking with Bruce. One interaction with it isn't supposed to change the world itself. It creates a mindset shift, which one has to follow with continual improvement to change one person, then to spread, but here you can hear it clicking.

Ideas that spread, win. Emotions too. Here is a case where the emotion kicked in with someone skeptical. It's not alone a solution, but a proof of concept. In entrepreneurial terms, the technology works.

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I ask guests to do episodes 1.5 when they tell me they couldn't do their Spodek Method commitment or keep postponing. Sometimes they say they don't want to share that they didn't do it. But experience has shown that talking about that vulnerability by sharing that they didn't do it overcomes it. Then redoing the Spodek Method usually leads to it working better than expected. The goal isn't perfection, after all. It's to create experiences that prompt emotions they like.

Alden wasn't doing her ebike commitment, as you'll hear in this episode. She also shares some of her priorities in the rest of life. Many people think they don't have time for sustainability, but that view is a red herring. The Spodek Method acts on strong emotions the person likes. Emotion and values are related. To manifest powerful emotions is pretty close to living by your values, which is what our time is for.

We redid the Spodek Method. Listen for yourself, but I'd say she enjoyed the process. She came up with a new commitment. She also shared why she expects this commitment will be easier. We also shared common natural joys like foraging, permaculture, and wild food.

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Frederic describes his program The Week in our conversation. I did it last year, invited by a friend (whom I misname in our conversation, sorry) and recognized him. Podcast guest and mutual friend Lorna Davis had introduced us before he had started creating The Week.

The Week is one of the few programs on sustainability approaching it as a leadership effort, not management or lecture. Anyone can do it. It's a series of videos you watch with a group, then engage in discussion about it. It's different than the Spodek Method, but shares many aspects.

I could describe it more here, but the best way to learn is to hear his description in our conversation, then sign up for it.

• Frederic's program The Week
• His book Reinventing Organizations

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