Sustainability In Your Ear

Mitch Ratcliffe

Mitch Ratcliffe interviews activists, authors, entrepreneurs and changemakers working to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, post-carbon society. You have more power to improve the world than you know! Listen in to learn and be inspired to give your best to restoring the climate and regenerating nature.

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20 episodes
Updated July 21

Episodes20

Newest first

July 21 · 55 min
Cody Two Bears on Indigenized Energy's Community-Centric Grid Strategy
Tribal households in the United States carry an energy burden 28% above the national average and endure 6.5 times more power outages a year, and roughly 17,000 tribal homes — housing at least 54,000 people — have no electricity at all, according to...
July 13 · 49 min
GoodPower’s Leah Qusba on Selling Clean Energy as Pocketbook Power
In 2024, 91% of new large-scale renewable projects around the world made electricity for less money than any fossil-fuel option,...
June 29 · 1 hr 1 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: Shareholder Democracy and Causeway Impact Founders on Building Shareholder Influence
If you hold a 401(k), an IRA, or a single index fund, you own a sliver of hundreds of American companies, yet you almost certainly let someone else decide how those shares vote. Individual investors hold about...
June 22 · 44 min
Kendra MacDonald Steers to the Blue Economy at Canada's Ocean Supercluster
The ocean produces about half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs roughly 30% of the carbon dioxide we emit, and takes up about 90% of the excess heat those emissions trap, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/ocean. It is the...
June 15 · 48 min
Urban Surfer's Sifiso Gumbi on Organizing South Africa's Recycling System
In South Africa, informal waste pickers recover between 80% and 90% of all plastic and paper that actually gets recycled. There are about 140,000 of these reclaimers, who walk through cities and landfills, pulling trolleys and selling what they...
June 8 · 43 min
Ethan and Desmond Hua Build HOPE for School Uniform Reuse
Most school uniforms are retired while they are still perfectly wearable. Children cycle through them on a predictable annual schedule as they grow, which sends a steady stream of usable clothing toward the landfill at the same moment families on...
June 1 · 52 min
The Institute of Food Technologists' Brendan Niemira on Why Food Science Is Climate Science
About https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food come from the food system, but the public conversation about food and climate keeps getting stuck at the two ends of the chain — what farmers grow on one side, what consumers buy on the...
May 25 · 50 min
SiYE Interview - Trex Makes Circularity Work
Less than 2% of Americans can put plastic film in their curbside recycling bin, https://recyclingpartnership.org/state-of-recycling-report-download/. Meanwhile, the country generates millions of pounds of bags, pallet wrap, bubble mailers, and dry...
May 18 · 41 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: EarthRating's Martin Johnston On Making Sustainability Claims Creditable
A traditional sustainability certification can take six to eight weeks and thousands of dollars in consultancy fees, and still leave purchasers wondering whether the claims actually hold up. Martin Johnston, founder of https://earthrating.ai/, thinks...
May 11 · 46 min
Emerald Packaging CEO Kevin Kelly Delivers Recycled Produce Packaging
Americans throw away nearly 5 million tons of film and flexible plastic packaging every year, and https://recyclingpartnership.org/film-and-flexibles/, according to The Recycling Partnership. The salad bag, the potato bag, the pallet wrap behind every...
April 27 · 46 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: Zena Harris Brings a Green Spark to Hollywood
An average big-budget movie creates about 3,370 metric tons of CO₂, according to the https://greenproductionguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SPA-Carbon-Emissions-Report.pdf. That’s like driving over 700 gas-powered cars for a year, or about 33...
April 13 · 1 hr 3 min
Author Michael Maniates on Why Green Shopping Isn't Enough
In 2024, the global market for eco-labeled products crossed $500 billion. Electric vehicles, bamboo toothbrushes, compostable packaging — the shelves are full of ways to shop your way to a better planet. And yet global carbon emissions hit another...
April 6 · 49 min
Don Carli On Tuning What We See Online To Reduce eCommerce Returns
https://whattheythink.com/articles/129325-the-850-billion-retail-return-problem-nobody-owns-yet/. That's what retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026, generating 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste — and a surprising share of it involves...
March 30 · 54 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: Schneider Electric's Steve Wilhite Maps the Renewable Energy Transition
The global energy system is changing in two big ways: it is moving from centralized fossil-fuel generation to distributed renewables, and it is becoming more digital in how energy is measured, traded, and optimized. Steve Wilhite, Executive Vice...
March 23 · 55 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: Jasper Steinhausen on Making Sustainability Profitable
Most business leaders believe sustainability costs money. They’re wrong. The proof is sitting right under their noses, bleeding out quietly as waste, excess heat, and byproducts every day the factory runs. Danish manufacturing data shows that more...
March 16 · 40 min
Sustainability In Your Ear: The XPRIZE Wildfire Competition Heats Up
Every wildfire starts small. The problem is that by the time most are detected, minutes have already passed and, under increasingly common conditions driven by a warming climate, a fire can grow beyond any tanker truck's capacity to contain. The gap...
March 9 · 44 min
The MooBlue Team Keeps The Beef, Without The Burp
Cattle are one of the most consequential climate problems hiding in plain sight on the dinner table. Livestock are responsible for roughly https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/FAO-Report-Greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-agrifood-systems/en, according to...
March 2 · 51 min
The Forest Stewardship Councils' Path to a Circular Bio-based Future with Loa Dalgaard Worm
Forests are vital for people everywhere. They cover about 4.14 billion hectares, roughly a third of the world’s land, and store 714 gigatons of carbon. They also support 80% of land-based biodiversity. However, we are losing 11 million hectares each...
February 23 · 51 min
The Net Zero Accelerator's Colin Mangham on Nature's Rules for Building A Sustainable Infrastructure
We already have the technology to decarbonize buildings, and many pilot projects have shown it works. So why hasn’t progress toward net zero moved faster? Colin Mangham believes it’s because we’re still using outdated business models to promote new...
February 16 · 42 min
CurbWaste's Mike Marmo Is Building the Waste Logistics Layer of the Circular Economy
The U.S. waste management industry moves more than 290 million tons of municipal solid waste each year. This is a potential trillion-dollar market, but much of the work still relies on paper tickets, clipboards, and spreadsheets. About 10,000...