Sustainability In Your Ear

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.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.Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.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.Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

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.Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Read along with our transcript.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.Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.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] to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube