March 28, 2021
Liat Arad is the VP of Marketing for UBQ Materials, a company that's spent many years developing a patented process to convert unsorted waste -- everything from banana peels to yogurt containers to mixed plastics and paper -- to create a sustainable, plastic alternative that can be used in the production of everyday goods.
UBQ just unveiled the use of its material in a new sustainable McDonald's fast food tray, through a partnership with the world's largest McDonald's franchisee, Arcos Dorados. (See coverage of that partnership in Fast Company).
The company has also struck deals with the State of Virginia and Daimler, among other notable customers.
March 14, 2021
Jussara Lee is a longtime fashion designer in New York City who came to New York to study fashion from Brazil and now focuses on fashion sustainability.
Jussara joins the Zero Waste Countdown to talk about overseas labour issues in fashion, organically grown fabrics, natural dying, and what the zero waste scene is like in New York with her friends and zero waste advocates Zero Waste Daniel and Lauren Singer.
February 21, 2021
The Canadian federal government recently announced that it would order about 19 salmon farms closed in British Columbia (BC) but without any local community consultation. Farmed salmon is BC's number one agri-food export and provides thousands of tonnes of nutrients to people around the world, so why would they do this?
Michelle Franze is the Manager of Communications, Partnerships and Community at the BC Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA) and Co-Founder and Director of BCSFA Youth Council. She joins the ZWC to explain how fish farming works, why it's so sustainable, and the reasons behind the Canadian federal government's ordered shut down.
![122. Urban Salmon]()
February 12, 2021
Caption: A team led by researchers at the University of Washington Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup have discovered a chemical that kills coho salmon in urban streams before the fish can spawn. Shown here Edward Kolodziej (left), an associate professor in both the UW Tacoma Division of Sciences & Mathematics and the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering; Jenifer McIntyre (right), an assistant professor at WSU School of the Environment in Puyallup; and Zhenyu Tian (background), a research scientist at the Center for Urban Waters at UW Tacoma, are at Longfellow Creek, an urban creek in the Seattle area. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington
Coho Salmon have been dying off in urban areas of the Pacific Northwest for years. Scientists have been working hard to figure out why, but have thousands of chemicals to sort through that enter creeks through storm runoff.
Caption: A team led by researchers at the University of Washington Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup have discovered a chemical that kills coho salmon in urban streams before the fish can spawn. Shown here Zhenyu Tian (left), a research scientist at the Center for Urban Waters at UW Tacoma; Jenifer McIntyre (right), an assistant professor at WSU School of the Environment in Puyallup; and Edward Kolodziej (right, background), an associate professor in both the UW Tacoma Division of Sciences & Mathematics and the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, are at Longfellow Creek, an urban creek in the Seattle area. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington
Edward P. Kolodziej is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington with a Civil and Environmental Engineering background and currently working at the Center for Urban Waters. He was part of a study that isolated the preservative compound 6PPD found in tires as the culprit responsible for killing coho salmon.
Edward joins the Zero Waste Countdown from Tacoma to tell us all about the study, why salmon are so important to the health of our ecosystems, how the culprit was found, and what we can do going forward to prevent salmon die-offs.
Caption: A preservative in vehicle tires keeps them from breaking down too quickly. 6PPD reacts with ozone and is transformed into multiple chemicals, including the toxic chemical the researchers found that is responsible for killing coho salmon. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington
![120. Water For First Nations]()
January 31, 2021
Jocelyn Burzuik, President and Senior Construction Manager at Sundance Construction, joins the Zero Waste Countdown once again to talk about a very important issue here in Canada that she has lots of personal experience with: clean drinking water for First Nations and remote Canadian communities.
When treated water is filtered with chlorine it creates trihalomethanes (THMs), causing problems for northern communities that lead to people bathing in bottled water to avoid rashes, and sometimes people need flights into bigger cities with hospitals for treatment. We also see antibiotics being prescribed to combat H. pylori which leads to antibiotic resistance in our communities.
But can't we just drill a well and be good to go? It's not so simple. Even where I live, drilling a well for one family was complicated, problematic, and expensive. Drilling to get enough water for a whole community in the north is much more complicated and expensive when we add in the costs of getting equipment to remote places. UV with ultrasonics could be the answer.
Jocelyn discusses identity politics and how the Canadian government divides people up by race, which ends up with some communities not being able to share their federal infrastructure with other communities.
Extra Reading:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/attawapiskat-water-quality-emergency-1.5204652
https://canadians.org/analysis/attawapiskat-water-crisis-another-failure-federal-government-provide-safe-water-first-nations
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/h-pylori/symptoms-causes/syc-20356171
