138. Aura7 Activewear

 

 

Aura 7 Activewear is made with recycled fibers from ghost fishing nets and other ocean waste. Their mission is to clean more seas and plant more trees by donating 1% of all revenues to Healthy Seas and with every purchase, a tree is planted with One Tree Planted. The Southern California brand became a celebrity favorite worn by Kristen Bell, Gabrielle Union, Jessica Alba, Lucy Hale, and Keke Palmer to name a few. Aura7 has been featured in VOGUE, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, US Weekly, and The Zoe Report for revolutionizing the activewear industry by bringing in some much needed changes in sustainability.

 

 

Francisksa Bray-Mezey, Aura7 Founder

 

Francisksa Bray-Mezey is a yoga instructor, mother, and founder of Aura7 Activewear. She joins the Zero Waste Countdown to discuss her brand and the sustainability behind it.

 

 

Host Laura Nash wearing Aura7

137. Neatly Cleaning Product

 

Iryna Rosetti Pacheco spent many years as a chemist in the cleaning industry before developing a new cleaning product called Neatly, which comes without plastic packaging or harmful chemicals. 

 

 

Her product is available on her shop's website Dew South, a zero waste shop based in Canada.

 

 

136. Bay of Quinte

Sarah Midlane-Jones is the communications coordinator for Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan, an organization dedicated to keeping the water clean in the Bay of Quinte on the northern shore of Lake Ontario.

Photo of Moira River flowing into Bay of Quinte from https://www.greatlakesscuttlebutt.com/news/featured-destination/come-ashore-discover-the-bay-of-quinte-region/

For thousands of years rivers have been used around the world for waste removal. Cities would throw waste in and watch it head downstream where it's no longer their problem. Sadly this still happens all over the world today in developing countries. When the city of Belleville, on the north shore of Lake Ontario was settled and developed, a lot of waste ended up going down the Moira River into the Bay of Quinte. Locals here still remember when Zwick's Park was a landfill and the Bay of Quinte had a dirty reputation.

Fast forward to today and the landfill mound is a grassy hill, popular for tobogganing in the wintertime, with a few short pipes allowing any gases to escape. The water is closely monitored and usually safe for swimming. The Bay of Quinte is one of the best spots in the world for walleye fishing while turtles, ducks and swans are spotted on the surface.

BELLEVILLE, ONTARIO- AUGUST 1, 2013- South George Park. photo by Simon Wilson/ Canadian Press Images

The Bay of Quinte is an environmental success story and proof that we can restore our eco systems and waterways while continuing to grow our population in a sustainable way.

135. Pipelines on Indigenous Land

Canada has some of the most ethical and environmentally friendly processes for extracting and transporting oil and gas in the world, yet we've become a hotspot for pipeline protestors who often recruit indigenous people to strengthen their efforts. The truth is that not all indigenous people and groups oppose pipelines in Canada for many different reasons. We explore some of these reasons from an indigenous perspective, as well as the process Canada goes through to put a pipeline through or near indigenous land.

Melissa Mbarki is a Policy Analyst and Outreach Coordinator in the Indigenous Policy Program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. She works in acquisition/divestment, environmental site assessments and abandonment/reclamation projects and has joins the Zero Waste Countdown to talk about pipelines on indigenous land.

Photo Source: https://www.commodityresearchgroup.com/us-canadian-pipelines-refineries-map-capp/

We discuss throughout this episode how pipelines are the safest mode of oil and gas transport and when environmental groups block them, it means we get our oil from countries with poor human rights and environmental records while increasing the number of dangerous rail cars and polluting diesel trucks.

134.Electronic Waste With Sunnking

 

 

Sunnking is an electronic waste recovery service in New York that recycles over 25 million pounds every year.

 

Adam Shine is the Vice President of Sunnking, one of the biggest electronic waste recyclers in the country.

 

 

 

Adam tells us how electronic recycling works, why it's so important, and what it takes to keep electronics out of landfill.

 

 

 

133. Love Zero Waste

Evelina Lundqvist and Malin Leth host the Love Zero Waste Podcast and share what it's like living zero waste in Austria and Sweden. 

132. Emerald Packaging

There has been a gigantic increase in the demand for plastic food packaging since the Covid pandemic started.

Kevin Kelly is the CEO of Emerald Packaging, a family-owned plastic packaging company in the US. He's disturbed by the significant, increased demand in plastic packaging on food due to Covid. He's even been kicked out of Whole Foods for trying to bring his own grocery bags!

Kevin joins the Zero Waste Countdown to talk about the plastic packaging industry and what he feels we can do to reduce plastic waste while working with producers and consumers to come up with reasonable solutions.

131.Zero Waste in India

Sahar Mansoor and Tim de Ridder are the co-authors of Bare Necessities: How to Live a Zero-Waste Life.

Sahar is also the founder and CEO of Bare Necessities and joined the conversation from her home in India. 

We discuss their new book, and how the Indian entrepreneurial spirit is tackling waste. For example, spent flowers from temples and river beds are upcycled into powdered colours to celebrate Holi festival each year.

Photo from MemphisTours.com

Photo from MemphisTours.com https://www.memphistours.com/India/india-travel-guide/festivals-in-india/wiki/festival-of-colors-in-india

130. A.I., Biotech, & Palm Oil

 

 

 

Leonardo Alvarez is the Chief Executive Officer of Protera, a biotech company he founded in his early 20's alongside his colleague, now Chief Operating Officer Francia Navarrete.

Mr. Alvarez has a biotechnology engineering degree from Universidad Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile.

 

 

 

He joins the show to talk about how AI and biotech are helping to solve our food waste problem as well as our destructive addiction to palm oil. Palm Oil is approximately a $57 billion market, making it the largest commercialized edible oil in the world. This harvesting of palm oil for corporations to produce many household products can lead to mass deforestation and larger environmental issues that follow. Protera is working on solving this issue by developing a better alternative.

129. Diamonds From The Air

 

 

Early in 2021 Elon Musk offered $100M in prize money for new carbon capture technology and there's a company already using carbon capture tech: Aether Diamonds.

 

 

 

Aether Diamonds is taking that captured carbon from the air and turning it into diamonds, which also alleviates the need for massive diamond mine operations and conflict or blood diamonds.

 

 

 

Ryan Shearman is a mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur with a background in material science and over 10 years of professional experience in jewelry and tech. He joins the Zero Waste Countdown to tell us all about his company that makes diamonds from the air.