Episodes
What happens when disaster strikes, a hurricane or fire, and communities are left stranded without power, water, or basic medical needs? Generally we rely on shipping in fuel to power generators, but that's not always an option, and certainly an imperfect one- burning the same fossil fuels which helped propogate the disaster in the first place. Sesame Solar has a solution. Today CEO and co-founder Lauren Flanagan joins us today to discuss her all in one solution for a mobile disaster...
Published 11/14/23
Published 11/14/23
Ted is famously known for their captivating talks on how to change our perception of, well, everything. But what comes next? How do we translate that attention into action? Lindsay Levin has a plan. Lindsay is in charge of partnerships and impact at TED, her mandate is to mobilize the global platform beyond the role of educator to catalyst for action. We discuss how she sees how role of storytelling can unite disparate communities through a collective action platform, what challenges lay...
Published 10/26/23
When we last spoke to Sanchali Pal she was the CEO of Juro. Today, Juro is called Commons, and she has $10,000,000 reasons to be more optimistic about the future of personal carbon accountability. Commons is an app that allows you to track your credit card spend and then offset your carbon footprint, a simple and elegant means of self-accountability. They've also partnered with pre-vetted businesses to offer more sustainable options to the products you purchase regularly. Since we last...
Published 09/20/23
What if recharging your EV was as easy as swapping out the batteries in your flashlight? That's exactly the future Ample is building. In this episode we sat down with Ample president John de Souza to discuss the future of electric mobility, fighting entrenched legacy energy in the halls of congress, what it means to be an entrepreneur and more.
Published 09/13/23
Understanding a forest has long been a marriage of art and science, but without the technology to scale. Earthforce is determined to bring forestry into the 21st century so we might better prepare for natural disasters while protecting one of most important natural resources. In addition to being as serial entrepreneur, Justin Dawe is also a native Hawaiian. Here are a few of the charities working to support fire relief efforts in Maui. Maui Strong Fund Kokua Restaurant and...
Published 09/05/23
Europe has long been more aggressive in how it deploys legislation and regulatory agency to push for a more climate positive future from large corporate interests. Still with me? Great, you'll love this episode. Joost Walterbos is a dear friend, accomplished climate entrepreneur, wildly chill guy, and possessor of great foresight when it comes to translating the transformation we're seeing in Europe to future action in the US. His firm, Hedgehog, works with companies large and small based...
Published 08/29/23
It's morning, you walk into your backyard, stroll over to the Maple by the fence, and have a conversation about the weather. That, my friends, is exactly how the team at ePlant imagines your day will start, and sooner than you think. On today's episode we sit down with ePlant.bio founder and CEO Graham Hine about the company he's built that allows us to, literally, commune with nature. Combining a custom built sensor that can measure tree growth, precipitation, humidity, and more, with...
Published 08/23/23
What if you could build a virtual environment, a la Sim City, but with real world inputs about product pipelines, energy sources, construction cap ex, and environmental impact? That's exactly what Actual is building. Tune in to this episode's interview with Actual President and co-founder Karthik Balakrishnan, and start planning for a better future.
Published 08/15/23
Artificial Intelligence will reshape our future in ways we haven't yet imagined. Electric Vehicles will transform our relationship with transportation. Today we're talking with Jason Koeller, the man who is at the collision point of AI and the batteries that will power the EV transformation. Chemix is making EV batteries more sustainable and higher-performing by using artificial intelligence to optimize battery chemistries. As a result, the company is able to limit or even eliminate...
Published 08/08/23
Jay Kapoor is the General Partner of VSC Ventures, an offshoot of the internationally lauded PR firm VSC. As a seasoned investor Jay, who spent the last decade advising teams and athletes in the NFL, NBA and other major US sports, is now entrenched in the climate world- he hosts the climate pod Climb which you can check out here. Money is important to building a sustainable solution. So is policy, advocacy, corporate responsibility, personal accountability, technology, and collaboration. No...
Published 08/01/23
Tim Hade is the COO and Co-Founder of Scale Microgrid Solutions. He founded Scale Microgrid Solutions to build distributed energy systems for businesses and electric vehicle transit fleets throughout the country. Before joining the cleantech industry, Tim served on Active Duty as an officer in the United States Air Force. His time in the military taught him how to achieve an objective, but when he became a civilian he found it virtually impossible to get the government to do anything about...
Published 06/27/23
The fashion industry is incredibly wasteful. Of the 100 billion garments manufactured in the world every year over 50 billion end up in landfill within 12 months. Inspired by Iceland, where beauty and sustainability go hand in hand, Katla.com is an eco-friendly fashion brand built on the core values of respect for people, animals and the environment. KATLA is pioneering a regenerative fashion business model and recognizes that the needs of the world today demand that we strive further and...
Published 06/20/23
We throw away 50,000,000,000, that's fifty BILLION, single use coffee cups each year, in the US alone. While most of these are made out of paper they include a plastic liner which makes them very tricky, if impossible, to recycle. Sanjeev Mankotia is on a mission to create a better coffee cup, one you can recycle yourself, just by smashing it on the ground. The idea for Gaeastar arose when Sanjeev was visiting family in India. There he was re-introduced the millennia old practice of building...
Published 06/13/23
It all started with a pizza box. Jack Bruner, co-founder and CEO of Carbon Neutral Club, is a reformed consultant, some of our favorite people here at WSTP. After cutting his teeth building vast and complex solutions for the corporate 100's of the world, he wanted to create a company that imbued his values, not just got the job done. Thus was born Carbon Neutral Club, the one-stop solution for building a workplace culture which revolves around education about and action toward a more...
Published 04/26/23
When you’re faced with a giant systemic machine that looks like it’s really never going to change, adopting some sort of nihilistic view isn’t uncommon. Brooke Bowlin’s giant machine is the Fast Fashion industry, which (for the record) creates more carbon emissions than the global shipping and aviation industries combined. What makes Brooke’s situation unique is that despite facing down this giant for the last four years, she hasn’t succumbed to some doomsday-style climate nihilism.And...
Published 04/11/23
Riddle me this: What if all of our clothes were made from seaweed?  This week we sit down with two phenomenal women who are changing the fashion industry from the inside out. Keel Labs was founded by fashion industry alumni Tessa Callaghan and Aleksandra Gosiewski. They’re two business partners who met at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and founded Keel Labs to create ocean based solutions, including their flagship product which is a kelp based yarn.  Here's a breakdown of...
Published 03/14/23
Let’s say you’re a big company. You’ve been making all these commitments recently at press conferences to get “carbon neutral”.” it’s been great for publicity, but now you’re worried because you have to actually follow through on them. You look through your contacts and you’re coming up short. Who do you call? Who can help your company actually go carbon-neutral? Julia Collins. That's who. Julia is the CEO of PlanetFWD, a company that bills itself as a brand’s “ultimate climate ally.”...
Published 01/25/23
Every brand worth their sustainable (or marketing...) salt is claiming a path to carbon neutrality, the bridge between the marking claims and the climate realities is being built in real time. This week we sit down with the hyper-successful startup Patch, Brennan Spellacy, to unpack how they are building the tools necessary to make corporate climate neutrality a reality.  Patch was founded in 2020 but has already raised over $80 million in venture funding from blue chip firms like Andreessen...
Published 01/12/23
Prior to becoming the President and Chief Strategy Officer of Arrival, Avinash Rugoobur, led General Motor's billion dollar acquisition of autonomous driving company Cruise. Understanding frontier technology in the world of automotive advancement is squarely in his wheelhouse, which is why it created quite a stir when he left Cruise in 2020 for the startup electric bus company, Arrival.  Since he joined, they've been on a roller coaster of valuations and product launches. In 2021 Arrival...
Published 11/18/22
As with most things magically, Joro was once an excel spreadsheet. Sanchali Pal was concerned with her personal carbon footprint when she was in undergrad at Princeton, so did as anyone would: she started tabulating the specific carbon weights of all of her choices on what became a massive excel sheet. After Harvard Business School, Ms. Pal was ready to turn this hobby into a force for empowering every consumer with better information about- and the means to offset- their personal consumption...
Published 07/05/22
Put your money where your mouth is, perhaps more effect would be to put your moneys where your values are. Carbon Collective is an investment platform that identifies companies dedicated to creating the technology, infrastructure, commerce and business necessary for a sustainable future, and they put your money to work supporting those companies. The value proposition is simple: if you think that not destroying the earth is good business, then investing in the businesses doing the most to...
Published 05/11/22
We often discuss saving the planet in terms of technological breakthroughs, political movements or individual choices. This week we examine a more fundamental element necessary for our survival: empathy. Jordana Guimaraes is many things. She is an author, an entrepreneur, a global ambassador for fashion, and a champion of human rights. She joins us to peel back the curtain on how her journey unfolded, the challenges she had to overcome both personally and professionally to realize her...
Published 05/04/22
They say culture eats strategy for breakfast, and if that's true it's unlikely Raven Hernandez, CEO and founder of Earthrides, will be hungry any time soon. She's an attorney, entrepreneur, and visionary rebuilding the relationship between ride sharing companies and the people who actually drive the cars.  Earthrides offers a fully electric fleet of cars, largely owned by the company themselves, with employees rather than just contract workers. She's taken the proven model for ride sharing...
Published 04/27/22
Who gets a voice when it comes to the environment? After all, we all have to live on this little blue dot together. Everyone, regardless of identity, has a right to define humanity’s relationship with the environment. However, environmentalism has a long and unfortunate track record of exclusion towards BIPOC and other marginalized groups. If we truly want to save the planet, we need to work towards a future that is just and equitable for all. Who’s Saving the Planet is celebrating Earth Day...
Published 04/23/22