After becoming a renewable energy entrepreneur (think massive kites), Saul Griffith started wondering about the greenness of his own life—so he started counting. The exercise became an exploration, which resulted in the website
WattzOn.com,
a powerful opensource tool for personal impact calculation. Using the
Embodied Energy Database, you can finally determine “the impact of wearing underwear versus taking holiday in Europe.” Griffith explains how WattzOn works (and how you can help perfect it), and why we miss the point when we obsess over carbon.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download....
Method cleaning products are the fitting accoutrement for the style and hygiene-minded ecophile. But Method is more than
boutique toilet bowl cleaners; it is booming into one of the great success stories of the new economy. Adam Lowry, with his business partner Eric Ryan, has reinvented his field (and made huge returns). Method is a certified B Corporation, its products bear the Cradle to Cradle seal, and renewable energy and upcycling are daily fare. Adam Lowry explains to TreeHugger what’s new in the lab, and divulges Method’s problem-solving motto:
“What would MacGyver do?”
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Also check out our interview with
Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab.
Full text after the jump.
...
With his planes, helicopters, and other fuel-hungry pets, Dean Kamen admits that he takes a lot out of the world. This just means that, in keeping with his immigrant grandfather’s advice, he has to put more back in. In the second part of our conversation, Kamen shares his obsession with the Sterling engine, telling about the one rigged into his electric car, the ones stationed in Bangladeshi villages, and the 80,000-pound Sterling sitting in his living room. The maverick inventor also lets us in on his vision of the future, which will see many of our problems evaporate, and new ones born.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Catch
Part One here.
Full text after the jump....
Dean Kamen is the kind of inventor we don’t imagine exists anymore—a fervent polymath like Thomas Edison. Best known as the creator of the Segway, Kamen is also responsible for major breakthroughs in
clean energy,
water purification, prosthetics, and other
urban transport devices. He is the owner of a small island off the coast of New York where he tests his creations. He recently
took the island zero-net energy with solar cells and LED lighting.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump....
Jay Coen Gilbert must be doing something right; after all, you don’t get invited to the White House to advise on economic policy just because you smell good. Along with two of his brainy Stanford buddies, Gilbert has built a certifying system for business. A certified
B Corporation is a new breed of company (the B stands for beneficial) that does right by its shareholders, community, and ecosystem. In the second part of our conversation, Jay shares what happened in Washington, what he’s doing on the back of
GOOD magazine, and shares advise for the aspiring (beneficial) entrepreneur.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Music comes from
Amadou & Miriam.
Listen (or read)
part one here.
Full text after the jump
...
Good business or just good marketing? Green business or greenwashing? Even the most hawk-eyed, label-scouring consumer can’t always know.
B Corporation's mission is to replace the guessing game with rigorous standards to judge what makes a truly “beneficial” company. To date, 179 companies representing almost a billion dollars have become certified B Corps. Jay Coen Gilbert, one of three veteran entrepreneurs behind B Corporation, tells TreeHugger how it all works.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Music comes from
Amadou & Miriam.
Full text after the jump...
In a caravan of solar-powered vehicles, the
Climate Solutions Road Tour traveled India for five weeks, gathering good news of homegrown sustainability solutions. We managed to get three of these messengers on the phone: Caroline Howe and Jitin Abraham—both in Delhi—and Deepa Gupta, in Vadodara. They met the president of India, they took Thomas Friedman of the New York Times for a ride, and by all accounts fulfilled their desire to “create, communicate, and celebrate” powerful solutions for the future.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Music comes from the sun-powered band Solar Punch....
“Radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity,” that’s the X Prize Foundation’s stock in trade. In the second part of our conversation with Peter Diamandis, the Foundation’s founder and CEO, we hear about other avenues for creating big changes in the realms of clean energy, space travel, and the importance of crazy ideas. Read or listen to the first part of our conversation
here.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Music comes from Chris Volpe
See our X-Prize cars slideshow!
Full text after the jump....
This race will draw “a line in the sand,” says Peter Diamandis, the CEO and chairman of the X-Prize Foundation. After the Progressive Automotive X-Prize is won, “there is no reason you should not be driving a car that gets over 100 miles per gallon.”
With the Tour de France-style competition approaching, it is clear that there is more at stake than just the $10 million prize. Even the runners up may find themselves on the front lines of a transportation revolution. “We’ve been driving the same old cars for 100 years,” says Diamandis. Things will never be the same.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Music comes from Chris Volpe
See our X-Prize cars slideshow!
Full text after the jump....
Photo: Mark Mahaney
The Rhinoceros Beetle is the world’s strongest animal, able to lift more than thirty times its own weight. To Natalie Jeremijenko, this sounded like an invitation to wrestle. Via some clever technology (she is an engineer, after all), Jeremijenko is wresting the Rhinoceros Beetle, as well as issuing “formal challenges to swaggering museum directors and Hemingway-esq literary heroes.” She’s also told us about turning Manhattan into a wildlife park, as well as her model urban development (MUD) for birds, complete with ferris wheel, food court, and high-powered rifle.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Listen to Part One here.
Our music comes from
Feist.
...
Photo: Mark Mahaney
If I were in Manhattan, my visit to the
Environmental Health Clinic might involve a session afloat Dr. Jeremijenko’s raft/office on the East River. Under the circumstances, she treated me over Skype, checking my toxics and discussing treatment options, including a pet tadpole and a No Park (an urban parking space-turned-garden). The creator of the
Green Light and other therapeutic instruments, Jeremijenko is a relentless synthesizer of technology, art, ecology, and delight. Our creativity, she says, is one of our most powerful tools, because “if we think of our agency just as green consumers, then our agency is only as big as our wallets.” Which is just plain boring.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump.
Our music comes from
Feist....
In
our last conversation with The founder of Project H Design, Emily Pilloton voiced her frustrations with a design world that has lost sight of its duty. In this segment, we’re taken through her latest project: a math playground in Uganda for the students at a school for AIDS orphans. This new “learning landscape” combines systems thinking and appropriate technology to create something versatile and fun.
Listen to the podcast via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
For part one of this interview,
click here.
Our music comes from
Andrew Bird.
...
The world doesn’t need another bamboo coffee table. Design, says Emily Pilloton, should be about solving our most pressing problems. Easier said than done, certainly, but the young architect/designer is not just talk. Pilloton founded
Project H Design to bring elegant, appropriate technology to where it’s most needed. Chapters of Project H Design have collaborated with LA’s homeless,
delivered Hippo Rollers to Africa (and even facilitated the Hippo's redesign), and
sponsored Lifestraws in Mumbai. And things are just getting going.
Listen to the podcast via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Check out
part two of our interview here.
Our music comes from
Andrew Bird....
It’s just a game, right?
World Without Oil brought people from all over the globe into an alternate reality, a near-future in which we’re sucking the last silted drops from the planetary oil barrel. We’ve seen in the past how games can touch critical issues like climate change,
hunger, and
obesity, but World Without Oil is different in that it is a “historical pre-enactment,” crowdsourced from the minds of global citizens who know this scenario is all but upon us. This is not escapism, says Eklund, this is playing it before we all live it.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download....
Michael Franti is the thunderous voice and poetic brain behind
Spearhead, a band that melts hip hop, R&B, reggae, and funk with a message of love and rebellion. Franti has long been outspoken on issues of political reform, peace, and ecological sanity. His documentary film,
“I Know I’m Not Alone,” follows his barefoot journey across the Middle East, guitar in hand.
Michael speaks with TreeHugger about his hopes for the new president, his efforts to live greener—both at home and on the road—and the making of Spearhead’s new record, All Rebel Rockers.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download, or read the text version of this interview after the jump....
How does an electric eel generate electricity without frying itself? How does a tree move water hundreds of feet up without pumps? If we quiet human cleverness and follow nature’s lead, says Janine Benyus, we see that most of our challenges have already been solved. Ask Benyus how to be a better biomimic. Two words: get outside!
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download, or read the text version of this interview after the jump.
For part one,
click here....
Janine Benyus is the woman who opened our eyes to the practice of modeling technology after nature, a discipline she calls
biomimicry. Drawing on nature’s design library has given birth to
glue inspired by lizards,
coatings inspired by beetles,
turbine blades inspired by whales,
paint inspired by leaves,
fans inspired by the sycamore,
power cells inspired by eels,
bulletproof plastic, and
bone repair. Nature is overflowing with sustainable solutions, she says, but the designers, engineers, and architects “who make our world” aren’t taught how to tap in. Janine’s latest project,
AskNature.org, is her effort to “organize the world’s biological information by design and engineering function.”
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download, or read the text version of this interview after the jump....
Hopes are high for an Obama-led climate strategy, but when it comes to true details there are still more questions than answers. Andrew C. Revkin has stationed himself at the intersection of science, technology, and policy for two decades, watching closely and writing like a madman. Revkin’s reporting can be found in the
New York Times, where he is a senior environment writer, as well as at
Dot Earth. He also pops up regularly on TreeHugger around issues like
geoengineering,
climate taxes, and
population growth. We asked Andy to shed some light on the Obama climate picture as it unfolds.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump....
Despite his own confessions, Pearce isn’t here to preach. He’d rather people make up their own minds about what to buy and what to snub. In the second part of our interview, the author of
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner tells more tales from his explorations into the sources of his stuff. We also get a slice of his
greenwash-busting that is featured regularly in the Guardian, and his reasons for believe that Obama might just save the world.
Click here for part one.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump....
Ever get curious? “Where was my computer put together, who picked my coffee beans, what about the gold in my wedding ring?” We recall when Fred Pearce
set out to find the answers, a journey that took him around the world seven times.
Confessions of An Eco-Sinner is his tale; and what he found was often shocking and counterintuitive (get ready to rethink fair trade).
Fred Pearce’s detective work has enticed us many times as he sleuths
the greening of China,
seed saving,
the population bomb, and “
virtual water.” He’s especially deft at sniffing out greenwashing, for which he has
a column in The Guardian. Fred was kind enough to let us inside his reconnaissance and share how this changed his thinking.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Thanks to Calabash Music for the soundtrack....
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on 07. 2.09
