Most business leaders believe sustainability costs money. They’re wrong. The proof is sitting right under their noses, bleeding out quietly as waste, excess heat, and byproducts every day the factory runs. Danish manufacturing data shows that more than 20% of raw materials purchased by the average company never reach a finished product. In a sector where resource costs account for more than 50% of total operating expenses — compared to less than 25% for salaries — that’s not a compliance problem or a branding challenge. It’s a structural, strategic failure that most business leaders have never been trained to see. Jasper Steinhausen spent two decades watching that failure play out across more than 100 companies in the Nordic countries. He came to sustainability not from the environmental side, but from marketing, where the core lesson was that people act on what they care about, not on what you think they should care about. When he started connecting the dots between resource-flow analysis and business strategy, the conversation changed. Leaders who tuned out every sustainability pitch suddenly leaned in when the frame was cost reduction, supply chain resilience, and competitive advantage. The “green” problem turned out to be a business problem in disguise — and a solvable one. That reframing is in his book, Making Sustainability Profitable: A Leader’s Guide to Growing a Thriving Business That Makes the World a Better Place. A free digital copy of the book is available at freebook.scoreapp.com — Jasper recommends starting with Chapter Three.

The argument Jasper makes is structural. Today’s business leaders have been trained rigorously in managing time and money, but almost never in managing material flows, even though materials dwarf payroll in the cost structure of most manufacturing companies. The result is a generation of leaders who are leaving more than half their cost base strategically unmanaged. The narrative problem compounds the structural one. When every leader wakes up believing sustainability is a cost, a constraint, and a compromise, they never get to the question of whether it might be something else. Jasper’s idea, which he posts about on LinkedIn and tests with clients ranging from small manufacturers to government advisory roles, is that the narrative is the first hurdle. The mental transformation has to precede the business transformation. Companies that clear that hurdle and start treating sustainability as an innovation platform consistently find themselves with a layer of competitive advantage their rivals haven’t even thought to open. Our conversation also covers the greenwashing trap, and how to avoid it by going around it entirely. The problem with leading on sustainability as a marketing message, Jasper argues, is that it inverts the logic. The job isn’t to convince customers to care about the planet. It’s to identify the problem they’re already trying to solve and deliver a better solution. Once that happens to be more sustainable because sustainability, done right, produces better outcomes. “Impact follows perceived value,” he says. A water company with a genuinely pure, chemical-free source doesn’t lead with environmental stewardship. It leads with safer drinking water for your kids. The sustainability isn’t hidden — it’s structural. It’s why the product delivers what it promises. Communicating it means doing what you say, saying what you do, and backing every claim with data and a visible roadmap. That’s not a compromise. That’s the only version of sustainability communication that survives contact with a skeptical market.

You can learn more about Jasper’s work at bwimpact.com and connect with him on LinkedIn.

• Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
• Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe 0:09

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation.

Today we’re going to talk about sustainable business — making it sustainable, making it profitable; in other words, making it a business. Many people still believe that sustainability is just a cost center: a compliance hassle, a PR move, or something that hurts profits. This belief has kept many companies from joining the green transition. Instead, they’re waiting for rules to change or for others to show how it works. But the data tells a different story, and according to our guest today, when manufacturers in Denmark account for all their inputs, more than 20% of raw materials they purchase never reach a finished product. Instead, they bleed out as waste, excess heat, and other byproducts. That’s not just an environmental problem — that’s money leaving through a hole in the floor. And it points to something deeper: sustainability, when done right, isn’t a cost to be managed. It’s a source of competitive advantage that most business leaders have not yet learned to see.

So I’m joined today by Jasper Steinhausen, founder and CEO of Business With Impact, and the author of the book Making Sustainability Profitable. Jasper is a longtime circular economy business consultant to businesses in the Nordic countries. Over the past two decades, he’s worked with over 100 companies and has served as an advisor to the Danish government’s Green Transition Fund. He’s developed a framework — the Impact Blueprint — that guides business leaders through five key actions connecting sustainability with growth, resilience, and profit. Companies that use it have reported their best financial results ever.

So let’s talk with Jasper about common mistakes small and medium-sized companies make when starting with sustainability, how circular economy thinking is really about using resources better and making more profit, and how companies that go beyond compliance can stand out from the competition. We’ll also try to get into some tougher questions: Why isn’t the business case catching on faster? How do you tell real sustainability from greenwashing? And can businesses move quickly enough to meet what science says is needed?

To learn more about Jasper’s work, you can visit bwimpact.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. You can find his book Making Sustainability Profitable on Amazon or at your local bookseller. If sustainability is truly a profit driver hiding in plain sight, why do so many business leaders still see it as a burden, and what would it take to change that? Let’s find out right after this brief commercial break.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe 2:58

Welcome to the show, Jasper. How are you doing today?

Jasper Steinhausen 3:01

Thank you, Mitch. I’m doing really, really well. Looking forward to having this conversation with you.

Mitch Ratcliffe 3:06

Well, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it. You know, like myself, you’ve been working for 20 years or so at the intersection of sustainability and business strategy. I’m wondering — was there a moment, or maybe a specific client, that made the bell ring for you, that these two things are intimately connected?

Jasper Steinhausen 3:23

Well, for me, the problem is that most people tend to focus on only one problem at a time, right? We tend to isolate problems, especially those we don’t quite understand. And that’s not just a sustainability thing — that’s just how our brains work. But the reality is that sustainability integrates into so many areas in a business, as you probably realize yourself.

And I’ve always been looking at the positive side of things, looking for the opportunity. At some point, back in the mid-2000s or so, I was very much into climate. This was heading up towards COP 15 in Copenhagen, so climate was the thing — also for me. I started looking at climate as the opportunity to innovate and to rethink, and thereby to solve more than one problem at the same time, because there was lots of stuff that needed fixing.

My experience from working in marketing right after I left university was that the more I talked to people about what they care about, the more they listened. So I started connecting the dots: what are the types of problems they do care about? Because a lot of people don’t necessarily care enough about sustainability — it’s not their top priority. So I started to look at it this way: What if I get curious, try to understand what your top priority is, and then figure out how climate — or sustainability, or whatever your slice of this pie is — intersects with that problem? And then speak to solving that problem in a way that also has impact. Basically turning sustainability into the toolbox and using it to solve the problems people actually care about.

And things started moving more easily. Conversations were more interesting to people. From there, I’ve just been refining that process for — yeah, 20-plus years.

Mitch Ratcliffe 5:32

Well, as you say, there are a lot of problems, and the range of challenges a business or policymaker faces today is growing constantly. What do you find the primary motivation is — is it profitability, or is it a combination of financial sustainability and a genuine desire to do better? Where does the motive lie these days?

Jasper Steinhausen 5:56

Well, it depends. Usually I just start by asking people: What are your top priorities right now? What do you really want to succeed with? Not necessarily in sustainability, but where’s your head on the line — what have you promised the board, or your senior leadership, or whoever I’m speaking to in the organization? So rather than having a conversation around sustainability, I find it more interesting to have a conversation about what we really want to achieve.

But I do find that many leaders feel a fairly significant pain around the gap between the values they live by in their private life — the choices they make about food, cars, travel, housing, what they buy, what they choose to repair — and their professional life. In their private life, they make conscious, deliberate choices that factor in sustainability. Then they go to work for eight or nine hours a day, and there they just can’t connect the dots. So they’re basically living a split, unable to live up to their values in their professional life — which is a big part of your life. And that’s painful.

So for some there is an underlying personal pain point, but it always comes back to: I’m being measured on delivering business results. And if you’re not in a company that’s advanced and mature in sustainability — where it’s an integrated part of the brand — well, then it’s a distant second to cutting costs, increasing sales, and attracting talent. So to come back to your question: the short answer is that it’s the business side for the vast majority, but a lot of them have a personal drive underneath. They just can’t connect the two, so they don’t even try. When I help them do that, it becomes a real personal relief as well.

Mitch Ratcliffe 8:30

So what would you say is the most common objection you hear when you make the argument to, say, a room full of CEOs that sustainability can be profitable? Is there a common myth you can dispel right off the bat?

Jasper Steinhausen 8:42

Yeah, I guess they don’t say this, but I’m pretty sure they think it — “BS, this can’t be true” — though they’re polite people and don’t say it to my face. But the thing is, I’ve asked people on every continent, and I get the same response: sustainability is a problem, it’s expensive, it’s hard for business, and you have to compromise in so many ways. That seems to be the decisive narrative globally on what sustainability is.

The reality is that sustainability delivers competitiveness. It drives down cost. It drives innovation. It fuels engagement — and engagement equals productivity, less sick leave, attracting talent, more innovation. And combine all those, as you advance further and further, it also starts to lead to increased customer loyalty, because you make better solutions and find people and companies who see that alignment. There is so much business value to be gained, and people just don’t get that.

When we make what I call a mental transformation — before we’re capable of doing a business transformation — it’s kind of like all of a sudden thinking: well, what have I been thinking for all these years? You can read more about this process in Making Sustainability Profitable.

Mitch Ratcliffe 10:31

Well, you’re describing the recognition of a series of connections that constitute the system in which the business does its work — whatever that work might be. And one of the things that was interesting, and why I wanted to talk with you, is that you frame this all initially as a waste issue. I was surprised by the Danish manufacturing results you reported — that 20% of raw materials never make it into the product or service. For business leaders who haven’t thought about it that way, how does framing sustainability primarily as a resource-efficiency problem change the conversation? Does it make it easier to take that first step?

Jasper Steinhausen 11:08

Well, it’s a really good question. In general, it shifts things quite a lot. The thing is that business leaders don’t really know how to deal with resource flow strategically, and there’s a reason for that. From around the early 1950s to the early 1970s — what’s often referred to as the golden age of capitalism — there was a notion of seemingly endless abundance in energy and materials, and prices just kept falling. So it became less of a strategic issue and more like a cost of operations, something to hand down the chain to the head of manufacturing or wherever it sits today. In leadership literature, it gradually disappeared as a strategic topic, meaning that today’s leaders have never really been trained to strategically look at the flow of resources. They focus mainly on the flow of time and the flow of money.

So through no fault of their own — because nobody ever taught them, it was never part of their education or their portfolio — now this massive area has been ignored. I once had an opportunity to dig into Danish national statistical data — about ten years ago, though I’m quite sure the picture is the same today, perhaps even more significant. Less than 25% of costs go to salary. A bit more than 50% is tied to resources. If you combine these two things — it’s kind of mind-blowing. More than 50% of all costs are not part of leadership’s strategic focus. Let’s leave that for listeners to chew on, because that’s insane when you look at it like that. But it kind of just disappeared.

So when I come in and help rewire this connection — have them look at where the resource flows are — it becomes quite easy to see that there are things really going wrong in how we produce today. When I look at a company or a value chain, I basically see money bleeding out all over the place. If I’m asking how we can increase competitiveness and reduce cost, the first thing I’d say is: well, why don’t we start by stopping some of these holes? And the response is: “Oh, yeah, okay — I hadn’t thought about that.” Because that’s just how things run. Procurement procures, manufacturing produces, sales sells, everybody’s busy, the cost structure is baked into the price, and that’s it. Just intercept a bit and show them what it really is, and it’s kind of “holy moly.” And then you can start doing things.

Mitch Ratcliffe 14:39

Well, you’re describing what happens when suddenly the water is off and you recognize you’ve been counting on it without thinking about it for a long time. Each organization within the entity is in its own silo, focused on its own thing. So how do you move from being reactive to being proactive about sustainability? What does the sweet spot look like in practice?

Jasper Steinhausen 14:58

Yeah, well, I guess you could say that things move a little more easily once you align strategy and offering, and you and your team are working toward something bigger than yourselves. As some of your listeners probably know, we understand quite a lot about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. And we know that when we contribute to something beyond ourselves — something bigger — it feels really good.

So if you’re in a company that’s not just about profit, but also a profitable way to be part of making the world a better place — in whatever area fits that company — we can all see that a lot of things in this world are out of balance and moving in the wrong direction, whether that’s climate change, biodiversity, plastics, the amount of chemicals, or something in the social space. Whatever is your flavor, that’s up to you. And the second you can see: “Now I’m part of a team or a culture or movement that’s actually taking some real steps” — and you’re leveraging the full power of a business to do it — it becomes this massively leveraged change. You make better products because you use sustainability as an innovation platform. You put customers’ problems at the center, so you come up with solutions that are better for clients and better for the planet. Your team becomes more engaged, stays longer, works harder. And that’s why they beat the competition. It’s simply a better way of doing business.

Mitch Ratcliffe 17:15

Well, you see yourself within a larger system and a bigger context, and that allows you to find greater motivation as well as more opportunities for innovation. Can you share the principles of the Impact Blueprint — the five steps a leader listening right now on their commute can identify and potentially apply when they get to the office?

Jasper Steinhausen 17:39

Sure. There are five steps: mindset, mission, mapping out a course to move toward it, actually doing stuff, and then going out and talking about it. You can read through all of them in depth in Making Sustainability Profitable — and I’d be happy to gift your listeners a digital copy. Check the show notes for a link to download a free copy.

The mindset step is a lot of what we’ve already been talking about: shifting out of “it’s bad, costly, and a compromise” and into the opportunity space. Don’t start with “what environmental problems should I solve?” Start with “what business problem am I most focused on solving?” and then look at that through the lens of sustainability or resource flow. How does that intersect with the problem? Don’t go in thinking it’s more costly — it’s an innovation game. Find ways to make better solutions.

Mitch Ratcliffe 19:11

Great. We’ll include a link in the show notes.

Jasper Steinhausen 19:15

Perfect. Just read Chapter Three — that’s about a 20-minute read and you’ll be all good to go.

Mitch Ratcliffe 19:23

Chapter Three. Check it out.

Jasper Steinhausen 19:23

Check it out. The mission step is figuring out why we’re all doing this. What’s the bigger thing? Where do we want to go with this? Say you’re a smaller company, or founder-led, or owner-operated — where do I really want to go with this? What’s important to me? And making sure that matches with the business. You can look at a SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — and then match that with what’s personally important to you. Kind of like legacy thinking: what would you like to be known for? Is it children? Is it animals? Is it climate change? And then make sure those match, so you don’t choose an impact area you have no ability to actually move.

I’ve worked with clients who really wanted to do something on climate, but had a business with a very insignificant direct climate impact, or where the impact was tied into a supply chain where they had zero ability to influence anything, because they were a small company with giant suppliers on the other side of the world. So you need to match those things so you actually choose something that gives you a real chance of working on sustainability in a way that also improves your business.

Mitch Ratcliffe 20:56

And those two — mindset and mission — are a great place to anchor the rest of the conversation. What is the minimum viable move in terms of its ability to catalyze the passion you’re talking about for making the world a better place, while balancing the day-to-day challenge of covering payroll at the end of the month? Is there some initial investment or activity that takes you out of your comfort zone — where the silos stop you in your tracks?

Jasper Steinhausen 21:41

Well, you’re very right that getting out of the comfort zone is part of it. I find that the absolute majority of leaders don’t know how to lead sustainability — they see it as this separate thing.

Mitch Ratcliffe 21:54

And I would argue that they may not even know how to lead.

Jasper Steinhausen 22:00

Point taken — yes, duly noted. And especially for smaller businesses. A lot of founders or engineers who suddenly have 20 people on their hands are struggling just to keep everything going. Some even dream about going back to being in the weeds doing the actual work rather than all this leadership stuff. So, yeah.

Mitch Ratcliffe 22:28

The lone innovator is often where a lot of us begin this journey.

Jasper Steinhausen 22:32

Exactly — true. But what I would say is that there’s a lot you can do that doesn’t require big, long-horizon investments. The story about sustainability is very often that it’s about investing for the long view or future-proofing. But what I sometimes refer to as the “brilliant basics” — not a phrase coined by me, but still very valid — is to look at your company and see what you’re going to keep doing for a very long time. You’re going to keep taking raw materials, running them through process A, B, and C, and turning out a product for your customers. And your customers will keep wanting good quality, reliability, and the best possible price. OK — so here is something you can invest in, because it’s going to be ongoing. Are you doing it the right way?

And again, back to the resource flow and waste issue: you are not doing it the right way if you’ve never really looked at it. Unless you’re a very high-volume, low-margin Walmart-type operation that scrutinizes every penny — or you’ve been on the brink of bankruptcy — odds are good you’ve never really looked hard at this. When the Ukraine war broke out four years ago, what we saw here in Europe was a massive, near-overnight increase in energy prices. All of a sudden, companies saw a doubling or more of their energy costs, and for many, that was lethal. All hands on deck.

And within weeks, so many things were changed — none of which required big new investments. It was just smarter practice: let’s produce at night when energy is cheaper; maybe we don’t need the temperature at 98 degrees — maybe 92 is fine. All these things that were never looked at, because it wasn’t on the radar. You can do a lot of that. The minimum viable move is really just getting the basics right.

Mitch Ratcliffe 25:41

So you’re describing that moment of crisis when the reframing is almost automatic — because you don’t have control anymore. This is also a great place to take a quick commercial break, folks, because the wheels have been clipped off the plane. Will we land it? We’ll find out right after a quick commercial break.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe 26:08

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Now, let’s get back to my discussion with Jasper Steinhausen, author of Making Sustainability Profitable and founder and CEO of Business With Impact. So Jasper, one of the testimonials I read about your work is that in a single coaching session, you reframed an entire business through your questions. What do those questions look like when you sit down with somebody who says, “I know I need to do something — I think it might be sustainability.” How do you drill in to find out what they can actually do?

Jasper Steinhausen 26:41

Well, I can walk you back to that specific session, because I think it’s a story that underpins quite well what we’ve been talking about. So it’s a company that sells a water product of really, really high standard, and the founder is passionate about sustainability — but they were struggling a bit with getting traction in the marketplace and getting people to support it, whether that was investors, partners, or whatever. She was clearly more passionate about the sustainability part than a lot of the peers around her that she was trying to persuade.

But the thing is, she had really, really clear water — one of the few sources that could actually claim it was not contaminated with any man-made substances: no plastics, no chemicals, no PFAS, nothing. So I thought: what if we reframe this not as “a sustainable source” but as “better for your health”? How many people walk around caring about what they eat and drink? How many are worried about chemicals in their bodies or in their children? If this was the truly safe source of drinking water, what would that look like compared to pitching it as “the sustainable drinking water”? And she was like —

Mitch Ratcliffe 28:31

However — does that get them away from sustainability as a focus of the company? How do you avoid repositioning defocusing the mission?

Jasper Steinhausen 28:46

Well, the thing is that in order to deliver on that promise, she had to maintain exactly those sustainability standards. I was just reframing from selling the “green” solution to selling the value that comes out of doing that work.

Mitch Ratcliffe 29:03

Back to what I was asking about. So is leading with sustainability the wrong way to think about this, generally?

Jasper Steinhausen 29:12

It depends on your target market. So if you’re targeting people like you and me, it’s probably a good idea to lead with sustainability, because when I’m looking for something, my starting point is: where can I find anyone who’s done something remotely interesting in terms of sustainability? But the majority of people don’t start there. So if it’s green versus better, I’ll almost always go with better. What’s the better outcome that comes out of it?

In the water story, the pitch is cleaner and safer drinking water — P.S., it also happens to be sustainable. And that’s why she would not bottle it in plastic, obviously, because micro-plastics would migrate in and destroy the quality of the product. So it has to be in glass bottles — but you’re still not devaluing your mission. You’re just reframing the value. And basically it goes like this: impact follows perceived value. The job is to figure out what your ideal client perceives as valuable right now, and then show how your sustainable practice supports that. How do my choices become a reason for you to feel more confident in the product — because it helps you with the problem you know you have? And I know that, at the same time, it’s also good for climate or for whatever else. But that’s the icing on the cake.

Mitch Ratcliffe 31:05

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that basing your product positioning on your own preference can be very challenging, because your preference and values may not map to the market’s. In this case, people are thirsty. They want good, clean, healthy water. Some of them — maybe not even most of them — want it delivered sustainably. Is it really important to lead with sustainability in any way, shape, or form? Or is that a subterranean activity? The thinking should be: let’s do this sustainably — but we don’t necessarily need to pitch that upfront. Let your quality speak first: you’re going to drink good, clean water; it won’t harm your kids; and, by the way, we’re going to be able to continue doing this without having destroyed nature.

Jasper Steinhausen 31:57

Yeah, I would probably go with something like that — but it depends on the room. Say I’m pitching this at Patagonia’s annual leadership assembly. Well, it’s probably a good idea to start by saying this is an amazing, sustainable product. They’re exactly the right audience for that. So it’s audience first — it’s page two of any book on selling.

So if people are on their commute back to the workplace thinking “what do I do?” — it’s just business. Sales is sales. Marketing is marketing. Innovation is innovation. What you can see is that sustainability is just an extra layer in the toolbox — and it’s one you probably haven’t utilized, and one that most of your competitors have never even thought about. That’s why you can beat the competition: by starting to utilize a layer in the toolbox nobody else is looking at, to develop better solutions, better business, lower costs, and more innovation.

And once you’ve done that, there’s a completely separate discussion: how much do you want to flag this externally? That comes back to who your target market is. Some you want to flag it a lot. Others — maybe not. “I’m trying to sell this to the White House right now, okay, I probably shouldn’t lead with sustainability. Let’s save that for later.” But if I’m selling to Patagonia, I probably want to flag it quite a lot. That’s a different discussion. You use the toolbox to make the better solution, and then you make a choice about whether and how much to flag it.

Mitch Ratcliffe 34:02

Well, in a lot of ways, what you’re doing is going around the greenwashing problem by actually focusing on why you’re making the decision. Greenwashing is a credibility killer in this space. If you were to go to Patagonia and say “we’re sustainable,” and it turns out you’re generating vast amounts of PFAS you’re dumping into the local water supply — you’re done with that audience. How do you recommend companies communicate sustainability in an authentic way, without making exaggerated claims? Because often, at the beginning of the process, they’re talking about their long-term goal rather than how they’re actually performing today. How do you begin that reveal in a way that lets people see you’re making progress, but without overpromising?

Jasper Steinhausen 34:51

Yes. If I should put this in really plain English: do what you say, say what you do, and be able to back it up with data. End of story. You could add: please don’t lie. In Europe, there’s regulation against this — it’s tied into marketing law. So making false claims is just breaking the law, the same as trying to sell liquor to minors.

But the key thing is: always be specific. Stay away from the generics — “I’m sustainable,” “I’m green,” whatever. No. We have done this specific thing. The problem is that when sustainability is pursued mainly as a branding exercise, because companies still believe it’s costly for business and the only return is PR — they try to push the envelope as far as possible. And that’s where all the greenwashing problems come from.

Whereas, if you go about it the way we’ve been discussing, the approach is: What are the three to five biggest business problems we have? What are the three to five biggest problems our clients have? Go to work on those. If you solve one of a customer’s biggest priorities, you don’t go out and say “this is amazing for climate.” You go out and say “we just fixed your problem — and, by the way, it’s also better for the climate.” See Chapter 3 of Making Sustainability Profitable for a full walk-through of this approach.

So there are three things to try to get at least a dash of in your communications. First, the mission — the bigger picture, the roadmap, the plan, whatever you call it. Show that this isn’t a standalone thing; it’s one in a series, and here’s what you plan to do next year and the year after. Then spend the majority of your time on the actual results: we have removed X, optimized Y, extended product life by Z. And be able to back it with data. In Europe, you need trusted third parties to verify the data. I’m not sure about the regulations on your end —

Mitch Ratcliffe 38:02

— here, we don’t have regulations anymore. Makes it easier, doesn’t it? Ha. You made reference earlier to potentially selling to our White House — which I’d argue is a fool’s gambit, because you’ll get stabbed in the back. But sorry, folks — it’s true. Do you see, in this environment of political pushback against sustainability, that the green transition is actually taking deeper hold — not just in Europe, but in business everywhere — because of the underlying resource-cost crisis you’ve been talking about? If we don’t find ways to reuse and reduce the cost of virgin material extraction, prices will just keep going up. Are we on the path to a greener, more environmentally responsible economy, or is it more talk than action?

Jasper Steinhausen 39:06

Well, that’s a really good question. There’s a long-form answer and a short form. Which one do you want?

Mitch Ratcliffe 39:13

Let’s go short — we’ve been talking for a while, and the commute for our listener is probably getting close to an end.

Jasper Steinhausen 39:19

1. I think we are nowhere near realizing the potential, simply because way too few people have the right understanding of what this is all about. There’s a great misconception we’ve referred to a couple of times, and that’s really what’s holding us back. It’s what makes politicians pass the wrong type of laws and legislation; it’s what makes decision-makers pull back again. It’s somewhere between tragic and hilarious — because in the name of cutting costs and increasing competitiveness, we’re ignoring one of the most powerful levers available to do exactly that. This is probably one of the biggest opportunities to increase competitiveness in our time, rivaled only by AI. And yet, because we don’t understand it, we’re removing focus from it.

Mitch Ratcliffe 40:20

That’s a really important point — and it goes all the way back to the beginning of the conversation. You’re in your silo, focused on your particular challenge. If you just look up a little and see the synergistic opportunities in thinking across silos — first to reduce waste overall, and potentially even to begin regenerating nature by putting raw material back into it — that can be transformative.

One problem a lot of businesses have is that they think of the circular economy only as waste management or recycling. How do you talk about that with your clients? How do you make the case for a full life-cycle approach versus “I took care of my part of the job, I hope somebody else does theirs”?

Jasper Steinhausen 41:15

Well, basically — if they’re not ready to talk circularity, I don’t talk circularity. I might get there eventually, but I use different words. If the reason for taking materials back is to get cheaper or less risky raw materials — because right now they’re sourcing everything from the other end of the world, and we’ve all learned that international supply chains are far more fragile than we thought, what with wars and conflicts and all of that — then perhaps the smarter move is to start sourcing from more regional waste streams. OK, well, then maybe we’re talking about de-risking the supply chain, or cutting cost through access to cheaper raw materials. Whatever it is, I try to listen, tune in, and translate.

I’ve trained myself to speak the language of the CFO, CEO, CTO, head of manufacturing, and sales — whatever the role, I can probably find my way into it. The goal is to make sure they feel they’re on their own turf. In reality, I’m just getting them to use my tools — they’re just not necessarily aware of it. And if they are ready to talk circularity, great — we can go as deep as you like. But for most, that’s not the case.

Mitch Ratcliffe 43:09

Well, you’re hitting on the opportunity of the times, really — the era of code-switching, being able to move from one dialogue to another while maintaining continuity. That’s the authenticity piece, the non-greenwashing part we were discussing a moment ago. If this business case is so compelling, why isn’t every company doing it? What’s the real barrier — is it knowledge, lack of incentives, the need for a new culture, or the need to connect with a bigger culture than your organization? How would you encapsulate that for a business leader who asks?

Jasper Steinhausen 43:49

Well, my analysis is that the single biggest — or perhaps the first — hurdle to get over is changing the narrative. When every business leader wakes up every morning thinking “this is bad for business, this is costly, and it’s going to restrict me and force me to compromise” — and then sits down and thinks “OK, I’m trying to cut costs, trying to find new creative ways to expand into new territory” — they immediately think: “I’m probably not going to use this tool, because I know it’s more costly. It restrains me, and I’m trying to create maneuvering space.” When they think that’s what sustainability is, it never fits the purpose.

The reality is, it fits the purpose extremely well. But nobody knows why — which is also why I spend so much time pushing this narrative by posting six days a week on LinkedIn and being lucky enough to be invited onto programs like this. We need this change in narrative, because otherwise people never even get started. They never get to ask the questions. They never open their eyes to realize: “Huh, that’s strange — maybe we should have a look at this.”

Mitch Ratcliffe 45:19

And it’s because, in a lot of ways, we tell ourselves the same old stories — both because they’re comfortable and because you don’t have to explain them to anyone. As you think about the transition we need to make, what’s that one factor you would urge a business leader to consider as they think about the story of their business — is it the missed opportunity to do the world-improving work they want? Is it missed profitability? Or something else?

Jasper Steinhausen 45:51

Well, in the world of today — where competition is as fierce as it’s ever been for most — I would probably lead with the business side. Just: stop wasting money all the time. Stop that. So you could start by simply looking at what percentage of your overall cost is tied to resources, and how much of what you buy is turning into waste.

Waste is the most expensive and idiotic thing we can create. First, you pay good money to get raw materials. Then you pay people and equipment to work on them. You also pay for marketing, advertising, and sales. And by the time you’re nearly done, some of all of this is lost — and then you pay somebody to come and take it away. It’s lose, lose, lose, lose all the way through. And it’s also bad for the world.

So if we could just eliminate some of that, you’ll save money in procurement. You’ll save money in wasted time, salary, machinery, energy — all of it. And you’ll do a really, really good thing for the planet. And you can turn that into part of your story as well — your people will love you for it, and your clients potentially will too, depending on how you position it. It could turn a lose, lose, lose, lose, lose into a win, win, win, win. Or you could stay where you are and just be damned ineffective. It’s up to you.

Mitch Ratcliffe 47:41

I almost don’t know how to follow that last line — because that is the “I’m just going to stick to my guns” approach I hear from so many business leaders: “I don’t have time for that.” But when you open your thinking to new options, almost invariably, any business can recover. How can folks keep up with your thinking? Where can they see you? Posting on LinkedIn every day?

Jasper Steinhausen 48:03

Yeah, it’s fairly simple, because there’s only one person called Jasper Steinhausen. So if you find me on LinkedIn, I’d really love to have you following and engaging with my content. Hopefully there will be something that inspires you. And, as I said, I’ll be happy to gift you a copy of the book — check the show notes for a link to download a free copy. Start with Chapter Three, as we talked about.

Mitch Ratcliffe 48:29

Well, thank you, Jasper, for your time today. It’s really been a great conversation. I appreciate it.

Jasper Steinhausen 48:34

Likewise, likewise. And thank you for doing all of this. Thank you.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe 48:43

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Jasper Steinhausen — sorry about mispronouncing his name earlier, by the way. He’s founder and CEO of Business With Impact and the author of Making Sustainability Profitable. You can learn more about his work at bwimpact.com — all one word, no space, no dash. And you can download a free digital copy of his book at freebook.scoreapp.com. When you do, check out Chapter Three first.

Jasper’s reframing of sustainability as a resource-efficiency problem hiding in plain sight is an effective tool for sustainability advocates in any organization. Danish manufacturing data shows that more than 20% of raw materials purchased by the average company never reach a finished product — instead, they bleed out as waste, excess heat, and byproducts. And by the way, you can also be wasting electricity excessively or burning too much coal. Don’t do that. That’s money leaving through a hole in the floor, not to mention an environmental impact too long ignored by business.

But as Jasper points out, this isn’t a failure of character on the part of business leaders. It’s a failure of training and culture. Ever since capitalism began, it has ignored the importance of resource costs. Sure, people talk about it — but when you actually look at it, we waste so much it’s insane. Today’s leaders have been schooled in managing time and money, but almost never in managing material flows, even though resource costs dwarf payrolls and account for more than 50% of the total cost in the average manufacturing company.

The second takeaway I urge you to think about is Jasper’s argument that the single biggest barrier to a green transition isn’t regulation, capital, or technology — it’s a narrative problem. In other words, we have to tell the story that becomes behaviors, repeated over and over to become culture. When every business leader wakes up believing sustainability is a cost, a constraint, and a compromise, their mental calculation about its value is over before it begins. Jasper’s bet is that once companies make the mental transformation — recognizing waste reduction, supply-chain resilience, and innovation capacity as the actual deliverables of a sustainable practice — the business case becomes self-evident. The companies that crack this beat the competition simply by using a layer of the strategic toolbox other companies never bother to open.

Finally, there’s the idea that runs counter to much sustainability advocacy: leading with sustainability as a primary value in your marketing is often the wrong move. Jasper’s principle that “impact follows perceived value” makes the job of the sustainable business clear — it isn’t to convince the market to care about the planet; it’s to identify the problem the customer is already trying to solve, and then bring a sustainable practice to bear on that problem in a way that makes the solution visibly better. That water company with the purest, chemical-free source doesn’t lead with environmental stewardship — it leads with safer drinking water for your kids. Sustainability is structural: it goes deeper than product messaging to why the product delivers what it promises. But it’s best positioned as a consequence of quality, not a call to conscience. Yes, it works with some consumers — like myself, who really pay attention — but for most people, we need to lead with quality. And that distinction matters, especially now, because greenwashing remains one of the fastest ways to destroy trust with an audience that cares most about the environment.

Jasper’s suggestion that you should do what you say, say what you do, and back it with data summarizes the challenge for any sustainability effort — whether it’s an internal initiative or the basis for a major product launch. Communicate specific results, not general claims, which we see far too often from companies pitching stories to Earth911. Anchor your results in a visible roadmap, so that your progress today can be seen as the first accomplishment on your road to a more sustainable world — not just the first in a long series of promises not yet kept.

So here’s the tension worth sitting with. Jasper’s model depends on business leaders choosing to look up from their siloed priorities long enough to see the resource flows bleeding money all around them. The global narrative that sustainability is a burden rather than a tool is nowhere near being corrected. It’s still driving policy decisions, investment decisions, and competitive strategy in the wrong direction. The irony is almost painful: in the name of cutting costs and increasing competitiveness, companies are ignoring one of the most powerful levers available to do exactly that — reducing resource costs by eliminating waste.

The window to act is open — wide open — and people are screaming for us to do better. The question is whether enough leaders will decide to stop leaving money and a livable planet on the cutting-room floor. We’ll keep talking with the leaders who do see the light and use it to illuminate the waste we can no longer afford — as a species, as a society, and as an economy.

I hope you’ll also take a look at our archive of more than 540 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear. We’re in our sixth season, and I guarantee there’s an interview you’ll want to share. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us — because folks, you’re the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. Please tell your friends, family, co-workers, and the people you meet on the street that they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.

Thank you for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we’ll be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Jasper Steinhausen on Making Sustainability Profitable appeared first on Earth911.

Before Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took his great big American road trip, Mikah Meyer did it first. 

Meyer is a travel writer and blogger. In 2019, he became the first person to visit all of the National Park Service sites in a single journey — over 400 in total. The full list includes national monuments, battlefields, and rivers — and the 63 national parks that most of us think of when we plan our summer trips. 

Now, with ultra-high gas prices, park staffing shortages, and funding cuts to the NPS, Meyer has some guidance for how to enjoy the outdoors responsibly this summer. He told Today, Explained that Americans should start with exploring their own backyard this summer — and think outside the box. 

Meyer talked with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about the hidden outdoor gems in each region of the US and what his number one spot in the country is. Hint: It’s not one of the heavy hitters. 

Below are some of Meyer’s favorites, divided by region and edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

The Northwest

One of my favorites in the northwest is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument [in Oregon]. There’s a unit called the Painted Hills Unit, which has these incredible red stripes that cut through the earth. And whether you live in Seattle or Portland, you can access it within a day’s drive and you’re not going to have any of the crowds that you’ll experience at Mount Rainier or at Olympic [National Park]. It’s just one of the most otherworldly places I’ve seen up there.

The Southwest

For the Southwest, I would not go to Saguaro National Park. If you go a few more hours away to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the cactuses are way cooler looking.

There are way more epic hikes. There are way more epic vistas and views. It’s on the border with Mexico. If it’s between just Saguaro or Organ Pipe, I would go to Organ Pipe.

The Southeast

If you are in the Southeast, I would skip the crowds of the Everglades and hop a short flight over to the Virgin Islands, where there is an island off the island of St. Croix, which is called Buck Island Reef National Monument. 

It’s a natural turtle nesting ground that you can actually snorkel underwater down a trail that the Park Service has made. It’s incredible. It’s not going to be crowded because most people, when they go to the Virgin Islands, go to Virgin Islands National Park, which is the majority of the island of St. John. And so St. Croix is like the forgotten kid, [which] is amazing. You just have to take a little boat over there.

The Midwest

Through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, there is a 72-mile river corridor called the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and it is a federally protected riverfront that is full of places to fish and hike and run and see amazing wildlife. And it’s one that I actually go to on a daily run every day. 

The Northeast

Acadia is a really popular one, but really close to there and far from the crowds is the end of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which starts in Georgia and runs all the way up to the center of Maine. You don’t have to do the whole thing, but in just one day you could go hike the final few miles to the center of Maine and you can actually see people finishing their months-long trek. 

It’s this super cool experience just as a day tripper to get to meet these folks, to talk to them. You get to the top of this mountain, and you get to witness people complete a historic National Park Service trail and feel just a little bit of that for yourself. 

His all-time favorite

My favorite National Park Service site in the whole system is in Utah. And when I wrote a blog ranking all of Utah’s Park Service sites, I got a lot of flack because my number one was not Zion, it was not Bryce, it was not Arches. It was Dinosaur National Monument. 

Because it’s a national monument and not a national park, most people haven’t heard of this site. If tomorrow Congress upgraded it to Dinosaur National Park, it would get millions of visitors. But that’s just because most people think America’s park system is only the 63 parks. They don’t realize that it’s over 400 sites. 

Dinosaur National Monument only gets 7 percent as many visitors as nearby Rocky Mountain National Park or Zion National Park, but I think it’s the best that the entire National Park Service system has to offer, all in one less-visited site where you, for example, can touch a dinosaur bone if you would like.

Travel back in time to hear the origin story of Algenesis, which started as two companies in one, a biotechnology innovator and footwear maker. Today, the company is a leading maker of bio-based plastics. In 2023, Algenesis had just begun making a new, sustainable material and found a clever way to prove its utility to get big companies to embrace it. Join the conversation hear why a shoe company was the best a practical application to prove the value of a plant-based, compostable bioplastic foam. Stephen Mayfield, a professor of Biology at UC San Diego and director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology, invented Soleic, an algae-based rubbery foam material that can be used in footwear, surfboards, and other products in the place of petroleum-based polyurethane foam. He launched Algenesis, a biotechnology-based materials science company to commercialize Soleic.

Note: This article contains affiliate links that help fund our Recycling Directory, the most comprehensive in North America.

But shoe companies did not come running to use Soleic, which biodegrades completely in sea water and compost piles. Along with Algenisis president Tom Cooke, a footwear and apparel industry veteran who had worked for Reef and Vans, Steve launched Blueview Footwear, maker of the world’s first compostable shoe. Steve and Tom join me today to talk about the evolution of Algenesis and Blueview, as well as the many materials Soleic could replace across a variety of product categories. The companies have also developed compostable, plant-based fabrics and a bioplastic waterproofing technology that biodegrades into organic material in a home compost pile. You can learn more about Blueview Footwear at blueviewfootwear.com and its parent company Algenesis Materials at algenesismaterials.com.

• Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
• Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.

Editor’s Note: This podcast originally aired on February 20, 2023.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Algenesis & Blueview Launch the Algae-Based Polyurethane Industry appeared first on Earth911.

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 partners@liquidonate.com.

• Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
• Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on November 17, 2025.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Liquidonate CEO Disney Petit On Solving The Retail Returns Crisis appeared first on Earth911.

An average big-budget movie creates about 3,370 metric tons of CO₂, according to the Sustainable Production Alliance’s 2021 report. That’s like driving over 700 gas-powered cars for a year, or about 33 metric tons of CO₂ for each day of filming. A single TV season can have the same impact as 108 cars. With thousands of productions happening every year in North America, Hollywood’s environmental impact is hard to overlook. Zena Harris, founder and president of Green Spark Group, has spent more than ten years helping the industry turn sustainability goals into practical steps that productions can track. On this episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, she shares how to build sustainable practices into film and TV projects from the very start, instead of adding them at the end when most waste has already been created. Zena started Green Spark Group in 2014 after earning a master’s in sustainability and environmental management at Harvard. She pitched Vancouver’s major studios on a simple idea: sustainability can save money. Her first big project, the X-Files reboot, managed to divert 81% of its waste across 40 filming locations. Since then, her certified B Corp consultancy has worked with Disney, NBCUniversal, Amazon, and other major studios, and she founded the Sustainable Production Forum, which is now in its tenth year.

This conversation comes at an important time. Soon, California’s climate disclosure laws will require studios to report emissions from every vendor in their production supply chain, both before and after filming. Zena points out that while studios are getting ready, most of their suppliers—like small companies that rent generators, handle waste, or provide lumber on tight schedules—are not prepared. The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance has released Scope 3 guidance for productions, and updated Scope 1 and 2 guidance came out in August 2025, but there is still no single tool that everyone uses. The real challenge over the next two years will be closing the gap between what studios must report and what their suppliers can provide. Zena also makes a bigger point about culture. After 12 years in the industry, she sees sustainability experts facing the same obstacles again and again because the way content is made hasn’t changed. The day-to-day work is important, but the bigger opportunity is in climate storytelling. Only about 13% of recent top-rated films mention climate change at all. Tracking the carbon footprint of a TV season is important, but what really matters is how a billion viewers see what’s normal on screen. That’s the influence Hollywood hasn’t fully used yet.

To follow Zena’s work, visit greensparkgroup.com. You can also learn more about the conference she started at sustainableproductionforum.com, or listen to her podcast, The Tie-In, which she co-hosts with Mark Rabin.

• Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
• Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe  0:00

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.

We’re going to talk about film and television, because every film and TV production starts the same way: with a creative vision, a budget, a shooting schedule, and a huge amount of stuff. Generators burn diesel all day and night at shooting locations. Trucks idle as they wait to move between locations. Sets are built from raw materials only to end up in the landfill when filming ends. Craft services rely on single-use items for literally everything that’s placed on the table for the production team.

Now multiply that by the thousands of productions happening in North America each year, and the scale of the problem becomes clear. The average feature film emits 3,370 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is like driving more than 700 gas-powered cars for a full year. And a single season of a TV show can match the emissions of 108 cars — and that’s not even counting the supply chain, everything that comes onto a set and everything that leaves. Hollywood has promised to be more sustainable many times, and our guest today has spent the last 10 years figuring out what it really takes to make these promises come to life in practice.

Zena Harris is the founder and president of Green Spark Group, a certified B Corp sustainability consultancy that she launched in 2014 with a mission to change the environmental impact of entertainment. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard in sustainability and environmental management, and she came to this work not as an environmentalist, but as a systems thinker — someone who spent her early career in engineering and HR identifying where organizations were leaking efficiency and money. But when she moved to Vancouver and discovered that nobody was focused on sustainability in what had become one of North America’s largest film production hubs, she saw a gap and filled it.

For more than a decade, she’s worked with major studios — including Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon — helping them embed sustainable practices in video production projects, and she’s developed measurable goals and built cross-industry collaborations that make lasting change possible.

She also founded the Sustainable Production Forum, which is now in its 10th year and has become the industry’s premier gathering place for turning sustainability talk into coordinated action.

We’ll talk with Zena about what it looks like when a production plans for sustainability from the very beginning, instead of adding it on at the end of the process like we usually do with all of our waste. And she’ll explain her idea of radical collaboration and why making real progress in Hollywood requires everyone — that includes unions, guilds, city governments, power companies, and those top-talent stars — to work together. We’ll also discuss how she uses the circular economy on set, the accountability gap that remains even as California’s new climate disclosure laws start to roll out, and whether the same systems-thinking approach can help business outside the film world.

To find out more about Zena’s work and Green Spark Group, visit greensparkgroup.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. Hollywood has the power to change how people think about sustainability, but can it also change how it works behind the scenes? Zena Harris is tackling both challenges at the same time. Let’s see what she’s discovered, right after this brief commercial break.

Mitch Ratcliffe  3:49

Welcome to the show, Zena. How you doing today?

Zena Harris  3:50

Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m doing great. The sun is shining in Tacoma, Washington, and I’m happy to be talking with you.

Mitch Ratcliffe  3:59

Well, I’m so happy to hear that you live in Tacoma. I lived there for almost 50 years. It’s a beautiful place, and I’m glad you’ve inherited it. I really like it. But you started your sustainability career in Vancouver, and you had no entertainment experience, and your first project was helping The X-Files reboot series divert material at 40 shooting locations — and you reduced their waste by 81%. What gave you the confidence to, you know, just call and say, ‘Hey, can I make you more sustainable?’

Zena Harris  4:31

It was a little more than that. You know, there was a lead-up to it. I had studied the film and TV industry in graduate school — I did my master’s thesis on it — so I had a little bit of a background. And the reason I studied it in grad school: I was in a sustainability master’s program, and I wanted to figure out how to shift culture. The first thing I thought of was, okay, people watch TV, we all love movies — that’s where I should start digging in to see what they’re doing. And they weren’t doing a ton. They were doing a little bit, but not too much.

So I talked to all the studio reps and found out what was going on and created a whole framework, like you do in graduate school, and wrote it all up. And then I pitched it to every studio. I sent out a white paper, essentially, to all the studios, and I was like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about this.’ Flew to LA, met with people in person. And I’m like, ‘I’m in Vancouver. I know it’s a major film hub. Put me to work.’ And one person did. She said, ‘Hey, you know, The X-Files is coming. It’s a big show. We have room in the budget to make this great. Let’s see what we can do.’ And that’s what really got me going.

One of the first people I met in the industry was Kelsey Evans. She is the owner of Keep It Green Recycling, which is a local vendor in Vancouver. Now, I had studied the film and TV industry, I know management practices and sustainability and the science, and she knew — like, really knew — the industry. So we worked together on that production, and we still work together today. She’s a friend of mine. She’s fantastic.

We got a lot of stuff done on that show, and that was my introduction into the film industry in practical terms. Vancouver, because it’s a major film hub, has — let’s just say — 20 shows filming at any given time. Sometimes it’s a lot more. But I knew that the work I was doing on that one show could scale. We needed to do it on all the shows. We needed to engage the industry. We needed to train people. So I started Green Spark Group as a vehicle to do this in the industry more broadly.

I think my past experience — prior to even going to grad school — in HR for a multinational company, and I was also an executive director at an international nonprofit where we had working groups and people from all over the world coming together to solve problems and create programs, all that gave me confidence to step into the film industry, look around, learn from others, apply my skills, and build this momentum locally. The company, locally, ended up — now we work across North America and even in other countries. So it’s been a journey.

Mitch Ratcliffe  7:52

Well, you point out that they said, ‘We’ve got room in the budget to make this great,’ but that isn’t always the case. So what’s the pitch to a new client?

Zena Harris  8:00

Yeah, yeah. Well, those are the magic words: ‘We can save you money.’ That is it. That’s it. I mean, look, this has been a movement over the last, let’s say, 12 years — that’s how long I’ve been working in this space. And it’s rare for folks to say, ‘Yeah, we can figure this out in the budget.’ Sometimes it happens, but most people want to know how they can save money. So if you can show them very clearly that they can save money, that pushes the door open. And then you can talk about lots of other things too.

Mitch Ratcliffe  8:43

So tell us about The Amazing Spider-Man 2. You saved them a lot of money. How’d you do it, and how much did you save them?

Zena Harris  8:48

I did not work on that. A colleague of mine, Emellie O’Brien, worked on that. That was actually one of the first productions publicized for saving a lot of money. I think they saved something like — well, I have the number here — $400,000. The cool thing about what happened with that, and also what happened with The X-Files and some others shortly thereafter, is that the studio recorded behind the scenes. They interviewed crew members to talk about what they had done. Then they published some of the stats in a case study and a video.

People in our industry love watching videos, right? So we did a behind-the-scenes for The X-Files, which caught lightning in a bottle — really created a whole movement in Vancouver. We showed that little five-minute behind-the-scenes video to everyone, and they saw their peers in that video because they were crew members speaking about what they had done. Things like that really sparked action in people and this excitement that, ‘Wow, things I have seen and kind of felt uncomfortable with — like waste, nobody likes seeing waste — people saw solutions in those videos. People saw themselves, saw their peers, and that inspired action, awareness, intrigue — like all the stuff you would want to create a movement. I can’t say enough about those early videos. They really helped kind of put us on a trajectory for more awareness and more action.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:42

A set is kind of like a microcosm of a city. A lot of stuff comes together and then disperses again. We actually did some consulting a few years ago with Hollywood about recycling the material on site — they use the PCs for the first time and then send them to recycling. It’s amazing how wasteful it could be. Tell us about what happens on a set. What’s the input, and what’s the output?

Zena Harris  11:10

Yeah, you are right. It is definitely akin to a city. I mean, if you think about it, for a large film or TV series, there can be 20 different departments working together to make that project happen. Each of those departments brings in some kind of material, some kind of input. The production office will have lots of office supplies, equipment, office equipment, furniture for the office — that kind of thing. Those things are coming in, and then you use them, and then they go out.

Then you can think of production design and construction. These two departments work really closely together, and they’re the ones creating and then building the sets in the sound stage. You can think about all the materials that might be associated with that. Construction is a big input department, where we’re bringing in lots of wood — and other types of material. It’s not just wood, but essentially we’re building a village inside a sound stage to shoot. And it’s all the wood and any other material that goes into that: wallpaper, paint, all sorts of props, set dressing that will go into that space.

So all that’s coming in, and then we use it for a short period of time, and then we have to do something with it. A lot of times, set walls are kind of standard — they can be reused. These are things that, if we recognize the patterns here, we’re using these things all the time. We’re breaking them down, and then we do something with them. A lot of times the breakdown is fast. You don’t have a ton of opportunity to really think. But if we know that there’s a pattern associated — prep, production, and wrap every single show — we know that we can disrupt that pattern. We can plan for it.

This is where thinking ahead and planning like, ‘Hey, we can reuse these walls. Got a lot of doors here — we’re going to reuse these doors. We’re going to send them to a place that will hold them temporarily, like a reuse center, and then those can be redistributed back into the industry.’ Some productions will store this stuff on their own if they have reshoots they think they might have, or another series they might come along. So all of these are options.

The default historically has been — because this is a dynamic industry, because timelines are short, people need to get out of their stage space — to use it, break it down, put it in the dumpster, get that thing out of here, and move on. So we’re saying there’s another way to do it, and just that alone saves the production a lot of money, because those big dumpsters at the end of it all are expensive to haul away. If we can reduce even a few of those, that is a cost savings, and then that material can be diverted and reused. So everything coming in — food, big material like construction material that people think a lot about, anything coming in — has an opportunity to be diverted, redistributed on the back end. And then that action saves money.

Mitch Ratcliffe  14:59

Well, you describe what’s needed as radical collaboration. I’m wondering if you can explain what that means, because Hollywood’s going through a lot of changes right now, and it sounds like sustainability may be the keystone of some new talent or new careers during the production process. So what are the hardest stakeholders in that radical collaboration to get to move from where they are today?

Zena Harris  15:22

Yeah. I think, like I said, I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and one of the things that I’ve picked up over the years is that people in the industry have been conditioned to point fingers. There are different stakeholders in the industry. Crew will point to the union or the studio, for example, and say, ‘You know, those folks need to do something so that I can integrate sustainable practices.’ The unions will point to crew or studios. The studios will point to production or unions. And so at the end of the day, that doesn’t get us anywhere. We’re kind of swirling in this finger-pointing. And nobody really knows what to do. They’re waiting for something. So progress is slow when you do that.

In order to move the needle, I think one of the things we need to do is actually work together in ways that might seem unconventional or radical. I keep reminding myself of the saying, ‘What got us here won’t take us forward.’ So we have to get over ourselves and do something differently. We know that there’s no single organization that’s going to solve all the problems or change the existing system. We need a different approach, a different narrative around all of this — not just kind of deferring to another stakeholder.

This is what I call radical collaboration, because it’s different. Collaboration between crew and unions and studios and creatives and suppliers and industry organizations — in ways that have been different than we’ve tried before, that really haven’t worked so well, or not to the degree we wanted them to work. So instead of reinventing the wheel on that, we need a whole different tack. I think that in order to see success, we need positive reinforcement for people. We need to actually say, ‘Yes, this worked,’ and in increments too — not just the big things. When people see that positive reinforcement, they actually lean in. They actually have more confidence in what they’re doing. And then this increases momentum. That’s kind of my view of radical collaboration and what I think is needed to keep the ball rolling.

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:07

Well, you’re making a really interesting point, which is that people don’t dislike change. They may be a little afraid of it, but they want to see that the extra effort involved in making the change actually is paying off. As the orchestrator of the sustainability activities on set, how do you communicate that to them so that the Teamsters and the members of the Screen Actors Guild all say, ‘Oh, I’m in’?

Zena Harris  18:37

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. You mentioned a couple of different positions there — Teamsters and actors and these sorts of things. Everybody is coming to the production with a different perspective, a different viewpoint, kind of a different mandate within their department. Like, their job is to do this. So everybody sees sustainability in a slightly different way.

One of the things we really strive to do — and I would say this is kind of a standard practice, but what we’re trying to do as a team at Green Spark Group — is go beyond surface-level conversations. Not just say, ‘Here are a few things you could do,’ but really try to have a deeper conversation with people in each of these departments and ask them what they see, what they need to be successful in doing any one of the things that they might want to do differently, and really help them get there. If they’re afraid to talk to someone, well, we’ll help them do that. We will have their back. We will go with them and be a backstop for anything they may not know or feel confident talking about. If it is finding a vendor and they don’t have time to look around, we’ll help them do that.

You know, people say, ‘Meet you where you are.’ But it’s really going beyond surface-level conversations. It’s really tapping into people’s wants, needs, level of confidence, and helping them grow that and helping them shine in their role — whatever it is. I think that sort of human-centric approach is really helpful, and what really moves the needle, or actually builds trust. Because at the end of the day, we can go in there and talk about all sorts of gear. There’s a lot of gear out there. There’s a lot of batteries out there that are going to save emissions. But I have seen multiple times where batteries have been rented, they sit in the gear truck, and people are afraid to use them. Why is that? Let’s talk about that. Let’s really unpack it, and let’s find a safe space to do it. Maybe it’s that lightweight one over there, and we want to just test it out. Totally cool. Let’s make that happen. What’s it going to take to get there?

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:24

This very meta moment — talking about telling stories to storytellers to get them to change their behavior — is a great place to take a quick commercial break. Folks, we’re going to be right back to continue this really interesting conversation.

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s get back to my conversation with Zena Harris, founder and president of the Hollywood sustainability consultancy — although Vancouver, too — Green Spark Group. Zena, your mission is to change the climate of entertainment, and that has a double meaning that clearly was deliberate. But I’m wondering, in the current environment and thinking about the stories we tell about why we do things, with all the whiplashing political winds of the last couple of years, how has that changed your message and your perception of what Hollywood’s trying to accomplish?

Zena Harris  22:16

Yeah, I mean, I’ve said this a few times. We have a lot of momentum. Right now, in 2026, there are more organizations, there are more people thinking about sustainability, there are more tools out there for people to use. There’s a lot of momentum in the industry. So for us at Green Spark Group, we are on a mission to change the climate of entertainment, and it’s incremental, year over year, year over year — and so we’re still working on it. It’s very relevant for us today.

We have had a hand in changing a lot in the entertainment industry over the last 12 years. We started programs, we’ve created strategic plans for industry organizations and training in the C-suite, and started the industry’s first conference. We’re uplifting people and trying to give a platform to people to collaborate and share their ideas. But there’s a lot of opportunity out there. There are still a lot of people who are new to sustainability, and they need someone to help them make sense of it all. It’s taking all this wonderful information that’s been created by various organizations — and we’ve contributed as well — and distilling it and helping them make sense of it all, make decisions that are in line with their values, and implement the things that they want to implement. Save the money that they can save, that they know they can, when they start doing the math.

Mitch Ratcliffe  24:11

Is the money the key thing right now? Is it the sustainable savings, or is it still a commitment to the climate, in the context of, again, all the backlash against the idea of environmentalism?

Zena Harris  24:24

Yeah, I mean, the idea of environmentalism, I think, is kind of in the broader ethos. I think when you get down to talking to people one on one, they want solutions to things — waste they’ve seen, or emissions they’ve encountered on production, or food waste, or whatever it is. Whether they call themselves an environmentalist or they just are a caring and concerned person, everybody wants a positive working experience. And they don’t want that tension internally between, ‘I’m doing this great, creative, wonderful thing in my job, and then I look over here and some negative thing is happening environmentally or whatever.’ People want a holistic, positive work experience. So I think that’s core at the end of the day — to tap into that, and, like I said, just go beyond surface-level conversations and really help people figure that out.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:35

Let me ask about the other side of that equation, about changing the climate of entertainment. Hollywood has enormous cultural reach, but we did a little research and found that only about 10%, 13% was the number we came up with, of recent top-rated films even acknowledge the idea of climate change on screen. Do you hear creatives on the content side talking about climate? Do they ask you? Do they say, ‘You know, this is interesting, I’d like to learn more, and I might tell a story about it someday’?

Zena Harris  26:05

Yeah. I mean, this idea that the industry reach is certainly enormous — the cultural influence of the industry, wherever you’re interacting with it, whether you love a character on screen, whether you follow an actor in real life and kind of just like what they do, whether you follow — like, I’m an operations kind of person, I like looking at how things work and trying to improve that. But this idea of climate storytelling, a lot of people are thinking about it right now. It’s a huge lever. You will hear that batted around a lot. A lot of industry organizations are doing research on it and trying to get into writers’ rooms and in film schools.

There’s a lot of momentum in that space. We have been engaged a few times in that effort, and it’s proven beneficial. So I would say that 13% — there’s a lot of momentum around this subject, and I can see that number increasing over time. People want stories that reflect the current reality they’re feeling in real life. There are a lot of people working in environmental jobs, or in some shape or form, and I think those kinds of professions will be reflected on screen a lot more in the future. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of momentum in that space.

Mitch Ratcliffe  27:52

I can see a film about a ranger saving a family from a fire.

Zena Harris  27:57

You can think it, they can do it.

Mitch Ratcliffe  28:00

Let’s turn back to the operational question, as you pointed out you focus on that. One of the common problems that production has, along with every other business, is trying to fully measure what’s going on. Like we were talking about, this set is this midpoint in a very complex supply chain where stuff has flowed in, now it needs to go somewhere in order to either be reused or appropriately recycled, but we can’t fully measure all that. What’s still in the invisible category of information? In the same sense that Scope 3 emissions are hard for a typical corporation to measure, is there a comparable issue with production sustainability?

Zena Harris  28:36

Oh yeah, 100%. Look, there are always more things to measure. As an industry, we have focused a lot on carbon emissions from things like utilities, fuel, air travel, and accommodations. We have a really good handle on that. But those are, like, four categories, right? And, as you said earlier, materials are coming onto production — food, wood, office supplies, you name it, it comes onto production. So those are the things we don’t have a solid handle on. There’s embedded carbon and all that stuff.

There are also lots of industry tools, industry carbon calculators out there — some measure more than others.

Mitch Ratcliffe  (interjects)

Are any of them any good?

Zena Harris  (continues)

Yeah, yeah, they’re good. But some have more inputs than others. Some will only measure those four categories that I mentioned. For years, for example, everybody in the industry wants to know the waste diversion rate, right? But nobody focuses on the carbon emissions associated with that material. We just get a diversion rate, and we call it good. So you have to choose: if you want to know all of that, you have to choose a tool that will allow you to input more of that information. And we don’t have a standard tool yet in the industry that everybody uses, so we can compare apples to apples.

We have guidance in the industry, and that’s really helpful. The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, which is an industry consortium, has put out guidance on Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. Their Scope 3 guidance is the most recent, and with new information, new methodology, a lot of people don’t really know what to do with that, and maybe aren’t sure which tool to use to capture some of that stuff. So there’s a lot of uncertainty even around the guidance that’s out there. That’s where you can seek out professionals to help you understand all that stuff.

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:11

One of the characteristics of the change we’re undergoing right now is the recognition of externalities. And in Hollywood production generally — I have some friends who are in the industry — it seems to me that they focused almost entirely on who was in front of the camera and who was behind the camera, and only now are starting to recognize that they’re part of this deeper supply chain. And now California’s new climate disclosure laws are going to require studios to report indirect, upstream and downstream emissions from every vendor by this year. How’s that going to change? And is the industry actually getting the traction on trying to respond to that requirement?

Zena Harris  31:47

The studios are very aware of this. They’ve been preparing for this. The suppliers upstream, downstream are not as [prepared].

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:58

So how are they not prepared? What do we need to do?

Zena Harris  32:00

Well, they haven’t been tracking.

Mitch Ratcliffe  32:10

So they’re the typical company.

Zena Harris  32:13

They are a typical company. These are small companies servicing these projects, these productions. And we’ve been so focused in the industry on pre-production and production — that piece of the content creation process. So if you think of a book that has 10 chapters, we’ve been essentially focusing on one chapter. So you’ve got all of the other ones, and all of the service companies and suppliers and all of that that still incorporates the book, and all of those are contributing in some way.

Now we’ve been collecting data from waste haulers. We’ve been collecting data from people who supply equipment, and even those folks are still trying to get organized with their data. So you can imagine, like every other company, they all have their own operations. So that’s one thing. You can incorporate sustainability into your own company operations, and then you can provide data associated with the product or service that you are providing. And that’s going to matter. Those things roll up into this production reporting, and that production reporting rolls up into the larger studio, who’s going to have to incorporate that into their corporate reporting.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:54

So do you see this regulation as catalyzing the potential for sustainability at scale in entertainment production?

Zena Harris  34:05

Yeah. I mean, I think it provides people a solid talking point to go up and shake the tree a little bit and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to have to be doing this.’ Look, they’re not going to have all the information they need, probably, in year one. So they’re going to take what they do have, and they’re going to estimate probably across their slate. And then they’re going to work really hard to make that better, more accurate in the coming years. So if you’re not asked in year one as a supplier for certain information, you might be in year two and three. It would be wise, I think, to kind of get your house in order and be able to start reporting on these things, even if you’re never asked. It’s good for you as a company, because you start to understand where your waste is, where your emissions lie, and then you can start making changes accordingly. And yes, that stuff saves money. So it’s good for everyone to be thinking about this, whether you’re asked by a studio or not.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:16

Well, that’s really the key — that it’s also rewarding to make that kind of additional positive impact, as well as save some money and make more profit in the long run. I mean, that’s what’s rewarding about progress in general.

Zena Harris  35:30

Totally, totally. It’s a ripple effect, right? And then we just get better as an industry, and then an industry that contributes to broader society.

Mitch Ratcliffe  35:40

So after 10 years, how far has the industry come toward the vision that you had when you started Green Spark Group?

Zena Harris  35:50

Oh, gosh. Well, there’s a lot that has happened over these years. Like I said, more people are aware, more people are engaged. But I think that we are swirling within the existing system. Sustainability practitioners that started working on production like I did years ago — we just entered this existing content creation system. And what I’m noticing now is that we’re swirling within the same system. We’re all running up against similar challenges around the world with regard to implementing sustainable practices. So we’re coming up against consistent hurdles, barriers within this system.

For me, that’s an opportunity to look a little bit bigger and say, ‘Okay, well, if we keep running into the same barriers, what if the system shifted? What if the entire system shifted? What are the incentives involved in the system to keep it the way it is?’ And there’s a lot — that’s a whole separate podcast — but all to say, this is where we need to be thinking: how we shift the system, how we have that radical collaboration, how we shift the needle on what suppliers are doing and reporting, and these sorts of things. And that’s what’s going to take us to the next level. We’re going to get over the hump.

Mitch Ratcliffe  37:34

So, given that, imagine that you are Zena, goddess of sustainability, and can put your finger on one thing and change it. What would it be, in order to drive much more rapid transition to a more sustainable production environment?

Zena Harris  37:51

I mean, I think it all comes down to the people — the people in the system that are either allowing or not allowing, either making excuses or open to possibility. It all comes down to that. There are some core elements associated with people, behavior change, these sorts of things. I think mindset is core, absolutely core. I think courage — even to talk about this stuff within your small team or your department, or even in a larger conversation — is pretty critical, to voice some things you’re noticing, or what ideas you have for doing things differently. I think that collective confidence — once you do that, people get on board. They come together. Confidence is critical as well. If you don’t have it, you’re not going to take the next step, right? So there are fundamental human elements that need to be developed, to be encouraged, to be demonstrated. And I think that is going to shift the needle.

Mitch Ratcliffe  39:08

It’s a storytelling challenge in a lot of ways. There’s some carrot, there’s some stick, there’s a lot of nuance to that tale that we need to really make embedded into everybody’s approach to thinking about the work. Zena, thanks so much for your time today. How can folks follow both Green Spark Group and the work you’ve done with the Sustainable Production Forum?

Zena Harris  39:28

Sure. You’re always welcome to check out our website, greensparkgroup.com. We post insights there monthly and have a lot of great information for folks. Also on social media at @greensparkgroup — pick a platform, we’re probably on it. And then the Sustainable Production Forum is online as well, sustainableproductionforum.com, and from there you can get to all of their content, videos, anything you want to know is there too.

And I’ll also just give a quick plug for my podcast that I co-host with my longtime friend Mark Rabin. It’s called The Tie-In, and so folks can also check out stories from crew members, from people doing amazing work behind the scenes. We talk to them all there.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:21

Zena, thanks so much. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Really enjoyed it.

Zena Harris 

Thank you.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:31

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Zena Harris, founder and president of Green Spark Group, the certified B Corp sustainability consultancy she launched in 2014 to change the climate of entertainment. You can find Zena and her team’s work at greensparkgroup.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. And check out their conference, the Sustainable Production Forum, now in its 10th year, at sustainableproductionforum.com, also all one word, no space, no dash.

I think the headline from Zena’s work is a pitch, not a principle: ‘We can save you money.’ That’s how she opens a conversation with a studio, and it’s why The Amazing Spider-Man 2 became an early case study, based on the work of a colleague of hers at Green Spark who helped that production save roughly $400,000 through sustainable practices. The implications of these savings are clear when you stand next to the dumpster at the end of a chute and watch a village’s worth of lumber, furniture, wallpaper, and props get hauled away to a landfill because the stage needs to be empty by Monday.

The sustainability opportunity in film and TV isn’t a values problem — the industry’s values are already stated on the record. It’s an operational capacity problem, and Zena’s work is translating aspiration into line items a production accountant can track. And that’s to the benefit of the environment, even if it’s not visible on the bottom line.

California’s new climate disclosure laws are about to change the equation, too. Beginning this year, studios will have to report upstream and downstream emissions from every vendor in their production supply chain. That’s the chapter of the book, as Zena put it, that the industry has never actually opened. The studios knew that this is coming, and they’ve been preparing for it. Their suppliers — the small companies servicing productions on short timelines — mostly haven’t. That gap is the real story over the next 24 months in the entertainment sustainability business.

Zena’s advice to suppliers is the same advice my recent guest Steve Wilhite, who leads Schneider Electric’s power management division, offered corporate energy buyers just a few weeks ago: get your house in order now, because even if you’re not asked for data today, you will be in two or three years. The companies that can report cleanly will win work, while those that can’t will become a balance sheet burden to the studios.

A digital nervous system is arriving now in Hollywood, and every waste hauler, every generator rental company, every lumber supplier is becoming a data-producing node in a network that didn’t exist just one or two production cycles ago. California’s environmental policy is forcing that network into being, and once it exists, it will not unbuild itself, because people are going to see the benefits. They’re going to see the savings that we’ve been talking about throughout this conversation.

And after 12 years in the business, I think Zena’s comment near the end of our conversation — that sustainability practitioners in entertainment are ‘swirling within the existing system’ — is important to note. The hurdles they hit on one production look identical to the hurdles they hit on the next, because the content creation system itself hasn’t changed. That’s the green living myth problem I discussed recently with author Michael Maniates, but with a Hollywood accent: individual actors are doing the right thing inside a structure that continues to produce the same outputs by default. And that can easily become disenchanting. On-set greening is necessary and it’s real, but the industry’s deepest cultural lever is the one that we discussed in passing.

Only about 13% of recent top-rated films even acknowledge climate change on screen. The carbon accounting for a single TV season matters, but the cultural accounting — for what a billion viewers see, what they feel is normal, and what film and television characters drive and eat and care about — that’s the lever that this industry hasn’t yet pulled. Production sustainability builds the operational muscle and the credibility, but climate storytelling is where that credibility will be built at scale, because it will spread these ideas, changing not only Hollywood’s practices, but the practices of an entire world. One without the other leaves the most influential narrative engine on the planet running on the old script, and it’s time for a change.

So stay tuned. We’re going to keep talking with people rewriting what’s possible on set and on screen. And could you take a moment to help spread the word about the sustainable future we can build together? You are the amplifier that can spread more ideas to create less waste. So please take a look at any of the more than 550 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear in our archives. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. So please tell your friends, family, and co-workers they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.

Thank you, folks, for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Zena Harris Brings a Green Spark to Hollywood appeared first on Earth911.

Read a transcript of this episode. Subscribe to receive transcripts.

• Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
• Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired on December 29, 2025.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Dandelion Energy CEO Dan Yates On How Geothermal Leasing Could Transform Home Heating and Cooling appeared first on Earth911.

The built environment, particularly office buildings other urban facilities, are responsible for 39% of the global energy-related emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. About a third of that impact comes from the initial construction of a building and the other two-thirds is produced over the lifetime of a building by heating, cooling, and providing power to the occupants. Our guest today is leading a key battle to reduce the impact of the built environment. Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation with Rob Bernard, Chief Sustainability Officer at CBRE Group Inc., which manages more than $145 billion of commercial buildings, providing logistics, retail, and corporate office services across more than than 100 countries.

Rob cut his sustainability teeth at Microsoft, as its Chief Environmental Strategist for 11 years, as the company was developing its world-leading approach and collaborating with other tech giants to lobby for policy and funding to accelerate progress. He discusses CBRE’s Sustainability Solutions & Services for commercial building owners, as well as the accelerating progress for renewables, carbon tracking, and economic, health, and lifestyle benefits of living lightly on the planet. You can learn more about CBRE and its sustainability services at cbre.com

Take a few minutes to learn more about making construction and building operations more sustainable:

• Earth911 Podcast: Cityzenith’s Michael Jansen Uses Digital Twins to Reinvent Urban Planning
• Earth911 Podcast: Concrete.ai CEO Alex Hall On Mixing Embodied Carbon Out Of the Built Environment
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: Lowering Construction Impacts With Green Badger’s Tommy Linstroth
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: William Ulrich on Learning From Y2K To Design the Circular Economy
• Best of Earth911 Podcast: Autodesk Spacemaker Aides Building Efficiency With AI Insights
• How to Assess Your Business’ Environmental and Social Impacts
• Passive House Design: Changing the Future of New Home Construction

• Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
• Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.

Editor’s Note: This podcast originally aired on April 15, 2024.

The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Making Billions of Square Feet of Commercial Space Sustainable with CBRE’s Rob Bernard appeared first on Earth911.

In South Africa, informal waste pickers recover between 80% and 90% of all plastic and paper that actually gets recycled. There are about 140,000 of these reclaimers, who walk through cities and landfills, pulling trolleys and selling what they collect to make a living. Each person can keep up to 24 tons of material out of landfills every year. Together, they saved municipalities R750 million (about $45 million) in landfill costs in just one year, yet they do this work without recognition, protection, or a formal role in the waste system.

Sifiso Gumbi began as a reclaimer at 19, collecting scrap metal in Soweto after school. After 15 years in the informal recycling economy, he founded Urban Surfer South Africa, a Johannesburg-based social enterprise that believes the people already doing recycling work should be supported and equipped, not replaced. Urban Surfer creates essential tools like PPE and collection trolleys with personalized number plates, helping reclaimers become recognized workers in their neighborhoods. The organization also runs four recycling hubs where reclaimers can sort and bale their materials to sell at better prices, cutting out the middlemen who used to buy their collections for much less than market value.

Urban Surfer tracks everything with GPS-enabled trolleys and a live dashboard, and this approach has increased reclaimer incomes by up to 300%. In this episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, Sifiso talks about why dignity is key to better recycling rates, how aluminum can prices show what gets collected and what ends up in landfills, and what it would take to expand this model across South Africa and the continent.

One key idea keeps coming up in the conversation: reclaimers are like an R&D department that no one asks for advice. In South Africa, aluminum cans sell for 28 to 30 rand per kilogram, and reclaimers collect them so thoroughly that Sifiso says finding one on the street is as rare as finding a dollar bill on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, materials with lower value end up piling up in landfills, which are quickly filling up in Johannesburg and Gauteng.

Companies that want their packaging recovered can learn from the people who decide every day what is worth picking up. Data is also important. Urban Surfer tracks every kilogram by material type and price at its hubs. As carbon and plastic credits become more common, reclaimers will have verified, real-time records of the work they have already done. Sifiso is honest about the challenges: four hubs are not enough for Gauteng, and there are always limits on land and equipment funding.

But the bigger challenge is building trust between waste pickers and a public that still sees them as vagrants, and between the informal workforce and the policymakers and companies whose programs will only work if rebates actually reach the people doing the collecting. This conversation asks whether a truly circular economy can be built by supporting the people who are already making it happen.

To learn more about Urban Surfer and to explore partnership and sponsorship opportunities that equip reclaimers with trolleys, protective gear, and recycling hub infrastructure visit urbansurfer.co.za.

• Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
• Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube

Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe  0:10

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today. We’re going to talk about waste pickers.

The way most of us picture recycling is a municipal one — a truck, a sorting facility, a system run by a city or a company — but across much of the world, that’s not the right picture. In South Africa, the overwhelming majority of plastic and paper that actually gets recycled is recovered not by any formal program, but by informal waste reclaimers, an estimated 140,000 people who move through cities and landfills on foot, pulling trolleys, collecting and sorting recyclable material, and selling it to survive. Each one diverts as much as 24 tons of waste from the country’s landfills every year. Collectively, they’ve saved municipalities hundreds of millions of rand in landfill costs and built the backbone of a recycling economy, all without recognition, protection, or a place in the official system.

It is some of the most environmentally valuable work being done anywhere, and it’s performed by some of the most marginalized people in the country. Reclaimers face social stigma and frequent harassment, and they work in unsafe conditions, exposed to chemicals and traffic. And because they are unorganized, they are often exploited by the middlemen, who buy their materials for a fraction of what it’s worth. The environmental service they provide is quite literally free, and the people providing it are largely invisible to the public they serve.

Our guest today has spent 15 years trying to change that. Sifiso Gumbi is the founder of Urban Surfer South Africa, a Johannesburg-based social enterprise built on the simple conviction that the people already doing the work of recycling should be supported, equipped, and recognized, not replaced. Urban Surfer designs and provides the tools of the trade, starting with a collection trolley developed alongside reclaimers over two years and 50,000 kilometers of real-world use, and that’s complete with a personalized number plate that gives its owner a sense of belonging and a measure of public legitimacy. The organization runs sorting and baling camps that connect reclaimers to offtake agreements and producer responsibility rebates, cutting out the middlemen and raising what reclaimers actually earn. It offers training, protective equipment, and mental health support, and it tracks the whole operation through GPS-enabled trolleys and a live reporting dashboard, turning work that was once invisible into measurable, documented impact.

Running underneath all of this is a word that Sifiso returns to again and again in his speeches and writing: dignity. Urban Surfer’s mission is framed not first in tons diverted, but in belonging — the right of a reclaimer to be seen as an essential worker rather than a nuisance, with a special focus on women and youth, who make up much of this workforce. That framing has earned Sifiso recognition as South African Environmentalist of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year, a TEDx Johannesburg stage appearance, and the endorsement of city and provincial governments that now rely on his data to plan their own waste systems.

So, we’ll talk with Sifiso about what 15 years among reclaimers has taught him that no policy paper could, why he believes dignity and recognition are inseparable from recycling rates, and how a better trolley changes the way a person is treated on the street. We’ll also dig into how his camps and offtake deals reshape reclaimers’ income, why he built a data infrastructure into grassroots work, and how he persuades corporations to see reclaimers as partners rather than a line item. Then there’s the big argument that his work makes: that a genuinely circular economy has to be built on the people who already live in it, not by bypassing them.

To learn more about Urban Surfer, visit urbansurfer.co.za — Urban Surfer, all one word, no space, no dash. That’s urbansurfer.co.za. What would it take to see the people who already recycle most of a nation’s waste not as invisible labor, but as the foundation for the circular economy? Let’s find out right after this brief commercial break. Welcome to the show, Sifiso. How are you doing today?

Sifiso Gumbi  4:36

I’m doing amazing. How are you, Mitch?

Mitch Ratcliffe  4:38

I am well. I am well. Now, you’re in Johannesburg, and you’ve spent 15 years working alongside informal waste reclaimers in South Africa. Can you take us back to that moment when you first realized that there was an opportunity and a need to organize informal recycling?

Sifiso Gumbi  4:53

I was 19 when I realized, because that’s when I was really starting out, you know, into the whole space as a waste reclaimer. And the one thing I realized was that I could actually grow within, you know, the industry, because I could just see all around me. Growing up — I come from Soweto — we used to have a massive challenge with illegal dumping sites, and on close examination of all the waste, you know, that was being dumped, it was actually waste that one could, you know, actually recycle. And what I then realized was that, you know, there will always be waste for as long as there are people, because for as long as there are people, there’ll always be consumption. And I just saw this as an opportunity that really guaranteed a career for me, because all I needed was, you know, access to the waste.

Mitch Ratcliffe  5:41

You literally saw a greenfield opportunity in waste — that there was just so much of it lying around of value that it could be, if organized correctly, a lot more valuable to the waste reclaimer, and there’s sufficient profit for you to grow an organization.

Sifiso Gumbi  5:59

Absolutely, that’s what it was. I didn’t realize the many challenges I was going to come across as, you know, an informal reclaimer.

Mitch Ratcliffe  6:07

For listeners who have never seen South Africa, can you explain the society in which a reclaimer works, and what a typical day looks like for one of them?

Sifiso Gumbi  6:16

So, a typical day for a reclaimer — they start their day very early. We do have a waste management system here in South Africa. Each metro has one, and each local municipality has one. So, how it works is that there’s a municipal bin truck that comes through on every business day to collect waste. The municipal bin truck will come and collect a bin, it gets tipped into a truck, which is a compactor truck, and that truck takes all of that waste to the landfill. So they usually come in the morning, so your typical waste picker has to get to the bin before the municipal truck gets there.

So a day in the life of a South African waste picker consists of waking up very early, so that you can get to people’s bins before the municipal truck gets there, you know, open those bins and literally go through such bins to recover recyclable waste material before the municipal bin truck gets there. And then from there you load it up in a makeshift trolley using bulk bags that, you know, are normally used for sugar, soy, maize, even manure. I think maybe you do use those bulk bags in America, but that’s what waste pickers use here in South Africa. So they use them as containers to load up all the collected recyclable material.

Then from there, the material is taken to informal waste sorting sites. You know, they don’t sort where they collect. So where they collect, they just collect everything and just tie it up into the bag, load it up on the trolley, pull the trolley to, you know, whatever informal setting they have — any piece of land that they find, they use for sorting. So there the sorting takes place: you know, the plastics are separated, the paper is separated, the metal is separated, aluminum is separated. And then once the material is separated and carefully segregated, it is then, once a week, sold off to the buyback centers or the neighboring recycling companies.

Mitch Ratcliffe  8:27

So does that produce a better-sorted load for the recycling off-takers, the organizations that buy the material? It sounds like it’s competing with the municipal system to do a better job of sorting.

Sifiso Gumbi  8:39

The municipal system is not concerned about the recovery of waste for recycling. The municipal system is mainly concerned with the recovery of waste for disposal, so that the waste is removed from, you know, people’s backyards and, you know, people’s bins. So that’s what it’s all about, you know. For the longest time — the City of Johannesburg, the City of Ekurhuleni, the City of Tshwane, I can think of all the major metros and all the local governments — we’ve relied heavily on the use of landfill space, which we are now running out of. So, the system was really simple: collect and dispose. Waste pickers are the only ones that are collecting for value, you know, and collecting with the intent of recycling, because that’s their livelihood. They actually make their money from the recycling. The municipality really doesn’t, and they didn’t really care about that, you know, because they make their money anyway.

Mitch Ratcliffe  9:33

So, in a way, this is a self-organizing solution for recycling that was simply being ignored by government.

Sifiso Gumbi  9:39

Absolutely. It’s been around for more than 30 years, largely informal — I would say totally and absolutely informal. If you look at the current South African statistics, when it comes to recycling, the main contributors are waste pickers. The reason why we have a recycling rate at all is due to the efforts of, you know, informal waste pickers.

Mitch Ratcliffe  10:01

So these people do really, really important work, and your tagline is empowering people and transforming waste, but you talk a lot about dignity, not just recycling rates. Why is dignity at the center of how you think about this work?

Sifiso Gumbi  10:17

Because that’s where we have to start. Before we get to anything else, we need to first recognize waste pickers, not only as essential environmental custodians, but firstly as people. Dealing with waste reduces you to a level, especially in this country — and I think it may be the same thing in other countries — it reduces you to a state where people don’t even see you as a human being. They see you as a vagrant, they see you as the scum of the earth, because no one wants to, like — I mean, if you think about it, no one wants to deal with rubbish, no one wants to deal with waste, no one wants to handle all of that grimy stuff, you know. So when you do, instead of being recognized and applauded for, you know, such a huge sacrifice, one is usually seen as being of the same value as that waste you are dealing with.

So the first thing, you know, we try and advocate for is the humanization and dignity of reclaimers. And how do we do that? Firstly, it’s by kitting them out, or providing them with the correct PPE, so that they are presentable and they are more approachable and they are more visible and they’re more humanized. Because most waste pickers you come across, they deal with waste on a daily basis, so of course they won’t look as glamorous as someone who drives an Uber or someone who works at a restaurant or someone who works at a hotel or someone who works at a factory, you know. They’re waste pickers, they deal with waste, you know. So usually, you know, because they don’t earn even as much, you know, their clothing items are usually soiled, the way they look is usually dirty, because of the work that they do. You know, if you deal with a mechanic, a mechanic looks like a mechanic — he will be covered in oil. If you’re dealing with a waste picker, a waste picker will look like a waste picker, because he has to deal with waste on a daily basis, you know. And because of that image, you know, the public perception around waste pickers is really, really negative.

So we advocate for their dignity and recognition first, before anything else. We want people to understand the work that waste pickers do, we want people to understand that waste pickers are humans, we want people to understand that they’re doing an amazing job, not only for these communities that do not see them as people, but for the environment as a whole.

Mitch Ratcliffe  12:30

What you’re describing is so important to understanding where the opportunity to raise up people lies in the circular economy. I’ve been involved in a little bit of this kind of work in South America, and the organization that I was consulting with paid a generous rate to trash pickers. They supported local programs that included decorating their trolleys, which gave them a real sense of pride that recognized their humanity, as you’re talking about. Tell us about how you work with a group of reclaimers to develop the trolleys that make their work easier.

Sifiso Gumbi  13:07

The first trolley that we developed was an amazing solution, and I’ll touch base on that as I expand into the whole picture that I’m going to paint for you. Most waste pickers use makeshift solutions. From the trolleys that they use — it’s all makeshift — to the PPE that they come across. They don’t have any PPE, you know, so if they find an apron that, you know, is protective gear, anything to use — from even a, we call them balaclavas here in South Africa, some people call them ski masks, you know — they wear those as protective wear. So it’s all very makeshift.

So we decided to engage them and understand, you know, what type of trolley they would, you know, like to have, and you know, what features it would have. And we realized that most of the reclaimers we were, you know, interviewing at the time were camping in open fields. And they did that because one would leave their respective township to go and try and, you know, make a living from recovering waste from the affluent neighborhoods like Sandton and Bryanston, you know, all these fancy suburbs, you know, that are away from the townships. That’s where they usually find the most waste. And because it’s so far from the township, they were now forced to, you know, camp in the open, you know, to store their recyclables, sort their recyclables, and then maybe sell their recyclables. So they couldn’t, after collecting, take their recyclables back to their townships, because the townships are like 30 kilometers away, or even more.

So, one of them said — I think several of them said — you know, if I could perhaps be able to sleep inside my trolley, that would be amazing. And so we designed a trolley that, firstly, could accommodate a bulk bag that was specifically designed to store recyclable material, you know, that could fit the trolley and carry as much as 300 kilograms onto the trolley. Secondly, we then came up with a solution to have a foldable tent that one can, you know, keep in a compartment on the trolley as they go out to collect on their daily activities, and then later on, one could be able to deploy that tent over the trolley, and they could have overnight shelter as they camped in whatever spaces they had found to store their recyclables in and camp. So when we started out, all of our trolleys had shelter — those temporary tents they could put up at night, impermeable to water, so they were protected whenever it was raining, and quite warm enough for winter.

But with that solution, what we found was that most of the reclaimers became really comfortable with that functionality in their trolleys, and they then ended up using those trolleys as mobile homes instead of using them for recycling. So what they would do is that they would park those trolleys, you know, with the tent fully set up, and then take their makeshift trolleys and go into the field to collect recyclables, which created a massive problem now for the municipality, because all of a sudden now you have all these, you know, temporary homes springing up all over the show, and we unfortunately had to cut that solution.

Sifiso Gumbi  16:30

So, what we now do is the trolleys that we roll out to reclaimers, they have personalized plates that have the waste picker’s nickname, you know, for relatability, and they also have a back panel that usually has a logo of, you know, whatever sponsor, you know, comes in to help us, you know, on a project that supports reclaimers. So what we found is that people really love the number plates and the look of the trolley, so it allows the public to get to know their neighborhood reclaimer without necessarily talking to them — because you see the trolley, it’s written “Sifiso,” then you’re like, oh, that guy is Sifiso, he’s been operating in my area the entire time. And then the other thing we have — we have GPS trackers fitted on each trolley, so as to track the movements of all the reclaimers. We are very big on data, so that we know where they are at any given time, and should there be any case in any neighborhood that they operate in, we are able to maybe, with authorities, share that. Okay, maybe at this point one of our reclaimers was there — perhaps ask him what happened there. So the reclaimers have become an added security feature, or like an intelligence network for civilians, you know, in that.

Mitch Ratcliffe  17:46

Could you also use that system to deploy people to where there is uncollected material?

Sifiso Gumbi  17:52

Absolutely, we can. As a matter of fact, we are getting requests, you know, from community associations to come and collect from them, so whenever they do, we just send through the nearest reclaimer.

Mitch Ratcliffe  18:07

You have the sorting and baling camps — are these sort of ad hoc homes for these communities of mobile workers? Tell us about how that works, and particularly, how do you aggregate enough material that you can pay them a better rate than the middlemen who would have purchased this material before?

Sifiso Gumbi  18:25

So we have recycling hubs that we’ve set up with the idea and clear understanding that, you know, most of the reclaimers we support not only just need collection equipment and PPE, but they also need working facilities where they can store their material and sort it. So now, what we have added into those facilities is processing machinery, so that the reclaimers don’t only just sort the material, but they are able to have access to a baling machine, which then compacts their material. And once the material is compacted, they can sell it to the recyclers, the recycling companies, at a better price, because they are no longer selling loose material.

So one thing we also organize for the reclaimers is corporate collection sites where they can collect from and have more access to waste. So we try and give them as much access to collection volumes as possible, because the more waste they collect, the more money they make. But the challenge is that we are only sitting on four recycling hubs so far, and there are so many waste collectors in Gauteng alone, not even mentioning in the country, so we’ve barely scratched the surface. So these recycling hubs are a great need for many of the other, you know, waste collectors, and it’s a bit of a challenge right now for us to, like, get access to land. And even if we do get access to land, we’re in constant need to perhaps get a funder to help us buy equipment, to help us set up the structures on site, and to bring in all the other necessary infrastructure to make a recycling hub operational.

Mitch Ratcliffe  20:07

I hear the beginning of an approach that would allow companies to partner with informal recyclers to collect even specialized materials, like e-waste, for instance, to create a local closed-loop system. But that also suggests that needs to happen everywhere. Do you see Urban Surfer as a model for an infrastructure to enable the circular economy globally?

Sifiso Gumbi  20:31

100%. So, the one thing that we’ve been able to crack on the ground is we have managed to become the bridge between the formal side of things and the informal side of things. So informal recycling people work as individuals — they are barely organized, they’re just concerned with their survival. So, how we’ve come in, we’ve now become the bridge between the private sector and the informal sector, we’ve become the bridge between the government and the reclaimers on the ground. So definitely, from what we have done in our own capacity, with a very small team and quite limited resources, I think our model is well proven and is well positioned to be the blueprint for replicating the same solution globally.

Mitch Ratcliffe  21:22

This is a fascinating opportunity. I want to take a quick commercial break, and we’re going to come back to continue the conversation. Stay tuned, folks.

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue the conversation with Sifiso Gumbi. He is the founder of Urban Surfer, which organizes informal recyclers in South Africa. Sifiso, the first time I became aware of informal trash pickers was actually in San Francisco, and it was common for older Asian women to pick bottles out of everybody’s trash before it was collected, just as you described earlier. But what I noticed is they all got on buses and then went to the most dangerous neighborhood in the city to sell their bottles, and I always wondered why nobody enabled them to drop it at an aggregation point where they would be able to collect sufficient volume to make a good profit on the material, while paying those women a fair rate for what they had collected. You’ve built this GPS-tracked trolley system, you’ve got live reporting — that’s a lot of technology for grassroots work. Following on the conversation we were having before the break, how do you see using technology, or technology’s ability to let us see into deep, complex problems, to organize a new recycling system?

Sifiso Gumbi  22:40

Listen, Mitch, we are living in a digital age, and I think the aggregation of data is quite essential, especially when you are dealing with projects like the ones we are involved in. Firstly, we saw it quite important for us to have a live data reporting system and also to fit GPS trackers on the trolleys of all the reclaimers that we support, because, one, if we are working with a project sponsor, we need to have a system that is able to measure the impact and the progress of each project that we have activated. It is important, one, to know how far waste pickers travel, where they collect, how frequently they collect from those neighborhoods. That, for one, gives us the pattern and actually gives us the general idea of, okay, which neighborhoods produce the most waste, because waste pickers only target the neighborhoods that produce the most waste, you know. So, for future reference, that data can help us maybe engage such communities more, and perhaps workshop them on how to better separate their waste, so that they help the reclaimers to collect more waste. Right.

Secondly, we record all the volumes that are brought in by our vast network of reclaimers. In all of our recycling hubs, we record the volumes of what recyclable materials they bring in — is it plastic, is it paper, and what quantity? And then, secondly, we record how much they’ve made from each recyclable item. So there’s a lot of, you know, solutions that have been brought in, like carbon credits, plastic credits, and because we already have all the data, we are in a position to bring those solutions in and have them as add-on incentives for reclaimers through the data that we collect from them — which includes the miles they cover, the volumes they recover — that can be packaged and perhaps accredited as a carbon credit that reclaimers can almost immediately start benefiting from, or it can also be credited as a plastic credit that waste pickers can start benefiting from, and which they should be benefiting from. They did the—

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:01

Work.

Sifiso Gumbi  25:02

They did the work, you know. So it was important for us to collect the data from the very beginning, so that when all of these solutions come to the fore, we already have all the data, and this is transparent data, this is real-time data. There’s absolutely no greenwashing, and these are accurate volumes. So, with that data, we are hoping maybe in the future to use it as leverage to have waste pickers benefit, you know, from all there is to benefit within the climate resilience and sustainability space.

Mitch Ratcliffe  25:38

You’re describing a remarkably advanced view into the reverse logistics economy, and I can imagine reclaimers organizing to address what we would think of in Uber terms as surge opportunities — a major football match, for instance — you could send people in to collect particular sets of material, and you have almost unprecedented visibility into local material flows. Are you also thinking about using that data as the basis for providing research, both to government and to corporations, about where those materials might be for profitable recovery?

Sifiso Gumbi  26:16

Absolutely. I mean, if we’re really talking about closing the loop, the best people to talk to, as far as R&D is concerned — let’s say you have a new product on the market, and you are looking for the best packaging solution. For one, the packaging for your product — you must make sure that it can be easily recovered for recycling, and the best people to engage on that are the waste pickers themselves, because they’ll tell you that, okay, this I can definitely recover, and this is how much I will get from it. So, if I’m well incentivized on that, you’ll definitely get to see the circular economy activated with whatever packaging material you put out into the environment. But because currently no one is really engaging, you know, the main volume drivers on the ground, people are mainly concerned with certifications, ISO standards, and this and that. But if you take a closer look at what is currently being produced as packaging material for most of the items that we consume as households, it’s only a limited portion that actually circles back into production. The rest is piling up in our landfills. And why is that? Because there isn’t any incentive for the waste pickers to collect that, you know, as a recyclable material. There isn’t.

Now, in South Africa, the best material, or the hot material, like, right now, to collect as a waste picker is aluminum cans. Aluminum cans are collected so effectively and aggressively, it is difficult to find one on the ground, just as it is difficult for one to pick up $1 in today’s economy, like, on the floor, right. Why is that? It is largely driven by the incentive behind collecting just a kilogram of aluminum cans. Currently, in South Africa, you collect a kilogram of aluminum cans, you can get up to 28 rand, or even 30 rand a kilo. Now, if you have 30 rand, that is enough to buy you a bunny chow and even a Coke.

Mitch Ratcliffe  28:23

What you’re describing is a world where we actually pay attention to the flow of materials, ultimately recognizing the value of the people who do that work. As you talked about earlier, the reclaimers face a lot of hardship — there’s the stigma of the job, the dirtiness of the job it’s associated with — but they’re harassed, a lot of them struggle with mental health issues because of the tensions of the work, and I found this in some of the philanthropic consulting I’ve done: people in many of these communities don’t trust outsiders. How do you help them work with these corporations in a way that they don’t feel like they potentially are going to be exploited?

Sifiso Gumbi  29:00

And that’s where we step in, you know. I get interviewed quite a lot. There’s a lot of media houses that want to come and interview, you know, reclaimers, you know, on site, but because they’ve been ridiculed and humiliated by the public so long, whenever someone comes and wants to stick a camera in their faces, it feels as if they are just parading them like freaks to the public, you know, because of the current stigma that is still active even today by the public. It is very difficult for them to trust anyone, and we have now established ourselves to a point where we are one of the main mouthpieces for them. And as much as I would like for them to open up a bit more, I think it will take more engagement on the ground — engagement by industry drivers, you know, CEOs, you know, ministers. We need to see more ministers visiting waste-picking camps. We need to see more CEOs engaging with waste pickers on the ground. They need to start feeling comfortable with the powers that be, even with the general public, you know, because they still aren’t, you know.

I still get a lot of, I still get a lot of hate, man. People say, “Hey, you need to make sure these people get out of the road, you need to get these people away. These people are vagrants, these people are dangerous.” You know, so we need a whole lot more engagement, we need a whole lot more interaction, you know, just with the public, with waste pickers, you know, at the heart of the discussions, at the heart of the engagement. I think we need to first get that right. We need a reconciliatory exercise: first reconcile the waste pickers with the public, and then reconcile the waste pickers with the policymakers, then reconcile the waste pickers with, you know, the relevant corporations that are interested in supporting their work. We need to get to that first before they can ease up to the idea of allowing anyone to come and be in the space and understand the work that they do.

Mitch Ratcliffe  31:00

Looking at projections about the value of the circular part of the economy — the collection and reuse components — the projections are, even just in the United States alone, between $1.5 and $2.2 trillion a year in value. Globally, it’s probably two or three times that. If you organize this class of people and give them the economic power, do you see those ministers in particular, but also corporate leaders, as feeling threatened by the rise of that power? Is that something that you need to help them overcome?

Sifiso Gumbi  31:37

They shouldn’t be threatened at all, Mitch. They shouldn’t be threatened. I think it’s an exciting opportunity. I think even for, you know, the corporations — I mean, as it is right now, Coca-Cola can tell you how many cold drink bottles or cans they produce, but they can’t tell you how many cold drink bottles or cans they’ve actually recovered back. They can only tell you the kilograms that they’ve recovered back, right, but they can’t really tell you how many of what they’ve produced that they’ve actually recovered back. They don’t even report along those lines, you understand. But if they were to start supporting reclaimers, they will know exactly that. If I produced one bottle of cold drink, right, and from the factory it left and it went to one province in South Africa, and it was bought by a client, perhaps, in that province — what happened to that bottle after the client was done consuming the contents of that Coke bottle? They will know right to a T, and they would know that, hey, that bottle registered back into our factory.

Mitch Ratcliffe  32:40

Well, and we’ve had conversations with GS1, which is the global nonprofit that runs the Universal Product Code system, and they have the ability now to track to unit level an individual can — we made it here, it was picked up here. Do you think that the reclaimers could scan every can that they picked up in order to get to that granularity of reporting that you’re describing?

Sifiso Gumbi  33:04

Absolutely, if they’re incentivized for it, definitely. Because, I mean, GS1 — I know about GS1 very well — but their technology, which is amazing, if you ask me, can only go so far. They are missing that element of including the people that are actually tasked, or appoint themselves, as the first responders to the waste.

Mitch Ratcliffe  33:27

There’s a bigger idea in everything we’re talking about, and that’s that the people already doing this work should be built into a new system rather than replaced by it. Absolutely. How do you think about reclaimers as the foundation for the real circular economy? And this kind of goes back to the question I was asking about the threat that ministers might feel. They also represent, as they organize and become more prosperous, a new voting bloc — or is that exactly the voting bloc that people should be thinking about cultivating, because it represents the future of our economy?

Sifiso Gumbi  33:57

Mitch, there’s already more than 100,000 reclaimers — I could say half a million, just a ballpark figure — here in South Africa. South Africa has a high unemployment rate, especially amongst the youth and women, you know. And already there’s this massive opportunity in waste. There’s a massive opportunity in waste that, if formalized, could really present an opportunity for people to sustain themselves at a massive scale. Right, what does that do for a government? The government can start accumulating data that they can use for their reports whenever they meet at the next COP in Geneva. They can use that data to say, okay, we have empowered X amount of people, and they are collecting X amount of waste, and as far as our carbon objectives and our climate action objectives are concerned, this is where we are, and this is where we’re going. But currently, right now, it’s a top-down approach where people are just making estimations at the top. There isn’t any real work that is being done to support those on the ground who are actually doing the real work, you know.

So, it’s an opportunity for the ministers, it’s an opportunity for the business people, it’s an opportunity for everyone. I think there isn’t any threat. If anything, there’s a big opportunity — there’s a really positive story, you know, to be achieved from all this, and South Africa has an opportunity to become the leading country as far as that is concerned. And that can be used as a blueprint, you know, to get all the other developing countries within Africa to also steer their climate objectives, their carbon objectives, and also, you know, deal with their high unemployment rate. You know, it gives us an opportunity also to explore other technologies and explore what other recyclable material we can get — you know, what can we do with carbon waste, what can we do with this, what can we do with that. But all it needs is just a little bit of support for those on the ground, you know, understanding the foundation, you know, of those dynamics, and then from there, a lot will be achieved, Mitch, I promise.

Mitch Ratcliffe  36:05

I am really struck, particularly, by the opportunity for youth and women to build the foundation for economic progress. We’ve had Georgie Badiel, the model, on several times, and she has run a program in Burkina Faso through the Georgie Badiel Foundation where women are trained to build local solar-powered water wells. But Georgie’s point is that once they have that income, that ability, and those skills, which they can sell in other contexts — so, you know, people in town need something fixed, now these women know how to do it — that drives local economies and women’s services, hairdressers, things like that. So you actually start laddering up the local opportunity. How do you see reclaiming as potentially a path out of poverty for a young person or a woman?

Sifiso Gumbi  36:50

Look, it was a path out of poverty for me, because I started in high school, Mitch. I was able to buy myself sneakers every now and then, you know, all due to the fact that I was, you know, I would say, ambitious enough to see that, okay, I could make a bit of money from collecting scrap metal, you know — and I bought my first smartphone from that. So, there’s a real opportunity for families to feed themselves. There’s a real opportunity for even varsity students to, you know, be able to support themselves while going through varsity. There’s an opportunity for one to even establish a career in this thing, because, you know, I’m here, you know, getting interviewed by you today because I walked the journey, you know. I established a career for myself within it, so you can even grow within recycling, because, you know, it’s not just recycling — there’s a broader activity even beyond that.

Mitch Ratcliffe  37:46

The economy extends into that population, the population contributes back to the economy. It’s a virtuous circle.

Sifiso Gumbi  37:53

Absolutely. It’s really an opportunity that is so untapped, and it’s just waiting for everyone to come to the party.

Mitch Ratcliffe  38:06

Sifiso, when you’re standing in front of an audience, like when you presented at TEDx, what do you want people to take away? What’s the most important point that you would like them to understand about the opportunity that we’re talking about?

Sifiso Gumbi  38:18

What I really try and perhaps galvanize people around is to start caring about how we — or how you, as the public — affect the environment that we live in. You know, we live in a world where everyone is concerned about the materialistic value of everything. No one is really concerned about the material once they’ve had their way with it, or once they’ve used it, you know — out of sight, out of mind. You buy the bar of chocolate today, open it up, eat it, you throw away the wrapper. What memory do you keep? How sweet the chocolate was, how delicious it was. But no one ever pays any attention to what happens to the wrapper, because once you’ve put it in the bin, it’s out of sight, out of mind. Right now, there is a group of people that are actually concerned with what happens to that wrapper — that chocolate wrapper that you toss in the bin — because that wrapper is their livelihood. That’s their salary, that’s their bread.

What I want people to see is that those people are not vagrants, those people are not animals — those people are actually essential. I always equate their value to that of bees, because without bees there’s no pollination, without pollination there’s no plants, and with no plants, we all die. Without waste pickers there’s no recycling — yeah, in South Africa, you know, it’s a fact. Without waste pickers there’s no recycling, and without recycling, then all the landfills would have been filled up by now. Joburg is running out of landfill space. Gauteng, as a whole, is running out of landfill space. South Africa, as a whole, is in trouble, you know, with landfill space, and the only people that are delaying the crisis are waste pickers. So, what I always try and get people to see is that, hey, those people matter.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:13

Dignity for a set of critical workers whose work is not currently recognized, but such an important mission. What’s next for Urban Surfer, and how can people find out more about the program and support the work?

Sifiso Gumbi  40:27

We are trying to get as much support to replicate, you know, the model nationally. We want to touch as many lives as we can, we want to support as many reclaimers as we can, equip as many reclaimers as we can. So, as far as the mission goes, what we’re largely focused on right now is just expanding nationally within the next few years, and perhaps, you know, throughout Africa, to also start supporting the other reclaimers, even outside of our borders.

Mitch Ratcliffe  40:59

Can people simply send financial support to help you accelerate the project?

Sifiso Gumbi  41:04

You know, that is actually something we’ve never thought about, like GoFundMe. We’ve never had, like, a donation wallet. We always, like — maybe whenever we find a project, we identify a group of reclaimers that need to be supported. What we would do then is we draft the proposal, and then we’d approach maybe corporate SA, or perhaps government, or perhaps public benefit organizations, or PBOs, or NPOs to say, hey, can you come in and support us? We’ve never really thought about how we can perhaps get the public involved as far as donating to the cause, you know. So, maybe that’s something worth considering.

Mitch Ratcliffe  41:39

I certainly think your site is packed with insight that people would be happy to support, and so I encourage you to think about that. But Sifiso, this has been an absolutely inspiring conversation. I thank you for your time.

Sifiso Gumbi  41:52

Thank you for providing the platform, Mitch, and for helping us, you know, crystallize, you know, the message and get it out there to the masses. I really appreciate the time and the opportunity. Thank you, Mitch.

Mitch Ratcliffe  42:11

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Sifiso Gumbi. He is the founder of Urban Surfer South Africa, the Johannesburg-based social enterprise that equips, organizes, and advocates for the informal waste reclaimers who recover most of that country’s recyclable material. And you can learn more about Sifiso’s work at urbansurfer.co.za. It’s a great site — check it out. There’s a lot of fascinating stories.

Let’s start with the fact that reframes our perspective on recycling, because we look at this from an advanced recycling — even though it needs a lot of work — perspective here in the United States. Between 80% and 90% of South Africa’s post-consumer plastic and paper that actually gets recycled is recovered by informal waste pickers, and that’s according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Sifiso put it plainly: the municipal system collects waste simply to dispose of it, and reclaimers collect it for the value, and that value is passed on to the rest of society in the form of materials that stay in circulation. The country has a recycling rate at all because more than 100,000 people decided, one trolley at a time, that other people’s bins were their livelihood. Now, it’s not a glamorous job, but neither was recycling when it started in the United States, and frankly, it probably isn’t considered that glamorous by most people today. South Africa’s system was self-organized over 30 years while the government ignored the issue, and Sifiso’s 15 years inside it began at age 19, when scrap metal collected after school bought him his first smartphone.

Material recovery is driven by incentives, and the proof is lying on the ground — or rather, it isn’t, as Sifiso said. Aluminum cans fetch 28 to 30 rand per kilogram in South Africa right now, and reclaimers collect them so thoroughly that he says finding one on the street is as rare as finding a $1 bill on the sidewalk. Materials with weak incentives pile up in landfills, and Johannesburg and Gauteng are running out of space. The lesson is simple: if you’re a company that doesn’t want to bury its customers in waste, when you’re designing your packaging to be recovered, ask the waste pickers what they’ll bend down for, and what picking it up must pay for them to be attracted to do so. They are the R&D department that nobody consults. And meanwhile, brands chase certifications without constructing the reverse logistics infrastructure that makes a recyclability claim legitimate. There’s so many things labeled as recyclable, but you have to have a system nearby you in order for it to be collected and processed. As extended producer responsibility programs expand, the incentive structures at the street level will determine whether those policies result in more material recovery or just more paperwork.

Next, let’s talk about that data layer that Sifiso talked about. Urban Surfer fitted GPS trackers to its trolleys, and they log every kilogram by material type and price across all of its recycling hubs. Sifiso built that infrastructure before carbon credits and plastic credits arrived on the market, and that means when those instruments mature, reclaimers hold verified, real-time records of work that they’ve already performed. As he said, we can have a recycling system with no greenwashing, based on actual transparent data that everybody could see. That’s the same verification standard that my recent guest, Martin Johnston of EarthRating.ai, argued that sustainability reporting lacks, and here it’s being built from the ground up by the people with the most to gain from that information being believed. The unit-level vision could go even further. A beverage company today can report kilograms recovered — it’s referred to generally as mass balance reporting — but it can’t tell you how many of its own bottles, or which bottles, actually came back. Reclaimers scanning what they collect as they collect it could close that reporting gap, but they need to be paid for that data, and it’s not expensive.

And the last and most important idea is that dignity is a design requirement, not a slogan, when building a circular economy.

Mitch Ratcliffe  46:12

Urban Surfer trolleys carry personalized number plates with each reclaimer’s nickname, so a neighborhood comes to know them as workers rather than strangers to fear. And the hard limits that Sifiso points out are trust and scale. Integration of last-mile services — or, in the circular context, the first mile of that return journey that packaging takes — requires a reconciliation of the public, policymakers, and recycling workers, and it’s time to unlock these opportunities to collect and keep materials in use, as well as pay a fair rate, to keep our world cleaner than it currently is. A circular economy can be built on the people who already live it, and that’s the argument that Urban Surfer makes with data, trolleys, and baling machines. So, we’ll be watching whether that model can be replicated nationally and across Africa, and whether EPR rebates and plastic credits actually reach the hands doing the collecting. Stay tuned.

If this conversation changed how you’ll think the next time that you toss a wrapper, share it with someone else who needs to meet the people on the other side of the bin. And you can help the show, too, with a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or any of the podcast host sites. You folks are the amplifiers who spread more ideas to create less waste, and our archive of more than 550 episodes is waiting on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness you prefer. Thanks for your support. We really appreciate you helping spread the word.

I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Urban Surfer’s Sifiso Gumbi on Organizing South Africa’s Recycling System appeared first on Earth911.

Virginia’s plan to redraw its congressional maps to create as many as four new Democratic seats is dead, struck down by the state supreme court. Its impact on Virginia politics, though, is still being felt — and nowhere more visibly than in Virginia’s First District. 

The district, which covers much of Virginia’s coastline and includes parts of the Richmond suburbs, is one of the few in the country that is actually competitive, and it’s been thrown into chaos due to the ongoing gerrymandering wars that have consumed the 2026 midterm cycle. 

To learn more, I traveled there last month for the latest episode of Vox’s video podcast, America, Actually.

Originally, Virginians voted to redraw their maps to be more favorable to Democrats in response to Republican efforts to do the same in Missouri, Texas, and elsewhere. But a court effort threw out that result, restoring the state’s original maps and sowing uncertainty for candidates and volunteers who had been advocating for the change.

Even more, Virginia has become a place where the underlying tensions in the gerrymandering battle have begun to bubble up to the surface. Newly elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating has taken a hit since endorsing the Democrats’ campaign to draw new maps, and she recently admonished House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries against pursuing his “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” strategy when it comes to redistricting. (The phrase, as Jeffries has noted, isn’t original to him: It’s also how the Trump camp described its own redistricting efforts.)

“It is outrageously premature of us to be talking about any sort of redistricting or map changing effort when we have to win the most consequential midterms of my lifetime this November,” Spanberger told the New York Times in May.

On our trip to Virginia’s First District, America, Actually spoke with Democratic volunteers who had organized for the referendum and were now pivoting to selecting a primary candidate. We also attended a candidate forum at the Libbie Mill Library in Richmond, Virginia, where several candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee in the district made their pitches to voters. 

At events like this, it’s easier to see how the party’s message for the midterms is taking shape. Here are three takeaways: 

1) Redistricting exhaustion is real

I understand the pickle Spanberger is in. Democrats organized, knocked doors, and convinced voters to embrace a redistricting effort that many people were uncomfortable with — and then watched a court erase it. Katie Sitterson, an Indivisible Virginia volunteer we talked to in Virginia’s First, described the morale hit as taking “the air out of your sails.” 

When I asked whether it had dampened volunteer enthusiasm, she put it bluntly: “People start to feel like, ‘What does it matter?’ I tried, and we’re doing all these things, and we even voted, and we used our voice, and it still didn’t work.” She said the reversal confirms the exact “lack of agency” voters already feel — and makes it that much harder to keep people in the fight for a full year.

I think that explains some of Spanberger’s resistance to Jeffries’ strategy. The “all warfare, all the time” move is something that excites the base — valuable in a midterm or national primary. Picking and choosing your spots to expend political capital is more important in purple areas like Virginia’s First or in statewide elections.

2) “Woke” isn’t dead

The short period where Democrats leaned into social justice language during the 2020 election seems to have passed. But at the Indivisible candidate forum in Richmond, there were lots of medical masks being worn, an open embrace of identity politics, and candidates leaning in. 

“I always say that joy is the best resistance we have,” one candidate told attendees. “Hope is not a dirty word.” Another introduced himself as “a child of immigrants,” and a third described herself as “unapologetically progressive…who doesn’t take any corporate money.”

These days, “wokeness” has become sort of a punchline in elite Democratic circles, as more and more politicians run away from the progressive message of 2020. But those are values people legitimately believe in and will re-emerge as a point of tension in a national Democratic primary.

3) Democrats have a message

If “affordability” was the buzzword of the 2025 elections thanks to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, I think “corruption” is emerging as the same thing for 2026, driven by a reaction to President Donald Trump’s actions and elevated by leading national politicians like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). But what’s most clear in these House races is that many candidates don’t see affordability and corruption as separate issues, but as linked ideas. Basically: Things are getting more expensive for you as Trump is grifting in the White House.

Here’s how Tim Cywinski, one of the Democrats running in Virginia’s First, put it: “From my experience with everyday people — Republican, Democrat, left, right, everyone between — it’s all about affordability and corruption.” He said the connection doesn’t require explaining insider trading or crypto: “You don’t have to know the nuances of the stock market. You just see that they are getting wealthier, while at the same time everybody else is getting…it’s harder to live. Life shouldn’t be this unaffordable. And if you say, ‘Yes, it’s because of them, but also at the same time, they’re enriching themselves,’ that drives people crazy. And for them, it doesn’t matter who they voted for in the last election.”

That sweet spot was Cywinski’s focus — pointing out that prices are rising for most Americans as Trump puts a seeming “for-sale sign in front of the White House.” Candidates think that contrast can not only motivate Democrats to turn out, but peel off enough independents and Trump voters to win a district like Virginia’s First. 

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.