Once Upon a Planet

In our sixth episode, Jon and Verda talk with Lisa Conway, VP of Sustainability for Interface Carpet. Interface, under the leadership of founder Ray Anderson, has led the way in the conversation around embodied carbon. With a new campaign called "Love Carbon", Interface is talking about being carbon neutral and even carbon negative! Can we all start making and using products that take carbon out of the environment? Interface seems to think so!

Stop sucking with The Lonely Whale Foundation! Jon and Verda get to talk to Dune Ives, NGO trailblazer and CEO of The Lonely Whale Foundation about individual action and corporate responsibility. She walks us through the "Stop Sucking" and "Hydrate Like a Mother" campaigns. We'll talk about hero corporations and her work with The Next Wave initiative. And of course, we'll make Dune tell us the story of "The Lonely Whale".

Break some damn dishes on this episode with Jon, Verda and Chad Nelsen, CEO of Surfrider Foundation. We'll talk about the power that surf communities have in driving legislation. We'll discuss the problem with "localism" and how "Surfonomics" is giving coastal communities the leverage they need to save their coastline environments. Chad is an amazing leader who recognized early that if you love the ocean, you will work to save it! And, are you curious about this "Bag Monster"?

In our third episode, Jon and Verda spend some time with Jane Abernethy talking about the toxic ingredients in product that need to be removed, and what this means to your supply chain. Jane is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Humanscale Corporation, and has been a driver in their work achieving the coveted Living Product Challenge Certification, removing Red List ingredients and in creating a Net Positive Impact on our planet. This episode talks about something new-Forensic Design. Is it a

Break Some Dishes, a podcast by Verda Alexander and Jon Strassner, takes a closer look at some of the environmental crises we face as a global community, and under the lens of creativity and design, talks to outliers who have worked to break some dishes and find solutions. Bad design is bad for the planet. We need to design our way out of our climate crisis! Verda is an artist and designer and Jon is a talker, and together they find those unique people who have found amazing ways to make a

In our second episode, Verda and Jon talk with David Stover, one of the founders of Bureo, a Ventura, California company that takes discarded fishing nets, cleans them and recycles them into nylon pellets which are then manufactured into products. We'll talk about ghost fishing, and what a calamity that is, we'll also talk about recycling and the inevitable need to use materials that fit into the circular economy. David doesn't blame plastic for our woes, he blames our expectation that we can use

Bad design is bad for the planet. In today's episode we talk to Oliver Campbell, who runs packaging for DELL Computer. As you can imagine, DELL Computer creates a fair amount of packaging! Oliver has taken on ocean plastic pollution by starting the Next Wave Collaborative, along with the Lonely Whale Foundation and is making packaging from ocean bound plastic. He's also working to use re-captured carbon from India to produce ink for his boxes. Who said packaging wasn't sexy?