Juggernaut on the rise: Demystifying the bioeconomy

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The Sustainable Hour no. 541 | Transcript | Podcast notes

Our guests in The Sustainable Hour no. 541 are Elizabeth Corbett, President of Enterprise at AE Global, a Miami-based full service packaging firm focused on sustainable packaging and supply chain solutions, and Brendan Condon, Founding Director of Australian Ecosystems and Regen Nurseries.

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From compost bins to 3D-printed homes made of cornstarch and wood dust – this week’s guests show how the bioeconomy is reshaping the future.

– Packaging can be planet-friendly and cost-effective
– Farmers and builders can draw down carbon instead of emitting it
– Microbes might soon feed the world.

We dive deep into inspiring and practical solutions to the climate crisis – from global trends to local innovations, from packaging to housing, and from compost bins to bio-based homes.

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Global outlook: A climate crossroads

Colin Mockett OAM brings us up to date:

Australia is bidding (with Pacific Island nations) to host COP31 – the 2026 UN Climate Summit.
Trump’s return to the White House risks derailing global climate progress.
China is leading in clean energy tech and manufacturing – even exporting entire factories.
Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of new energy, growing faster than expected.
Africa is stepping up with a new Carbon Data Access Partnership.
Forest Green Rovers (the world’s greenest football team!) continues to score goals on and off the field.

Miami to Seattle: Two worlds of waste

Guest Elizabeth Corbett from Miami-based AE Global shares her perspective:

In Seattle, composting and recycling are the norm. In Florida? Not so much.
Climate impacts in Florida are becoming unaffordable – rising sea levels, hurricanes, and skyrocketing insurance.
But there’s hope in innovation: businesses across the U.S. are turning to sustainable packaging and embracing compostable and aluminium-based solutions.
And contrary to myth: sustainable doesn’t always mean expensive.

Elizabeth Corbett is the President of Enterprise for AE Global, a Miami based full service packaging firm, focused on sustainable packaging and supply chain solutions. Elizabeth has more than 25 years’ experience working with brands such as Tiffany, Starbucks, Culligan and Estee Lauder.

→ To find more information about Elizabeth and her work, go to www.aeglobal.com

→ Elizabeth’s Linkedin page is the best way to reach her. It has links to many of the resources she can share. Find it on Linkedin.com

Building hope from the ground up

Guest Brendan Condon, director of Australian Ecosystems and Regen Nurseries, and The Cape eco village, shows us what the future looks like:

At The Cape, homes save up to $6,000 a year by going all-electric, solar-powered, and fossil fuel–free.
On a national scale, this model could save Australians $40 billion per year.
Brendan introduces us to the exciting concept of the bioeconomy – using biology, not fossil fuels, to create our future:
- 3D-printed homes made from wood dust and cornstarch
- Hemp and bamboo as building materials and food sources
- Microbial proteins as a sustainable alternative to meat – grown with minimal land, water, and emissions
- Even concrete is going green – with carbon-absorbing microbes

Brendan Condon has founded and manages a number of companies working to design and create carbon neutral sustainable communities, restore nature and biodiversity and to build urban farms in our cities and communities. Brendan and his co-workers work to create a better designed, more efficient, lower cost, circular economy society that is able to meet the challenges of the future, and to show that we already have the solutions at our fingertips to build a better world.

Brendan’s projects and companies include The Cape Sustainable Estate at Cape Paterson, described as a blueprint for the future of carbon neutral communities in Australia.

Australian Ecosystems and Regen Nurseries is a land restoration company and nursery that collects seeds and grows and plants millions of native plants each year to restore wetlands, forests and biodiversity.

Brendan is also a founding director of urban farming company Foodcube, which manufactures water efficient farms that enable communities to turn underutilised city spaces into thriving urban farms.

The interview starts 31 minutes in on the audio file.

You can find links to the numerous projects Brendan mentions during the show further below on this page.

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Music and meaning

The episode features two uplifting original songs produced by Mik Aidt:

“Growing Houses, Growing Hope” – about building a regenerative future.
“Sustainable Living” – celebrating everyday community-driven change.

Growing Houses, Growing Hope | Lyrics

Sustainable Living | Lyrics

→ You can listen to a full hour of music from The Sustainable Hour here

Be hopeful, be helpful
In a world of challenges, this episode reminds us that solutions already exist – they just need to be scaled. Let’s demystify sustainability, challenge myths, and build a better world with optimism and action.

We’ll be back next week with more hopeful information, guests and truthtelling. Be hopeful, be helpful, do the right thing and dare to grow that difference!

“The farmers of the future will be growing our houses, growing our food, and also farming nature and getting paid for it. So I think this is the opportunity to flip this last major sector into being a carbon-sinking and carbon-sequestering sector, and giving farmers a future with dignity on the land and creating this next generation of sustainable industries.”
~ Brendan Condon, Founding director Australian Ecosystems, Regen Nurseries and Food Cube

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.

True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.

“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org

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BIOECONOMY & CLIMATE LINKS

→ CNN – 3 June 2024:
‘When can I have one?’: The world’s largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
“Dozens of 3D-printed homes have been built across the world – to house a family in the US state of Virginia or members of an impoverished community in rural Mexico. The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood is currently under construction outside of Austin, Texas.”

→ DesignBoom – 24 November 2024:
World’s first 100% bio-based 3D-printed home in maine is built with sawdust and corn
“The University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) spearheaded building BioHome3D in Orono, Maine, the world’s first 3D-printed house made entirely with bio-based materials”

→ Solar Foods:
Food out of thin air
“For the first time in history, humankind can produce food without burdening our home planet.”
Microbial protein as a future scaleable food source: Solar Foods Finland is producing sustainable single cell protein using precision fermentation.

→ Solar Foods – 18 March 2025:
Solar Foods announces an investment plan for Europe’s single largest emission reduction moonshot project
“The Finnish food technology company Solar Foods announces factory investment plan, which, if realised, would according to the company’s estimation be the largest emission reduction project in Europe.”

→ The Guardian – 20 April 2024:
Eating light: Finnish startup begins making food ‘from air and solar power’
“Maker hopes solein, protein grown with CO2 and electricity, will cut environmental impact of farming.”

→ Good Food Institute – November 2019:
Precision fermentation of proteins and its benefits
“This is your guide to whole biomass fermentation and precision fermentation for alternative protein production. Find background, resources, tools, and expert industry analysis here.”

Monbiot.com – 24 November 2022:
Fermenting a revolution
“I believe this is the most important environmental technology ever developed. It might be all that now stands between us and Earth systems collapse.” By George Monbiot

Globe Newswire – 11 December 2024:
Hemp Protein Powder Market to reach $530 Mn by 2032, Says Global Market Insights Inc.
“The hemp protein powder market valuation is predicted to exceed USD 530 million by 2032, reported in a research analysis by Global Market Insights Inc. This growth is largely fueled by the increasing demand for plant-based protein options among health-conscious consumers, including vegans and vegetarians.”
Hemp protein as an alternative protein source that could be extracted from hemp crops alongside fibre and biomass for 3D printing.

→ Science Direct – 20 May 2023:
Lignocellulosic biomass from agricultural waste to the circular economy: a review with focus on biofuels, biocomposites and bioplastics
Lignocellulosic biomass from agricultural waste to the circular economy: a review with focus on biofuels, biocomposites and bioplastics). Amount of lignocellulose produced by earth each year: “According to recent statistics, globally the annual production of lignocellulose biomass is approximately 181.5 billion tons”

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Combining biology and technology to create a climate solution

Excerpt of a newsletter from State of Green in Denmark on 27 March 2025

Entering the age of biosolutions
With several global challenges mounting up, the need for innovative solutions is more urgent than ever. Fortunately, there are solutions out there – they are called biosolutions.

Biosolutions use nature’s own toolbox by utilising processes like fermentation and using tools such as bacteria and enzymes. They are simply put, the combination of biology and technology to create a climate solution.

The potential of biosolutions is vast. According to Copenhagen Economics, existing biosolutions could reduce CO₂ emissions by 4,300 million tonnes by 2030 – the equivalent of eight percent of today’s global emissions.

With rising demand for sustainable alternatives, the global biosolutions market is projected to grow from EUR 240 billion today to EUR 640 billion by 2030. This growth promises not only climate benefits but also the creation of high-skilled jobs and a strengthened position in the fast-growing green economy.

The term ‘biosolutions’ originated in Denmark just a few years ago, as part of an effort to define and unite a new sector and ecosystem. Rooted in Denmark’s strong legacy in biotechnology and HealthTech, the sector builds on advanced technologies such as fermentation and biorefining – both fundamental to biosolutions – which are already deeply embedded in the Danish industrial landscape. This integration enables continuous innovation, production, and industry growth.

The Danish biosolutions sector is supported by a range of organisations working to create optimal conditions for innovation and commercialisation. This involves creating an ecosystem consisting of universities, authorities, industry associations and business support organisations.

To guide readers into the era of biosolutions, State of Green are publishing a new publication: Biosolutions – Creating climate impact with nature’s own toolbox. The publication offers an introduction to biosolutions and showcases Denmark’s innovative biosolution cluster, featuring 16 cases spanning colours, construction and cosmetology.

Feline Falck Christens
Editor – State of Green Weekly

Publication
Biosolutions: Creating climate impact with nature’s own toolbox
Explore key technologies and players leading the way in Denmark in our publication, showcasing 16 tangible cases from Denmark’s world of biosolutions. Discover the publication

Perspective
Biosolutions – a driver in the green transition
By combining technology and biology, biosolutions have the potential to create climate impact using nature’s own toolbox. Read the perspective article by the Danish Minister of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, Morten Bødskov.
Read the perspective

CopenhagenCapacity_Visibuilt_DanielRasmussen-04676-min

Cases
12 cases from Denmark’s biosolution cluster
From carbon-capturing algae to asphalt made from fungi-derived binders, biosolutions offer innovative solutions to optimise resources while reducing emissions and waste.
Discover the cases

Landing page
Explore insights and connect with solution providers
As a well-established research-based industry with a strong international engagement, the Danish biosolutions cluster provides a breadth of ways to initiate and accelerate the green transition across industries.
Discover biosolutions cases and solution providers

Projects and cases

Teknologisk Institut credit - biosolutions alger f830ca89-4120-43ee-aefa-59388f281031

Danish Technological Institute
Driving green innovation through biosolutions
By assisting startups and SMEs, the Biosolutions Technology Center drives innovation and contributes to CO2 reduction through biorefining, fermentation, and microalgae production.
Discover the case

Novonesis
Recycling plastic with enzymes
Novonesis is advancing circular plastic solutions by scaling enzyme technology that breaks down hard-to-recycle plastics into high-quality recycled PET.
Discover the case

Chromologics
Natural colours crafted by fermentation
By using precision fermentation to create sustainable, natural colorants, Chromologics offers a more efficient alternative to traditional methods by reducing land use and dependency on weather conditions.
Discover the case

→ See the newsletter from State of Green

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 541

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General:
The climate time bomb is ticking.

Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong. The Sustainable Hour.

Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded. Always was and always will be First Nations land. They’ve had a focus on nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. And in the ancient wisdom that’s been a result of that, we have so much to learn as we navigate the climate crisis.

Mik Aidt:
Beyond Zero Emissions have done the math. When you switch from gas and petrol over to electrifying everything in your home, you save $4,000 a year. $4,000. And meanwhile, leading scientists in Denmark are now out with a report that explains that unless we do something very drastic about our emissions very very quickly we can expect not some centimetres but a three-meter sea level rise within this century. But hey! Saving four thousand dollars a year and at the same time help solving all these problems with sea level rise and extreme weather events, cyclones and bushfires… Why would anybody want to do something that stupid, right?

Let’s hear what else has been happening around the world. It’s over to you now, Colin Mockett OAM – the man with the global outlook.

Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook:
Yes, thank you Mik. My roundup this week begins in the United Nations building in New York, where Australia in partnership with Pacific Island nations is bidding to host next year’s 2026 UN climate summit. That’ll be COP31. But the decision was deferred last week to June after the Australian federal election.

And this was mainly due to Turkey’s rival bid to host the event. We were alone and looked like we were just going to be getting it, but now Turkey’s come in as well. The Guardian newspaper reported that the bid is being called the Pacific COP, and it’s supported by many Western European countries. If successful, it’s likely that Adelaide would be the host city. Now hosting COP31 could provide Australia with an opportunity to showcase its climate action efforts and strengthen ties with its Pacific neighbours. In short, it’ll be good for our climate efforts because we couldn’t be seen to be slacking and not hitting our targets if we’re hosting COP. And it’s particularly good with South Australia, and Adelaide, which is actively promoting its credentials as a potential host city by highlighting its renewable energy targets and its potential for green industries to move in to green sites, literally.

Elsewhere in the U.S. this week came a serious look at the potential impact of President Trump’s attempts to move away from renewable energy in order to, in his own words, ‘Drill, baby, drill’.

The New Yorker last week noted that the last time he was president, Donald Trump abandoned the Paris Accord as he has done again. But that first time, many observers argued that they were better off with the US alone outside the tent rather than wrecking things from within. The UN treaty that drives the global climate response demands consensus in key votes.

Now having the US side with fossil states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia might have gummed up what is already a cumbersome process, might have gummed it up even further. But this time the threat is greater. That’s because right-wing populism is surging the world over. And there’s a risk that other countries might follow the US out of the door of the COP agreements.

Further, Trump’s failure to deliver on contributions to the Green Climate Fund could prompt reciprocal nations to abandon their own climate action. Now, despite its best efforts, the last Trump administration failed to breathe new life into the coal sector because it was already in structural decline. Now, the same is now true in the medium term of both oil and gas. Now what’s different this time is the momentum that has built up. Renewables are already the cheapest form of new energy and their growth continues to defy even the most optimistic predictions.

The International Energy Agency just published a report showing that renewables were now meeting all new demand caused by a surging global hunger for electricity and behind that is the AI surge. The prime engine for now all clean technology is China, which has built up its solar, wind and battery sectors so fast that it is now not only exporting solar panels and batteries and EVs, but also the factories that build them and also the finances that build the factories.

Energy economist Tim Buckley has tracked $140 billion, that’s US dollars, in deals done by China to build EV, wind turbine, solar and battery factories across the world in the five years since 2020. This rapid expansion has allowed Europe to reduce its energy dependency on Russia and accelerated decarbonisation of its economy.

By last December, China had hit a target that it had set itself to ensure half of all new cars that are being sold are electric. And there is growing evidence that its oil consumption will peak this year and then move into decline. But these advances by the world’s second largest economy and the largest single source of greenhouse gases.

A cause for only muted celebrations because they’re probably not enough to save the world. In short, the world needs all nations to take part as temperature records continue to be broken monthly and the cost of climate linked disasters continues to grow. That’s about 16 million dollars US an hour by one recent estimate it is clear that we are already out of time.

As one American veteran of the UN climate process, as he said, he asked not to be named so he could speak openly about Trump administration. He said the U.S. has been a vital source of monetary and practical aid in combating climate change. Now, when the technology exists to decarbonise the global economy, and what is needed is unanimity of ambition and speed. The U.S. has become a dead weight. Trump won’t stop the shift to green power because the U.S. has been overtaken by market realities. Clean tech, in short, has won.

That said, instead, in the twilight of the fossil era, Trump donors will make sure that America loses its leading position in future industries, while the world will continue to dangerously heat up.

And then in Africa, the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and carbon data platform SilverEra have launched a partnership to provide better access to carbon market insights for African countries.

The Carbon Data Access Partnership, which is called CADAP – I don’t know why they’ve always got to have one of those – will give participating countries government access to insights onto 21,000 projects. The partnership will essentially unlock carbon finance to poorer African countries. Alistair Furey, who’s CEO of Silvera, said Africa has a critical role to play in the journey to net zero, with the continent at the forefront of driving meaningful climate action.

And my final piece, as usual for Tony, is about Forest Green Rovers, which drew. Forest green rovers are the world’s greenest sports team. They’re a football team in the UK. Their players are vegan. They only serve vegan and they use no insecticides or herbicides on their pitch. They drew 1-1 at the weekend and are now sitting in a promotion spot third on the ladder of their lead. And that’s my round up for the week.

Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.

Tony:
Our first guest today is Elizabeth Corbett. Elizabeth is the President of Enterprise at AE Global. They’re a Miami-based full-service packaging firm. They focus on sustainable packaging and supply chain solutions. So taking it right through from go to woe, you would say. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks for coming on!

Elizabeth Corbett:
Thank you.

Tony:
We’ve referred to Miami as being the front lines of climate change, of the climate crisis. How’s it look from your view?

Elizabeth: (at 11:08)
So I’m I have an interesting perspective in that I live part time here and part time in Seattle. And so the great thing about being from the Pacific Northwest, I grew up in Oregon, moved to Seattle after college is if you look at the United States, probably one of the greenest areas of the United States, not just because there’s a lot of trees and rain, but just in terms of perspective, right? And even something minor where in Seattle you can literally recycle, compost anything, right? And in fact, it’s the rule of law. So you have to compost it and it’s one of those things, they make it so easy. And then you come to South Florida where honestly most places don’t recycle here. Most municipalities have barely anything. Certainly they don’t compost.

So it’s a very difficult perspective to see and the way that a lot of it is dealt with here and when you think of it not only from a hurricane perspective but just rising seas is that when anybody buys a home here if it’s on the water, if they choose to tear it down and build a new one which is kind of the thing here, they are required by law to raise that land by at least a foot and a half.

And I find it humorous that that’s how you deal with it, right? That’s how you deal with the problem is just keep going up. Or in a lot of areas, you’ll see where they build homes, where the main level is just like a garage and then the, you know, the entry level and then the living level is the next one or two stories. And so that’s how you deal with it. I find it humorous that… I will be honest, I am an environmentalist at my very core, and there are many in the state of Florida who are not.

Florida is the flattest place I’ve ever been in my life, and I haven’t had the opportunity to go to Australia, so I know that you have mountains and other things. Florida is literally flat as a board. I I think the highest point in the state is maybe 100 feet, and my home in Seattle is at 500 feet. So, it’s such a fascinating concept anyway, that that’s what you have to do. And your home is worth significantly more here if it is in one of the higher areas and a higher area is, you know, maybe 10 feet. I think the thing that’s, it’s going to become too expensive to live here.

And it’s going to be just like what you saw in Southern California. So Southern California and Florida are, well, the state of Florida and the state of California have the highest cost for homeowners insurance in the United States now, if you can even get it. So what’s going to happen is it’s going to get to the point where people just can’t afford to live here, right? Because it’s, you know, my homeowners insurance for the entire year in Seattle is $2,500 a year. If I end that comparable home here would be $2,500 a month. So that’s just that’s so much money, right? And the average person can’t afford that. And if they can even get that insurance, and you’re going to have the same problem in California, every time there’s a hurricane here, one of the things that they kind of bury is that less than 20 per cent of Florida homeowners have appropriate homeowners insurance and flood insurance.

And so it’s going to, it’s going to come down to the federal government or the state government to try to bail these people out. And eventually I think it makes sense to tell people you can’t rebuild in a place that had three hurricanes in five years. Great. It’s like a floodplain. Houston has the same problem. There’s parts of Texas where it’s almost, you know, people, their home will flood three times in eight years and they’re like, I’m gonna be rebuilding. And I was like, why? And that’s great if you choose to do that, but I don’t wanna have to pay for it. And I’m not trying to sound harsh.

Colin: (at 15:39)
That’s increasing with global warming, is it not?

Elizabeth:
Absolutely, absolutely. Right. And when I was, when I was a kid, you had forest fires in the West. That was normal. We all had that. But now, particularly in Seattle, August historically is the most beautiful month of the year. It’s amazing. We don’t have humidity. It’s 80 degrees. It’s gorgeous. But now August has become the month that we have smoke because every time they have fires in BC, all the smoke comes down to Seattle.

And so we’ll have two to three weeks where we have the worst air quality in the world. It’s worse than Beijing. that’s, gosh, I feel like I’m being the most depressing person on the planet.

Mik:
So, Elizabeth, now with Trump 2.0, what’s it like to be an environmentalist in the U.S. right now? We heard Colin talk about how the U.S. is now on everybody’s mind, in a way. But what is it like to be there? – and what’s it like for your business?

Elizabeth:
So the interesting thing is, particularly globally, know, everybody thinks at the federal level that Trump does all this stuff and it stops everything. And it doesn’t. Because the states really have their own regulations. And that’s where, honestly, some of the most exciting things are happening. From an environmental perspective, from a packaging perspective, sustainability, everything.

And I personally have a number of friends who have invested in and are building some phenomenal companies in terms of carbon sequestration. I’m a member of a women in climate technology global group where we’re just, mean, honestly, there are some phenomenal companies being developed right now that already got started. Nobody’s abandoning that, right?

And there are a lot of regulations from a packaging perspective. I was just talking to somebody about this the other day. 15 years ago, you started having a couple of states, Seattle was one of them, California was one of them, who decided to, they wanted to get rid of plastic shopping bags. So bags had to be reusable, or if there were going to be shopping bags, they had to be paper and they had to be at least 40 per cent post-consumer.
So I worked with Tiffany at the time because they identified it was spreading. So you already are going to have to change your shopping bag. Well, change your shopping bag then so that it works in California or Seattle or Austin and just make it so it’s for everywhere. So I helped them and we changed their shopping bag to be a 50 % post-consumer FSA certified shopping bag. So they made a decision that was sustainable and it was good for business at the same time. Right?

I’m actually very hopeful about the future. Yeah, there’s some stuff going on right now that’s not great. But honestly, nobody’s going out and saying, I’m going to invest in the coal business. Nobody’s going out and saying, I’m going to invest in the oil business. They’re investing in companies that are the right thing from a sustainability perspective, but they’re also the right thing, like you said, Colin, from a financial perspective. And so I do believe that there are good things happening from my perspective obviously, because it’s on the front line, on the packaging side, and it’s a combo. It ends up being the right thing to do from a sustainability perspective, but it also ends up being that you’re also going in the right direction.

Mik: (at 19:27)
To me, Elizabeth, the million dollar question here when you talk about packaging is: Will we find a way away from plastic? You know, can we get out of plastic?

Elizabeth:
I don’t know. I don’t have that answer. There are certain things for which plastic is, I think that there are some really interesting things going on from a development to move from plastic to paper. I don’t even know if you guys, there is a collagen company here called Vital Proteins and their packaging, it’s big tubs. buy like a, I don’t know, a couple months supply and a big tub with a scoop and it was always plastic, and they have recently transitioned to a paper tub. And it’s a great experience. And we’re seeing some pretty exciting things being done that way.

I’m also seeing some really cool things done with aluminum, which has its own complication right now, particularly with tariffs. So, you know, we’re seeing some interesting things. I know of somebody who’s doing some testing with aluminum child resistant bottles like for pharmaceuticals to replace plastic, which I think has a lot of momentum, but again has its own complications.

And then the thing I’m really interested to see is that there’s a ton of development into compostable packaging and particularly compostable flexible packaging. And flexible packaging has a really, it has a great fit, right?

It really does, especially, you know, a reusable zipper pouch. And to get to the point where that’s compostable, which I do think is going to happen within the next couple of years, and there’s compostable now, it just doesn’t protect all products. If you make potato chips in Canada and you put them in a compostable bag and you try to sell them in Whole Foods in Florida, they will be stale way before their date.

And that’s just because of humidity and interaction with compostable packaging. However, I think it’s so close, like within years. But part of our struggle, and this is where the EU just is light years beyond us, is that part of our struggle is also the way that we set up recycling and waste and composting in the United States. Because every municipality, every state does their own thing.

So if you’re going to do compostable, is it curbside compostable? Is it industrial compostable? Even with recyclable products. Again, if you live in Seattle, I can compost and recycle anything. But when I got my home in Fort Lauderdale, I’m sure they put this letter on the wall at the waste retrieval place, because they thought I was humorous, because I sent them a letter saying I thought they should put together a composting program. I’m sure they thought I was funny.

That’s part of the struggle and that’s got to come at a couple different levels. That actually has to be driven by the brand owners. That’s got to be driven by the corporations because that’s good for all of us, right? It’s got to be driven by the constituents. This is the other complication. Yes, Colin? Sorry, I get very passionate about this.

Colin:
Yeah, we can hear! The first point I wanted to make was that it’s very much market driven. And the point that everybody’s using plastic right now is because it’s incredibly cheap. Because it’s oil based and it’s going to get cheaper as the world moves away from petrol driven cars. There’ll be a glut of oil and that means plastic’s going to be cheaper.

Even if you came up tomorrow with a method of using seaweed to make containers and replace plastic, it’s likely that the plastic industry will just become cheaper again because of that flood of oil that we’ve built up over almost a century now. And now it’s going to be very difficult to stop. But look, I’ve got a couple of questions for you, Elizabeth, if I can. First up, have you got solar panels on your roof in Florida?

Elizabeth:
I don’t

Colin:
Does it have solar panels?

Elizabeth:
It does not.

Colin:
Right, if you did fit solar panels, would they be made in America or are they mostly made in China?

Elizabeth:
I think most of them are actually made in China, although I will be very interested to see what happens with the tariffs, if that drives any more behaviour.

And the second thing I was going to say is that here in Australia we have a system of garbage collection which includes different coloured topped bins for composting. We have a green waste as well as a sustainable waste which is glass and plastics. well as that that’s separate from the standard rubbish that goes into. That’s what we have in Seattle.

Colin:
So is your composting tied in with that collection?

Elizabeth:
Yes, in Seattle, you have a green bin for composting and yard waste, which is food waste, whatever. You’ve got a blue bin for recycling. You’ve got a brown bin for garbage. And then a number of us also have another company called Ridwell that has a container that you put on your porch that are for items that you can’t, that they have a way to recycle for you, but it’s not through the system of Seattle City Garbage.

But yeah, you can, it’s awesome. And the great thing about Seattle is they have figured out how to make money off the compost, which is great. That’s the best way to do it.

Tony:
There’s so many products here that are classified as recyclable or compostable, but they’re not really, or they take ages to break down. Is that an issue in the States as well?

Elizabeth:
It is, and I think that the problem is, again, it goes down to the municipalities as well. The more sophisticated, and again, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, think New York, LA, not actually all of LA, they have more sophisticated systems. And so they’re able to sort, and they’re also, part of it’s educating the consumer, right? So when you live in Seattle, you’re really educated about what you can recycle, what goes where.

We have that other opportunity with Redwell where we can set other things like plastic wrap and stuff that would normally go in the garbage in some cities. They actually will come collect and I pay for that, but that’s okay. I want to, right? I want to do the right thing. And they make it really, really easy. That’s, I was just talking about this last week with somebody, a lot of this is education, right? A lot of it is education and it’s educating not only, you know, it’s educating the consumer, but part of my job when I’m working with corporations is educating them as to how to address the sustainability of their packaging, whether it’s brand new, right, and we’re doing a new brand, or if it’s looking at an existing line of products and figuring out how help them. I worked with a company last year that in one of their lines had 150 SKUs, and we were able to do a full analysis of the 150 SKUs.

Almost half of them was in packaging that was too big. That’s the number one thing, right? I got to save them money and then I also got to do something sustainable. And then this happens a lot. They had bought a bunch of companies. So you don’t, you don’t know what you got, right? And nobody ever sat in a room like I did for two days and look at all the packaging and analyse all of it. But they also had at least 10 SKUs that were using a plastic thermoform that I was able to convert that to corrugated.

So for me, that’s a really easy sustainability win. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting your customer to sit down and really look at everything because as more and more companies have bought each other, I bet they don’t even know what’s in there.

. . .

SONG
“Growing Houses, Growing Hope”

[Verse 1]
We powered our way into trouble and heat,
Smoke in the sky, flames at our feet.
But now we’ve got tools, and we’ve opened the gate,
To flip the script and regenerate.

[Chorus]
We’re growing houses, growing hope,
With bamboo, hemp, and microscope.
From food scraps rise our veggie farms,
Right in the city, safe from harm.
We’re building dreams that clean the air,
With microbes spinning meals from care.
We’re farming nature, not just crops—
Forests bloom where logging stops.

[Verse 2]
We used to cut, now we regrow,
Wetlands thrive where rivers flow.
Our rooftops shine with solar light,
Our buildings breathe, the future’s bright!

[Bridge]
We powered our way in,
Now we power our way out.
With science and spirit,
We’re turning it about.

From cornstarch walls to protein dust,
We’re feeding the planet with balance and trust.

[Final Chorus]
We’re growing houses, growing hope,
With bamboo, hemp, and microscope.
The planet’s healing, day by day,
Because we found a better way.
So sing it loud, and plant the seed,
A world of care is all we need—
We’re cooling down, and rising up,
Together strong, and full of love.

[Outro]
Growing houses… growing hope…
One green step, one shared road.

. . .

Voice excerpts heard in the song:
Sir David Attenborough: (at 29:50)
It’s a new industrial revolution powered by millions of sustainable innovations.

Carl Sagan in 1985:
If you don’t worry about it now, it is too late later on.

Yuval Noah Harari:
Look clearly at where can we be in 2050.

Mik Aidt:
I say that because it is through love that revolutions are won.

Sir David Attenborough:
There just could be a change in moral attitude from people worldwide, politicians worldwide, to see that self-interest is for the past, common interest is for the future.

Antonio Guterres: (at 31:09)
The longer we wait, the harder it will become.

. . .

Tony:
Our next guest is Brendan Condon. He’s the founding director of Australian Ecosystems and Regen Nurseries. Also heavily involved at Cape Paterson – an eco village there. I’m sure that he’ll have some comments about sea level rise in that context. So Brendan, thanks very much for coming on.

Brendan Condon:
Thanks for having me.

Tony:
Pleasure. So tell us, tell us your story and what gets you up each day to tackle the climate crisis which you do.

So, yeah, so I’m here today at Australian Ecosystems with my staff and we grow millions of trees, grasses and shrubs and indigenous plants and we restore rivers, creeks, waterways, wetlands and nature.

I’m also director of FoodCube. We build pop-up farms in cities to intercept organic resource food waste and green waste and to grow food within arm’s length of households and communities and also the Cape Eco Village – which is a really good example of decarbonisation: a whole community that’s moving beyond fossil fuels.

So that’s a 230-home estate where we built all the houses to around eight-star energy efficiency, really energy efficient, fitted them out with heat pump heating and cooling and hot water and solar. 30 per cent of the homes are paired with electric vehicles and we’re finding people are collapsing their energy bills, saving $5,000 or $6,000 a year in avoided gas and petrol bills.

And the whole estate’s well on track, 230 homes to be saving a million dollars a year by going carbon neutral. So when we’re fully built out, on average, five to six grand per home in avoided gas and petrol costs, as well as electricity costs. And that shows the power now of decarbonisation. I think Rewiring Australia identified that if every house in Australia did what we’ve done at the Cape, the savings to the Australian economy would be, to Australian households would be about $40 billion a year in avoided spend on fossil fuels.

So it’s really interesting listening to our last speaker, Elizabeth. I agree that the renewable energy juggernaut is unstoppable. And right now we’re seeing huge decarbonisation, uptake of renewables in China. They are decoupling their whole economy from the costs of fossil fuels. They are going to have an enormous advantage in reduced running costs in their economy.

And I look at the U.S. and I see the blue states are driving really hard with the agenda. The cities are driving hard with the agenda. Even some of the leading red states like Texas have massive renewable energy programs. So we’ve got a certain special stable genius in the White House at the moment. But I think the juggernaut will continue and the US will have to continue if they want to stay competitive economically. Economics take politics out of it. So yeah, so I think it’s a juggernaut.

Mik: (at 34:16)
And with the election coming up, what’s your view on, say, Dutton becoming our next prime minister?

Brendan:
I think Dutton’s aligned to the fossil fuel industry and the old economy. And I think, you know, with the interests that are linked to the LNP, they’re going to try and prolong the use and damage done by fossil fuel interests. But I think that, you know, it’s about communicating the benefits of these new technologies. You know, it’s interesting, the costs of integrated sustainability electrification 10 years ago was expensive.

But the cost of solar panels have come down 90 per cent in the last 10 years. The efficiency of heat pumps, all these things have improved. So the costs of the old economy and the cost of the new way of doing things have passed each other like ships in the night. And there’s a big economic performance gap opening up in favor of renewables and batteries and energy efficiency. And I think it’s going to be a brave politician to stand between those huge savings to our household budgets, to stand between those savings.

So I think it’s incumbent on us to really communicate the fact that we can collapse these bills and have tiny running costs for our households and that money can stay in household budgets.

Colin:
During the second lockdown, which was now two years ago, we took the opportunity to completely decarbonise our house and our lifestyle. We now drive an EV car, so we’re all the things that you’re doing building in. And I can confirm that we’ve got a lot more money. We don’t pay electricity bills at all, and we’re running our car on the electricity that we’re generating on our roof.

So yes, I’m just sort of doubling back on what you’re saying. It is sensible and it makes sense. But unfortunately, this is the real thing. Our governments don’t really want it to happen because they’re getting, well, they’re getting payments from the fossil fuel companies. The fossil fuel companies are using that, they’re paying political parties and they’re using that to… bribe, if you like, our politicians to put hurdles in the way of doing it and that’s my real question what unexpected hurdles have you had to get over in order to build a non-carbon estate?

Brendan:
It was interesting 10 years ago when we set out, as I said, things were expensive and we thought we might have to, an enlightened development group with ethical investors, we thought we might have to provide subsidies and some leg ups to outfit these houses with the kit. But as I said, the economy of scale production in China took off and the cost of all these things has now plummeted. Such that it absolutely makes economic sense to do this. And you’re making a poor economic decision to stay with the incumbent technologies.
So I think that’s been the surprise how quickly things have flipped in the positive. And I think that’s a really good new story.

So I think decarbonisation of transport and energy has a head of steam up and it’s moving really well and we need to double down on the urgency there. But I wanted to have a chat today about this other part of the climate change challenge that we have, which is the fact that we have elevated atmospheric carbon levels.

I’m going to go blue sky a bit. I’m going to talk very quickly the size of the problem and then I’m to talk about new solutions that I’m seeing coming through that will help tackle climate while meeting human needs and stimulating a strong economy.

So, you know, if you look at it, it’s quite daunting where it’s 425 parts per million now and the last time the atmosphere had this much carbon was, I think, the mid-Miocene, which was 15 million years ago, and we were in a different planet, three to four degrees hotter, sea level rise back then was around 20 metres higher. So we’re sort of pushing towards this three to four degrees of temperature with the carbon levels we have now.

So if we’re move to a safe climate position, and science tells us that is sitting at low 300s parts per million, if you talk to our top climate scientists, we’re going to have to ramp up a massive capacity to draw carbon back out of the atmosphere. And my belief is that we’re doing that things like replanting forests, which is great, but by itself it’s not going to be anywhere near enough. And I love forests. My companies have planted 50 million trees and grasses in the last 20 years. But I think we’re going to have to find novel and new pathways to draw down carbon. And we’re to have to form a carbon utilisation economy, looking at that carbon as a resource, and finding ways to reverse mine it and draw it down and lock it down into things like soils, forests, oceans, but also buildings and infrastructure.

So we’re to have to develop a whole lot of pathways to reverse mine the carbon from the atmosphere, and do it in a way that creates jobs, wealth, value, employment and meets human needs. I sort of think a lot about this as a practitioner in the climate space.

How do we sort of scale? Where are the opportunities in our global biosphere to really scale carbon drawdown? To me, I keep coming back to the global lignocellulose cycle. So that’s lignocellulose that’s made by all plants, everything from marine algae to forests to grasslands to woodlands to wetlands. It is a vast drawdown cycle. It pulls down about 180 million. We create about 180 billion tonnes of lignocellulose per annum in the natural world.

Now, if you draw that down to carbon, it’s around 70 billion tonnes of carbon is drawn into lignocellulose each year. Human emissions are around 11 billion tonnes of carbon. So it’s about 15 per cent of the carbon that’s cycled in the global lignocellulose cycle. So that’s a vast carbon pump.

And the problem is at the moment that plants draw that carbon down, then they die and they break down and they decompose and re-release. So it’s sort of in this active carbon stasis. And another subset of that is the global micro risal cycle. That pulls down 13 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into soil. So we have these really powerful carbon pumps. And my view is that we’re going to have to reconfigure some of those pumps so that we fix that carbon and intercept it and use it for useful things. And I’m going to give two quick examples.

One is: The secret to climate change is that we have to reconfigure the major emitting processes in the economy with science and innovation and tweak them so that they transform from carbon emitting processes to carbon sequestering processes. And one example is the global construction industry. have huge amounts of embodied carbon in concrete, for instance. So concrete is 8 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. If concrete was a country, it’d be you’d have China, then the U.S. and then thirdly concrete in order of magnitude of emissions.

So we can’t keep using concrete because it’s contributing to the problem and we’re out of carbon budget. So I’m watching the emergence of 3D construction printing using bio-based materials. And this is massive fascination to me. An example is the University of Maine recently printed a house in a couple of days out of wood dust and corn starch. So they took waste stream wood dust, they took corn starch, they have a corn industry. They polymerised that cornstarch, turned it into a bio binder, and then they took the wood dust and polymerised corn starch and they printed a beautiful house out of wood dust and corn starch in two days.

So, Google the ‘Bio Home’ ‘University of Maine’. Someone’s just lived in that house through the Maine winter, it performed really, really well. My view is that with climate change, we’re have big impacts on supply chains. Plantations are becoming more fire prone and drought prone. We’re going to have to move to rapid cycle biomass and use that for construction. And then, if we can develop bio-binders, can bind those, that lignocellulose material together, things like pulverised hemp, pulverised bamboo, and we can then build buildings super fast, precision print them, airtight. And every time we’re printing a building, we’re engaging in active climate repair. We’re drawing carbon down through photosynthesis into a building and drawing it down into a building that’s got a lifespan of a hundred years.

So I think, by using bio-based materials has the potential to swap the construction of a home into a carbon sequestering activity. So this is really exciting.

And then if you step on the shoulders of that, there’s another company called Prometheus Materials in the U.S.. They’ve taken a microbe, a carbon fixing microbe, and they’ve inoculated into a bio-cement. So as that cement cures, it triggers the life cycle of the microbe. And the microbe pulls in carbon and forms a calcium carbonate, exoskeleton that strengthens the concrete. As that building cures, it sucks carbon in and uses that to strengthen the building. And I think that Apple have just commissioned them to produce data centres.

So these are bioeconomy tools. This is a really interesting thing. I’ve sort of been quite depressed over the years thinking we’re going to decarbonise, we’re going to move energy onto clean energy, decarbonise transport, we’re to have this legacy carbon problem. How do we draw it down? Tree planting is not enough, we’re going to need these new tools. And I’m seeing the bioeconomy as a really interesting area that’s rapidly innovating. And it’s a knowledge and science-based sector that harnesses and leverages biological resources and processes and principles to produce the next generation of sustainable goods. And there’s a lot of movement in the bioeconomy to develop new tools for large-scale carbon sequestration.

So that’s one example. And I’ll go on to a second one, but are there any questions at the moment on that?

Mik:
Well, just from my side, I love the word bioeconomy. That’s a new word to me. And I think words sometimes, you know, are needed to create change. Is that a word you invented? Or is that a common word in your world?

Brendan:
No. It’s a common word, but not that common, and most people draw a blank. I think as climate activists, we really need to understand this because there’s a whole lot of new tools coming out in the toolbox to tackle climate, to draw down carbon and to generate goods and processes that sequester carbon that create jobs and positive economics. So I think we’ve got to power our way out of climate change in the way we of power our way into it.

If we can reconfigure the major productive processes of the economy to be carbon sequestering, then we can power our way out just as we power our way into it. So I think it’s pretty exciting.

Tony:
I could see implications there for Elizabeth as well in what she’s doing, the combination of those ideas.

Brendan:
Well, I think that if you look at that University of Maine Bio Home, you know, they printed that house in two days. If you look at the future impacts of climate, we’re going to need vast amounts of housing as people retreat from sea levels or out of flood zones or fire prone zones. And if you look at something like the Mallacoota fires in Victoria, I think in five years time, we’ll be able to go into that community and print back better. We’ll be able to use biobased materials and rapidly reprint houses that are high quality for people who are escaping climate driven events. It’s also a jobs rich environment. You still need your plumbers and your electricians and you still need carpenters to fit these things out. But it’s going to allow us to step up and meet housing needs in a carbon negative or a carbon sequestering way. So it’s pretty exciting.

Mik: (at 46:05)
Elisabeth, you talked in a way also about the bioeconomy and said, ‘Yes, in a couple of years we may get there’. What’s your comment to what you hear Brendan talk about here?

Elizabeth:
Well, I actually want to think one of the things that Brendan brought and the University of Maine story is amazing. One of the… and I don’t know enough if this is going on in Australia, but honestly, we have a significant crisis in the United States in terms of affordable homes. And I mean, it’s truly a crisis. So and there are there are a lot of different reasons for it. It’s not just one thing.

And so to get to a point where we can have a solution like that is amazing from a sustainability perspective. But yes, I absolutely believe in the bioeconomy. I think that there are an amazing number of opportunities, like we said and Brendan talked about, I personally know of many, many companies. And by the way, they’re not just in California. I have a friend who has a carbon sequestering company that’s headquartered in Kansas. So it doesn’t matter where it is, if it’s a good opportunity. Absolutely.

Brendan:
It also doesn’t really matter, Elizabeth, on the product that was used. I mean they used cornstarch because they’ve got a lot of cornstarch in maize. Here in South East Asia we can grow bamboo incredibly fast and we’re already making furniture and stuff out of bamboo that you wouldn’t think was made from bamboo. So yes, it’s the future. If it doesn’t use… it isn’t dependent on fossil fuel.

Elizabeth:
One of the things that’s very interesting here is, and I don’t know if you guys have seen this, there’s a number of companies are now using, it’s, how do put it, it’s cushioning, but at the same time, it’s keeping the product cold. And I personally buy the farmer’s dog, which I’m sure I’m paying way too much for my dog’s… But it comes in a corrugated box and the, protection material is actually the best way I can describe it. So having, I came up in the packaging industry and the paper side. So I worked for a paper mill for 17 years. I can recognise the smell of pulp anywhere and I, it’s top of mind because my dog’s food just came here today. So what you do is you take it out. Once you’ve taken all the dog food out and I just lay it on the ground and I spray water on it and it’s compost and it literally smells like a pulp mill, but it is a fascinating product that is significantly better than Styrofoam or anything like that. And I know more and more companies that it is more expensive. It’s probably driving part of the cost for what I’m paying for this, but I sure feel a lot better about that, about adding some value to my soil than putting Styrofoam in something.

Styrofoam should be banned anyway, don’t you think?

Brendan:
So I guess, you know, to me the challenge is how do we function as a society in an era of climate breakdown where we’re going to see massive disruption to communities. So the solutions themselves need to be meeting human needs, providing food and shelter. So I think 3D printing is a classic example. It turns a whole carbon emitting sector of the economy, potentially by using biobased materials, into a carbon sequestering sector of the economy and also addressing housing shortages.

And I think you were talking about bamboo, I think in Australia we’ve got the ability to grow a lot of hemp and hemp also has this extra benefit of food security because hemp seed has really rich amino acids. It’s a fantastic protein, complete protein for human consumption. So I think that’s a dual crop that could be printing houses. Farmers could be growing our houses and growing our food.

And I think that the second, you know, big system that really needs a lot of work is food security, because that’s going to be under, it’s already under enormous pressure. You know, we saw $11 lettuces with the 2022 big La Nina flooding out our salad bowls. Southern Europe has just been hit – the big salad and tomato bowls – with extreme climate events.

So food security is going to be important and innovation. The bio economy is also throwing up really powerful opportunities. And I think the one that I’m finding most interesting is microbial proteins.

If we look at our current, the way we’re growing food, particularly livestock, very, very inefficient. You know, take cellulose, put it through a ruminant and you get all these energy losses. You know, as the ruminant breaks down that cellulose and accesses the energy to produce meat or milk. And you have this huge loss, 15 per cent of which is methane. So, you know, this is why livestock farming has been seen as something that we need to tackle to tackle climate and come up with more sustainable alternatives. Microbial proteins are fascinating.

And I’ll give you an example. There’s a company called Solar Foods out of Finland. They’ve recently isolated a naturally occurring non-GMO microbe, which is a super protein producer. And they’re culturing it up in like a microbrewery in a fermentation system using a system called precision fermentation where they put in some nutrients and sugars, and I think it’s hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and they ferment it up using renewable energy, and it produces a protein powder that is clean and has a really good nutritional profile for human consumption. So they’re producing Solene. Now, they can produce the same amount of protein as beef on 1 per cent of the land take of beef. So it is a super sustainable microbial protein..

And recently they launched that in Singapore with some of the top chefs in Singapore who made a whole lot of really delicious foods out of Solene. Now I see that that’s really interesting because all these things, know, hemp and bamboo and also the sugars that go into microbial proteins require farmers. So this push is a pro-farmer, farmer friendly story, but it’s also about diversification of farming and agriculture, which at the moment as currently configured is quite capable of pushing us over two or three degrees because it’s a major emitting part of the economy. And a lot of farmers aren’t really having a great time with climate change. But I think if we harness 3D printing and we get farmers growing biomass and starting to supply the construction industry, and then if you move into this next generation of clean, sustainable microbial proteins, they’re still going to need farmers producing sugars.

In the northern Australian hotter zones, there’ll be sugar cane, in the southern zone, sugar beet, or even potentially lignocellulose. If we could convert lignocellulose into feedstocks for precision fermentation for microbes, we have solved food security because lignocellulose is so vastly abundant.

So I think farmers of the future have the potential to diversify, to be producing the feedstocks for growing our houses. They’ll be growing our houses. They’ve also got the potential to produce the feedstocks for new super sustainable proteins. And then that shrinks the land take required to meet the same calorie output. And it frees up space to do the third thing, which is restore nature. So it’ll free up the ability to restore carbon rich ecosystems and habitat and forests.

So much of which has been lost to our currently configured agricultural system. So the farmers of the future will be growing, growing our houses, growing our food, and also farming nature and getting paid for it. So I think this is the opportunity to flip this last major sector into being a carbon-sinking and carbon-sequestering sector and giving farmers a future with dignity on the land and creating this next generation of sustainable industries.

. . .

Jingle:
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid.

Malcolm Turnbull:
We are the land of droughts and flooding rains. We recognise that it is a very volatile and often capricious climate.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.

Mik (at 54:47)
That’s all, once again, we could fit in one Sustainable Hour, full of solutions and full of what I think our politicians need to hear. Here in Australia now, we have an election and we have all these politicians going about and honestly, I don’t think they have the vision and they don’t have the knowledge that Brendan and Elizabeth is coming with to us listeners today. So we need to get the word out there and hopefully you will help us, Brendan and Elizabeth, in that process. We always round off with saying be the difference or be something else. What’s your ‘Be’, Brendan?

Brendan:
Be a place to demystify rapidly emerging positive solutions to climate change that are scalable on a multi gigaton scale.

Mik:
That’s easy!

Colin:
That’s snappy.

Mik:
Elizabeth?

Elizabeth:
I think mine will be on the packaging side and I think that this can apply to anything honestly in terms of sustainability is for many people they automatically think that if something’s going to be more sustainable it’s going to cost more money and they can’t afford it. And I think that’s one of the biggest things and that’s going to go with Brendan’s demystifying. Demystifying the concept that you have to spend more money to do the right thing or to make your overall packaging program more sustainable and that’s not true. You can absolutely build a program that is good to Mother Earth and maybe saves you some money along the way.

Colin:
Hmm

Mik:
So how is that condensed down into Be… – Be… what?

Elizabeth:
I like to think Be hopeful. Be hopeful. We don’t have to… It’s easy to get down in the dumps right now. So be hopeful.

Tony:
Yeah, like it.

Mik:
Be the difference, and be helpful.

. . .

SONG (at 56:52)
‘Sustainable Living’

[Verse 1]
Morning sun peeks through my window pane
See my neighbor planting in the rain
Trading tomatoes for her fresh-baked bread
Simple choices moving us ahead
Look around at faces that I know
Every seed we plant helps others grow
People gathering in the town today
Making changes in a brand new way

[Pre-chorus]
Hand in hand we’re building something real
Share the food, share the way we feel
Every small step leads us to believe
In the power of you and me

[Chorus]
Sustainable living, bringing us together
Sustainable living, any kind of weather
Sustainable living, changing how we move
Sustainable living, everything we do

[Verse 2]
Sally shows me how to save the rain
While Tim’s creating compost down the lane
Kids are learning how to plant and grow
Making gardens row by row by row
Someone’s sharing bikes they used to ride
Someone’s teaching skills they used to hide
Every person brings a different part
Now we’re learning how to make a start

[Bridge]
Remember when we felt so far apart?
Now look how close we are
From tiny seeds to open hearts
We’ve come so very far

[Chorus]
Sustainable living, bringing us together
Sustainable living, any kind of weather
Sustainable living, changing how we move
Sustainable living, everything we do

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour

Events in Victoria

The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.

Petitions

→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Live-streaming on Wednesdays

The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).

→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, click here – or go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen Live’ on the right.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Podcast archive

Over 570 hours of sustainable podcasts.

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows as well as special Regenerative Hours and Climate Revolution episodes in full length.

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