Green Sense Radio

This week we spoke with Ron Cowgill, President of D/R Services and host of the Mighty House Radio Show. Ron shares his thoughts on what makes housing affordable, tips for homeowners on how to help save money and energy by weatherizing their homes, and tips for installing a home EV charger. 

This week we spoke with Kelli Pelc, founder of The Refilleri, a zero-waste store in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. They offer refillable or zero-waste solutions for a variety of products to make living an eco-friendly urban lifestyle more accessible. Kelli shares her motivation for beginning her business and her motto of reduce, reuse, and refill to help us achieve a plastic-free world.

This week we spoke with Joe Webber, Founder of Four Star Mushrooms, an indoor grow operation that sells its exotic mushrooms to the best restaurants in Chicago. Joes shares how Four-Star Mushrooms is on a mission to create more sustainable and equitable food and ecological systems. Mushrooms are both a delicious, nutritious source of food, and the substrate can be recycled to provide compost material.

This week we spoke with Sanza Kazadi, Founder of Kazadi Enterprises. Kazadi Enterprises is developing refrigeration systems that use the cleanest energy on earth - environmental heat.  Their systems reduce the energy cost of refrigeration by up to 90% and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerants. Sanza discusses how their solutions are resilient against brown- and black-outs, working even when electricity isn't available. 

A Future Solution for Today’s Plastic Waste Problem

Max Delferro, group leader of the Catalysis Science Program at Argonne
National Laboratory and coresearcher Geoffrey Coates, Professor at Cornell
University discuss their bench-scale research to a revolutionary approach to
recycling by plastic waste reengineering the molecular structure. Max explains
what it will take to scale their research and make it commercially available.

2022 was a year of unpredictability for agriculture, with droughts, floods, volatile
weather, kinks in the supply chain, inflation, and labor shortages. Along with the
challenges came advancements in Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA)
technology allowing more crops to be grown indoors while minimizing risk. CEA
covers a wide range of crops grown in greenhouses and vertical farms - from
floriculture to fruits and vegetables to cannabis and hemp.

This week we have a special edition of Green Sense Show where we meet the
CEA press to look back on the CEA industry in 2022 and what we can expect to
see in 2023.

Host Robert Colangelo has a candid discussion with representatives from three
leading publications that make up the CEA Press: Jennifer Marston, Senior
Reporter AgFunder, Brian Sparks, Senior Editor of Greenhouse Grower, and
Chris Higgins, Founder of Urban Ag News.

Building physical technologies that will change the physical world.

This week we spoke with Kim Blomquist, Director of Marketing and Communications, at mHUB, an innovation center for all things hard tech. Kim discusses how mHUB’s prototyping labs, industry partnerships, and a commitment to U.S. manufacturing (the mHUB ecosystem) are changing the landscape of hard tech development. Hear what resources mHub has to offer startups that make things.

This week we are joined by Julia Kurnik, the Director of Innovation Startups at
World Wildlife Funds. WWF is the world’s leading conversation organization,
working in nearly 100 countries to develop and deliver innovative solutions that
protect communities, wildlife, and the places in which they live. Julia discusses
how climate change is impacting crop production in the US. There recent
research suggests alternative locations to grow crops more sustainably.

This week a chat with Tom Appel, publisher of Consumer Guide Automotive, to
look back at the many new green transportation innovations we saw in 2022 and
look forward to what to expect in 2023. Tom also shares his thoughts on oil
changes: synthetic vs. traditional and how many miles can you go between
changes.

Prince William of Wales launched the Earthshot Prize Awards last year, an international contest to fund the world's most promising projects in five categories: protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world, and fix our climate".

This week we spoke with Zara Summers, Lanza tech’s Vice President of Science, the only American finalist, about their unique solution to change the way people think about carbon from a “liability” to a valuable feedstock for a wide range of sustainable new products.