The Sustainable Jungle Podcast is a mission driven show, focusing on solutions for the world’s sustainability and conservation challenges. Hosts, Lyall and Joy, talk with some of the most interesting and inspiring people working to future proof our planet. Join us as we create a place to encourage and galvanize positive change.
Episodes
Thursday May 24, 2018
Thursday May 24, 2018
“Jenny Golding is a writer, musician, mom, and educator. She loves long rambles in the woods, writing songs, singing harmony, cross-country skiing, and adventuring in the wilderness with George and little George. After 20 years working for nonprofits in conservation and education, she now writes about Yellowstone and natural history topics from her home in Gardiner, Montana, and has published over 40 e-news and print articles for local nonprofits and other digital and print publications.”
“George Bumann can draw, sculpt, and teach about all aspects of Yellowstone. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in wildlife ecology and has spent thousands of hours studying the animals of Yellowstone and interpreting them through art, lectures and courses. It is this intimate, daily knowledge of wildlife, natural history, and animal communication which infuses truth and meaning into his artwork. His art and writing have appeared in popular and scientific publications, and his sculptures can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States and around the globe.”
We spent the most magical day roaming Yellowstone National Park while interviewing Jenny and George for our Podcast. We had almost 3 hours of audio! It was tough editing down to just 1 hour of the best gems from the day which include lessons on noticing the small things and truly listening to better understand the world around you, making deliberate choices about the life you want to live and how nature and wild places give you perspective!
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Show notes for this episode can be found here
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Sunday May 13, 2018
Sunday May 13, 2018
Cara Smyth is a leader in the Fashion Industry. She has built her career in management, brand building, and global scaling and has served as President of Jill Sanders America, a Director of Burberry and the CEO of Menichetti International in Milan. Today, Cara is an Executive Board Member and Vice President of Glasgow Caledonian University New York College (GCNYC) and is also the passionate founder of the College’s Fair Fashion Center.
The Fair Fashion Center (FFC) “focuses on the intersection of profitability and sustainability. With the unique mission to facilitate the incorporation of sustainable practices into fashion, the FFC is proving the business case for sustainability by turning global issues into industry opportunities. The Center is closely aligned with industry leaders and strives to create a fashion industry that is a respectful, regenerative ecosystem supporting people, planet and profits. Its efforts are built upon the recognition that systemic change in the fashion industry requires an approach that is aligned to the industry’s disciplines, and reconciled to the bottom line.”
In this episode, we learned about the complex world of fashion, how fashion can be used as a force for good and how the Fair Fashion Center is changing industry perceptions and turning sustainability into an opportunity.
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Find show notes for this episode here
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Friday May 04, 2018
Friday May 04, 2018
Harish Hande is the definition of a social entrepreneur. In 1995, after learning about the power of a distributed energy model, he founded SELCO India, which “provides sustainable energy solutions and services to under-served households and businesses” and recently won the 2018 Skoll Foundation award for social entrepreneurship. Harish has won numerous awards over the years and has an incredible amount of wisdom to share. Today he also heads up the SELCO Foundation and SELCO Incubation Center which support start-up social entrepreneurs working to alleviate poverty. The SELCO family helps the underserved out of poverty and eliminates the environmental and health impacts created by today’s kerosene, coal and wood energy sources.
We talk about setting up a social enterprise in the 90s, SECLO's approach and business model, key lessons Harish has learned along the way, SELCO's impact to date and the other 3 arms of the SELCO family: SELCO Foundation, SELCO Incubation Center and the SELCO Fund.
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Find the show notes here
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Friday Apr 27, 2018
Friday Apr 27, 2018
"Louis Masai is a visual artist based in London. He uses his research on endangered species as a topic of discussion to heighten the general public’s awareness of the ‘sixth mass extinction’. When not working in the studio, Masai travels around the world painting murals in cities, towns, and villages. These are often of locally endangered species. His paintings have reached out to people in ways that environmentalists and activists find hard to capture. To this effect, he often works alongside scientists, and conservationists as well as environmentally minded companies."
This episode is a little longer than the usual because we were enjoying ourselves and found so many topics that were fascinating to cover with Louis including Louis’ inspiration, his evolution as an artist, his local and international projects and the role of his art in communicating important messages. If you want to jump to a specific topic covered in the interview have a look at the timestamps in the show notes.
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Find the show notes here
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Thursday Apr 19, 2018
Thursday Apr 19, 2018
Todd Lemons is an economist, engineer and ultimately, an environmentalist (quite the unique combo). Over the last 25 years, Todd Lemons lived and worked in South and Central America, Mainland China and South East Asia. In that time, he has:
- Served as CEO for EnVision Corp, an “incubator for sustainability technologies and a leader in the development of market-based environmental finance solutions”
- Founded Infinite Earth which “develops and manages tropical conservation land banks and provides environmental offsets and private-label CSR solutions to companies across the globe”
- While at Infinite Earth, together with Biruté Mary Galdikas he founded the Rimba Raya Project, the first validated REDD+ project under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and helped define the criteria by which all projects are measured
- Most recently, founded Veridium Labs, an “environmental FinTech company offering a real-world application of blockchain technology that uses cryptographic environmental mitigation offsets”
In this episode, we cover Todd’s background, how he went from chopping down trees to saving them, the mechanisms being used to do this and how blockchain will be used to dramatically improve how carbon offsets are traded for companies and consumers.
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Find the show notes here
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Thursday Apr 12, 2018
Thursday Apr 12, 2018
Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski is an environmental photojournalist, presenter, and film-maker. Over the last 10 years, Bertie has been at the coal face of animal conservation around the world including exposing Namibia’s annual seal cull, pursuing the ‘tortoise mafia’ through Madagascar’s sacred forests, training as an anti-poaching ranger in Zimbabwe, living on-board a commercial tuna fishing vessel and reporting on Borneo’s ‘Sea Gypsies’. His articles and images have appeared in more than 40 international publications, winning multiple awards including the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, photojournalist category. Bertie is a currently a TV presenter for the wildlife and conservation specialists, ScubaZoo TV (SZTV) and has a number of epic projects in the works including, the focus of our discussion, a project on the dark side of the on Wildlife Tourism industry. This is a long-term project for Bertie, kicked off by a trip he made to Thailand where he visited a number of popular animal tourist attractions.
This interview is a little different from our usual in that our topic is not a happy one. It covers Bertie's latest project which exposes the horrific cruelty behind the Wildlife Tourism Industry. The major objective of this episode is to raise awareness and educate ourselves and others on these issues and to ideally slow down demand and support for these types of cruel attractions.
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Find the show notes here (including the ink to Bertie's crowdfunding campaign)
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Friday Apr 06, 2018
Friday Apr 06, 2018
Ana Berliner is the President of the ATN (Associação Transumância e Natureza), a not-for-profit organization set up to own and manage the Faia Brava Nature Reserve, which is a private reserve in the Côa Valley region of Portugal. The reserve was started by Ana and her husband 20+ years ago with the purchase of 20 hectares of abandoned land. Ana is also the owner of the guesthouse in the small medieval town of Castelo Rodrigo. She is an inspiring person who is the centre of her community, working hard to save endangered species and bring economic development to this rural region of North Eastern Portugal.
We really enjoyed this relaxed conversation with Ana on location overlooking the beautiful Portuguese hills and valleys. We covered a bunch of topics including: how and why she started the Faia Brava Nature Reserve almost 20 years ago, rewilding in Europe and the species they’re helping to save from extinction, how Casa De Cisterna along with other ecotourism businesses in the Côa Valley region are conserving endangered species and how the ATN and Faia Brava work to build local economic development.
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Find the show notes here
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Wednesday Mar 28, 2018
Wednesday Mar 28, 2018
Hayden Wood is the CEO and co-founder of Bulb Energy, an award-winning renewable energy startup, based in London. Hayden has a background in management consulting and together with his friend Amit, spotted an unmet need in the UK’s energy market. They created Bulb in 2015 and have enjoyed the challenge of building a socially driven enterprise whilst delivering low prices and next level customer service.
We had a great discussion with Hayden on a number of topics, including his personal journey to becoming a co-founder of a successful renewable energy startup; the state of the energy market in the UK, how renewables are challenging the status quo, what the secret sauce is behind Bulb’s impressive growth and his advice on getting a next-gen startup off the ground.
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Find the show notes here
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Wednesday Mar 21, 2018
Wednesday Mar 21, 2018
James (Jim) Norrod is currently the Chairman of Recyclebank and the President and CEO of Tellabs Inc. Jim has a tremendous amount of experience making great businesses better and has, in recent years, increasingly focused his attention on mission-driven businesses.
Jim has a pretty impressive business improvement and leadership track record including the following:
- Segway Inc. as Chairman, President & CEO
- Infinite Power Solutions (IPS) as CEO
- Big Belly Solar as CEO
We had a thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of sustainability and business with Jim. He shared his thoughts on what the major differences are in leading a triple bottom line business vs a profit only model; what role consumers, businesses and governments should play in sustainability; if and when a Benefit Corp or B Corp type ethos will become mainstream; what businesses can do to use sustainability as an economic driver and many other nuggets of wisdom on making good business
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Find the show notes for this episode here
*Note: Apologies for the poor audio quality in patches on this one - Skype was not playing ball!*
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Friday Mar 16, 2018
Friday Mar 16, 2018
Umberto is a mountain guide in the Abruzzo Region and a naturalist photographer. He works between Abruzzo and Molise regions where, among the immense beech forests in the mountains or in the meadows, you can still see some extraordinary animal species. At the end of the 90s, Umberto had an emotional encounter with the bears of the valley which guided him to what has become his job. He is the creator and the director of Wildlife Adventures project and now he tries to convey the emotions he felt when he was young to those who walk along the paths and the mountains of Central Apennines with him.
Daniela is a conservation biologist who has undertaken several state funded studies of animal species in Abruzzo National Park, including the Marsican Brown Bear, wolves and Chamois (a species of mountain goat). She also works as a tour guide for Wildlife Adventures.
We spoke to Umberto and Daniela on location in Pescasseroli, Italy. They shared their favourite animal stories and the most impactful moments they’ve had in the wild. We also talked about why it’s important to spend time in nature, the role of eco-tourism in conservation, why humans and nature need to learn to co-exist and how the Abruzzo National Park has been successful in involving local communities.
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Find the show notes here
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