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Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for episode 164

164 Louis De Jaeger: our futures depend on healthy soils

Healthy soils provide the foundation for life on our planet, and yet most agriculture degrades soil. Nurturing soil should be at the top of all our priority lists, and Louis De Jaeger—author of the new book ‘SOS: Save Our Soils, How regenerative farming can save your health and the planet’ — helps us understand why it’s so important, and what we can do about it.
Louis says his life mission is to regenerate 550 million hectares of land, to cool down the planet, save biodiversity, end hunger, and create world peace.
For the past twelve years, Louis De Jaeger has travelled extensively through North America, all the way to Panama, through Europe, South America and Africa. Along the way, he’s visited farms and interviewed a wide range of people, from pioneering regenerative farmers to corporate lobbyists, and explored one central question: How can we feed the world without destroying it?
Louis says, “To be honest, it really took a while to find clear answers on what the best way is to shape the future of food.” He is grateful for insights he couldn’t have dreamed of, and he shares them in SOS: Save Our Soils. Louis says the book is a manifesto, a global quest, and an invitation for all of us to step into the most critical conversation of our time: the future of food.”
Healthy soils are probably the most important element in our system – they are essential for nurturing us, nurturing the living systems we depend on, for drawing down carbon, for providing clean air and water, and much more. Every one of us, and every business, depends on soil – Louis De Jaeger explains why this is an SOS, and what we can do about it.

Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for episode 138 with Ruben Abruma

138 Rubén Abruña: keeping our poop in the loop

Award-winning documentary film maker Rubén Abruña helps us dig into one of the oldest problems in civil society…
All around the world, there are serious problems caused by the various ways we deal with our toilet waste – all the poop and pee we humans create every day. We waste drinking water – Flushing toilets use massive amounts of water – for example, in a country like Switzerland, each person will flush over 40 litres a day down the toilet. Often, the sewage from water toilets is mixed with household waste water, so it’s now contaminated with microplastics, cleaning chemicals, contraceptives and drug residues. And then, in most western societies, all that liquid waste is then mixed with industrial waste. So now we’ve got massive volumes of pretty toxic stuff to try and clean up, and separate into drinkable water and solid waste.
In developing countries, millions of people still use open toilets, or have to defecate on the land around their houses. So here, there are massive issues with disease and vermin, and in some areas, even a safety risk from predatory animals.
What’s more, we’re wasting precious resources, too. Our human pee and poop contains valuable nutrients, including significant quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – NPK – the key elements that we need to growing food and other crops. Instead, we’re using expensive fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals to provide these macronutrients.
Back in his homeland of Puerto Rico over 20 years ago, Rubén Abruña experienced a sanitation epiphany when he sat on a dry toilet for the first time. He was amazed that he could poop using no water, leaving no stink, and that the deposit could be safely composted into fertilizer, without polluting the environment. It drove him nuts that more people were not doing the same, and this prompted him to make the award-winning film “Holy Shit: Can Poop Save the World?”
Rubén has over 30 years of experience in the film, television, and radio industries. He has written, produced, directed, and edited numerous documentaries, broadcast journalism stories, and educational programs in New York, San Juan, Miami, and Zürich.

Artwork for Circular Economy Podcast episode 137

137 Dr Martin Stuchtey: rethinking how we invest in nature

Prof. Dr. Martin Stuchtey – a geologist, economist and entrepreneur – is challenging and helping to rethink industrial, farming and economic systems. He founded The Landbanking Group, a Nature Fintech aiming to bring natural capital onto our balance sheets in service of the Paris and Montreal agreements.
Dr. Martin Stuchtey is a former Senior and Managing Partner at McKinsey & Co., where he co-founded and led the global sustainability activities. He then founded systems change company SYSTEMIQ, and is also professor for industrial systems in transition at the University of Innsbruck. Martin is an investor, multiple board member and owner of an organic farm in Austria. He’s authored numerous papers, press, radio and TV publications and a book, “A Good Disruption – Redefining Growth in the 21st Century”.
I was keen to ask Martin about a chapter he co-authored in a recent book published by Factor X – The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy: separating aspirations from reality.
Then we move onto talk about The Landbanking Group, born out of Martin’s frustration with the lack of progress in pushing back against the current, extractive economy. Martin also realised that we need to rethink how we invest in nature as the fundamental building block of our future on this, our home planet.
The Landbanking Group’s ambition is to change the way we make land-use decisions worldwide. Their first-of-its-kind platform allows land stewards to earn income from accruing natural capital (such as biodiversity, carbon, soil, water). It allows companies to invest into balance-sheet grade natural capital contracts (or “Nature Equity”). The Landbanking team aims to create the hardest currency for nature by combining the latest science and accounting practices into a coherent, transparent, and compliant way to invest into natural capital – because nature is critical infrastructure – for companies, economies and societies. 

Circular Economy Podcast Ep75 Helena Norberg-Hodge – the future is local

75 Helena Norberg-Hodge – the future is local

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE is a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of Right Livelihood Award (aka the “Alternative Nobel Prize”), the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”
Helena Norberg-Hodge is also an author, and her most recent book is Local is Our Future. This book connects the dots between our social, economic, ecological and spiritual crises, revealing how a systemic shift from global to local can address all of these seemingly disparate problems at the same time. Helena is also the author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Helena explains why local, small-scale, ‘traditional’ farming is better for farmers, for animal and human health, and for our planet, and how it helps strengthen local communities. We talk about why local food is one of the simple solutions to our interconnected, systemic problems, and why connection with soil, with nature, with the process of growing food, is essential for our health and wellbeing.

Circular Economy Podcast Episode 54 Louise Bijleveld - LONO

Episode 54 Louise Bijleveld – LONO

Catherine Weetman talks to Louise Bijleveld, Co-Founder of LONO in Côte d’Ivoire. Lono helps agro-industrial companies and farmer cooperatives to create value from waste, by converting it into biofertilizers and biogas. Its overall aim is to help value reach rural areas and reduce the inequalities in agricultural supply chains. Côte d’Ivoire is an important global producer of cocoa beans, cashew nuts, natural rubber and tropical fruits – all of these produce huge amounts of agricultural waste when harvested. The farms are often in remote areas, so it’s a big challenge to find ways to combine compatible feedstocks and make the logistics cost-effective.