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This SHINE podcast episode is on the importance that water plays in all of our lives. Water is a fundamental resource and life. In this interview, we will speak about why water stewardship is important. We will address three significant challenges in the quality of water on the planet: Red Tide, Microplastics and PFAs. We speak about how these 3 are interconnected, the dangers of them to our well being, and action steps you can take to reverse the negative impacts at an individual and business level. This inspiring episode will ignite greater purpose and inspiration to be a water protector.
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Carley Links:
Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development
Executive Coaching with Carley
Environmentally Friendly Products for Water Protection
Red tide
Everything you wanted to know about Red Tide- Scripps Edu
Red Tide Affects in Tampa/St Pete Area
PFAS
Dark Waters– Documentary on PFAS
How Dupont may avoid paying to clean up toxic forever chemicals
Microplastics
Nature Article on Microplastics
Well Being Resources:
Inner Game Leadership Assessment
Social:
Imperfect Shownotes:
Carley Hauck 0:08
Hi, welcome to the shine podcast. My name is Carley Hauck. I’m your host, this is the fifth season of the shine podcast. I started the shine podcast as a way of doing research for my book on conscious leadership in business. And you will find interviews with scientists, researchers and business leaders on the intersection of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices. My book debuted in 2021 Shine ignite your inner game of conscious leadership and was voted one of the best books to read in 2022. By mindful magazine, I facilitate two episodes a month of the shine podcast. And before I tell you about the topic for today, please go over to Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast carrier and hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any future episodes. The focus of this season is on the essentials for wellbeing. And that encompasses the intersection of our personal well being the collective well being of our workplace, and how that fosters and nurtures the planet’s well being they are all connected. I focus on well being this season, because I really want to crack the code and inspire folks to prioritize their individual well being and therefore that will transcend into the collective and the planet’s well being. And I have developed a inner game leadership assessment that I gave out to 100 different leaders last year. And the leadership assessment is based on the framework of the inner game, which is what we’re cultivating on the inside to be conscious leaders. And then it shows up on the outside when we’ve cultivated the certain qualities. And two of the nine leadership competencies that were lowest from the sample of 100 leaders were psychological and physical well being. Therefore, that is why we are focusing on well being and if you’re curious about where your strengths and gaps are, around the qualities to become a conscious leader, you can take the assessment and find out your score for free. I recently opened to the assessment tool to the public and the link will be in the show notes. Now onto our episode. Hello, Shine podcast listeners. Thank you so much for joining this season. I am so excited about this conversation with my friend, Greg. Coach. Greg, thank you so much for being here.
Greg Koch 3:06
Thanks for having me, Carley. I really enjoyed the last podcast we did and the relationship that we’ve maintained the friendship since then. And I’m looking forward to today,
Carley Hauck 3:15
likewise. And for those of you listening, I just want to share that I’ve only had two folks that have now been on the podcast twice. And so Greg, you’re in very good company. Lynne twist, who wrote the foreword for my book, who has a new book that just actually came out that I interviewed her on at the end of last year is the only other person that has been on the shine podcast twice, but for good reason, the fact that you are both repeating, because you’re very purposeful leaders, and she is also a very strong climate leader. And so I’m delighted that you both
Greg Koch 3:58
are here, I feel honored.
Carley Hauck 4:02
Well, so with that, please introduce, introduce yourself regarding your current role at IR M. And also, you know, why? The topic of water stewardship and water protection, which we’ll be speaking about in various ways today is personally and professionally important to you.
Greg Koch 4:26
Sure. Well, thanks again for having me. My name is Greg couch, and I live in Atlanta, Georgia. And I’ve spent when I’ve not been on a plane or somewhere out of the country, which has been quite often throughout my career, I’ve been based in Atlanta, here in Atlanta, Georgia. I currently work for consultancy called e r m Environmental Resources Management. And my role there as a technical director is in the water and climate space and And primarily what I do is work with clients to translate all the noise around water and climate risks and issues into an assessment of how those issues will impact the business, both negatively and potentially positively. Meaning there are opportunities to, to, to look at as well as risks to try to mitigate. And so what does that look like? Well, it takes all the data that everyone has, but then dives deeper in what information the client would have around their water use or greenhouse gas emissions, what they’ve experienced in terms of impacts regulations, employee interest, other external stakeholder interest, including investors, NGOs, customers, and consumers. So that nuances all that, that global information and local information, and allows you to come up with scenarios realistic scenarios of what could happen positively or negatively, because of the stress issues. And then let’s just focus for the sake of time on the risks versus the opportunities. But when you look at the risks that we quantify, we help the clients quantify a probability of that risk event happening, and then the impact that they would experience if that risk scenario or if that manifested itself. And that assessment of risk, what what would this mean, to me, me in this case would be accompany, but it’s the same if you want to take it down to the personal level. Once you translate the issue, into what could happen positively and negatively, to you, your business, what have you, that leads to two things that I find very powerful one is, it leads to ownership, because you’re a part of translating the noise into real impacts that you would experience or maybe already are experiencing. So the ownership, right, you’re not just accepting the data and saying, Okay, that’s an issue, I’m going to do something about it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with going from issue to action, but issue to risk and opportunity quantification, in my experience leads to that ownership, but also more impactful actions. So so that’s what I do. And in the course of the topics we’ll discuss, I can give you some examples of how I’ve helped clients, and what that actually looks like.
Carley Hauck 7:42
Thank you. So that was a great summary. Why does protecting the water there’s no, there’s lots of resources in the environment that we can protect. But that seems to be one you’ve really narrowed in on in your life and in your career, why does what is protecting the water personally matter to you?
Greg Koch 8:06
Well, it should matter to everyone in the same way it matters to me in that it is a fundamental resource life as we know, it does not exist without water, there is no substitute for water. And at the same time, while water is a finite resource, there’s a fixed amount of water on Earth that you cannot change over the long term. We can’t create or destroy water over the long term. But it’s infinitely renewable. So I’ll be honest, most of my pre adult life, I took water for granted water was something I played in, I recreated in I saw fall from the sky, you know, experience rainfall, you you have a daily visceral connection with water. So it’s always been important, but honestly, I took it for granted. Like I think most people do, and probably that those from the fact that over human history, water has been relatively abundant, and relatively clean, and therefore hasn’t posed significant challenges to the majority of civilizations that have come and gone and that currently exist. But all that’s changed, certainly since the Industrial Revolution, and even more in the last few decades, particularly from the impacts of climate change, which we talked about in in our previous podcast was very, you know, climate change is the message than water is the messenger. Right? You experience climate change, primarily not through hotter temperatures, but through some change, more intense and more unpredictable water situation. So what was the aha moment for me? It came when I was working for the Coca Cola company. And one of the jobs I had It was addressing wastewater discharge around the world and the company had implemented a standard or requirements say that if you can’t discharge your wastewater, your industrial wastewater into a sewer system, if you will, where the government were utility would fully treat that water, then you had to build a wastewater treatment plant yourself, right, so that you weren’t discharging, untreated, industrial and sanitary waste. And that was very well adopted. But the standard that is, but it went when I first started assessing the current status. Now, keep in mind, Coca Cola operates, I think, in all but one or two countries in the world and has 1000 Hot plants. And so I really got exposed to the local conditions around water. Initially, it was through the lens of water pollution, but quickly started to appreciate the challenges of drinking water access, reliable, safe, affordable water, being there at the tap when you needed it, or in some close proximity. And all of that was happening at a time where in my life, I had young children, they’re 25 and 22. Now, but at the time, they were toddlers, and, you know, preschool or school aged children. And you know, I appreciate it. The the luxury that we have compared to most of the rest of the world, in having that safe water access, and then seeing the impact when that safe drinking water is available, what that does to communities and made me appreciate more the situation that that we have here in Atlanta, but also recognize how dire the situation around water was around the world. And so
Carley Hauck 12:01
I have a more personal recently, which I’ll see ya, yes. But you know about Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah. That’s fascinating. Well, let me just kind of queue up what we’re gonna be talking about today for those listening. So So Greg, and I’ve been noodling and emails in the last few weeks. And we came up with this fabulous conversation to share with you. So we’re going to be really reviewing the interconnection between red tide microplastics and PFS. Over the course of the next, you know, 4045 minutes with you all, we’re going to talk about what each of these are, how they are negatively impacting the planet’s well being locally, globally, but then how that is impacting our well being, because what happens, what the planet is going to be happening with us, you know, we are interconnected. And we are, unfortunately, creating a lot of these problems. So we have the opportunity to shift that, to clean it up, you know, this, this is our home, we need to take care of our home. So so that is really going to be what we will be empowering, and activating and shedding the light on for all of you. And I also thought I would share a little bit about why water protection matters to me. So well. I grew up in Florida, which is not too far from Georgia, they’re, you know, they’re their neighboring our sister states, we could say. And from a very young age, I just had this kind of inner climate leader. And I was, you know, spending a lot of my childhood in St. Augustine, Florida, which is actually deemed to be one of the oldest cities in the United States. It’s apparently where Ponce de Leon founded the fountain of youth. There’s old Spanish forts. It’s a beautiful, quaint city. And we would go you know, they’re from my hometown of Gainesville when I was a kid every summer and multiple times during the year and I was noticing plastic on the beach. And because I was really interested in ocean life, and my father would give money to the World Wildlife Fund or the cetaceans society and so he would get these really cool calendars with all of these beautiful pictures of whales and dolphins and being a curious kid. I’m still a curious kid. Just a little older. I would I would go and look at the calendars and I’d see all these different organisms. missions and I started doing some research and finding out, wow, this humpback whale is endangered and this bottlenose dolphin is also endangered. And the sea turtle that I am fascinated with is really struggling. Why? Well, because we are poaching them, you know, we’re polluting the oceans. And so when I was eight, nine years old, I literally was writing letters to the dictator. I guess they were a dictator at that time of Japan. And I said, stop killing the whales. So I adopted a gray. Yeah, I drafted a gray whale for my third grade class was $25. Back then I’m sure it’s not much more y’all, you can adopt a gray whale. But it kind of started off, you know, at a young age. And so I’ve always felt this, frankly, responsibility to take care of the ocean. And there were not trash receptacles on the beaches in Florida. And I’m speaking to this now, because that was about 40 years ago, and I was recently in Florida, during red tide, which we’re gonna get into in just a minute. And right before I left, thankfully, the basically the Tampa Bay St. Pete area lifted the restriction of being at the beach, because if you’re near Red Tide, which Greg is going to tell us more about, you know, I mean, it can actually create some really adverse consequences, you can’t breathe, you know, people get really sick if they go near the water if they go in the water. So all of the, you know, beaches, basically, in the Tampa St. Pete area, we were restricted from going and then the day before I was about to leave, they lifted those restrictions, it was safer, supposedly to go. And so I was walking on the beach with my father and I see a piece of plastic, which I know if I don’t pick up a sea turtle is probably going to, at some point in their lifecycle see it, if it goes in the ocean, think it’s going to jellyfish and it’s going to try to eat it. So that’s just an innate reflex of mine pick up trash, if you see it on the beach. And there was no place to throw it away. There’s I mean, so Florida, Florida people. Now see you it’s been 40 years I was doing this when I was five, I’m getting closer to 45. It does not take a lot of money to put waste receptacles recycle, compost would be great on the beach. Otherwise, it makes it really hard for people to do the right thing. Because most people are not going to pick up trash and carry it to a receptacle. And let’s let’s just let’s just be real, like, you know, people go to the beach, they bring stuff, they bring stuff they don’t even intend to leave on the beach. But let’s say they have a screaming two year old who came with a little plastic bunny. And she throws the bunny on the beach and the bunny then gets stuck in the sand and they don’t bring it back. Anyway, these things happen. Let’s just make it easy for people to do the right thing. So this is why the water protection matters to me, because this is our home. I care about the planet, I care about the creatures, and I want to create a legacy for the future, that I’m not going to feel guilty about that I’m not going to regret that I couldn’t have done more. And that, frankly, is going to alleviate so much suffering of so many people because we do the right thing right now.
Greg Koch 18:50
Yeah. That’s amazing. Thanks for sharing that.
Carley Hauck 18:53
Yeah, thank you, Greg. Well, and I know that the folks that are listening to this have that inner water protectors as well. And so, before this podcast ends, I’m going to leave you all a prompt to really ignite that part of you because we all have that responsibility. And that opportunity. Okay, so without further ado, Greg, I feel like there’s a you know, a music or is playing in the background. Can you please illuminate? Let’s start with red tide. What is red tide? And why does it matter?
Greg Koch 19:35
Yep. All right. So red tide is a global phenomenon. It can be called different things. But it’s a condition where there’s a certain micro organism and I’ll get into that in a moment. It’s an algae, different types of algae, but there’s one in particular, that when it grows in abundance, when it grows, period, it per Do says a toxin a neurotoxin, as part of how it metabolizes food, and when shellfish in particular, but other aquatic species as well are exposed to that toxin, it can kill them and or affect their reproductive abilities. And if you eat those fish or shellfish in particular, you could ingest some of that toxin and it would have negative effects for you. It’s called Red tide in in Florida and other parts of the world because that bacteria when it grows in maths, it takes on a reddish brown color. And that can actually color the water. And so the phrase red tide is used. There are other versions for it. So it’s good that we started with red tide, because it’s, it’s the only one of these three topics microplastics and P Foss and red tide that occurs naturally, even without humans, but as exacerbated by humans. The other two topics we that’s all the on us. Right? So red tide, or versions of it have been in recorded history as far back as the 1500s. So well before the Industrial Revolution well before the type of Population and Development we have today. So we know, in Florida, in other parts of the world, red tide has occurred naturally, these are naturally occurring micro organisms, and they do in particularly in warmer weather, when they are faced with enough nutrients. And I’ll talk about the nutrients in a moment. It can cause it’s perfect conditions, and they just start growing like crazy. If they are the type of algae that, that that produce this neurotoxin, then you get this, this red tide that happens now a little bit about the micro organisms, they’re algae, and when you get a big growth of them, it’s called an algal bloom. Right, just a lot of algae. One algae that all of us are familiar with, or most of the listeners should be familiar with is kelp. So seaweed, most forms of seaweed, including kelp are algae. So algae can be really big. If you’ve been diving off the coast of San Diego, the kelp forests are massive that actually an algae. So they are and I say that just to say that they are naturally occurring. When that algae bloom happens, I already talked about the impact to aquatic species, that neurotoxin and how that could impact you, but that that toxin that’s released also becomes airborne. And most people will have trouble breathing. People who have immune compromised, their immune compromised or have asthma are more sensitive for some reason to to, you know, respiratory issues. It can be, it can be very debilitating. I’m not certain about deaths. And could anyone say this person died because of this, but it’s certainly a complicating factor. And as you said, when that occurs, advisors go out and say, Okay, we’re going to close the beach, you know, we’re going to close it, the fishing, and we’re going to close it to even people walking on the beach, because of both the dead fish and shellfish that will come up on shore. No one wants to walk around that. The smell of that, of course, but then also that toxin that’s in the air that that’s going to affect everyone and some people very significantly. So that’s what
Carley Hauck 23:48
Yeah, no, thank you. And just to speak to that, you know, I was reading a lot of articles. So I was I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago visiting my parents in the Tampa St. Pete area. And I remember when I was last there, there was also a red tie. And I’m like, why is Why is this still here? And so as I was as I was doing some deeper research, it had been in full bloom essentially with some minor, you know, wanes since December 22. And I just thought this has been going on for over a year. Yeah. And, and as I did more research, like 600 tons of whales and dolphins and turtles and fish are just rotting there. They’re dead. I mean, this makes no sense to me. So that was in Part I, I was very angry. And I reached out to Greg and I said what is going on? And he said I was just in Florida too. Yep. So So I guess that’ll go to the next piece of it. Why is this happening? And I’ve done some research, but I’d love to ask.
Greg Koch 25:03
Sure. Well, like I said, it’s been documented back to the 1500s. So it happens, it happens all by itself without any human intervention. But, and the science is not conclusive yet. But it is certain about one thing. A couple of things. One, you know, these things naturally exist. And for them to thrive, they need warm temperatures, like climate change, and they need nutrients food, just like you and I, we need magnesium and iron and potassium and you know, all these elements and nutrients, phosphates, nitrates, what have you. Our bodies need them to metabolize, to build cell structures to process food, what have you, it’s the same with with any living organism, there’s a set of nutrients that are critical. So when you have conditions where you have warmer than normal, or just warm temperatures and lots of food in the form of nutrients, that’s right conditions, ideal conditions rather for a red tide to have red tide in quotes. Sometimes it’s called the Blue tide. Sometimes it’s all the other things, but let’s just use red tide. So what role do humans play in either of those two conditions? Well, climate change is conclusively, in part, caused by manmade action. So we’re making the world warmer, global warming aspect of climate change. And then we grow a lot of food and apply a lot of the nutrients that these algae love to the land. We do that in agriculture, we do that in our own home gardens, our lawns, our public spaces, to maintain those, for the most part, we apply a lot of fertilizer. And the main things in fertilizer are potassium, and nitrogen, and manganese. And so it is those nutrients that that enable the algae to thrive. So again, not conclusive, but if you triangulate runoff from land, particularly agricultural areas, and then coastal areas with warm, particularly warmer than normal water, body temperatures, you get these blooms. One thing I failed to say earlier, it’s not just a title issue in the sense of the ocean, you can have algal blooms in freshwater, particularly in lakes, probably the, for those of your listeners that are familiar with the United States, Lake Erie, every summer, the west end of it, I believe it’s the West End, just gets this green pond types gum on it, and, and that too, is it’s green. And I’m sure people have been hiking and you know, in the forest and come across a pond and it’s just covered in green scum. And that’s algae, and conditions were ripe for that algae to to grow. Now, even if it doesn’t produce this toxin, it still can have impacts on the environment and therefore humans. So this Algae grows, and it comes to a point where it can’t grow anymore, because there’s not enough room or enough nutrients or enough oxygen. And so that algae that algal bloom will eventually die. And when it dies, it settles to the bottom where other micro organisms say Oh, buffets open, let’s go eat. And they start multiplying like crazy. And in doing that they they grow and they use up a lot of oxygen. So the dissolved oxygen, the amount of oxygen that’s in water, for plants and animals to breathe to use is decreased and you get fish kills and other impacts. Probably the most famous one in the United States is in the Gulf of Mexico, at the outfall of the Mississippi River. Every summer there’s a dead zone, actually called a dead zone because really everything dies because so much nutrients from all the agricultural practices in the Midwest come down the Mississippi dump all those nutrients in the summer you have warm temperatures and you get this massive algal bloom and once that algal bloom starts dying off, you get accelerated dissolved oxygen content and everything dies a dead zone. That doesn’t sound great. So so it happens naturally. But it is pretty clear that higher temperatures from climate change and nutrients, primarily from fertilizer application, untreated sewage, untreated sewage, those types of things are going to exacerbate. Yep.
Carley Hauck 30:09
Thank you. And I was also just gonna share, and it’s not cracking down on polluters, right. And also, you and I were having a conversation prior to this one about how do we educate farmers to be more regenerative and their approach, right? I mean, we all know composting is the way we know that regenerative agriculture is the way forward so that we have, we’re not ripping up, you know, the soil infrastructure, but we’re regenerating it. So it’s easier to continue to create a lot of opportunities for food and growth without all of this fertilizer. And it seems like from some of the research that I’ve been doing around Florida, and I’ll leave, we’re gonna leave a lot of, you know, very validated links about all of these things in the show notes. But apparently, the sea it was in the clean waterways act of 2020, did not require agricultural interests to reduce phosphorus runoff, and continues to rely on what is effectively a system of voluntary compliance. Well, that is not going to get it done. appealing to people’s altruistic motivations. Unfortunately, without I think, certain checks and balances and consequences, is not going to support red tide to diminish. What do you think, Greg?
Greg Koch 31:39
I agree. And, you know, not in defense, but an explanation of farmers. They spend a lot of money buying fertilizer, and they spend time and money applying it to land. And they know that they apply more fertilizer than the plants they’re growing can actually absorb. And that cost them money. And when you apply more that the plants can use, that’s what becomes runoff either trickles down into groundwater, or it’s gonna run off off the surface, and then into rivers, lakes, and eventually into the ocean. The reason they they do that is that when a plant needs a certain nutrient, let’s say nitrogen or phosphorus, they want to make sure it’s available. Right? So you put more than you need, because you know, someone’s going to wash off. And that when that plant in that part of the field is ready for it’s there. Now, yes, if you knew at every part of the field, exactly what a plant is needs. During its growth cycle, you could apply that but just think of the technology and the cost of trying to understand that at such a granular level. So it’s it’s much easier for them to just apply it more liberally, if you will, so that they ensure that the plant is going to have the nutrients it needs. But unfortunately, that’s what what ends up in our waterways and whether it causes red tide or not. There. There’s other impacts to us, right? You know, the water treatment systems, for instance, for drinking water around Lake Erie, when they are faced with their source of water being covered in this green algal bloom. They have much higher water treatment costs to make that water safe to drink. It’s a cyanobacteria that that actually grows from that blue green algae that causes that, that pond scum. So if you say all right, well, that’s just temporary. It’s in the summer. It’s well, what if you live there, you know, beyond the health impacts?
Carley Hauck 33:53
Well, I want to share I want to share just this is coming from an article. This is from a current, you know, citizen that lives in Pinellas County in Florida. So this is her experience in this part of Florida as we know it happens all over the world and all over the country. But she let me just Okay, so this this is coming from a woman Alicia Norris, a mother of 352. She experienced it firsthand. She said I cannot shake off that sickening, nauseous feeling in the summer of 2018. From the stench of dead fish turtles and manatees rotting in reddish brown coastal waters along the shorelines of St. Petersburg and the state’s Tampa Bay area. And apparently, you know, it’s been getting worse every year, as we know, because, you know, it gets it gets hotter. And just within the last year, Pinellas County Only officials reported collecting 600 tons of dead fish as the red tide peaked.
Greg Koch 35:07
What that does to Yeah, it’s deadly life.
Carley Hauck 35:10
Property dolphins, manatees? Yeah,
Greg Koch 35:13
the loss of biodiversity, property values, tourism dollars, you know, that fisheries people, fish or people who go out and catch fish to sell that we eat, you know, all of those are going to be impacted when you have a situation like this.
Carley Hauck 35:31
And then, apparently, in 2001, the leak there is a basically a phospho Algeciras leak, that was discovered in a reservoir pond, that was holding 480 million gallons of toxic wastewater produced from phosphate. So there’s apparently a lot of that that is positive, there’s 25 Giant, toxic wastewater ponds in Florida. So I’m kind of sharing some of the God I don’t want to hear this. But isn’t this evoking emotion, emotion is going to get us to do something different. So I want to expose what’s here? Because then we get to act on it. So we’ve kind of addressed what is red tide? How is it negatively impacting us? And now we get into what can we do about it? So and then we’ll move similar Lee into PSAs, and microplastics, because they all are connected?
Greg Koch 36:37
They are. So what can you do? I’d say for all of these topics, any topic that’s new to you. Do some research, get some facts, as you said, Carly, in the show notes, you’re gonna have some links to some reputable this is like no, CDC, right? Go get some facts. And
Carley Hauck 36:57
Greg and I have come up with these resources together, by the way, so they’re I’m not just pulling them out of thin air we actually came together on like, okay, let’s share these. Yeah.
Greg Koch 37:07
So whatever the topic is climate change, microplastics, red tide, you know, whatever, go get educated, you know, maybe this, this podcast is the first step. But if this interests you, or some emotion that’s evoked, we’ll do some reading. But beyond that, there’s always advocacy that people can do and, you know, become somewhat, you know, cliche ish, but write your representative in Congress, right, your local, but those things matter, right? So do write your local representatives, your your local town, your county, your state, whomever and say, This is my voice, you know, that it’s rare that people get to voice their concerns and issues with elected representatives outside of voting for them. Right. But but this is one way. And they have entire staffs, who, whose job it is to feel these questions and summarize and, and so it does have an impact on these people. If they say, you know, 10,000 people in my constituency have written to me about this issue. They’re passionate about this issue, I have to say something and perhaps do something, and perhaps doing something is going to be something constructive. So get educated. Right, your representatives, right. But what can you do
Carley Hauck 38:30
on it to plug one other piece to? Yeah, you know, I think it’s also really important that we give money and we’re supporting the institutions that are doing research on this. So for example, like, the mote aquarium is a research laboratory down in St. Pete, Tampa Bay, Scripps, which is where I am in San Diego, you know, they’re they’re doing some incredible research around ocean protection and how climate change is impacting the coral reefs to our water to red tide. And so like how do we support these institutions that are creating the education for us?
Greg Koch 39:10
That is, and they’re also creating the data, the science that regulators and other people will eventually look to to say, Okay, this defines the situation now I want to do something about it. So excellent. Add.
Carley Hauck 39:25
Yeah. So I know we could talk about this for hours. So I want to move us into woody Which one do you want microplastics PFS?
Greg Koch 39:37
Well, let me let me just want to add one more thing for things that you can do at home right now. Yes. Even if you live in Kansas and not worried about red tide, but one is, think about the fertilizers you’re putting on your own lawn in your own flower pots in your in your apartment, whatever the case. There’s a huge climate impact producing those fertilizers. And then if incorrectly applied, they can contribute to water quality issues, including red tie. So think about maybe using composting of your food waste and using that as a fertilizer and just be thoughtful about your fertilizer application. The other thing is, if your house or apartment, your home relies on a septic tank, that septic tank should be properly maintained. You know, it’s not flush it and forget it, you still have a responsibility as a homeowner to properly maintain that when those aren’t properly maintained. They can release a lot of sewage, which has lots of problems, but nutrients are are one of the things that is contained in sewage. So those are two other things that you could do. All right.
Carley Hauck 40:50
I really appreciate that, as well. And you know, the other piece two, and I know you came up with this, but I think it’s so important that we pay attention to what are we putting down the septic system, right? Like, are we using environmentally friendly products for cleaning for laundry detergent for you know, washing there’s, there’s so many options. GROVE collaborative also is a really wonderful company and everything that they provide are really environmentally safe and plastic free, in fact, cleaning and household resources. So I will put a link in the show notes, they are one of my favorite companies.
Greg Koch 41:33
So one other thing I saw, I just learned about yesterday, Amazon platform has a filter that you can I haven’t tried it, but someone showed it to me. Right now it’s around climate change. Like if a company has set a Paris treaty aligned carbon reduction goal aligned with the 1.5 degree change. Some of your listeners will know what that is. It shows up. So if you’re looking at products that you might buy from Amazon, there’s a screen there that say, okay, which ones have set a goal of reducing their carbon emissions. And, you know, hopefully over time, other credible certification platforms or organizations would join that. And that way consumers can make an easier informed decision on something that that’s not going to be as impactful to the environment.
Carley Hauck 42:32
I love that. Yeah.
Greg Koch 42:35
All right, well, let’s go to microplastics. Boy,
Carley Hauck 42:38
I feel like I want to get going from
Greg Koch 42:40
bad to worse.
Carley Hauck 42:42
Take it away from my class six. All right, there we go.
Greg Koch 42:46
We’ll talk about a personal evolution on the topic when most of my life, you know, I didn’t Well, I don’t like seeing litter on the side of the road, you know, wherever on the beach and waterways, just just, you know, out in the field or whatever. But I thought, you know, what harm is it doing? You know, it’s just a can or a newspaper. It’s just there. And then yes, you read about certain plastics that turtles might think as a jellyfish. And, you know, I just didn’t really appreciate it was that big of an issue? It’s wasteful. Aesthetically, it’s displeasing. But is it really doing harm to the environment? Well, here comes micro plastics. And there’s two categories of micro plastics. So they’re defined as a piece of plastic that is of a certain size, and that’s five nanometers, but it’s tiny, tiny, tiny, the two most predominant sources of microplastics. One is intentional, and one is not intentional. Let’s start with the intentional one. There’s something called microbeads. And you find these microbeads in their tiny little balls of plastic, that are in makeup, are in exfoliating creams are in some toothpaste and are even in some, some foodstuffs. So these are manufactured microplastics that are put into a product, a human use product for some sort of functionality, right, it helps with exfoliation, or taste or texture of a food that you’re you’re eating whatever the case may be. So that’s one and there are many examples of products that have microplastics in them. The other is probably what you’re thinking of, it’s just a piece of plastic, any kind of plastic that has been disposed that in the environment, particularly in the in the aquatic environment, and particularly in oceans, but it can happen on land it can happen in rivers and lakes. Oceans are just more energetic and dynamic. That those pieces of plastic take take a plastic bottle, soda or Water, whatever it is, it just gets broken down over time. You know, just like water action, breaks down rocks into boulders and then eventually into pebbles and then eventually into sand. So it’s the same natural phenomenon that’s breaking apart these pieces of plastic. And now, they’re really tiny. And they currently are everywhere. You can find them in the Arctic, North Pole, you can find them in the Antarctic, you can find them on the peaks of mountain tops throughout the world. You find them in rivers, lakes, and in particular, they’re all over the ocean. They’re everywhere. What is the problem with that? The problem is, well, first of all, there’s still a lot of science to be done. But what is already known is, you’re probably eating them, maybe even inhaling them as you speak. And, and listen, because, as I said, they’re so prevalent around the world, they’re in everything. So you could just do the the mental thought experiment, say, Well, how can a microplastic and an ocean end up in my body? Well, if a fish or some species, even if it’s one that you don’t eat, but something you do eat, eat it, right in the food chain, they might mistake the plastic for food, or it just might be attached to something they normally eat. Like say that’s a turtle that wants to eat some plant like kelp, or I’m not sure if they eat kelp, but it’s got microplastics attached to it, they’re just going to ingest it inadvertently. Or they actually think it’s food that’s usually with bigger pieces of plastic. So inside the body, it’s not going to break down, it’s going to take 100 to 1000 years for it to break down in your body or other people’s body. It is already known to cause reproductive issues in aquatic species. What is the birds and amphibians, lizards, frogs, snakes are also exposed to it, anything that’s closer to a water environment is probably going to be ingesting it. And that has problems just for biodiversity overall, but if you eat any of those, or rely on them to do something else for you, then they’re being impacted. The human impacts are unknown. Certainly not pleasant to think that you have undigested plastic in your in your gut. But odds are you do. In fact, I would almost guarantee it. But no one’s done the science to say, how much microplastic Can I ingest over a lifetime? That’s a safe amount. Right? So there’s the studies that are done on all kinds of chemicals that are aquatic, or in our case, human.
Carley Hauck 47:57
And I also login another piece to this. And this is also, you know, kind of connecting to what can I do? Right? Yeah, to avoid microplastics. But based on hearing that we have, we all have plastic in our gut. But guess what else has plastic and it’s got animals, right? Yeah, fish, because we’re depositing so much of our plastic in the ocean, but it’s also getting in the soil, it’s getting in the water, it’s getting in the air. And so Greg and I are both, you know, big plant based advocates, and you will actually have less plastic, if you’re eating more fruits and vegetables, you know, a Whole Foods organic plant based diet, and that also will greatly mitigate the effects of climate change through less fossil fuels. And the more that we can actually eat vegetables versus things that are packaged, there will be less plastic, you know, we don’t need I mean, it’s great that we have beyond me, and we have all these really wonderful opportunities to get these products like just egg who happen, you know, just like Josh Tetrick happens to be a CEO that I have focused on in my book, Josh and I have had heart to hearts, he’s like Harley, we wouldn’t need to even create, you know, being placed or being sourced offering if people were just eating more beets and vegetables. So anyway, we can minimize our plastic consumption by eating more whole foods plant based and also just by choosing not to buy plastic as much as possible, even though we know it’s everywhere.
Greg Koch 49:45
I remember one time being in I used to travel a lot, particularly International. And I remember I think it was in Japan. And in the airport. They were selling bananas in a plastic bag, a sealed plastic bag and I looked Get that and I thought the banana has a rapper, rapper that protects that banana in the forest in the jungle for transportation, everything, but for some reason someone thought, let me put it in a plastic bag before I sell it. It has a nature provided bananas, its own packaging. But it’s great. You say that. So what can you do? Again, educate yourself write your representative. But I like to think of what I can do about microplastic as the three C’s consume less clean. All right. And don’t change as often. All right. It’s a it’s a weak alliteration. I get
Carley Hauck 50:44
that I love it. One more time.
Greg Koch 50:47
Yeah, no, it’s consume, clean and change. break those down for you. Now, I think that’s a really weak alliteration. But so the first one you already said it’s, you know, buy less things that have plastic in them, or are made of plastic. Right? Particularly. Yeah, particularly single use. Totally plastic. Right. So here, well, you can’t see it. You can but your listeners can’t. is a plastic water bottle that I got at REI. Rei. Yeah, go Rei. So it’s made of plastic. All right, but I’ll have this I’ve had this for 10 years, I’ll have it for another 20. Right. And that’s better than a one way bottle of water that I just drank. And now I’ve got to get rid of it. Right. So fortunately, increasingly, you see a lot more consumer goods particularly,
Carley Hauck 51:46
and bring your own Tupperware to the restaurant. I went. So I currently live in San Diego right now. And I went to a place I tried to actually cook and eat the majority of my food from home, but sometimes I’m out and about, and I gotta eat dinner. So I stopped to get a salad. And I knew that I was not going to leave the whole salad. And I said, I don’t want you to put it in a TO GO Box. Even though they had a compostable box. I brought my own Tupperware. And the woman behind the counter said, I love that you brought your own Tupperware, why aren’t more people are doing that. And I was like, I know. But you just have to think about it and grab it. So bring your own plastic Tupperware. That’s how you use it. And for those of you that have been listening, the podcast, you know that I had this experiment where I lived in Costa Rica for three months, and I tried to live as regeneratively as I possibly could. And I brought plastic everywhere. And I recycled even my little plastic baggies. Like I just I really did not want to bring more plastic into this country that does not want it or need it going back.
Greg Koch 53:00
Consumers don’t buy things or plastic. Certainly, well, if you can avoid it. One way plus
Carley Hauck 53:08
another piece. This is a plug for the US airlines and international. They, in my opinion, are one of the biggest polluters of single use plastics, we do not need to be using plastics for everybody’s water consumption. I’ve talked to the airline attendants, they hate giving out these plastic cups. So southwest, you know united, what are we doing? It’s so easy, there is compostable plastic ware that we can be giving out to our patrons who are going to love the fact that you are being more environmentally responsible. For you, I don’t know are the airlines any of Arabs clients? How do we get the airlines your clients?
Greg Koch 53:55
I don’t believe any of the airline’s our clients. I know we’ve done some work for some of the airline manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus, but I don’t know. But wow, talk about a captive audience and a captive waste stream, right? No one’s gonna take any of that waste with them when they leave the plane. So it’s entirely up to the airline what to serve, and what to serve it in and what to do with the waste that’s left. It’s only them right? Because people aren’t going to bring their own meal. Most people are water and they’re not going to leave their way or take their waste with them.
Carley Hauck 54:30
So I do but I’m meticulous. Bring all my own food. I bring my water bottle and I just want to plug only 7% of what we think gets recycled actually is recycled. So the rest of it it’s just going into a landfill and or the ocean.
Greg Koch 54:46
That’s the worst part. All right back to what can you do we talked about last
Carley Hauck 54:53
and then we don’t have a lot of time left Greg. So we’ll have to move into PFA clothing.
Greg Koch 54:58
Let me just do clothing. Yeah, go for it because most clothing has plastic in it. Yeah, nylon, you know all these synthetic fibers. So try not to buy the latest fashions all the time and throw out your other stuff. And believe it or not, because most clothing has plastic in it, your dryer, if you heat dry your clothes, like you wash your dryer at home, it’s generating lots of microplastics that will get out into the airborne environment through your dryer vent. So think about that. Particularly with the, you know, the trend to buy all new outfits for every season because it’s cheap, and you can have a new outfit and whatnot. But let’s move on to P FOSS.
Carley Hauck 55:43
And I’ll just plug I know we’re sharing a ton of information. But after this interview, I’m going to repeat the what can you do a summary for everybody before you so stay on till the very end of this interview because you’re going to be reminded, okay, Greg, take it away. P FOSS.
Greg Koch 56:02
P FOSS?
Carley Hauck 56:03
What a fun name your pays
Greg Koch 56:05
are P Foss, I think it’s most commonly referred to as P FOSS. And sorry, my dogs are excited if you hear them in the background. Yeah. Well, it’s funny, those dogs have beef. Awesome. And so do you, Carly? So do I, it’s everywhere. You know, I talked about microplastics being everywhere. This stuff is really everywhere. I’m everywhere. So what they are is they’re they’re per and polyfluorinated substances, abbreviated as P FOSS. It’s a chemical and manmade chemical. It’s a poly or fluoro polymer for anyone who wants to try to understand that. But in the shownotes there’ll be some links that explain you most commonly experience P FOSS in Teflon, scotchguard GoreTex. Those are probably the three most trade names that most people are. So stain resistance, water resistance, stick resistance, right? There’s more industrial applications and firefighting foams, but because of Scotch cards a brand name, but what I mean to say is stain resistant coatings, which are everywhere. Teflon, everyone’s frying pan, and cookwares coated with something nonstick. And then GoreTex is every bit of outdoor equipment. Those things are major sources of peat moss, and so they’re everywhere. And because they’ve been used so ubiquitously. It’s in the entire global population. So there was a famous study that one of the manufacturers of P FOSS did, where they, you know, said we’re gonna do a random sampling, you know, I don’t know 10,000 People and sample their blood and see if there’s any P Foss, they stopped after 100 people, because 100% of the 100 people that pee FOSS in them. They’re like, it’s everywhere. It is everywhere. It’s considered a forever chemical, meaning it takes 1000s of years to break down in a natural environment that it’s in you you’ll never get rid of. There’s no way to get P FOSS out of your body. We believe that it has thyroid cause thyroid problems, cancer, reproductive issues, and liver does liver damage, but a lot of the science and that’s not just in people that’s in other living species, aquatic and terrestrial. And the science is still out of we know if you consumed a bunch of this, it would be detrimental probably deadly. But the tiny concentrations that we all have and are exposed to from our clothes or carpet, whatever our rain jacket. What does that look like? What are the long term health impacts over a lifetime that being exposed? We don’t know. But in an abundance of caution regulators around the world in Europe, even in the United States and the Biden administration pointed out put out some recent new rules to say we’ve we’ve got to start limiting how much new pee FOSS gets into the environment into the product supply. And we start we have to start cleaning up some of the hotter spots of pee FOSS
Carley Hauck 59:29
just to give a little bit more science. And this is all been found you know through the pf the P FOSS action act of 2021 which was designed to create a national drinking water standard for select P FOSS chemicals. And basically, the lawmakers shared that more than 320 military sites have P FOSS contamination and more than 200 million US residents could be drinking contaminated water now Want to cause cancer, reproductive and developmental issues and weakened immune systems? So there is, you know, this new legislature that it seems like it’s being passed finally, through the EPA, because it’s been stalled many times to remove three. And I believe there’s 600, forever
Greg Koch 1:00:17
600 versions of these.
Carley Hauck 1:00:19
So why are we only reducing three,
Greg Koch 1:00:23
three, go start somewhere. But I can tell you, you know, linking it back to my personal life, you know, the consultancy I worked for, there are places where we go and sample for this, to see, you know, if it’s there, we know it’s going to be there. But at what concentration, it’s incredibly hard thinking about you’re trying to sample for something that might be present in the parts per billion or even trillion, but you the person doing the sampling and doing the lab test, have P FOSS in you, it’s in all the lab equipment, it’s in the sample container, it’s in the air, even just sampling for and trying to test it in the lab is very difficult because of how ubiquitous it is. And to be honest, that the three issues red tide microplastics and, and P Foss, this is the one that that worries me the most, not just the three that they’re acting on now, but all 600 of them, and they are forever chemicals.
Carley Hauck 1:01:18
And they’re not just you know, local to the US. They’re global, because they’ve gone out and all products all over the world. So what can we do? We can? Mice? Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was also gonna say, What are you cooking with y’all? You know, cooking with to get rid of that Teflon, you stainless steel or all clad is another
Greg Koch 1:01:45
something. But I think the number one thing you can do after you sort of scrub your you know, is just be cautious about new products that come out. That sounds too good to be true. I mean, think about it, you know, think about stain resistance, you know, I could spill blueberries on this dress shirt that I have on right now. But because of the stain resistant, it comes right off. So be a little more cautious when a new product comes out, say, oh, it’s got all this new function well, is it using a forever chemical? Does it have microbeads or microplastic in it and, you know, get educated about what you’re bringing into your home into your body. As you work to try to eliminate the original sources of this Be careful not to buy a new one. Because it’s the latest greatest thing. And it does things we I you know, stain resistance, waterproofing, stick resistance, these things make our life easier. But I would trade the convenience that those things offer for, for better health any day of the week.
Carley Hauck 1:02:49
And make sure that you have really good filtered water, like some research on this reverse osmosis is the best to be able to really eliminate PFAs. You know, one of the things that I didn’t share in this podcast, but it’s also why I felt even more compelled to put more effort in my own life around water protection is when I was living in Costa Rica, Greg knows this. I unfortunately, got hit with parasites three times in three months. And this was due to I love Costa Rica. But if you’re near the coast, they don’t have great drinking water. And I have no idea what I was picking up. And it’s not because I wasn’t drinking filtered water, all my teachers, but I was I was eating local produce, because I was trying to stay away from having to cook everything and I didn’t want to eat out. Yeah. And that local produce is being you know, grown and unhealthy water. And even though there’s parasites and there’s PFAs here in the States, I guess my body’s like, I know that parasite. You’re welcome here. But the parasites in subtropical climates in Costa Rica, my body was not happy. Took a little while to come back into healthy. So I believe that that was for me. And for me to then reach out to Greg and say, Hey, buddy, let’s go we gotta talk more. Let’s let’s amplify our efforts to protect. This was wonderful. The other thing that I just wanted to leave as as resources is, Greg has written a fabulous book with his colleague will sarni I’m gonna leave a link in the show notes, which speaks to some of what we can do from a private and public sector. So even though Greg and I have been saying what can you do individually, this also comes down to what do we do in our business, right? Business has such an opportunity to be a force for good to really I change its operations so that it is aligned with the SDGs. And environmental responsibility and accountability for that matter. And then I’ll just plug my own book, my own book shares another pathway, which is, how do we really cultivate that conscious motivation, as an individual to really lead, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in our communities, whether it’s at home, and to see models of other people doing that, to know that, we have the opportunity, we have the responsibility to be the change, and there are going to be lots of resources for your education, for your activation that we will leave in the show notes, and I will come back, if you stay on just a few more minutes, I will summarize all the things that you can do. And, you know, maybe just pick one from each of these categories. And start small. And Greg, thank you, again, give our listeners with,
Greg Koch 1:06:05
I think, not plugging my book, but the underlying premise of the book is about wellbeing. And the book starts off with an obvious realization of more, right, you hear politician, we want more jobs, you know, you’re a business person, say we need more profit, more revenue, more volume, right? It’s always more more more more and more across business, across government, even in our own lives. People want a bigger house, a nicer car, newer clothes, more jewelry, more, more, more. And in part microplastics, and nutrients and P FOSS are linked to a consumer society. And so the premise is, you know, instead of focusing so much on more, why don’t we apply all that energy into well being?
Carley Hauck 1:06:57
And less and simplicity. Yeah, I love it. Okay, thanks. This is so much fun. Yeah. It’s so good to talk. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Keep keep rocking it, Greg,
Greg Koch 1:07:14
you to have fun and have fun this weekend. I will. So have fun. You too. Take care.
Carley Hauck 1:07:21
Bye. Well, I am humbled and inspired by that conversation. Greg, thank you so much for willing to noodle on this with me the past couple of weeks, as we, you know, co created what do we want to talk about? How is this going to be in service, for the flourishing of people and planning, and I’m just really delighted to have you in my life and this friendship that keeps deepening. For those of you that want to connect more with Greg, you know, he’s doing some fabulous work with companies, and so is his consulting firm. So his LinkedIn handle is in the show notes. He also wrote a fabulous book. And I would encourage you to go there. As I prompted throughout the podcast, there were lots of action steps that Greg and I spoke about. And what I would encourage you to do is, you know, to pick one or two from each of these three sections, red tide, PFA, S and microplastics. So let me summarize a couple for you to really take some action on because we are all leaders, we all have the responsibility and the opportunity to lead and we have to take care of our home and that is planet Earth. If we do not take care of her, we will not flourish. our well being as you heard is being hugely negatively impacted. Because of our actions. We need to clean it up. We need to do better, we can do better. So I hope that these action steps inspire you. Share them with friends with colleagues with your kiddos, what can we do about red tide? Well, as we heard, the more we can mitigate warming of the planet, the better. So we try to abstain from fossil fuels. How do we do that? We don’t drive as much you know, you don’t have to go to the grocery store to go get that thing every day. Ride your bike more take mass transportation. And also, you know, be mindful of your heating and your cooling and just your energy consumption, limit or even eliminate home fertilizer use that even And, you know pertains to, if you’re living in an HOA or you know a residential neighborhood are the landscapers using fertilizer like you have a voice This is what you pay for right? Figure out what are they using? Is there a way to have this be more regenerative pick up pet waste even on your lawn that actually makes a difference, as Greg mentioned, maintain your septic septic system. And really refrain from dumping any pollutants into sewers or storm drains or your laundry you know, so again, like there are so many environmentally friendly products for shampooing and laundry, to cleaning your pets to washing your hands that are biodegradable and healthy. Also see what you can do if you live near streams or water. How can you help clean up the water right so that there isn’t trash or pollutants? It was kind of astonishing to me in 21 I was living outside of Asheville, North Carolina and the front prod wherever, which is one of the largest rivers throughout the Mississippi was quite polluted. And it just ran through town people would get really sick in the summer when they go swimming in it and I just think so Why are you swimming in an infected huge river? Why aren’t we cleaning this up so we can enjoy it. And the same thing as you heard me talk about in Florida, which is please people that are living in Florida, please to help me get some new legislature so we have composting in Florida so that we have mandated solar on roofs that’s going to help mitigate warming and red tide. Okay, I’ll stop there. What about microplastics? What can we do about that? Well, it’s intuitive, we use less plastics. Bring your own bag, there is no excuse for not having a cloth bag. Bring it when you travel. Bring your own water bottle when you travel when you go on the plane, refill it anything honestly that is transported in a plastic bottle that then has water in it that then you drink from at some point that plastic bottle is being transported in heat. When plastic gets hot. What happens? Well, chemicals from the plastic leach into the water which then you’re drinking. So I don’t believe that what is in your plastic bottle is cleaner than the tap water. So let’s really try to bring our own bottle. There’s a ton of incredible filters when you go to the airports now. And you just refill your bottle there. wash your clothes, less often. Air dry clothes, because that’s going to mitigate microplastics you don’t have to buy new clothes. I love going to consignment stores one that’s going to lower fossil fuels because it takes less energy to have to create new clothing when you can actually just use great ones that are still in good shape that were probably way more expensive than what you can get for them now. And buy plastic free cosmetics if you’re using cosmetics and don’t microwave in plastic containers. We kind of already know that and then again, you can do you know litter cleanup. That’s also going to help. What about PFS? PFS is harder because they’re in everything. There’s over 600 But filtered water is huge. And in doing my research reverse osmosis seems to be the best way to reduce them from your water. We also need to call our legislature or senators or Congress, you know, men, women people, why are we only limiting three when they’re 600. And let’s go a step further. I would love to encourage you to watch the movie dark water, which came out in 2019 Mark Ruffo and Anne Hathaway Oh yeah, some big stars are in this movie. And they basically exposed Dupont, there is a article in the shownotes where there is some evasion on actually paying the amount needed for all the people that got sick and the ongoing long term effects that they have caused not just the US the world, it’s everywhere. And we also want to have less consumption of packaging because that is going to have one microplastics into it. PSAs so there are a lot of wonderful actions that you can get started on. But before we end, I wanted to leave you with a prompt. So let’s just take a moment to just go inside, close the eyes. If you’re driving, don’t do that. And just feel your body. And when you think about this question, notice what arises, feelings sensations. And what do you feel inspired to do? What if you didn’t have clean drinking water? What if you didn’t have enough water to use for your every day? You know needs? There are a lot of people in the world that don’t. How would that impact you?
And what might you do to ensure that you protect it the water for yourself, for your neighbors for your community for life for animals for future generations? How could you live more simply how could you bring your attention towards living in a way that is regenerating? Not over consuming, not destroying.
Water is becoming more scarce and quantity and quality. We can and should expect that there will be a reduction in precipitation due to changing climate. Drought, excessive withdrawals of groundwater from aquifers. Freshwater is diminishing. And we have a finite amount of water, which means we have to protect it. We are water protectors, you are a water protector.
I invite you to take 30 minutes out of your week to reflect on how you want to be a water protector in your life. If you enjoy this episode, please give it a five star rating and share it with friends, colleagues and community who will benefit. Additionally, if you know of someone or you yourself work in the airline industry, I feel there’s such a huge opportunity to remove single use plastics from the business operations and shift to compostable tableware. I have many contacts in this industry I’d be happy to connect you with. And I imagine Greg and his team at etrm would also be happy to help with this initiative. Additionally, if you are a frequent traveler, you have sway as a customer, businesses listen to what their customers want to need. And that may be the bigger push to operationalize. For more environmental responsibility around single use plastics. My LinkedIn information and Greg’s are in the show notes feel free to reach out. Lastly, I love partnering with people leaders. And I use my skills in Human Centered Design and training and leadership and culture to assess the gaps so that you can create thriving, purpose driven companies where folks want to stay where you can have high trust psychological safety, people can bring their best selves to work and they belong. I am available for consulting and coming into a more internal role in these capacities with the right team and Company. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or book a free consultation with me so that we can figure out together how to move you towards your best opportunity to create a human centered workforce this year. We have incredible interviews and episodes coming out in the shine podcast, make sure that you’re subscribed or go to lead from light.net. You don’t miss a beat and until we meet again and thanks so much for listening be the light and shine the light
