ECO SPEAKS CLE
ECO SPEAKS CLE is where the eco-curious explore Northeast Ohio's unique and thriving environmental community. Each episode delivers thoughtful and informative interviews with local sustainability leaders and offers tips to help listeners connect, learn, and live with the community and planet in mind. ECO SPEAKS CLE is hosted by Diane Bickett and produced by her son-in-law, Greg Rotuno. Diane draws on experiences and relationships developed during her 31-year environmental career to showcase the impactful work shaping Cleveland's environmental future in a podcast that speaks to sustainability newcomers and masters alike.
ECO SPEAKS CLE
Our 2 Year Anniversary Special
On December 21, 2021, Greg and I launched the first episode of Eco Speaks CLE to elevate and connect the greater Cleveland environmental community by speaking with those doing inspiring and impactful work. Forty-seven episodes later, as we celebrate two years of Eco Speaks CLE, we are grateful to each guest and each listener. You have become our friends. We hope this first episode of 2024 and its compilation of clips from the past two years will help you find new ways to stay connected, stay positive, and stay active.
Featuring:
Eddie Olshanski/Trash Fish Cleveland
Tristan Rader/Solar United Neighbors
Britta Latz/Medwish International
Tim Jasinski/Lights Out Cleveland
Steven Love/Cleveland Plogs
Chelsea Shuran/Hunger Network
Jacob VanSickel/Bike Cleveland
Semia Bray/Black Environmental Leaders
Jim Sheehan/Ohio City Bicycle Co-op
Elissa Yoder/Ohio Sierra Club
Mike Sandoval/Evergreen Recycling
Ren Brumfield/Cleveland Recycling
Nina Savastano/Brooklyn Recycling Program
Nathan Rutz/Tilth Soil
Denzil St Clair/Greater Cleveland Beekeepers Association
Emily Peck/Frayed Knot Farm
Patrick Kearns/Ohio City Farm
Jess Boeke/Rust Belt Fibershed
Dan Brown/Rust Belt Riders
Nicole MgGee/Upcycle Parts Shop
Jessica Davis/Rebuilders Exchange
Debbie Eastburn/Humble Design Cleveland
Matt Walters /Cuyahoga Recycles
Kathleen Colan
Jill Bartolatta/Ohio Sea Grant
Erin Huber Rosen/Drink Local, Drink Tap
Alex Margevicius/Cleveland Water
Max Herzog/Cleveland Water Alliance
Rachel Regula/Little Spark Refill Shop
Pat Conway/Great Lakes Brewing Company
Alec McClennan/Good Nature Organic Lawn Care
Aaron Jacobson/Faanware
Joe Rohan, Jing Lyon/BRITE Energy Innovators
Jefferson Jones/Organic Connects
Amy Roskilly/Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District
Carol Thaler/Great Lakes Biomimicry
Marci Lininger/Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative
Deb Yandala/
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You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the EcoCurious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Pickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello friends and happy new year.
Speaker 1:Greg and I are excited to share this compilation of clips from EcoSpeak CLE to mark our two-year podcast anniversary. We're really proud of our work and proud of this community, and we hope this first episode of 2024 will help you find new ways to stay connected, stay positive and stay active by hearing the voices of sustainability in Cleveland. So we've organized these clips loosely by topic, and first up are some organizations you can volunteer with and ones that will help you reduce your environmental footprint. Here we feature Eddie Olshansky with Trashfish Cleveland, tristan Rader with Solar United Neighbors, brita Lats with Medwish International, tim Czazinski with Lights Out Cleveland, steven Love with Cleveland Plogs, chelsea Chorin with the Hunger Network, jacob Van Sickle with Bik Cleveland, samia Bray with Black Environmental Leaders and Jim Sheehan with Ohio City Bicycle Co-op.
Speaker 2:I want to bring as many Clevelanders down here. I want to make our river, our great natural resource that we have and great recreational resource we have down here, as accessible to as many people as possible, and I kind of trick them into coming down here with a free kayak and then they're stuck getting an amateur science lesson from me while we're out there. So sorry for talking y'all's ear off, but that's what we do around here.
Speaker 4:We're just here to help people access that and choose where the energy comes from. Essentially, you know, historically we've had to buy electricity from the grid and you get what you get. You get whatever the grid's selling you, whatever electricity generation's out there. Now you can choose to buy power, buy solar panels and receive that free power straight off of your roof.
Speaker 5:essentially, Everyone can get involved with Medwish If their distance doesn't matter. If you can't donate financially, come volunteer. If you're far away and you can't be part of Medwish in a physical sense, help us to spread the word. Maybe you make a birthday campaign on Facebook to help to increase donations in that way. Maybe you want to join us on a brigade? Come and do that. Or if you work in a healthcare facility and you see supplies that are getting thrown away, you know can actually help us yeah speak to us about it.
Speaker 7:So the number one really rule with wildlife rehabilitation is if you have an injured or sick or orphan animal, keep in a warm, dark, quiet place until you can get to treatment for from a licensed rehabilitator. So the main thing we do down there downtown I've taught the volunteers how to reduce stress on the birds. So we capture them with butterfly nets and then we place them in brown paper bags that are made with lights out of cleavage information that we collect down there about the bird and then we transfer them to the car or someone's car as soon as possible to let them rest because obviously went through a lot hitting the window.
Speaker 6:Global Shapers community started in 2011, and it was founded by the director or the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab. He realized that there were just not enough young people at the table in these global conversations, workshops, trying to really unpack and figure out solutions that make sense for each community with these systemic global issues like climate change.
Speaker 8:So I think we might be the only official blogging group that's a cleanup group.
Speaker 9:All right, Unless you find another one.
Speaker 8:Diane, you tell me.
Speaker 1:I love it. What drives you to do this every single?
Speaker 8:Well, if we weren't on a podcast and you could turn around and look at Lake Erie? That's the driver. Yeah, the health of our Great Lake, the health of our community, the health of our environment, that's the driver.
Speaker 12:We take surplus usable but not sellable products from food related businesses in the community. So this could be grocery stores, this could be farms, this could be produce distributors, this could be bakeries, restaurants, catering companies, you name it. If they're producing food or have surplus food and it's in their facility in a safe manner, we can accept that food for donation. We send all of that food back out to organizations that are working with food insecure populations.
Speaker 13:Other people. I should probably do this myself. So I started biking more and started seeing the true benefits, but also started seeing some of the areas where improvements need to be made, which is the impetus of starting by Cleveland. If I had to nail it down, there's two things. One is education, so teaching people how to bike safely, teaching motorists how to navigate around bike safely. But also two is really just the design of our roadways.
Speaker 14:Bell started as an idea. You know, you get good people and good food together and you just come up with amazing things. So we were invited to join what was called a green chat in Chew. It was hosted by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation and the Alliance for the Great Lakes. In that conversation it became very obvious that we had a lot of expertise at the table people of color but each one of us were having the similar experience, and that was that we found ourselves far too often the only person of color in the world.
Speaker 15:The time that you spend on a bike is probably the most impact that you could have on climate change by doing nothing except getting to work. Because the more people see people using bikes, because there's just a lot of resistance to that. You know, cleveland is such a car town and it still is, and having that just once in a while seeing a bike, it's like oh yeah, people really do that.
Speaker 16:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Next we have some clips from our waste reduction and recycling episodes, featuring Alyssa Yoder with Ohio Sierra Club, Mike Sandoval with Evergreen Recycling, Ren Bromfield with Cleveland Recycles and Nina Savestano on the Brooklyn Cart Tagging Program.
Speaker 17:Plastic Free July campaign. It's hosted by the Plastic Free Coalition and they began this campaign in 2011, and it's a pledge that millions of people all around the world. Each year, they take it during the month of July with the goal of reducing plastic waste in their own lives.
Speaker 18:So, looking at Clyde, we'll have the bales come in. We have a bailbreaker, we simulate the bottles up front. So the first thing we do is we either drop the bale into a mezzo which will just chew the bottle up, or we'll have somebody snap the wires, pull the wires and then it goes into a bale breaker which simulates the bottles.
Speaker 19:It's really just basic recycling. It's going to be what it should have been the first time, but I think we, you know what's going to be. The biggest difference is there's going to be a lot more communication from the city to the residents about what's going on. There's because there is a recycling coordinator there was a person in the city who was in charge of making this go smoothly and because you know I'm talking to you because I've been where I've been, because people see me and they know me. Now it's important to me. This is me. I want it to be just right.
Speaker 21:What was on the oops tag. So the tags had on the front it was all the things that could have been wrong in the bin. So whatever we saw, we would check that it was wrong, we would circle or write specific items and then on the back it had everything that was recyclable.
Speaker 1:Some of our most popular episodes had to do with organic and regenerative agriculture. Here we feature Nathan Rucks with Tulsoil, denzel St Clair with the Cuyahoga County Bee Cuppers Association, emily Peck with Freyd Knot Farm, patrick Kearns with Ohio City Farm, jess Boke with Rust Belt Fiber Shots and Dan Brown with Rust Belt Riders.
Speaker 22:Deeper your soil is with organic matter, the more carbon's in it and there's a added benefit of you have better water infiltration, you have better water holding and you still have better porosity. So you have better air flow through the soil, which actually also increases the amount of nitrogen fixation that can happen in the soil, so you can fertilize less. It's a virtuous cycle.
Speaker 11:If we didn't have beekeepers and this is important for everybody to know if we did not have beekeepers we would not have honey bees today. So a feral colony of bees just does not exist. It may exist for a short period of time, but by short period I mean maybe a beekeeping season, but at the end of that season, at some point, it's going to succumb to the mite and the mites will kill every colony of bees in the entire state of Ohio.
Speaker 3:It's really delicate and beautiful and also, yeah, it's tough too, and I think that kind of embodies me, where I think I'm a kind person and can grow beautiful flowers, but also like it's really really, really hard to be a farmer.
Speaker 23:You know, because of that history of the land, we didn't have to go through an expensive or extensive process to remediate the soil. It was pretty good to go, and so they brought out and there was this amazing picture that was on the front cover of the plane dealer back in the day, and it was a team of Amish horses with an iron plow breaking the ground of the Ohio City Farm.
Speaker 25:You know, everything that is produced within that fiber shed is part of that product. And when we have such a regional approach, such a local approach to creating clothing, it's very similar to our local approach to creating food right. So we know the story of where that thing comes from. We're familiar with the farmers that are growing our food right.
Speaker 24:The light of the climate crisis. Those kinds of emissions methane emissions are about 80 times more potent on a 25-year timescale than the stuff that comes out of our tailpipe right, and so, if we're to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change, we need to immediately stop sending food to landfill like full stop.
Speaker 1:Repurposing and reusing stuff is near and dear to our hearts, as are the people creating those opportunities. Next we hear from Nicole McGee from Upcycle Part Shop, jessica Davis from Rebuilders Exchange, debbie Eastburn with Humboldt Design Cleveland, matt Walters with Cuyahoga Recycles and Kathleen Colon with Casey Media Partners.
Speaker 26:But when people are thinking about transforming materials or seeing what's left over and giving it new life, those are the people that we draw in, and I think many, many artists are inherently resourceful because materials are all around us and also you want to explore new materials without necessarily incurring cost. So this model is not by any sense unique. In fact, it's not even unique to creative people or artists. Our grandparents were resourceful in reusing and their grandparents certainly were, so it's just sort of bringing it all together.
Speaker 28:We are creating a possibility of wealth building, so we're creating places where people can make money or an economy, and for Habitat, there's a lot of great reused stores that are non-profits. However, it doesn't create an economy and, from my experience, what I've seen happen is that people need to be maybe mission driven to divert waste, but it doesn't really compensate the people who are moving the materials or incentivize them to make a living.
Speaker 29:We do what we call intentional design. So our process is three days. We go in on day one. We learn about the person. We spend about an hour to an hour and a half with the recipient. We get to hear their journey, we learn a little bit about them. It's the time we have to really connect with them. We take pictures, we take measurements, we find out what colors they like, what the kids are into all of that good stuff and then we come back to our giant warehouse and really this is where the magic happens.
Speaker 30:People have not had the opportunity to learn how to perform simple repairs on their household items. It's just more convenient, so they feel like it's more convenient to dispose of the item and buy a new one if it's broken, Whereas there can be some relatively simple repairs that they can do at home. That saves them money and it keeps that item out of the landfill. So the idea behind the repair workshops is to pair somebody who has a broken item with someone who has some repair know-how to teach them the skills they need to repair that stuff.
Speaker 31:I will always be writing about something. It's just. I mean it's just what I do and who I am. And I think I'll always be selling on the secondary market, because that is so interesting too. And I mean I just like to imagine the lives these items have had before and make up stories about them. So I mean, both suit me. So yeah, just continue doing what I do. And my eBay store is at separelove, which means it's perfect love in French.
Speaker 1:Protecting our Great Lakes and our drinking water source, Lake Erie, is serious work, and here we feature Jill Bartolotta with Ohio Sea Grant. Erin Yuber Rosen with Drink Local Drink Tap. Alex Margavedes with Cleveland Water. Max Herzog with Cleveland Water Alliance.
Speaker 32:What is a risk plastic pollution poses to wildlife in the Great Lakes? Exposure to toxic chemicals when ingested, loss of nutrition from ingestion instead of a natural food source, entanglement or all of the above? It's all the above. Yes, whenever they give you all of the above, it's always all of the above.
Speaker 33:The curriculum specifically is about exploring your eco and water footprint. We've heard a lot about our climate footprint and things like that, but no one really is talking about the water footprint. So we cover that. We cover water equity issues. So this is the human right to water and both locally and globally, we have a huge crisis on our hands. Two million people in the United States don't have access to their tap water and globally, 2.1 billion people don't have access to clean water. So this is a huge problem that we're focusing on locally and globally.
Speaker 10:Every five feet down we measure temperature and dissolved oxygen level to give us a sense three dimensionally of what's going on in Lake Erie with the oxygen levels, so that we have some advanced warning of what maybe to expect. Is this going to be a difficult summer or an easier one to worry about? Since then, for about two years now, we have added two more boys, one near the Nottingham plant in Collinwood and the other near our Crown plant near West Lake, such that all four of our intakes now have a water quality boy near them.
Speaker 34:We want to unlock the potential of the Smart Lake to serve a whole wide range of stakeholders, and that could be folks trying to use the data to advocate for increased investment in conservation, changes in legislation. It could be folks that are interested in just knowing you know what's the quality of water it might be right now, or what's the wave height out on the lake where I'm thinking about going to Recreat. And one of the things that we are really focused on is trying to unlock the potential of the data for folks in research, as well as folks in sort of the entrepreneurial innovation space.
Speaker 1:Next we hear from those green entrepreneurs that are demonstrating that people, planet and profit can go hand in hand, featuring Rachel Regulo with Little Spark refill shop, kat Conway with Great Lakes Brewing Company, alec MacLennan with GoodNatured organic lawn care, erin Jacobson with fan clothing and Joe Rohan and Jing Lyon with Bright Energy Innovators.
Speaker 35:In the middle of COVID I was like, do we have a refill shop yet? Like it kind of like lost my mind and came back and we did it and I was at a point which I think a lot of people were, where they're like what makes me happy? We're stuck in our houses, like we have a lot of thinking to do during shutdown and I was like I don't want to live this life anymore. I want to open a refill shop. That's what makes me happy and I'm still fulfilling my goal of, like making a difference in someone's life.
Speaker 36:I said well, maybe this is a great spot for an urban farm, and so we collaborated and that's the the good word on that whole project was collaboration between us in Ohio City Inc. And the guys who are doing the refugee response stuff, and we didn't know it at the time but I guess was the largest urban farm in the country.
Speaker 37:Our approach is mostly focused on how can we improve the health of the things that we want to encourage. So grass is a pretty aggressive plant. If you can give it the right conditions, mow it correctly, you know, feed it, feed the soil, so you have a nice, healthy soil for it to grow in. If you can give it what it likes, then it will kind of crowd out a good amount of other plants.
Speaker 38:We're only working with materials that aren't going to have environmental consequences or burden my grandchildren after we're done making and selling those clothes. So that means not working with polyester and finding ways to recycle and reuse scraps from our production process rather than throwing that in the garbage.
Speaker 39:There's two sides of the equation. There's the sustainability side, but there's also just job creation New businesses in Ohio utilizing space for sustainable energy products instead of, you know, kind of getting rid of the old rust belts mentality and replacing it with sustainable industries.
Speaker 9:Having an anchor in Voltage Valley and with all the partnerships and other organizations in the area, from Foxconn to Altium to Lloyds Town Motors, is great but it's bringing energy technologies from Voltage Valley to the rest of the state and to the rest of the globe.
Speaker 1:And, finally, why we all care about sustainability, protecting, learning and getting out in nature, featuring Jefferson Jones with Organic Connects, amy Roskilly with Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District, carol Thaler and Tricia Brown with Great Lakes Biomemetry, marcy Lininger with the Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative, dab Yandala with Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Samira Malone with the Cleveland Tree Coalition.
Speaker 40:You can bring people together, even if they may not like each other or have biases or prejudices against one another. That if you bring them into the outdoors, they will bond. They will bind over a kayak, they will bond over a bow and arrow. They will bond over, you know, making a fire or foraging, whatever it may be. So our goal is to make the world a better place.
Speaker 27:You know, talking about building habitat is not just doing the milkweed Milkweed's great, fine, wonderful, please plant it. But having that campaign of you know, when I was on the podcast last time, drinking your lawn, putting in that native habitat, because all of our pollinators, monarchs included, need food all year, all season long, so they need things that are blooming from early spring into late fall.
Speaker 41:Biomemetry is innovation inspired by nature, so a lot of times we look at how to invent something new, you jump right to the engineering and you miss a whole world of answers that are around us in nature.
Speaker 17:Okay.
Speaker 1:And Trisha, how would you describe biomemetry? Really the same way. It's a process, it's a different way of looking at something, and so we have found, through the professional education, the things that we've done with companies, that once they understand what biomemetry is and can do, there's really no going back.
Speaker 42:It can't be just about monarchs. The monarch is what got us here, but the monarch, if you look at it as sort of like a guardian angel of other pollinators in wildlife. What a great opportunity we have to have such a charismatic, beautiful species that needs our help so desperately and we can do good things for monarchs. And by doing good things for monarchs, we're helping other species that live under the same house.
Speaker 16:It's beautiful property. We're retaining acreage right on the river so that we can move a little faster than the park can in terms of getting some resources there for the public and it's park building. In some ways we're trying to bring in voices who maybe historically haven't been engaged in park building and park design, and it's really quite an exciting thing. And I'll say the other thing I really feel good about this, with the work that the community did to protect this land, is this is key habitat that really connects the park east and west.
Speaker 20:Humans and the native ecosystem and nature should not be divorced from one another. So, when they are, we get to see some of these disproportionate impacts that we've seen throughout the decades, and so one of the things that's really exciting about this work is that not only are we able to increase tree canopy for the benefits that it brings the environment, but it really is an act of healing and restoration, both for people, place and the environment.
Speaker 43:We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeaksclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.
