December 16, 2025 • 47 mins
What if the most powerful environmental cleanup technology on Earth is not a machine but a tree?
In this mind blowing episode, environmental scientist and TEDx speaker Renee Murphy reveals how plants, microbes, and fungi are quietly solving some of the world’s biggest pollution problems: toxic soil, contaminated groundwater, PFAS, landfill leachate, mining waste, and more.
This is the future of environmental remediation: fast, affordable, circular, regenerative, and already happening at NASA, industrial sites, landfills, and damaged ecosystems around the world.
If you have never heard of endophyte assisted phytoremediation, this episode will completely change how you see land use, water treatment, city planning, and the future of sustainability.
Watch this if you care about clean water, climate resilience, biodiversity, or how nature can outperform our most advanced technologies.
🔎 This episode covers:
-How NASA pioneered plant based cleanup
-How trees and microbes remove toxins from soil and groundwater
-Why EV batteries, plastics, and PFAS require new circular thinking
-Real case studies: landfill leachate, mining, brownfields, contaminated aquifers
-How cities can redesign infrastructure to work with nature
-What industries must change to avoid ecological collapse
-How phytoremediation can be faster and cheaper than traditional cleanup
⏩ Jump to your favorite parts
00:48 Meet Renee Murphy: From Fashion to Environmental Science
03:04 Discovering Phytoremediation: A Life-Changing Trip to NASA
05:50 The Science Behind Phytoremediation
10:56 Implementing Phytoremediation in Real-World Scenarios
22:10 Proactive Environmental Solutions and Future Outlook
25:57 Understanding Indicator Species
26:06 Innovative Water Management Solutions
28:06 Challenges in Sewage Treatment
28:56 Leachate Management in Landfills
30:45 Circular Systems and Plastic Recycling Issues
31:42 Electric Vehicles and Battery Recycling
33:25 Mining and Environmental Restoration
41:36 Residential Applications and Challenges
44:46 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
About Renee Murphy and Intrinsyx Environmental
Renee Murphy is a two time TEDx speaker, environmental scientist, and Director of Business Development at Intrinsyx Environmental. She helps industries use nature based remediation to clean toxic sites, restore ecosystems, and build regenerative circular systems.
About Intrinsyx EnvironmentalIntrinsyx Environmental specializes in using nature-based solutions, including endophyte-assisted phytoremediation (plants and microbes), to clean up contaminated sites and restore ecological health.
Website: https://www.intrinsyxenvironmental.com/
LinkedIn (Renee): https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneepmurphy/
LinkedIn (Intrinsyx Environmental): https://www.linkedin.com/company/ranpak/posts/?feedView=all
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midlifefarmgirl/
Instagram (Intrinsyx Environmental): https://www.instagram.com/intrinsyx_environmental/
Join the Conscious Design Movement
📘 Get the “Conscious Design” book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KNMN9BT
Learn more: https://www.consciousdesignhaus.com/
Want to turn visionary ideas into market-ready, sustainable products? 👉 https://www.petermanfirm.com/
Connect with Us
Instagram: /cdesignhaus
TikTok: /consciousdesign
LinkedIn: /conscious-designhaus
X (Twitter): https://x.com/CDesignHaus
What shocked you most about how trees and microbes can clean toxic sites?
👍 Like, subscribe, and share to support conscious innovation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Just to make it simple, we planta special tree that is right for
the type of contaminant we're trying to clean up.
We inoculate them with microbes.So it's a site that has
hydrocarbons or like oil and gasproducts.
We would use hydrocarbon specific degraders that are just
natural endophytes, just bacteria that already exists in
(00:20):
nature. But we've identified them and
we've put it into the tree and the tree becomes sort of a super
degrader. Hello and welcome to the
Conscious Design podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman and
I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7 figure businesses.
(00:43):
Join me for another episode where sustainability meets
innovation and business savvy. Today I'm really excited to have
Renee Murphy. She's a sustainability keynote
speaker, educator, internationalTE DX speaker, which her talk
was on trees and microbes cleaning toxic sites, which is
really cool. And right now she's an
(01:03):
environmental scientist and director of business development
Intrinsics Environmental, where they're combining nature with
engineered solutions for sustainable environmental
remediation. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Ian. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I am really excited to dive into this as remediation
and cleaning soil is a big problem tackle and we definitely
(01:24):
need some good options to be able to do that.
But first, let's talk a little bit about how did you get into
this industry? What got you into this
environmental sustainability space?
Well, in I'll tell you, I spent most of my life in the fashion
industry. Actually, I had my own business
(01:45):
and was really living the dream that young girls dream of going
back and forth from LA to New York every month.
I had gotten to a point to wherereally I was at the top of my
industry. But for years I had this anxiety
that was creeping up every day. And something about the way I
(02:05):
was living my life and what my career was focused on, which is
really, you know, overconsumption and selling this
idea of perfection. And you know, at the time, I had
a daughter that was growing up in her teen years, and I could
see how much she was watching meand mimicking me and started to
see things that were unsettling.But why was I so unsettled?
(02:28):
And I had started getting into hiking and walking out in
nature. And the strange thing happened
when I was outside. I would feel at peace, you know,
all of those ruminating thoughtswould go away.
And I just felt so inspired by what was going on with the
ecology of every location that Iwas at and started to become
more and more obsessed with nature and start having a really
(02:50):
hard time going to work every day because it just seemed like
it was no longer in alignment with me.
And I made the decision to walk away from all of that in my mid
40s, which is a bit of a scary leap to make.
But I was inspired by a trip in Houston where I had gone to NASA
(03:13):
on a just a tourist trip, never really into space and all of
that. But I thought, I'm here, let's
check it out. And one of the exhibits talked
about how scientists were exploring how to grow plants on
Mars. But because the soil is toxic,
this toxic to humans, how would this happen?
And then they went on to explainthat plants on Earth have this
(03:35):
ability to clean soil and water and the air through what was
called phyto remediation. And that's just plants cleaning.
That simple. And I thought, well, if we could
do this technology and we're exploring this on Mars, why
aren't we doing this right here on Earth?
And that sent me down the rabbithole that made me make the
(03:59):
decision and the career pivot tobecome a scientist.
So I went to school, got my master's in plant science, and I
was off to the races. With this degree.
Love focused on native plant restoration, working as a sales
director at a native plant nursery and doing some
(04:20):
collaborative research trying togrow trees in a very toxic area
known as the Salton Seat in Southern California.
Yep. Familiar and it's, you know,
salt impacted, drought impacted.In addition, it's highly toxic.
And how do we restore areas likethat?
Because this is the problem all over the world is that we have
these areas that are degraded and what do we do with them now?
(04:44):
Can we grow on them anymore? No, not because we farmed on
them so poorly in the past. How do we go on to regenerate
land and how do we clean, clean land in ways that doesn't
require us just digging and hauling it?
Because that is one of the big methods of doing contamination
cleanup is digging it up and just moving it to a toxic dump
(05:06):
site. Which are are we really doing?
That's the same problem, just a new.
Spot, right. We've just moved it.
I mean, they do this in Alaska. They barge the soil to
Washington or Arizona. It, it's, it's really, as a
newcomer to the industry, it, I was baffled.
So when I was working on this restoration effort, someone I
(05:27):
had known from my past decades ago, saw a posting that I had
done on social media about this work I was doing.
And he reached out to me and said, hey, I used to work with
NASA. This is the field that I'm in.
Talk to me about your research. And within months, I ended up
moving to the Bay Area in San Francisco area and working for
(05:47):
Intrinsics Environmental, working in Phyto remediation.
So we do just that. We can clean not just soils, our
groundwater as well. So we work on cleaning
groundwater and soil using specialized tree and plant
species. And then we inoculate those tree
and plant species with naturallyoccurring microbes that have
just evolved to be very specificto breaking down certain
(06:10):
contaminants. So just to make it simple, we
plant a special tree that is right for the type of
contaminant or trying to clean up.
We choose the right plant based on the depth of the roots and
the depth of where that contamination might be and what
our objectives are, what the client is looking at, the speed
of which they're trying to cleanit up.
(06:31):
You know, a lot of this, we haveenvironmental regulators
involved in directing how the cleanup is being done, which is
why it's terrifying that there'sso many rollbacks in this.
What was the great, the new great deal that was just passed?
I don't know if I've got the exact name, but within that,
there's all these environmental rollbacks for regulators, which
(06:52):
which is scary to me because that is the reason that cleanup
is being done at all, right? It's so we plant these tree
species, we inoculate them with microbes.
So it's a site that has hydrocarbons or like oil and gas
products. We would use hydrocarbon
specific degraders that are justnatural endophytes, just
(07:13):
bacteria that already exists in nature.
But we've identified them and we've put it into the tree and
the tree becomes sort of a superdegrader in phytoremediation.
It's been used for decades. But one of the issues that would
come across is that when you'd plant the trees, the area was
too toxic and so the trees wouldget phytotoxicity and they would
(07:38):
die. So now we are able to plant
trees in very high contamination, we call it those
source areas. Plant the trees, inoculate them,
and the trees thrive because they're able to manage that
particular contaminant. So kind of like if I gave you
amazing probiotics and built up your gut bacteria, you would get
(08:00):
sick less, you would be strongeroverall your whole system.
So it's incredible technology, but it's what's considered a new
emerging technology. So if you could imagine, like
any industry, it's difficult. We have to consistently educate
people on this new technology and then it's not phyto
remediation of the past because some people may have tried it in
(08:23):
the past and it wasn't as successful if they would have
liked. But it is the only real green
sustainable technology. And if you could imagine, a lot
of these locations are located in areas that are underserved
communities. They tend to be art.
You never go into rich area and see, you know, there wasn't a
factory in a rich area, right? So they're always localized more
(08:45):
in these underserved communities.
But when we leave or the remediation is done, the
community's left with a forest of trees versus Gray
infrastructure. Right.
That's amazing. Yeah, this is, this has been
such a fascinating and I'm sure there's like some of this stuff
is really old, but I I've seen articles on, you know, like, oh,
(09:07):
there's a new mushroom that's been discovered that eats it
breaks down this kind of plastic.
Or. That breaks down oil or a must
like these just little plant. They're like, oh, there's a
plant that eats there. That's terrible talks and we'd
die if we had that much. But see how incredible this is
if we could learn to harness thepowers of nature to do this work
(09:30):
for us? They already have the
capabilities. It's just we have to understand
it as scientists and then be able to take it out of academia
and move it into commercial, which is what we've done with
this technology. The research was done by the
University of Washington for three decades by Doctor Sharon
Doty. This is old.
I mean, this is really. Old.
(09:51):
She's been characterizing these microbes for decades and she's
been published in journals many,many times.
And so we, along with Doctor Freeman, who founded our
company, has commercialized that.
And our very first project was with NASA in Mountain View and
the EPA. And we're able to show that it
(10:11):
did in fact work with, we specifically worked on
chlorinated solvents there. But so we have microbes that
work on chlorinated solvents, microbes that work on oil and
gas, PCBS, ammunitions. And we're now optimizing our
ability to uptake metals becauseplants do handle inorganic
contaminants differently. The first set of microbes
actually break the contaminants down into non-toxic substances.
(10:35):
When we're talking about inorganic contaminants, the
plants do take it up into their biomass.
So we do handle that a little differently.
But you can see how important itis to have experts in this field
understanding how the plants will naturally behave when you
give it a certain contaminant and how would we systemize that
in order to remove it. So it's really cool.
(10:57):
I love that is there because I'mjust curious once so it's
actually breaking it down. So that means that the plant
itself is not really impact likeit doesn't become a toxic.
It's not like a sponge where it's just, oh, the toxicity is
now in your trunk and then you have a toxic trunk.
It's actually, I would say that is everybody's fear is like, OK,
(11:20):
so now you're just leaving us with toxic trees.
Well, well, no. So yeah, that is actually not
happening. So that symbiotic relationship
between the microbes and the plants, the the microbes want to
live inside the plant. So endophyte inside the plant,
they want to live inside the plant.
But what they do is they're going to metabolize every, you
know, everything has to metabolize something and they
(11:42):
metabolize these different contaminants.
So it's just being broken down into simpler byproducts that are
not toxic. And it's being broken down
within the soil, within the roots, within the tree trunk,
and some volatizes out through the leaves.
And we do do phytoforensics, we do tree car analysis, leaf
tissue analysis, and specifically look for the
(12:04):
contaminant to make sure that itis not stacking up in the tree.
Because if that's happening, something's not right with our
system. So we look for stress in the
trees. You know, we want strong,
healthy trees and that guides us.
And then I guess again, we're we're looking at our mediums,
whether it's water or whether it's the soil and we're able to
(12:24):
see whether we are degrading these different contaminants.
Amazing. And you mentioned earlier
something about being able to part of your selection on based
on what plant you start with is also where how deep into the
soil and you mentioned groundwater which can be that
can be a little ways down. Yeah, it sure can.
(12:44):
It's. But it is the contaminants will
soak all the way down. So how it's one question like
how deep can you go? How, like, what are you able to
pull up out of this? Yeah.
That's a great question. So I would say that the species
that we tend to use the most because it is an exceptional
(13:08):
fighter remediation plant and that is the popular tree.
It's called a friatophyte, whichjust means that it's super
thirsty. And if we're trying to clean up
groundwater, we're trying to getthe tree to drink up the water
and transpire, right. So when it drinks it up, that's
when the degradation is occurring.
So the more water we take up, the more breakdown is occurring,
(13:31):
which is confusing to people when they say, well, we want a
native species or, you know, especially in California, we
want a native species. Something is drought tolerant.
Well, a drought tolerant tree isnot taking water up quickly.
So you see how we have to match.If we're trying to get a
restoration effort, we're just getting a tree that can handle
the contaminant. But the goal isn't to do like a
(13:53):
groundwater cleanup. OK, then we can look at natives,
but we have to use a species that is thirsty.
Willows are another great one. So we would look at the
groundwater depth and determine poplars can go down to say 30
feet with their root systems. So that gives us a lot there.
Willows, you know around I'd say10 feet average.
(14:14):
So we are looking at where the contamination is, is it up in
the soil? Are we looking for trees that
will spread their roots just this way or are we wanting ones
that will, you know, get a semi tap root and just go to seek
that groundwater? Additionally, we have hybrid
poplars that are like salt and boron tolerance.
So if we're moving into a site that what we know is high in
(14:35):
boron and high in salt, we woulduse those trees because that's
just like an added benefit. These trees are already going to
be tolerant up to certain levels.
So you can see it's a lot of figuring out what is the best
system, what are we trying to tackle and the speed at which we
need to do the cleanup. So depending on the budget of
the client and depending on whatthe regulator is asking, that
(14:57):
would determine how many trees we put it, right.
So and we can put them pretty close together.
We're talking like up to five feet, really tight spacing like
we have done what we call functional landscaping, which I
love the idea of. So we could, a lot of
redevelopment is happening on brownfield properties and that's
just properties that have had something there industrially and
(15:21):
are suspected of having some contamination.
And so these lands might be bought by a developer at a
reduced price, but they do incurthe liability of the legacy
contamination. They didn't do the
contamination, but it's there and they have to.
Deal with it and they got to deal with it.
Right, right. So if you could imagine, you
could develop a property at the same time, put our trees in.
(15:43):
So you're cleaning up and developing all at the same time.
And while that property is then being used for the purpose, it's
still being remediated. So at no point are you going in
and just scooping everything out, removing it and then
redeveloping it. You could do it at the same time
using this functional landscaping.
And again, this functional landscaping is being used all
(16:04):
over California and it's really kind of amazing because you're
hitting a couple of things. You know, you can plant trees
throughout a parking lot. So you're kind of battling that
heat island effect because you're putting in very fast
growing trees that put on a lot of leaves very quickly, you
know, get very tall. I live in Arizona.
I know all about. This right like Arizona.
(16:25):
Everywhere is insane. They're not planting enough
trees in Arizona through their parking lots.
Everyone fights over those couple of spots that have that
tree. The. 2 trees.
The cooling effect is real, so you could densely plant trees
through a parking lot and they won't disrupt the infrastructure
because of the way they like to grow straight down.
Picking ones that don't spread out.
(16:47):
Right. So you have to be very careful
like what's your infrastructure and understanding all of that.
But again, you'd be doing that with any remediation.
You'd have to be very focused onwhat the existing infrastructure
is and how your system will fit into that.
So you know you can you can do this type of functional
landscaping. But additionally to that, we've
now moved into the restoration field where maybe a restoration
(17:11):
company has tried to get establishment and can't because
you know, again, whatever suspected in that soil is making
it very difficult to establish their restoration efforts.
So we can go in and plant nativespecies.
Now this is where planting natives is great because we're
not concerned about the speed atwhich they grow, but we are
concerned about can they survivethe first couple years.
(17:34):
And so the endophytes give them again that boost to tolerate
stress and we can get establishment even in like
reforestation efforts, establishment rates are pretty
low. So if we can increase that by
just giving this microbial boost, you can see how many
really great applications there are to this technology.
(17:56):
How? Because one of the things that I
think of, you know, and you probably have had to answer this
question, when you think of likea tree growing, you're like,
it's going to take 20 years. But obviously you're working on
remediation where you're like, no, we don't, we don't want to
take 20 years to do that. So I'm assuming that the
lifespan of the tree is not likethey can remediate something
(18:19):
faster than 20 years. Basically it's.
Absolutely. And we have.
There's some slow ones, but. And again, all of that, it
depends on different variables we discussed earlier.
But if we are trying to get a clean up faster, we can start
with much bigger trees. And now I want to explain to you
what our trees look like when weinstall them.
(18:41):
They're not what you would wouldimagine.
So you imagine a tree in a box holding its roots, right?
So like, yeah, the little. Yeah, where you get 1 little
hole and you drop it in and you're done.
Or you buy a big tree and it's got like a tremendous box
attached to it with its root systems and it's a lot of work
to install. That is not what we do.
It's just really cool. So we auger holes into the
(19:04):
ground using like a skid steer. They're going to drill holes
into the ground. We put amendments into the hole
very specific to what we're dealing with and what, you know,
depending on the conditions of the site.
And then we put in what is called a pole or a tree cutting.
So if you could imagine, it justlooks like we're taking a branch
from a tree. No buds, no roots, it's just
(19:27):
like a stick. It was, we went, I did an
installation one time and they'dopened up the big gates for the
construction, like the construction gates, because they
thought I was coming in with a huge truck full of giant boxed
trees. And I was holding all the trees
under my arm because they're just cuttings.
So if you can imagine, I've got 100 trees under one arm, 6 foot
(19:49):
cuttings and they're like, whereare the trees?
I'm like, they're right here. Where are the trees?
They're right here. So we put them in to the ground
with the spring, with propagation hormone and our
endophytes and the proper amendments.
You'll come back three weeks later.
You have a tree with leaves. It's starting to form a root
system in about a year. It's getting to the point where
(20:13):
the roots have reached generallywhere we're looking to get.
And that degradation starts to happen.
So recently we just received a no further action which is
closing a site after five years on a contaminated sites with the
trees, zero tree mortality and in five years we closed the
site. That's really pretty cool.
(20:35):
And again, it depends on the contamination level and the size
of the site, but we have had some really incredible quick
turnarounds getting the objectives met by the regulator.
And how does this for all of ourlistener there, how does this
compare to like a standard, likewhat is a standard remediation
(20:56):
process that you're replacing? There are many different
remediation methods, but I'll just name like a couple that
come to mind. Like to dig in Hall is a big one
and a lot of times different methods are used in combination
with one another. There is like soil vapor
extraction systems where they're, if you saw like the
(21:18):
infrastructure involved, there'sa big cage and then there's
infrastructure and that is working on removing soil vapor.
Let me think of some of the other ones.
You can go in and biologically treat certain source zone areas.
So they are injecting bacteria and then feeding the bacteria
and breakdown is occurring againthrough bacteria, which is
(21:39):
great. Ours is a little different in
that is that the trees are doingthe work so that you are left
with that green space. But we do do some biological
work as well. Or sometimes you might do them
in combination with each other. It just depends on what needs to
be done. Or if they're looking to see
like immediate work being done, then we might be brought in as a
secondary step. Like we've put in what we call
(22:02):
like a phyto barrier to protect maybe river or a natural area on
one side, but there's a refineryon the other.
OK. I was going to ask about like
kind of this proactive or ongoing thing where you know
that you have a contaminant flowincoming.
I would love to see, you know, I'm glad you said proactive
(22:24):
because that is unfortunately not being done right now.
And I would love to see especially some of these big
corporations look at rather thanbeing reactive is can we be
proactive? Like we know certain things are
going to happen. Can we put a Berry of trees
(22:46):
around our site as a proactive measure?
We know there's some natural space we want to protect.
We're doing this proactively. So there are so many ways that
if we just, if we wanted to, this could be one of the best
(23:07):
ways to market your work. I mean, for me, if I worked for
an oil company, I would want to be the leader in preventative
measures. I mean, there's such this like,
you know, everybody has this badtaste in their mouth when we
(23:27):
talk about oil and gas companies.
Well, we all need our oil and gas, so it's not going away.
But can we be the best company at being proactive and trying to
eliminate any of this type of spills or leaks or leaving sites
(23:51):
contaminated and then needing toclean it up?
Like can we just be more proactive in our thinking about
that? Can we be proactive in the way
that we're designing our cities?We, we already know that these,
you know, trees are cleaning theair, cooling the areas.
Humans are healthier when we're closer to trees and parks.
(24:11):
Can we incorporate more of this natural design and be very
proactive with it versus after the fact?
I think that's the problem. We just, we, we have not used
our creativity and our artistry and I think that's inside
everybody. And then we get into our careers
and we get very, you know. Yeah, well, I mean, one of one
(24:37):
of the first that when you were mentioning, you know, parking
lots was forgetting on the word there there's and not as much
anymore. But like when I was a kid,
there's, there's always oil stains oil and you when you went
to go RIP up, I'm sure it's the same case.
And you go to RIP up an asphalt parking lot, there's oil like
(24:59):
the oil seeps through. There's no way around it.
So if you were to preemptively go, OK, well, we know we're
going to have these kinds of things coming off a car or
highways or road, right? There's so many things.
We, we know it's going to happen.
And if you're my thought too is like if you're, if you're
already putting in green space of some kind, because a lot of
(25:21):
places they do at least a littlebit.
If you were to like one step further and go, well, let's pick
the plant species based on how it will handle toxins that we
know are going to hit just those.
Those kinds of it seems so simple.
There there are species that also can be indicators of
contamination, like a Canary in the coal mine.
(25:43):
Oh, really? OK.
So yeah, I was reading about different species that are
indicators. So.
So when they start getting sick,you know that's a signal.
Oh, interesting. You know, that's why the
Canaries were used in coal mineswhen the Canary died, they knew
there was a vapor problem, right?
(26:04):
So. That is interesting.
Same kind of idea. But you know, if you know,
you're thinking along the lines of that parking lot, you know,
our our oceans, you know, you don't surf in the oceans after a
rain because all of the oil and contamination goes into the
waterways. Why can't we design parking lots
(26:25):
with understanding where that water flow would go into?
And maybe it is directed into like a bioswale and the plants
are planted there as as that filtration system rather than,
you know, most water is taken upproperties and then taken off
(26:47):
the properties and then eventually ends up down at the
ocean or into a processing center.
Why doesn't the water get directed into a system that will
actually treat it before it goesto its next location?
You know, these aren't complicated concepts, we just
don't use them. Hey, it's your host, Ian.
(27:08):
I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode.
I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for
the awesome things they are doing.
I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses
like yours turn their our boldest ideas into powerful,
purpose driven brands. So if you're serious about
building a brand people love, like our guests and clients too,
and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to
(27:29):
dive a bit deeper with our book Conscious Design.
Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use
to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful,
impact driven brand. Brand that stands out, tracks
loyal customers and drive sustainable growth with social
and environmental responsibilitywoven into its DNA.
Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website
(27:52):
consciousdesignhouse.com or justfind the link below in the show
notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode
and don't forget to like, subscribe and share.
Yes, we don't. And it makes me even think like
how could this, and I don't knowyou've done this kind of thing,
(28:14):
but how could this improve? Because like if you look at our
sewage treatment capacity, right, these we have plants
built for cities based on population numbers in from the
80s and things like that holds right?
How obviously one of the biggestthings that they those systems
do, obviously there's the the waste matter, but also the
(28:37):
toxins, all the stuff that gets gets washed in.
I'm kind of one of the things thinking through this is like
had this type of plants be an assistant to that or add
capacity to treatment, water treatment facilities.
So let me tell you about this project that I visited in
(29:00):
Chicago, which you can think about waste treatment, but
another one of our issues, you know, there's waste, but there's
also our landfills, right? So we visited this landfill and
there's the whole industry around leachate management.
So you can imagine everything ina landfill turns into leachate,
right? Which is basically like, you
(29:21):
know, your waste systems you're talking about that leachate
needs to go somewhere off site for processing.
So this site we visited by one of our partners, leachate
management specialists, It was so incredible.
So it was a giant City Park. Everybody could use it for
mountain biking. There's, you know, a river
(29:42):
running through it. But one particular area was
gated off, and they had rows androws and rows of Poplar trees
planted. They were taking the leachate,
bringing it to the Poplar trees and irrigating the Poplar trees
with it. And then the Poplar trees were
breaking it down. That was their water source and
(30:03):
they were breaking down the contaminants in the leachate.
So that ultimately the project, you know, they have to take the
leachate off the property for processing.
That costs money. That's part of what it costs to
run that particular landfill. But the poplars were doing such
a great job that much of what they had to take off site was
(30:27):
very minimized. So now the trees are actually
reducing the cost to the city because they are processing it
rather than it needing me taken off site.
So I thought that was such a beautiful circular kind of
system there, like if we could use that in so many more areas
(30:49):
of life and the way our cities are run, we have to start
thinking more circular versus linear, you know, and you know,
we can beat the, you know, plastic, plastic to death with
how it's, it's linear. And, and because of this, the
thought wasn't in the beginning,how will this breakdown, how
(31:09):
will this be recycled? How can we create this in a way
that we can use its end productsinto something else that really
can't be done? Unfortunately, like the recycled
plastic is, is more toxic than the original plastic.
And these end streams, they're still trying to figure out what
to do with them. So this whole idea of like
recycling plastic, it, it's not working.
(31:30):
So we do have to think from the very beginning, the initial.
We only recycle like 4% of plastic anyway and we're not
even actually recycling it. Right.
And, and there's so many different kinds of plastic and
we don't have the infrastructureto support that.
And you could think about that with the same way with our, you
know, our electric vehicles, theidea is really great, right?
(31:52):
So they're powered by your EV battery, but we aren't recycling
those batteries. So we're still linear anyway you
want to slice and dice it, we'restill linear.
There's no circularity there. We have no places take take the
batteries. The batteries aren't getting
recycled. You know, the technology a
(32:12):
certain point, you know it, there's an end use to it.
And then what do we do with that?
So did we really improve transportation by making things
EV? No, because we didn't design, we
didn't think about the entire circularity portion that there
needed to be a way to manage each each parts of the waste of
(32:38):
EV vehicles. So that's my little sticking
point about that. And and not even to imagine like
we, OK, so we, we have all theseEV powered vehicles, but where
do those minerals come from? Strip mining, which is not
exactly great, and there's definitely the mining.
(32:58):
I'm sure. There's somebody somewhere who's
doing mining who's thinking about this.
But I would think there's something like what you guys are
doing would be an obvious, easy,easy thing to plant around.
Like wherever you're mining, we're going to be mining stuff
for a while. Like there's no.
It's we have to accept that we're doing it.
(33:20):
So we have to figure out now how, how do we do it, to do it
the best way that we can, right.And our company has begun doing
work within South Africa and they've been very welcoming to
this new technology. And so we've been doing a lot of
business development in the area.
And so that has been one of our targets is all the mining there,
(33:43):
all the destructive mining. But they now have regulations
where mining companies also haveto have an exit plan that
includes revegetation and. OK.
Which could be an incredible wayto fit this technology into
these revegetation efforts because again, that soil is
(34:05):
completely stripped. It's not really soil anymore,
right? No, it's it's rock bits.
Basically, right. So like how can this technology
be utilized there? And we we have done some
publications with USGS where they found that the endophytes
did help with establishment. So you know, that would be like
(34:26):
the next great pilot project forus is to do something in
partnership with a mine to see is this a technology that would
be useful in this industry. So we're currently doing
research in South Africa with this and hopefully this will be
a great place for us to go considering what our future
looks like. Yeah, I love, I love that idea.
(34:48):
I feel like there's so much, right.
And and mines don't last forever.
There's is it there is an exit point where it becomes not worth
mining anymore. And So what do you do?
You know, the question of what do you do with that space?
And you, you know, when I was a kid, I actually lived near a
small quarry that was done. And they, it just sat there like
there was nothing, nothing to do.
(35:10):
Eventually they backfilled it probably with some remediated
dirt, who knows what they backfilled it.
And then they put a parking lot on it in a small strip mall.
And so like, you know, spaces like that is very, but it sat
there for years and years and years doing nothing good for
anybody. So I love the idea of this kind
of thing where it's, we can put something in, it's has immediate
(35:33):
use. It's green, it's green spaces.
We all like green spaces. We love living near green space.
Even just driving by green spaces is better than than not.
And it happens to pull out all these toxins, which is amazing.
I wanted to add on the toxin side, one of the big ones that
everyone is talking about, of course, is PFAS.
(35:55):
Is that something that you guys have been able to go after?
So with this, PFAS is a big market, right?
Everybody wants to know. Everybody wants it.
So we we do have research that we're doing right now
specifically with a collaborator.
So there's definitely initial positive research so that plants
(36:19):
can down. P Foss.
We have to be very careful because breaking it down into
smaller chains, those are toxic too, right?
Yeah. A few layers before it.
We have to be really careful about it.
So yes, we are in the we are doing the R&D right now on it.
There's nothing commercially available yet, but there's also,
(36:42):
you know, great research with a fungi as well, so.
Are you guys able to cause I've seen I've seen some really cool
research about fungi and and it grows on trees so.
Well, actually so so we can do a.
Remember I said we could do a multiple, you don't have to just
do trees, right? So we could do micro remediation
(37:06):
with the soil, right? So we can inoculate soil, right,
right. And then the trees might be
dealing with groundwater specifically and and we're using
fungi to work on the soil and wehave done that OK on.
Projects blend and put together this combination package
basically that's amazing. So you're going after PFAS as as
(37:29):
a target area. What has been the most and I
feel like this probably applies to like farmland that's been
over farmed as well as industrial.
Like what has been what has beenthe most interesting kind of
industry or or category where you've put this into and had a
(37:51):
it's the site going with it. Oh gosh, we will.
Again, we have a lot of different sites and a lot of
different types of contaminants and we are working on salt
impacted farm lands as well. So that is an interesting area.
But I'll tell you just because it is sort of my, the part
that's most important to me. I love that we're moving into
restoration and the idea that, you know, our biodiversity loss
(38:17):
is incredible. We're losing plant animal
species faster than you could imagine.
And that's largely due to, you know, development, right?
We're, we're removing what's native to the area, planting
whatever the big box store has or whatever's in fashion in the
moment. And you can always see that you
(38:38):
can see certain decades of what was popular based on the the age
of the community. And their landscaping is all the
same, right? And unfortunately, a lot of it
shouldn't be in that particular area.
Like throughout California, you can see the eucalyptus or the
Brazilian pepper trees, like there's certain or the tropical
(38:58):
landscaping. It's it's so cringy to me,
especially like you think about Arizona.
So I know that they put in restrictions about not being
able to put in lawns, which makes sense.
You're in the desert, Go to a City Park with a lawn.
You don't need it in your yard. So I'm all for that.
But people said, OK, well, let me just put fake grass in
(39:19):
plastic, you know it. What do you think that's
volatizing when it gets hot so. It's not good.
The heat is not good for that stuff.
It's volatizing contaminants into the air around you it.
You have literally eliminated all biodiversity there by
putting in plastic grass rather than plant life in our and, and
(39:40):
our insects and our birds need that plant life.
And if you're removing it and then putting plastic grass in,
like why? Because you want to see green.
If you move to the desert, embrace what's at the desert.
Don't bring your tropical landscaping to California.
It's not tropical. Like, learn about what's, learn
(40:05):
about what's in the area. And embrace what's beautiful
about the natural vegetation that is supposed to exist within
that area. So why I really like working on
the native sites is also trying to encourage customers to say,
hey, look, yes, we can remediatethis space and we can put trees
in. But can we go one step further
(40:27):
and start looking at how we can be more regenerative in our
focus? It's not much more in your
budget to like, let us put native plants throughout.
Like we could have trees doing what they do and let us
revegetate with the native plants.
So we are bringing back biodiversity and we're cleaning
(40:48):
up. So there's a really nice
restorative element and we need to be thinking more like how can
we regenerate, How could we restore?
And so this is one baby step towards that.
And the Poplar trees actually help especially in hot dry areas
at the Poplar trees, because they grow so quickly, they help
(41:09):
sort of nurse up that successionary planting of the
native plants. The native plants tend to grow
slower and and so they nurse that and eventually that's those
hybrid poplars will die out and then the natives have restored
the space. So a lot of cool ideas and way
(41:29):
to just push remediation one step further in a better
direction. Have you and there's, so there's
obviously like commercial applications to all of this.
Have you guys done much on like the residential side?
Because I would I would think that there could be some good
(41:50):
benefit, like you said, of people that are maybe there need
to swap out their plastic grass for for something real.
There actually have been, we getinquiry inquiries all the time
from residential client individuals.
Maybe they are right next to something that they believe is
(42:10):
potentially contaminating to their property and they're
wanting to put in a line of trees or whatever it may be.
Unfortunately, you know, every it is we, we are a business and
right now that's just not financially feasible to be
working on a project that small that we do need to have them be.
So it would be better for like adeveloper to OK want to install
(42:36):
this from the start. Planning ahead.
Planning well, but again, planning it.
What if you are developing rightnext to a landfill?
Oh yeah, there's lots of developments right next to them.
Right. I mean, couldn't this?
Just. Be as part of the development is
also doing this installation effort preventatively.
(43:00):
But yeah, this has been an issue, you know, with Alaska
specifically is with the meltingof snow, the infrastructure of
like underground storage tanks and and tanks for which they use
to heat their homes break and leak quite frequently.
And this is something that homeowners are affected by.
(43:24):
And, you know, these these aren't people that have, you
know, substantial amounts of income to be able to pay for
this type of cleanup work on their property.
And unfortunately, there's not the funding available to help
people as well. So gosh, it would be incredible
(43:45):
if there was community funding that that could be used to help
assist with this type of work because there's lots of
different methods, you know, of which they could be working on
cleaning up their own soil. But right now it's just a
difficult market to crack, right?
Because it has to, you know, youhave to run a profit with a
business. So until we could figure out the
(44:07):
business model to that. Well, that would be amazing if
you guys figure out how to do that there.
There's so many people, so many people that could definitely
benefit. So right.
And I feel like it happens like you start right, you start in
academia and now it's commerciallike it takes, it takes some
(44:27):
time to scale down. Right.
And kind of systems who know andyou know.
If you got to use it enough to figure out how to do it really
efficiently, yeah, to make it more cost effective.
Yeah, who knows, it could be a couple and completely different
world in a couple of years, so. We'll see.
We'll. Hold down hope for that.
I will absolutely. Well, this has been, this has
(44:48):
been really amazing. Renee, I really appreciate you
coming on and talking about all of this.
Before we wrap, I just wanted togive you the opportunity to
share anything that we might have skipped there like I need
to say. And then also, how can
businesses reach out to you, find you best way to to connect
with you guys if, if they have aproject or just want to learn
(45:11):
more? Yeah.
You know, I, I think the one thing I just want to point out
is that we are all individually responsible for our environment.
And if you know, these thoughts should be going through your
head every day, how can I be more sustainable?
How can I be better to my environment in little ways?
We start little, we get better at it, we get better at it.
(45:35):
Then we start talking to our community communities about how
to be better at protecting the environment, how to be more
sustainable. And then ultimately we we start
voting with our dollars in showing corporations how we want
our money to be spent on more sustainable products, on
healthier food, on better environments.
(45:58):
That's done with our votes and done with our dollar.
So we are all personally responsible.
I know that's people are don't feel like they can make a
difference, but you really can. It is the reason why I left my
career and in just a few years, you know, I feel like I been
able to help spread this messageinternationally so you you can
(46:20):
make a difference. So start there.
I do speak to different corporations about
sustainability and if you have any interest in what Intrinsics
Environmental does, just reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Renee Murphy. Perfect.
And for everyone listening watching there will be show
(46:41):
notes. So use those links and yeah,
thanks again for for being on the show and and sharing what
you guys are doing. It's amazing.
And I hope you, I hope you keep figuring out new things you can
get rid of, get rid of more toxin.
Thank you so much. And that wraps up another
episode of the Conscious Design Podcast.
If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to
(47:02):
life and turn it into a sustainable 7 figure business,
visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below.
Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here
to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and
I'll see you on the next episode.
Just to make it simple, we planta special tree that is right for
the type of contaminant we're trying to clean up.
We inoculate them with microbes.So it's a site that has
hydrocarbons or like oil and gasproducts.
We would use hydrocarbon specific degraders that are just
natural endophytes, just bacteria that already exists in
(00:20):
nature. But we've identified them and
we've put it into the tree and the tree becomes sort of a super
degrader. Hello and welcome to the
Conscious Design podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman and
I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7 figure businesses.
(00:43):
Join me for another episode where sustainability meets
innovation and business savvy. Today I'm really excited to have
Renee Murphy. She's a sustainability keynote
speaker, educator, internationalTE DX speaker, which her talk
was on trees and microbes cleaning toxic sites, which is
really cool. And right now she's an
(01:03):
environmental scientist and director of business development
Intrinsics Environmental, where they're combining nature with
engineered solutions for sustainable environmental
remediation. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Ian. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I am really excited to dive into this as remediation
and cleaning soil is a big problem tackle and we definitely
(01:24):
need some good options to be able to do that.
But first, let's talk a little bit about how did you get into
this industry? What got you into this
environmental sustainability space?
Well, in I'll tell you, I spent most of my life in the fashion
industry. Actually, I had my own business
(01:45):
and was really living the dream that young girls dream of going
back and forth from LA to New York every month.
I had gotten to a point to wherereally I was at the top of my
industry. But for years I had this anxiety
that was creeping up every day. And something about the way I
(02:05):
was living my life and what my career was focused on, which is
really, you know, overconsumption and selling this
idea of perfection. And you know, at the time, I had
a daughter that was growing up in her teen years, and I could
see how much she was watching meand mimicking me and started to
see things that were unsettling.But why was I so unsettled?
(02:28):
And I had started getting into hiking and walking out in
nature. And the strange thing happened
when I was outside. I would feel at peace, you know,
all of those ruminating thoughtswould go away.
And I just felt so inspired by what was going on with the
ecology of every location that Iwas at and started to become
more and more obsessed with nature and start having a really
(02:50):
hard time going to work every day because it just seemed like
it was no longer in alignment with me.
And I made the decision to walk away from all of that in my mid
40s, which is a bit of a scary leap to make.
But I was inspired by a trip in Houston where I had gone to NASA
(03:13):
on a just a tourist trip, never really into space and all of
that. But I thought, I'm here, let's
check it out. And one of the exhibits talked
about how scientists were exploring how to grow plants on
Mars. But because the soil is toxic,
this toxic to humans, how would this happen?
And then they went on to explainthat plants on Earth have this
(03:35):
ability to clean soil and water and the air through what was
called phyto remediation. And that's just plants cleaning.
That simple. And I thought, well, if we could
do this technology and we're exploring this on Mars, why
aren't we doing this right here on Earth?
And that sent me down the rabbithole that made me make the
(03:59):
decision and the career pivot tobecome a scientist.
So I went to school, got my master's in plant science, and I
was off to the races. With this degree.
Love focused on native plant restoration, working as a sales
director at a native plant nursery and doing some
(04:20):
collaborative research trying togrow trees in a very toxic area
known as the Salton Seat in Southern California.
Yep. Familiar and it's, you know,
salt impacted, drought impacted.In addition, it's highly toxic.
And how do we restore areas likethat?
Because this is the problem all over the world is that we have
these areas that are degraded and what do we do with them now?
(04:44):
Can we grow on them anymore? No, not because we farmed on
them so poorly in the past. How do we go on to regenerate
land and how do we clean, clean land in ways that doesn't
require us just digging and hauling it?
Because that is one of the big methods of doing contamination
cleanup is digging it up and just moving it to a toxic dump
(05:06):
site. Which are are we really doing?
That's the same problem, just a new.
Spot, right. We've just moved it.
I mean, they do this in Alaska. They barge the soil to
Washington or Arizona. It, it's, it's really, as a
newcomer to the industry, it, I was baffled.
So when I was working on this restoration effort, someone I
(05:27):
had known from my past decades ago, saw a posting that I had
done on social media about this work I was doing.
And he reached out to me and said, hey, I used to work with
NASA. This is the field that I'm in.
Talk to me about your research. And within months, I ended up
moving to the Bay Area in San Francisco area and working for
(05:47):
Intrinsics Environmental, working in Phyto remediation.
So we do just that. We can clean not just soils, our
groundwater as well. So we work on cleaning
groundwater and soil using specialized tree and plant
species. And then we inoculate those tree
and plant species with naturallyoccurring microbes that have
just evolved to be very specificto breaking down certain
(06:10):
contaminants. So just to make it simple, we
plant a special tree that is right for the type of
contaminant or trying to clean up.
We choose the right plant based on the depth of the roots and
the depth of where that contamination might be and what
our objectives are, what the client is looking at, the speed
of which they're trying to cleanit up.
(06:31):
You know, a lot of this, we haveenvironmental regulators
involved in directing how the cleanup is being done, which is
why it's terrifying that there'sso many rollbacks in this.
What was the great, the new great deal that was just passed?
I don't know if I've got the exact name, but within that,
there's all these environmental rollbacks for regulators, which
(06:52):
which is scary to me because that is the reason that cleanup
is being done at all, right? It's so we plant these tree
species, we inoculate them with microbes.
So it's a site that has hydrocarbons or like oil and gas
products. We would use hydrocarbon
specific degraders that are justnatural endophytes, just
(07:13):
bacteria that already exists in nature.
But we've identified them and we've put it into the tree and
the tree becomes sort of a superdegrader in phytoremediation.
It's been used for decades. But one of the issues that would
come across is that when you'd plant the trees, the area was
too toxic and so the trees wouldget phytotoxicity and they would
(07:38):
die. So now we are able to plant
trees in very high contamination, we call it those
source areas. Plant the trees, inoculate them,
and the trees thrive because they're able to manage that
particular contaminant. So kind of like if I gave you
amazing probiotics and built up your gut bacteria, you would get
(08:00):
sick less, you would be strongeroverall your whole system.
So it's incredible technology, but it's what's considered a new
emerging technology. So if you could imagine, like
any industry, it's difficult. We have to consistently educate
people on this new technology and then it's not phyto
remediation of the past because some people may have tried it in
(08:23):
the past and it wasn't as successful if they would have
liked. But it is the only real green
sustainable technology. And if you could imagine, a lot
of these locations are located in areas that are underserved
communities. They tend to be art.
You never go into rich area and see, you know, there wasn't a
factory in a rich area, right? So they're always localized more
(08:45):
in these underserved communities.
But when we leave or the remediation is done, the
community's left with a forest of trees versus Gray
infrastructure. Right.
That's amazing. Yeah, this is, this has been
such a fascinating and I'm sure there's like some of this stuff
is really old, but I I've seen articles on, you know, like, oh,
(09:07):
there's a new mushroom that's been discovered that eats it
breaks down this kind of plastic.
Or. That breaks down oil or a must
like these just little plant. They're like, oh, there's a
plant that eats there. That's terrible talks and we'd
die if we had that much. But see how incredible this is
if we could learn to harness thepowers of nature to do this work
(09:30):
for us? They already have the
capabilities. It's just we have to understand
it as scientists and then be able to take it out of academia
and move it into commercial, which is what we've done with
this technology. The research was done by the
University of Washington for three decades by Doctor Sharon
Doty. This is old.
I mean, this is really. Old.
(09:51):
She's been characterizing these microbes for decades and she's
been published in journals many,many times.
And so we, along with Doctor Freeman, who founded our
company, has commercialized that.
And our very first project was with NASA in Mountain View and
the EPA. And we're able to show that it
(10:11):
did in fact work with, we specifically worked on
chlorinated solvents there. But so we have microbes that
work on chlorinated solvents, microbes that work on oil and
gas, PCBS, ammunitions. And we're now optimizing our
ability to uptake metals becauseplants do handle inorganic
contaminants differently. The first set of microbes
actually break the contaminants down into non-toxic substances.
(10:35):
When we're talking about inorganic contaminants, the
plants do take it up into their biomass.
So we do handle that a little differently.
But you can see how important itis to have experts in this field
understanding how the plants will naturally behave when you
give it a certain contaminant and how would we systemize that
in order to remove it. So it's really cool.
(10:57):
I love that is there because I'mjust curious once so it's
actually breaking it down. So that means that the plant
itself is not really impact likeit doesn't become a toxic.
It's not like a sponge where it's just, oh, the toxicity is
now in your trunk and then you have a toxic trunk.
It's actually, I would say that is everybody's fear is like, OK,
(11:20):
so now you're just leaving us with toxic trees.
Well, well, no. So yeah, that is actually not
happening. So that symbiotic relationship
between the microbes and the plants, the the microbes want to
live inside the plant. So endophyte inside the plant,
they want to live inside the plant.
But what they do is they're going to metabolize every, you
know, everything has to metabolize something and they
(11:42):
metabolize these different contaminants.
So it's just being broken down into simpler byproducts that are
not toxic. And it's being broken down
within the soil, within the roots, within the tree trunk,
and some volatizes out through the leaves.
And we do do phytoforensics, we do tree car analysis, leaf
tissue analysis, and specifically look for the
(12:04):
contaminant to make sure that itis not stacking up in the tree.
Because if that's happening, something's not right with our
system. So we look for stress in the
trees. You know, we want strong,
healthy trees and that guides us.
And then I guess again, we're we're looking at our mediums,
whether it's water or whether it's the soil and we're able to
(12:24):
see whether we are degrading these different contaminants.
Amazing. And you mentioned earlier
something about being able to part of your selection on based
on what plant you start with is also where how deep into the
soil and you mentioned groundwater which can be that
can be a little ways down. Yeah, it sure can.
(12:44):
It's. But it is the contaminants will
soak all the way down. So how it's one question like
how deep can you go? How, like, what are you able to
pull up out of this? Yeah.
That's a great question. So I would say that the species
that we tend to use the most because it is an exceptional
(13:08):
fighter remediation plant and that is the popular tree.
It's called a friatophyte, whichjust means that it's super
thirsty. And if we're trying to clean up
groundwater, we're trying to getthe tree to drink up the water
and transpire, right. So when it drinks it up, that's
when the degradation is occurring.
So the more water we take up, the more breakdown is occurring,
(13:31):
which is confusing to people when they say, well, we want a
native species or, you know, especially in California, we
want a native species. Something is drought tolerant.
Well, a drought tolerant tree isnot taking water up quickly.
So you see how we have to match.If we're trying to get a
restoration effort, we're just getting a tree that can handle
the contaminant. But the goal isn't to do like a
(13:53):
groundwater cleanup. OK, then we can look at natives,
but we have to use a species that is thirsty.
Willows are another great one. So we would look at the
groundwater depth and determine poplars can go down to say 30
feet with their root systems. So that gives us a lot there.
Willows, you know around I'd say10 feet average.
(14:14):
So we are looking at where the contamination is, is it up in
the soil? Are we looking for trees that
will spread their roots just this way or are we wanting ones
that will, you know, get a semi tap root and just go to seek
that groundwater? Additionally, we have hybrid
poplars that are like salt and boron tolerance.
So if we're moving into a site that what we know is high in
(14:35):
boron and high in salt, we woulduse those trees because that's
just like an added benefit. These trees are already going to
be tolerant up to certain levels.
So you can see it's a lot of figuring out what is the best
system, what are we trying to tackle and the speed at which we
need to do the cleanup. So depending on the budget of
the client and depending on whatthe regulator is asking, that
(14:57):
would determine how many trees we put it, right.
So and we can put them pretty close together.
We're talking like up to five feet, really tight spacing like
we have done what we call functional landscaping, which I
love the idea of. So we could, a lot of
redevelopment is happening on brownfield properties and that's
just properties that have had something there industrially and
(15:21):
are suspected of having some contamination.
And so these lands might be bought by a developer at a
reduced price, but they do incurthe liability of the legacy
contamination. They didn't do the
contamination, but it's there and they have to.
Deal with it and they got to deal with it.
Right, right. So if you could imagine, you
could develop a property at the same time, put our trees in.
(15:43):
So you're cleaning up and developing all at the same time.
And while that property is then being used for the purpose, it's
still being remediated. So at no point are you going in
and just scooping everything out, removing it and then
redeveloping it. You could do it at the same time
using this functional landscaping.
And again, this functional landscaping is being used all
(16:04):
over California and it's really kind of amazing because you're
hitting a couple of things. You know, you can plant trees
throughout a parking lot. So you're kind of battling that
heat island effect because you're putting in very fast
growing trees that put on a lot of leaves very quickly, you
know, get very tall. I live in Arizona.
I know all about. This right like Arizona.
(16:25):
Everywhere is insane. They're not planting enough
trees in Arizona through their parking lots.
Everyone fights over those couple of spots that have that
tree. The. 2 trees.
The cooling effect is real, so you could densely plant trees
through a parking lot and they won't disrupt the infrastructure
because of the way they like to grow straight down.
Picking ones that don't spread out.
(16:47):
Right. So you have to be very careful
like what's your infrastructure and understanding all of that.
But again, you'd be doing that with any remediation.
You'd have to be very focused onwhat the existing infrastructure
is and how your system will fit into that.
So you know you can you can do this type of functional
landscaping. But additionally to that, we've
now moved into the restoration field where maybe a restoration
(17:11):
company has tried to get establishment and can't because
you know, again, whatever suspected in that soil is making
it very difficult to establish their restoration efforts.
So we can go in and plant nativespecies.
Now this is where planting natives is great because we're
not concerned about the speed atwhich they grow, but we are
concerned about can they survivethe first couple years.
(17:34):
And so the endophytes give them again that boost to tolerate
stress and we can get establishment even in like
reforestation efforts, establishment rates are pretty
low. So if we can increase that by
just giving this microbial boost, you can see how many
really great applications there are to this technology.
(17:56):
How? Because one of the things that I
think of, you know, and you probably have had to answer this
question, when you think of likea tree growing, you're like,
it's going to take 20 years. But obviously you're working on
remediation where you're like, no, we don't, we don't want to
take 20 years to do that. So I'm assuming that the
lifespan of the tree is not likethey can remediate something
(18:19):
faster than 20 years. Basically it's.
Absolutely. And we have.
There's some slow ones, but. And again, all of that, it
depends on different variables we discussed earlier.
But if we are trying to get a clean up faster, we can start
with much bigger trees. And now I want to explain to you
what our trees look like when weinstall them.
(18:41):
They're not what you would wouldimagine.
So you imagine a tree in a box holding its roots, right?
So like, yeah, the little. Yeah, where you get 1 little
hole and you drop it in and you're done.
Or you buy a big tree and it's got like a tremendous box
attached to it with its root systems and it's a lot of work
to install. That is not what we do.
It's just really cool. So we auger holes into the
(19:04):
ground using like a skid steer. They're going to drill holes
into the ground. We put amendments into the hole
very specific to what we're dealing with and what, you know,
depending on the conditions of the site.
And then we put in what is called a pole or a tree cutting.
So if you could imagine, it justlooks like we're taking a branch
from a tree. No buds, no roots, it's just
(19:27):
like a stick. It was, we went, I did an
installation one time and they'dopened up the big gates for the
construction, like the construction gates, because they
thought I was coming in with a huge truck full of giant boxed
trees. And I was holding all the trees
under my arm because they're just cuttings.
So if you can imagine, I've got 100 trees under one arm, 6 foot
(19:49):
cuttings and they're like, whereare the trees?
I'm like, they're right here. Where are the trees?
They're right here. So we put them in to the ground
with the spring, with propagation hormone and our
endophytes and the proper amendments.
You'll come back three weeks later.
You have a tree with leaves. It's starting to form a root
system in about a year. It's getting to the point where
(20:13):
the roots have reached generallywhere we're looking to get.
And that degradation starts to happen.
So recently we just received a no further action which is
closing a site after five years on a contaminated sites with the
trees, zero tree mortality and in five years we closed the
site. That's really pretty cool.
(20:35):
And again, it depends on the contamination level and the size
of the site, but we have had some really incredible quick
turnarounds getting the objectives met by the regulator.
And how does this for all of ourlistener there, how does this
compare to like a standard, likewhat is a standard remediation
(20:56):
process that you're replacing? There are many different
remediation methods, but I'll just name like a couple that
come to mind. Like to dig in Hall is a big one
and a lot of times different methods are used in combination
with one another. There is like soil vapor
extraction systems where they're, if you saw like the
(21:18):
infrastructure involved, there'sa big cage and then there's
infrastructure and that is working on removing soil vapor.
Let me think of some of the other ones.
You can go in and biologically treat certain source zone areas.
So they are injecting bacteria and then feeding the bacteria
and breakdown is occurring againthrough bacteria, which is
(21:39):
great. Ours is a little different in
that is that the trees are doingthe work so that you are left
with that green space. But we do do some biological
work as well. Or sometimes you might do them
in combination with each other. It just depends on what needs to
be done. Or if they're looking to see
like immediate work being done, then we might be brought in as a
secondary step. Like we've put in what we call
(22:02):
like a phyto barrier to protect maybe river or a natural area on
one side, but there's a refineryon the other.
OK. I was going to ask about like
kind of this proactive or ongoing thing where you know
that you have a contaminant flowincoming.
I would love to see, you know, I'm glad you said proactive
(22:24):
because that is unfortunately not being done right now.
And I would love to see especially some of these big
corporations look at rather thanbeing reactive is can we be
proactive? Like we know certain things are
going to happen. Can we put a Berry of trees
(22:46):
around our site as a proactive measure?
We know there's some natural space we want to protect.
We're doing this proactively. So there are so many ways that
if we just, if we wanted to, this could be one of the best
(23:07):
ways to market your work. I mean, for me, if I worked for
an oil company, I would want to be the leader in preventative
measures. I mean, there's such this like,
you know, everybody has this badtaste in their mouth when we
(23:27):
talk about oil and gas companies.
Well, we all need our oil and gas, so it's not going away.
But can we be the best company at being proactive and trying to
eliminate any of this type of spills or leaks or leaving sites
(23:51):
contaminated and then needing toclean it up?
Like can we just be more proactive in our thinking about
that? Can we be proactive in the way
that we're designing our cities?We, we already know that these,
you know, trees are cleaning theair, cooling the areas.
Humans are healthier when we're closer to trees and parks.
(24:11):
Can we incorporate more of this natural design and be very
proactive with it versus after the fact?
I think that's the problem. We just, we, we have not used
our creativity and our artistry and I think that's inside
everybody. And then we get into our careers
and we get very, you know. Yeah, well, I mean, one of one
(24:37):
of the first that when you were mentioning, you know, parking
lots was forgetting on the word there there's and not as much
anymore. But like when I was a kid,
there's, there's always oil stains oil and you when you went
to go RIP up, I'm sure it's the same case.
And you go to RIP up an asphalt parking lot, there's oil like
(24:59):
the oil seeps through. There's no way around it.
So if you were to preemptively go, OK, well, we know we're
going to have these kinds of things coming off a car or
highways or road, right? There's so many things.
We, we know it's going to happen.
And if you're my thought too is like if you're, if you're
already putting in green space of some kind, because a lot of
(25:21):
places they do at least a littlebit.
If you were to like one step further and go, well, let's pick
the plant species based on how it will handle toxins that we
know are going to hit just those.
Those kinds of it seems so simple.
There there are species that also can be indicators of
contamination, like a Canary in the coal mine.
(25:43):
Oh, really? OK.
So yeah, I was reading about different species that are
indicators. So.
So when they start getting sick,you know that's a signal.
Oh, interesting. You know, that's why the
Canaries were used in coal mineswhen the Canary died, they knew
there was a vapor problem, right?
(26:04):
So. That is interesting.
Same kind of idea. But you know, if you know,
you're thinking along the lines of that parking lot, you know,
our our oceans, you know, you don't surf in the oceans after a
rain because all of the oil and contamination goes into the
waterways. Why can't we design parking lots
(26:25):
with understanding where that water flow would go into?
And maybe it is directed into like a bioswale and the plants
are planted there as as that filtration system rather than,
you know, most water is taken upproperties and then taken off
(26:47):
the properties and then eventually ends up down at the
ocean or into a processing center.
Why doesn't the water get directed into a system that will
actually treat it before it goesto its next location?
You know, these aren't complicated concepts, we just
don't use them. Hey, it's your host, Ian.
(27:08):
I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode.
I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for
the awesome things they are doing.
I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses
like yours turn their our boldest ideas into powerful,
purpose driven brands. So if you're serious about
building a brand people love, like our guests and clients too,
and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to
(27:29):
dive a bit deeper with our book Conscious Design.
Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use
to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful,
impact driven brand. Brand that stands out, tracks
loyal customers and drive sustainable growth with social
and environmental responsibilitywoven into its DNA.
Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website
(27:52):
consciousdesignhouse.com or justfind the link below in the show
notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode
and don't forget to like, subscribe and share.
Yes, we don't. And it makes me even think like
how could this, and I don't knowyou've done this kind of thing,
(28:14):
but how could this improve? Because like if you look at our
sewage treatment capacity, right, these we have plants
built for cities based on population numbers in from the
80s and things like that holds right?
How obviously one of the biggestthings that they those systems
do, obviously there's the the waste matter, but also the
(28:37):
toxins, all the stuff that gets gets washed in.
I'm kind of one of the things thinking through this is like
had this type of plants be an assistant to that or add
capacity to treatment, water treatment facilities.
So let me tell you about this project that I visited in
(29:00):
Chicago, which you can think about waste treatment, but
another one of our issues, you know, there's waste, but there's
also our landfills, right? So we visited this landfill and
there's the whole industry around leachate management.
So you can imagine everything ina landfill turns into leachate,
right? Which is basically like, you
(29:21):
know, your waste systems you're talking about that leachate
needs to go somewhere off site for processing.
So this site we visited by one of our partners, leachate
management specialists, It was so incredible.
So it was a giant City Park. Everybody could use it for
mountain biking. There's, you know, a river
(29:42):
running through it. But one particular area was
gated off, and they had rows androws and rows of Poplar trees
planted. They were taking the leachate,
bringing it to the Poplar trees and irrigating the Poplar trees
with it. And then the Poplar trees were
breaking it down. That was their water source and
(30:03):
they were breaking down the contaminants in the leachate.
So that ultimately the project, you know, they have to take the
leachate off the property for processing.
That costs money. That's part of what it costs to
run that particular landfill. But the poplars were doing such
a great job that much of what they had to take off site was
(30:27):
very minimized. So now the trees are actually
reducing the cost to the city because they are processing it
rather than it needing me taken off site.
So I thought that was such a beautiful circular kind of
system there, like if we could use that in so many more areas
(30:49):
of life and the way our cities are run, we have to start
thinking more circular versus linear, you know, and you know,
we can beat the, you know, plastic, plastic to death with
how it's, it's linear. And, and because of this, the
thought wasn't in the beginning,how will this breakdown, how
(31:09):
will this be recycled? How can we create this in a way
that we can use its end productsinto something else that really
can't be done? Unfortunately, like the recycled
plastic is, is more toxic than the original plastic.
And these end streams, they're still trying to figure out what
to do with them. So this whole idea of like
recycling plastic, it, it's not working.
(31:30):
So we do have to think from the very beginning, the initial.
We only recycle like 4% of plastic anyway and we're not
even actually recycling it. Right.
And, and there's so many different kinds of plastic and
we don't have the infrastructureto support that.
And you could think about that with the same way with our, you
know, our electric vehicles, theidea is really great, right?
(31:52):
So they're powered by your EV battery, but we aren't recycling
those batteries. So we're still linear anyway you
want to slice and dice it, we'restill linear.
There's no circularity there. We have no places take take the
batteries. The batteries aren't getting
recycled. You know, the technology a
(32:12):
certain point, you know it, there's an end use to it.
And then what do we do with that?
So did we really improve transportation by making things
EV? No, because we didn't design, we
didn't think about the entire circularity portion that there
needed to be a way to manage each each parts of the waste of
(32:38):
EV vehicles. So that's my little sticking
point about that. And and not even to imagine like
we, OK, so we, we have all theseEV powered vehicles, but where
do those minerals come from? Strip mining, which is not
exactly great, and there's definitely the mining.
(32:58):
I'm sure. There's somebody somewhere who's
doing mining who's thinking about this.
But I would think there's something like what you guys are
doing would be an obvious, easy,easy thing to plant around.
Like wherever you're mining, we're going to be mining stuff
for a while. Like there's no.
It's we have to accept that we're doing it.
(33:20):
So we have to figure out now how, how do we do it, to do it
the best way that we can, right.And our company has begun doing
work within South Africa and they've been very welcoming to
this new technology. And so we've been doing a lot of
business development in the area.
And so that has been one of our targets is all the mining there,
(33:43):
all the destructive mining. But they now have regulations
where mining companies also haveto have an exit plan that
includes revegetation and. OK.
Which could be an incredible wayto fit this technology into
these revegetation efforts because again, that soil is
(34:05):
completely stripped. It's not really soil anymore,
right? No, it's it's rock bits.
Basically, right. So like how can this technology
be utilized there? And we we have done some
publications with USGS where they found that the endophytes
did help with establishment. So you know, that would be like
(34:26):
the next great pilot project forus is to do something in
partnership with a mine to see is this a technology that would
be useful in this industry. So we're currently doing
research in South Africa with this and hopefully this will be
a great place for us to go considering what our future
looks like. Yeah, I love, I love that idea.
(34:48):
I feel like there's so much, right.
And and mines don't last forever.
There's is it there is an exit point where it becomes not worth
mining anymore. And So what do you do?
You know, the question of what do you do with that space?
And you, you know, when I was a kid, I actually lived near a
small quarry that was done. And they, it just sat there like
there was nothing, nothing to do.
(35:10):
Eventually they backfilled it probably with some remediated
dirt, who knows what they backfilled it.
And then they put a parking lot on it in a small strip mall.
And so like, you know, spaces like that is very, but it sat
there for years and years and years doing nothing good for
anybody. So I love the idea of this kind
of thing where it's, we can put something in, it's has immediate
(35:33):
use. It's green, it's green spaces.
We all like green spaces. We love living near green space.
Even just driving by green spaces is better than than not.
And it happens to pull out all these toxins, which is amazing.
I wanted to add on the toxin side, one of the big ones that
everyone is talking about, of course, is PFAS.
(35:55):
Is that something that you guys have been able to go after?
So with this, PFAS is a big market, right?
Everybody wants to know. Everybody wants it.
So we we do have research that we're doing right now
specifically with a collaborator.
So there's definitely initial positive research so that plants
(36:19):
can down. P Foss.
We have to be very careful because breaking it down into
smaller chains, those are toxic too, right?
Yeah. A few layers before it.
We have to be really careful about it.
So yes, we are in the we are doing the R&D right now on it.
There's nothing commercially available yet, but there's also,
(36:42):
you know, great research with a fungi as well, so.
Are you guys able to cause I've seen I've seen some really cool
research about fungi and and it grows on trees so.
Well, actually so so we can do a.
Remember I said we could do a multiple, you don't have to just
do trees, right? So we could do micro remediation
(37:06):
with the soil, right? So we can inoculate soil, right,
right. And then the trees might be
dealing with groundwater specifically and and we're using
fungi to work on the soil and wehave done that OK on.
Projects blend and put together this combination package
basically that's amazing. So you're going after PFAS as as
(37:29):
a target area. What has been the most and I
feel like this probably applies to like farmland that's been
over farmed as well as industrial.
Like what has been what has beenthe most interesting kind of
industry or or category where you've put this into and had a
(37:51):
it's the site going with it. Oh gosh, we will.
Again, we have a lot of different sites and a lot of
different types of contaminants and we are working on salt
impacted farm lands as well. So that is an interesting area.
But I'll tell you just because it is sort of my, the part
that's most important to me. I love that we're moving into
restoration and the idea that, you know, our biodiversity loss
(38:17):
is incredible. We're losing plant animal
species faster than you could imagine.
And that's largely due to, you know, development, right?
We're, we're removing what's native to the area, planting
whatever the big box store has or whatever's in fashion in the
moment. And you can always see that you
(38:38):
can see certain decades of what was popular based on the the age
of the community. And their landscaping is all the
same, right? And unfortunately, a lot of it
shouldn't be in that particular area.
Like throughout California, you can see the eucalyptus or the
Brazilian pepper trees, like there's certain or the tropical
(38:58):
landscaping. It's it's so cringy to me,
especially like you think about Arizona.
So I know that they put in restrictions about not being
able to put in lawns, which makes sense.
You're in the desert, Go to a City Park with a lawn.
You don't need it in your yard. So I'm all for that.
But people said, OK, well, let me just put fake grass in
(39:19):
plastic, you know it. What do you think that's
volatizing when it gets hot so. It's not good.
The heat is not good for that stuff.
It's volatizing contaminants into the air around you it.
You have literally eliminated all biodiversity there by
putting in plastic grass rather than plant life in our and, and
(39:40):
our insects and our birds need that plant life.
And if you're removing it and then putting plastic grass in,
like why? Because you want to see green.
If you move to the desert, embrace what's at the desert.
Don't bring your tropical landscaping to California.
It's not tropical. Like, learn about what's, learn
(40:05):
about what's in the area. And embrace what's beautiful
about the natural vegetation that is supposed to exist within
that area. So why I really like working on
the native sites is also trying to encourage customers to say,
hey, look, yes, we can remediatethis space and we can put trees
in. But can we go one step further
(40:27):
and start looking at how we can be more regenerative in our
focus? It's not much more in your
budget to like, let us put native plants throughout.
Like we could have trees doing what they do and let us
revegetate with the native plants.
So we are bringing back biodiversity and we're cleaning
(40:48):
up. So there's a really nice
restorative element and we need to be thinking more like how can
we regenerate, How could we restore?
And so this is one baby step towards that.
And the Poplar trees actually help especially in hot dry areas
at the Poplar trees, because they grow so quickly, they help
(41:09):
sort of nurse up that successionary planting of the
native plants. The native plants tend to grow
slower and and so they nurse that and eventually that's those
hybrid poplars will die out and then the natives have restored
the space. So a lot of cool ideas and way
(41:29):
to just push remediation one step further in a better
direction. Have you and there's, so there's
obviously like commercial applications to all of this.
Have you guys done much on like the residential side?
Because I would I would think that there could be some good
(41:50):
benefit, like you said, of people that are maybe there need
to swap out their plastic grass for for something real.
There actually have been, we getinquiry inquiries all the time
from residential client individuals.
Maybe they are right next to something that they believe is
(42:10):
potentially contaminating to their property and they're
wanting to put in a line of trees or whatever it may be.
Unfortunately, you know, every it is we, we are a business and
right now that's just not financially feasible to be
working on a project that small that we do need to have them be.
So it would be better for like adeveloper to OK want to install
(42:36):
this from the start. Planning ahead.
Planning well, but again, planning it.
What if you are developing rightnext to a landfill?
Oh yeah, there's lots of developments right next to them.
Right. I mean, couldn't this?
Just. Be as part of the development is
also doing this installation effort preventatively.
(43:00):
But yeah, this has been an issue, you know, with Alaska
specifically is with the meltingof snow, the infrastructure of
like underground storage tanks and and tanks for which they use
to heat their homes break and leak quite frequently.
And this is something that homeowners are affected by.
(43:24):
And, you know, these these aren't people that have, you
know, substantial amounts of income to be able to pay for
this type of cleanup work on their property.
And unfortunately, there's not the funding available to help
people as well. So gosh, it would be incredible
(43:45):
if there was community funding that that could be used to help
assist with this type of work because there's lots of
different methods, you know, of which they could be working on
cleaning up their own soil. But right now it's just a
difficult market to crack, right?
Because it has to, you know, youhave to run a profit with a
business. So until we could figure out the
(44:07):
business model to that. Well, that would be amazing if
you guys figure out how to do that there.
There's so many people, so many people that could definitely
benefit. So right.
And I feel like it happens like you start right, you start in
academia and now it's commerciallike it takes, it takes some
(44:27):
time to scale down. Right.
And kind of systems who know andyou know.
If you got to use it enough to figure out how to do it really
efficiently, yeah, to make it more cost effective.
Yeah, who knows, it could be a couple and completely different
world in a couple of years, so. We'll see.
We'll. Hold down hope for that.
I will absolutely. Well, this has been, this has
(44:48):
been really amazing. Renee, I really appreciate you
coming on and talking about all of this.
Before we wrap, I just wanted togive you the opportunity to
share anything that we might have skipped there like I need
to say. And then also, how can
businesses reach out to you, find you best way to to connect
with you guys if, if they have aproject or just want to learn
(45:11):
more? Yeah.
You know, I, I think the one thing I just want to point out
is that we are all individually responsible for our environment.
And if you know, these thoughts should be going through your
head every day, how can I be more sustainable?
How can I be better to my environment in little ways?
We start little, we get better at it, we get better at it.
(45:35):
Then we start talking to our community communities about how
to be better at protecting the environment, how to be more
sustainable. And then ultimately we we start
voting with our dollars in showing corporations how we want
our money to be spent on more sustainable products, on
healthier food, on better environments.
(45:58):
That's done with our votes and done with our dollar.
So we are all personally responsible.
I know that's people are don't feel like they can make a
difference, but you really can. It is the reason why I left my
career and in just a few years, you know, I feel like I been
able to help spread this messageinternationally so you you can
(46:20):
make a difference. So start there.
I do speak to different corporations about
sustainability and if you have any interest in what Intrinsics
Environmental does, just reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Renee Murphy. Perfect.
And for everyone listening watching there will be show
(46:41):
notes. So use those links and yeah,
thanks again for for being on the show and and sharing what
you guys are doing. It's amazing.
And I hope you, I hope you keep figuring out new things you can
get rid of, get rid of more toxin.
Thank you so much. And that wraps up another
episode of the Conscious Design Podcast.
If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to
(47:02):
life and turn it into a sustainable 7 figure business,
visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below.
Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here
to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and
I'll see you on the next episode.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.