HAPPY PLANET
Can innovation, entrepreneurship and investment make the planet happier and healthier? Entrepreneur and investor Abigail Carroll thinks so. Through conversations with founders, investors, and thought leaders, in over a dozen countries and counting, Abigail shares this thought-provoking and hope-promoting world with her audience. And always with a little humour.
Episodes
Happy Planet Wednesday! Today we travel to Rhode Island, the ocean state, where, fittingly, the blue economy is thriving.
Ian Estaphan Owen, Co-Founder of JAIA Robotics didn't grow up in Rhode Island but rather coastal Wales where he became passionate about the ocean. On his road to entrepreneurship, he even did a stint with the British Royal Navy.
Now a denizen of Bristol, Ian is co-founder of Jaia Robotics, a ...
I have been at this long enough by now - 61 episodes!- to see some great successes and some disappointing failures. This week's guest tells a story that's a bit of both, but he is not letting failure get in his way.
Today we are heading back to Norway to meet again with Tore Enger, Founder of TECO 2030, a company that was looking to build fuel cells for the maritime industry.
Tore came on the podcast two year...
Today we are traveling to Chile, the birthplace of Positive Polar, a travel startup aiming to combine luxury cruises with academic research and environmental action. Positive Polar’s sustainable expedition cruises will aim to restore the whale population, amplify oceanic food production and implement high-potential climate mitigation strategies.
I had the incredible privilege of speaking to both co-founders last week. ...
Proscovia is a Kenyan entrepreneur who wears many hats. She is founder of Samaky Hub, an organization that empowers women and youth in Africa's aquaculture sector by offering strategic planning, operational guidance, and marketing support to their ventures. Proscovia is also an African Food Fellow, the Kenyan Program Manager for the Irish aquaculture venture hub, Hatch BLUE, and a writer for the US industry rag, ...
Happy new year to all and welcome back to our first episode of 2025!
Our guest this week is an entrepreneur who excels at building market strategies. Heather Myers of Spark Number 9 has created her own methodology for getting the market segment answers entrepreneurs so desperately need. An important distinction is that her method relies on observable behavior, not on surveys.
Heather's own business has flourishe...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
This will be our last podcast until 2025 and I want to thank you for tuning in this year! It's been an exceptionally interesting journey for me and I hope you've been enjoying the podcasts. If you have feedback, please do not hesitate to share it.
This week we head to New Jersey to speak to Philipp Stratmann, CEO of Ocean Power Technologies. Followers of penny stoc...
Happy Planet Wednesday! And to American followers, Happy Thanksgiving!
During the US presidential debates, we heard a lot about the nearly five million unit housing shortage in the US. While this needs to be addressed urgently, it won't be good for the climate. Traditional building activity accounts for up to 40% of the world's carbon emissions.
Our guest Nick Farmer is president of Opal Build, a Ma...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
This week we are hopping across the Atlantic to speak to serial Dutch innovator Wietse van der Werf.
Wietse's current venture, Sea Rangers, is a social enterprise that trains youth from underprivileged backgrounds in the maritime trades. Aspiring sea rangers learn while working on ocean conservation missions that are performed from carbon-footprint free sailing research vessels. ...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
I was tempted to call this week’s episode “Unhappy Planet” because in it we grapple with what happens when your startup doesn’t go as planned.
When I learned that Courtney Boyd Rey shuttered her seaweed startup AKUA, I reached out to see if she would come on the podcast. Given that over 90% of startups fail, and even 75% of those backed by venture capital do as well, I wante...
In this episode of the Happy Planet Podcast, host Abigail Carroll interviews Slater McLean, co-founder of Oliver Charles, a sustainable sweater company. Slater discusses the significant environmental impact of the fashion industry and how Oliver Charles is addressing these issues using natural materials like yak wool and seaweed-based fibers. The company employs an innovative 3D knitting process to eliminate waste. Ol...
In this podcast episode, I welcome Damien Demoor, a French engineer and ocean innovator based in France, who introduces his company, Greenov, and its groundbreaking product, the Subsea Quieter.
Demoor discusses the significant threat of underwater noise pollution caused by maritime activities, detailing its detrimental effects on marine life, including mammals, fish, and ecosystems.
He explains how their solution, dev...
Innovative Fish Feeds: Reducing Aquaculture's Environmental Footprint
In this episode of the Happy Planet podcast, I speak to Alessandra Romano, the entrepreneur behind Ittinsect.
Allessandro discusses his novel aquaculture feed supplements derived from insect proteins, which aim to accelerate fish growth with lower environmental impacts.
The conversation explores the inefficiencies in traditional fish feeds, the e...
In this podcast episode, Abigail interviews Benjamin, founder of Azul Bio and participant in the Ocean Pitch Contest by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance.
The discussion focuses on Benjamin's startup, which aims to save coral reefs from extinction caused by ocean warming. Benjamin explains the importance of coral reefs for ocean life and human livelihoods and describes Azul Bio's innovative solution: coral micr...
Welcome to Happy Planet!
Our guest this week is William Calvert, co-Founder and CEO of the NYC based startup, Return to Vendor. William is a fashion designer and entrepreneur who has lived in Paris, and Italy and designed for the likes of Balenciaga before getting the fashion-tech bug about 10 years ago.
His first foray into the field led him to create fabric out of down for an Italian company and ...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
The weather has been so beautiful in Maine lately that I am going to bring you all here to my home state. Today we’re going to speak to Marianne Naess, a Norwegian native living in Maine who, with her husband, has co-founded Katahdin Salmon, a soon-to-be scaled salmon aquaculture farm that intends on bringing Norwegian quality salmon to the Northeast corridor, without the carbon footprint.
As M...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
Could eating farmed redfish be the answer to building coastal resilience in Florida? Founder Megan Sorby would like to think so.
Megan and her husband co-founded Pine Island Redfish. True to its name, they grow growing the much-loved but highly protected redfish for the commercial market on Pine Island, a Florida Island with an agricultural tradition. And they are using the waste water to grow ...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
Pack your bags, we're headed to Kenya! This week we'll be speaking to Anga Mbeyiya, a South African seaweed entrepreneur whose company, Ole Blu, is transforming seaweed into biostimulants to help rural farmers adapt to climate change.
While her company is still young, it's also already having a big impact both socially and economically. They're buying seaweed from a woman run...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
If you live on the coast, this is a podcast you might want to pay special attention to. Matt Campbell, President of NatrX, is joining us today to talk about his nature-based solutions for building coastal resilience.
Thinking you need to protect your community from rising sea levels? Rather than building a wall along the coastline, Matt thinks you might have better results looking to solutions...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
This week's guest, Elizabeth (Liz) Muller is Co-Founder of Deep Isolation. While living in France, was impressed by France's nuclear power program, which provides nearly 70% of the country's power, with zero carbon emissions. The problem was, and it still is, the waste.
Today, over 490,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is located in above ground temporary storage. And no spent nu...
Happy Planet Wednesday!
With all of the good work that oysters can do for the planet, filtering water, preventing erosion, reducing acidification, mitigating storm surge and more, entrepreneur George Birch wanted to see if an oyster living in the water doing all of those good deeds could be more valuable in terms of dollars or euros than an oyster on your plate.
George's business is called Oyster Heaven and wit...
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