April 7, 2025 • 37 mins
Josh Dorfman—known for his The Lazy Environmentalist book series—visites to share his latest efforts to make sustainability seamless, smart, and scalable. From hosting eco-living shows to launching climate tech ventures, Dorfman’s mission: make sustainable choices attractive and accessible. In the 1990s, while working in China, Dorfman saw the country’s shift from bicycles to cars and realized the environmental cost of global development. That insight set him on a path to shift consumer culture toward greener living. “People don’t respond to guilt,” he said. “They respond to practical, self-interested solutions that make their lives better.” Dorfman now leads two new initiatives: Plantd and Supercool. By blending smart storytelling with practical solutions, Dorfman shows how sustainability can be not just necessary—but undeniably cool.
Plantd is a carbon-negative building materials startup using ultra-fast-growing grass to produce high-performance panels that outperform and underprice traditional plywood. Backed by former SpaceX engineers, Plantd’s electric, zero-smokestack production line locks atmospheric carbon into walls, floors, and roofs—without cutting down trees. Their work has caught serious attention: DR Horton, the largest U.S. homebuilder, recently placed an order for 10 million panels. The Supercool podcast and newsletter spotlight climate innovation that resonates across political lines. Dorfman’s storytelling targets the middle ground—where sustainability aligns with health, economics, and lifestyle. Episodes feature stories like upcycled e-bike marketplaces, AI-optimized HVAC systems, and green retrofits of federal buildings. “We already have the technology to solve climate change,” Dorfman said. “What we need is faster adoption—and that comes from telling the right stories.” You can learn more about Plantd's carbon-negative building materials at https://www.plantdmaterials.com/ and tune into the Supercool podcast at https://getsuper.cool/
Plantd is a carbon-negative building materials startup using ultra-fast-growing grass to produce high-performance panels that outperform and underprice traditional plywood. Backed by former SpaceX engineers, Plantd’s electric, zero-smokestack production line locks atmospheric carbon into walls, floors, and roofs—without cutting down trees. Their work has caught serious attention: DR Horton, the largest U.S. homebuilder, recently placed an order for 10 million panels. The Supercool podcast and newsletter spotlight climate innovation that resonates across political lines. Dorfman’s storytelling targets the middle ground—where sustainability aligns with health, economics, and lifestyle. Episodes feature stories like upcycled e-bike marketplaces, AI-optimized HVAC systems, and green retrofits of federal buildings. “We already have the technology to solve climate change,” Dorfman said. “What we need is faster adoption—and that comes from telling the right stories.” You can learn more about Plantd's carbon-negative building materials at https://www.plantdmaterials.com/ and tune into the Supercool podcast at https://getsuper.cool/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable, carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Ratcliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today. The challenge of making
sustainable choices can often feel overwhelming, expensive and convenient, or
(00:30):
just plain confusing. But what if being eco responsible didn't
have to be hard? What if sustainability could seamlessly integrate
into daily life without sacrificing style, comfort or efficiency. Few
have tackled this question as creatively as our guest today,
Josh Dorfmann. From hosting The Lazy Environmentalist on Serious XM
(00:50):
and the Sundance Channel, to launching innovative green businesses like vine,
which is a green retail shop on Amazon, or Planted,
which is Plant with a D, a carbon building materials company,
Josh has made sustainability accessible, engaging, in even effortless. Now,
as the founder of super Cool, he's exploring the intersection
(01:11):
of climate tech and cultural transformation, spotlighting groundbreaking innovations that
could shape a greener future. We're going to dive into
Josh's journey how he went from writing best selling books
on eco living to developing carbon negative building materials, as
well as rethinking the way we shop for impact. We'll
also explore what it takes to build a truly impactful
(01:31):
environmental movement and how business can drive real change without
compromising on convenience or profitability. You can learn more about
Josh and his current project at get supercool dot com.
Get super cool is all one word, no space, no dash,
getsupercool dot com. We'll jump into the conversation right after
this quick commercial break. Welcome to the show, Josh. How
(01:58):
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I'm doing wonderful. Mitch, how are you doing well?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Doing well? It's a little early in the morning, but
it's always good to talk to an interesting person like you.
You've done a lot of different things. What started the
lazy environmentalist in the first place? How did you? How
did you start thinking about changing public perceptions about environmentalism?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, the if there's a quick version, it starts in
for me going to China in the mid nineties. When
I finished up college nineteen ninety four, I was looking
around as an international relations major and was pretty clear
for some reason that this that China was going to
be a big deal in the twenty first century. So
(02:39):
I went over to Nanjing. I got a job teaching English.
Was thinking about State department, maybe in some you know,
fantasy Cia, but I was just like, I need to
get over there, learn this culture, learn this language, you know,
understand this country. And I got a part time job
working for Kryptonite bikelocks in their first factory in mainland
China about events from ours teaching, and then went to
(03:01):
work for them full time. We opened more factories, we
were looking at the Chinese market, and my second year there,
I just had this realization. I just thought, oh my gosh,
there's a billion people riding bicycles here, but nobody wants
to bike. Everybody wants a car. And you can see
the bridge's tunnels. How is all this infrastructure coming in
so fast? And I thought, you know, I don't know
anything about global warming, but this is going to be problematic.
(03:24):
And you've got India and Eastern Europe and everyone's developing.
What's going to happen as we move, you know, as
everyone in advances develops, and we get more more cars
on the road, and we just keep increasing our consumer
habits that ultimately led me to come back to the
States continue to think about that and eventually felt, you
know what, I live in a consumer driven culture. I
(03:46):
am going to aim to shift consumption into more sustainable direction.
Lazy Environmentals wasn't my first foray. That was a little
bit of an accidental brand when I had started a
monitor design eco friendly furniture company back in two thousand
for and my first employee, on her last day working
for me, took that opportunity to tell me what a
terrible environmentalist I was in my personal life, even though
(04:08):
I was selling all this green stuff. Hence the lazy
environmentalist was born.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
You hit on an important point, which is a lot
of folks expect perfection, and perfection takes well pretty much forever.
Why does the perception of environmentalism need to change before
we start any the other part of this conversation, why
do we need to change it?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, if we're I think there's a number of perceptions
that probably need to change. The view that I came
to I didn't start there, you know. I think I
probably went through a process that I think a lot
of people go through. When when I started becoming attuned
to environmental issues, I became panicked, obsessive, crazy nobody. And
(04:55):
what I started just recognizing was like, man, like, nobody
who I love or care about wants to hang out
with me anymore. I'm not actually influencing anybody to change
their behavior just because I'm so you know, panicked about
the future. And I thought that I have to find
a way to just be in my life and be
more comfortable and find a way to communicate that I
(05:19):
think can break through. And I do think that a
lot of people are open to a conversation and a
message that has a practical element to it that that
doesn't write. I think maybe that's where you're going with
the question, But that's that's early on after some real pain.
I mean, I remember walking with my mom in New
York State when I came home from China and being like,
(05:40):
why are all the lights on? You know, it was
like ten o'clock at night, right, And she's like a child, like,
I think we need to find you some therapy, you know,
But uh so, I so I have a lot of
empathy for that perfection or that you know, that where
that where that where that comes from. But I do
think that the practicality can potentially well, I do think
(06:01):
it's more impactful. I do think you can dry more
change that way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Now I know this feeling. I mean, having written about
recycling and sustainable living now for a decade and having
cared about it since the eighties when I did kind
of go crazy. It's what I've realized is people want
actionable opportunities. You know, they want to consider something, but
they don't want to be told what to do. Is
(06:25):
that part of the problem that the environmental movement has
had is it's been very prescriptive.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
It's the challenge that it's been very prescriptive. I think
that the challenge is that, to me, there's so many
opportunities to frame what's good for the environment also in
people's own personal self interest, and I think maybe environmentalists
(06:50):
may struggle with that with that concept, right, it's not
just this pure no I'm doing this to like you know,
it's pure environmentalism for the planet. But it's like, well, hey,
like we live on this planet, and you know, there's
there's just you think about health, right, you think about
you know. One of the things that I've gotten very
excited about over the last couple of years is look
(07:11):
at you know, hospitals that get built green and patient
outcomes improve, or or schools that build green, build get
built green, and attendance goes up. You know, bad behavior
goes down, performance goes up, Students, teachers, everyone's happier. Communities
are happier. That's great for the planet, that's great for humans,
(07:32):
and it improves our life. And so I think if
you want to encourage change over the long haul for
most people, because you got to be in this for decades,
just like you, right, I mean, and we're trying, We've
got twenty fifty targets. I just think the way to
say to people, we're going to do something really great
for the planet, and in the process, we're going to
(07:54):
we're going to enhance what it means, we're going to
enhance our civilization, We're going to enhance our quality of life.
I don't think those things are run counter to each other.
I think there is a path where they are aligned.
I personally find that very appealing, and I think a
lot of people do as well.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and I think that that alignment is the interesting
question is that we all want to go somewhere together,
and together is the key word. But right now we're
tearing ourselves apart in order to decide where we're going
to go. So, I and what I like about what
you're doing with super cool And by the way, I'm
inviting a competitor on my show. It doesn't bother me, Right, Okay,
(08:32):
we need this movement. Let's all go somewhere. But what's
the right way to make environmentalism cool in the Trump era?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, the right way to make it cool in the
traub Gosh, I really like how you frame your questions,
Mitch to me again, I think this is about well,
Trump error, non Trump error. I mean, okay, right, we
live in it. We live, certainly in the US in
the most capitalist I believe society on the planet. Maybe
(09:01):
there's I don't know, maybe you could say Singapore or
somewhere else more free market. But but right, so, so
to me, there's a conversation to be had that that
resonates where there's this a financial component to it, or
there's an economic component to it. There is that, and
again that comes back to it doesn't have to be
just personal self interest.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
We did We did a story. It's probably a story
you would do too. We went and looked at Iowa
because Iowa has as a percentage of its energy the
most wind energy you know, on its grid, and and
exports energy to other states as well. And so what
I wanted to understand was, well, one, how that happened,
but too who why and who benefits? Right, And so
it's not just it's not just the planet farmers, right
(09:44):
who are leasing land. But then also that tax base
for rural communities, and so ural communities can get more
fire departments and police stations and libraries built as a
result of clean energy, regardless of the politics of the
people in that community. And you know, those those echo
gnomic arguments and those kinds of I think stories or
(10:04):
situations are just incredibly compelling because there's such a practicality,
and I do think that's a way that you transcend,
you know, these left right divides. There's a through line
there that I think speaks to people in a way
that has a lot of resonance.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, when you start making a living being sustainable, it
really changes the game. But when you tell everybody they
need to be sustainable so that they might have a
living in the future, you present them a quandary they
cannot resolve. Yeah, I think, you know, you do that
with you, the lazy environmentalist. You've done that. You're a
multimedia monster. Right. So this started as a blog, it
became a radio show, then a TV series and a
(10:41):
book set of books. How does your approach to environmental
advocacy reflect the media environment that you've grown into?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So their through line from lazy environments is to super cool.
There is this through line of practicality, self interest lazing environments.
As we were talking about consumer facing stories, now we're
talking about business facing stories, right. But to me, okay,
I want to tell you about a great business I
think there's a business case here for name a company
company called zoom z u M that's that's essentially electrifying
(11:13):
student bus transportation and using AI to optimize school bus routes.
Are an amazing company, right, I want the business case
is incredible for that, But to go tell that story.
It's a story, right, So how do we take this
business case, wrap a narrative around it that's going to
be incredibly appealing, bring in data that actually gives it
some quantification. Right? So there's so there's more to latch
(11:36):
onto and more for the naysayers to, you know, less
for them to kind of dismiss right and then spend
the economic argument on it, or what it does for schools,
what it does for businesses, what it does for homes.
That's been the through line for me. All of it
has to be around great story. I just don't see
how else you break through and really reach people.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So what are a couple of great stories about? Here?
You changed your personal.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Behavior, how I've changed my personal behavior?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I could get less imperfect.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I married a woman who's more of an environmentalist than
I am, So that was you know, that's a good
that's a good forcing mechanism. When we were first dating
and getting to know each other, I think we had
take out Japanese and she was cleaning out the little
wabi thing to recycle, and I thought, Man, I'm gonna
I'm gonna marry this woman. This is very She's over
(12:27):
there just shaking her head, you know. To me, I'm
always looking for the so yes, the easy ways, the
easy convenient to life. Always one of the things that
I've come across recently that I'm very excited about. Have
you seen Climate First Bank? What I like about that?
This is so we always talk, but there's a lot
of talk in the environmental movement about shift your money,
get it out of the banks, get it out of
(12:48):
you know, so you're not under writing fossil fuels. Since
most of the major bank, all of them, I think,
still onder write fossil full of them. But I hadn't
seen a bank an alternative until Climate First Bank that
that not only offered the personal banking but also commercial
business banking. So that feels new to me. I'm excited
about that. So as a small business owner, I can
shift my you know, I can shift my finances along
(13:10):
with my personal finances and align that all with with
within my values. That's an easy, exciting you know. I
think there's a lot of upside opportunity in that, you know,
and then you know, it kind of goes back to
super cool. This week on the show, we looked at
this coming called Upweigh that is essentially coming into the
the e bike market, which is growing, you know, probably
(13:32):
faster than the electric vehicle market. That's fascinating, and but
what's been missing is sort of this carvana like secondhand,
well structured used market. And that's so these guys from
Uber you know, built this company called Upway that's streamlining
and using all their kind of operational expertise to you know, one,
(13:54):
make e bikes like fifty or sixty percent cheaper to
a customer if you want to get if you want
it for the same you know, for a for a
really good bike. Well it was interesting to me. So
that's the consumer facing side, but from the super cool side,
what really struck me was Upweys doing this recommerce thing.
So if you're buying a bike from say Avanton or
Electric or somebody else, I'm online e by company and
(14:15):
you don't want it, that return is actually going to upweigh, right.
They're handling all those back end third party logistics, and
that creates a lot that kind of makes the whole
industry grow and become more buoyant and lets people focus
on what they're good at.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So well, and you're hitting on a really really important point,
which is right now, most of the hard work in
this is a logistical challenge. You mentioned optimizing roads and
streets earlier. How do you see the place we are
in the evolution of technology, which many people see as
a threat as well in terms of our opportunity to
(14:50):
actually solve these problems.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We're having this conversation a lot. I've been reflecting a
lot over the last six weeks or so on this
question of do we have enough technology here to solve
climate change already? I think the answer is probably yes.
We're going to get more, it's going to get better.
The real question, I think it still goes to what
we've been talking about in this conversation is how do
you gain adoption? Right? Okay, you've got solar, you've got
(15:17):
storage now for home batteries, right, you can pair them up,
you can create your turn your your house into its
own mini power plant. That's awesome. How do you get
more people to do it? So that's the thing that
kind of lights me up. We were talking to this
guy who you ever Have you ever spoken to Eric
Corey Freed? He wrote Green Building for Dummies. He's like
(15:37):
this architect been around forever, as he says, he's been practicing,
you know, green architecture since the late nineteen hundreds, But
about five years ago he joined a firm called Cannon
Design as their head of sustainability, and Can Design is
one of the largest architecture firms in the world, and
so he's got his platform right, and they're doing incredible
(15:58):
net zero building. They've done some with the federal government
that are just stunning. They've even done like retrofit net
zero energy buildings, which is really fascinating. Right, it's not
even a new build. And so I was talking to
and said, well, well, what's different. He's like, we don't
ask for permission anymore. We're not asking you, we're not
waiting for the RFP that says, hey, we want a
(16:19):
green building, can you guys do it. We get a client,
it's like, we're giving you a green building because it's healthier,
it's higher performance. Everyone's going to love it. You know,
we'll couch it. And however, you need to get on
board with the client. But this is happening, right, And
so I just think there's like this different, this different
approach that is extremely compelling to me when you think
(16:41):
about adoption, how do you get adoption? And that's because
the products he can build a building that is his
client's going to love and he's going to do all
the green stuff that he wants to do. At the
same time.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
That's interesting. In my consulting work, we're taking the same strategy,
which is, if you want to do something, we're going
to help you do it regeneratively. It's better solution, and
the result with the client is often wow, you were right. Yeah,
but if you start with it, if you lead with it,
you stopped the conversation about two thirds of the time.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. You know. The other thing that I would say related,
We did a show. I found this guy, Kyle wagon Shoots,
who in twenty ten, the mayor of Memphis hired him
to try to get Memphis off the Worst Place to
Bicycle list from Bicycle Magazine two years running. Like that
was his He was one of like a handful of
bike activists in Memphis. He got plucked. He'd just done
(17:37):
his masters and like, get me off the list, that's
your soul mandate. He did it. He learned a lot
about how do you build how do you build a
coalition of support in a place that really has no
biking culture? Right? How do you go do that in
Middle America? And so he ran he led this program
or this trial, I guess you could say, with People
(17:58):
for Bikes that youtional advocacy group for biking. And they
went into New Orleans Province, relying Pittsburgh, Denver, and Austin
and they said, okay, it takes decades to get bike
lanes built in our cities, like it should take months,
but it takes forever. We think we know why. And
so they did it in twenty four months. They built
(18:20):
collectively three hundred and thirty five bike bike lanes, safe
connected bike lanes in these cities. And I just thought, man,
that's amazing. I want to understand that. And so he
said a lot of interesting things, but one of the
things he said that really struck me. He said, look like,
if you're going to go do this for a city,
the last thing you need to do is spend your
time getting bicyclists on board with your plan. They're already
(18:40):
on board. Don't even talk to them. The people that
you need to get on board with your plan are
the people who are never going to use those bike
lanes are their car drivers. And if you can figure
that out, then that clears the runway and bike lanes
go forward and say, okay, well how do you do that?
And so Kyle says, well, we tested a lot of
things in many places. You appealed to nostalgia. Remember, and
you were growing up, win streets were a little slower
(19:02):
when everyone could be outside and you knew your name
is you know that whole stick, so to speak. He's like,
but it has a lot of resonance, and and we
kind of we put this playbox together and we can
get the outcomes that everybody wants, right, And so it's
a little bit counterintuitive, but I find that there's a
lot of people now who are looking at you know,
innovation isn't just technology. Innovation is all of this is
(19:24):
innovation because you're doing something in a different way to
get the result.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, it's behavior change at scale.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's behavior change at scale. Yeah, how do you do that? Really? Really?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well? Well, this is why I knew this was going
to be interesting conversation. There's so many interesting stories here.
I want to continue, but we need to take a
quick commercial break. We're going to be right back.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Let's get back to the conversation with Josh Dorfmann. He's
the host of The Lazy Environmentalist and a Super Cool podcast.
He also is the author of two books called The
Lazy Environmentalist, and he recently launched a project called Plant
at the Low Carbon Materials Company. Josh, you've got a
lot of balls in the air. What what what possessed
you to co found Plant to create carbon negative building
(20:09):
materials it seems like yet another twenty four hour a
day job.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Well, my friends do joke that, you know, I did
create this brand of lazy environmentalist, but they're like, dude,
we never lie you all you're doing. Yeah. So six
years ago, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I had started a
monitor design, my second Monitige sustainable furniture company, this time manufacturing.
It was called Simbly like simple Assembly, so it was
kind of like a Kia style all, you know, FSC
(20:36):
certified woods, local manufacturing in North Carolina, trying to do
this as sustainably and attainably priced as possible. It was fun.
The COVID hit, Our ability to make new product and
manufacture really of course was impaired. Our ability to source
material was extremely impaired. And when I could get this
FCY certified when it was called apple Ply, was actually
(20:58):
coming from Oregon. It's the highest quality FC certified apply
with probably on the planet. It's beautiful. The quality was
going down, probably as a result of COVID, and the
prices were skyrocketing. So I was thinking a lot about materials,
and I was also thinking about was there a way
to do something that actually where we don't necessarily have
to cut down trees to make furniture other products. In
(21:19):
that moment, I was introduced to another entrepreneur in North Carolina,
where I was living in Nashville at the time, and
he was also in manufacturing. We got to talking. I'm
starting to go off about materials and I mentioned maybe hemp,
maybe something else, something that grows fast. And this guy,
Wada said to me. He's like, well, you know, I've
(21:41):
got six bags of industrial hemp in my garage. And
I was like, oh wait, wait, wait, wait, who are you?
What do you like? Where'd you come from? How did
you eat? And he's like, well, I just spent the
last eight years at SpaceX designing the life support systems
to keep astronauts alive on the Dragon Crew spacecraft. But
I left. I put a spreadsheet together, you know, as
a good entrepreneur would of all the places in the
(22:03):
country where we could move. Raleigh came to the top
of the list. We showed up, we liked it. We're here,
and so I said, Oka, wait a second, you're from SpaceX,
you have six bags of industrial help in your garage,
You're thinking about materials and carbon removal. Let's just shut
our companies and go build a materials company and think
about a carbon move. So we did. That's actually how
(22:24):
we got started. So we said, okay, can we find
something that grows faster than trees? We looked at hemp
for a while and realized that it just economically wasn't
going to work for our purposes. We got more space
exers to come to North Carolina and so we said, okay,
here's what we're going to do. Eventually, we found this
fast growing grass similar to bamboo. It's not but has
(22:46):
similar structural properties. It's thinner. We can actually mechanically harvest it,
which is really important. We're going to pull carbon from
the atmosphere by growing something that grows nine to ten
times faster than trees. We're going to go build an
electric production line o smoke stack, so we don't give
this carbon back in the manufacturing to get to true
carbon negativity where we can sequester carbon in the walls
(23:09):
and floors and roofs of homes. And we're going to
make a product that's better than what builders use today,
which is either plywood or now what's replaced plywood Oriented
strandboard or OSB. It's cheaper still structural we're going to
go do that, and so we decided to do that
four years ago and that's actually what we're doing. So
I started as founding CEO. I was there for the
(23:30):
first three years, raised a couple of rounds of funding.
We established a relationship with d R. Horden, the largest
home builder in the country. Just this past fall they
gave us an order for ten million panels, which is
a lot more than we have the capability to make today.
So we're going to be working on that for a while.
But thank you. Yeah, and it's been very exciting. It's
been a really it was a wonderful it's a wonderful venture.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
And you've been named one of Fast Company's World's most
innovative companies. How did that change the ability to raise
capital and to get the attention of somebody like d R.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Horton, I would say more than anything else. And the
timing was right for this business. When we started thinking
about it four years ago, the markets were a little
more flush than they are today, so people were willing
to cast around and be open to an idea like
planted that might be harder to get off the ground today,
(24:20):
honestly than it was four years ago. What's interesting in
the home building market is that, of course, at the
on the one end, you have green builders who build
incredibly beautifully many right, not exclusively, but like you have
incredible craftsmen, green builders who of course share these values.
(24:42):
And we could go to those builders all day long
and be like, hey, we're going to use hemp or
some other thing and we're going to make a carbon
negative blobbay blah. You know, would you be interested? You know,
And for the most part they would say yes. They
also might say like, well, if it's new, maybe not
right away because I need to see that, right I'm
building a house. But whatever, there's they care. You go
(25:02):
to the top of the market to you know, a
lot of the public builders, not all, but a lot
of them who are beholden to shareholders and and are
more attuned to the sustainability conversation because there's some there's
some financial pressure coming from Wall Street and there's some
interest there too. And so we got i would say,
we were in the right place with the right team.
(25:23):
We got a little bit lucky, and we got deer
Horden to take an interest and take notice. And then
you have the massive middle that really is not paying
attention at all to sustainability. So you have this really
strange bifurcation. You kind of have to pick your strategy.
Are you're going to go try and reach the green
builders and go you know, wide with your distribution, or
are you're going to go narrow and kind of partner
(25:44):
up if you can with a large builder you know,
bees are homes another one that's doing all you know
net zero already building and pick your path to market.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, you know my experiences, which goes back to the eighties,
is that recessions and downturns and shocks like we're going
through right now, and we'll see how bad this recession
might be, actually yielded the most productive explosion of innovation
that I've ever seen, and may have been the most
explosive moment of innovation in history. We got mobile computing,
(26:13):
the web. AI emerged in that same timeframe too, but
it took a long time to mature. Based on what
you know about the market from your experience with planted
on a scale are one to ten, how achievable is
a net zero built environment?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, I have to look at that in two ways.
I think there are because I think there's two components
to it. There, you have the materials systems component systems.
I would say we're very far along the path to we.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Have the technologies we need.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
As you said, yeah, materials, there's not as much material
innovation taking place that as I would like to see.
I mean, for planted it's nice. I don't think you know,
from an al turn to timber that can compete in
a commodity market. We don't see. We don't see a
lot of competition. I see some cool things happening in Europe.
(27:08):
I've seen straw bale starting to actually really kind of
commercialize and and and move kind of out of its
its niche and and kind of take more market share.
That's incredibly exciting. But I have some so I have
some concerns. On the home building side. You see a
lot of stuff happening around, you know, low carbon or
zero carbon concrete, those technologies are coming. There's still a
(27:32):
lot to be figured out. I think. I mean, I'm
an optimist. I think we're going to get there, but
I don't see it as a straight shot linear path.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I mean, not to take away you'r an next business idea,
but if you were talking to a young entrepreneur who
wanted to start a company today in this space, what
would you recommend they do?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I don't know if I could assign an industry, I'm
not really sure that I could do that. I would
probably just have to give some really general advice. I
would say, what causes you the most personal gain, what
you irritates you the most, Well, what you see because
it's going to take a long time and you need
persistence and persevere. Right Like, I think because every industry,
(28:10):
every industry is changing, whether it's because they're adopting AI,
which I've been a skeptic of from an environmental point
of view, but I see so many use cases where
it's driving carbon reduction more and really around efficiency more
than anything else. But so many use cases for that.
I think it's a very like you're saying, I think, yeah,
this pain, I think this moment we're in will create
(28:31):
a lot of opportunities. And I think just still every
industry is right for disruption. If you want to go big,
you have to go to industries that are heavy, that
actually have a big physical footprint in some way and
change them.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So you wouldn't recommend somebody start a company you pen
the phrase AI to it and then go try to
raise money. You'd actually go hard, good and focus on
the building.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Is that what I'm What I mean by that, Mitch,
is so you take a company called it like brain
Box AI. Brain Box AI was just acquired by trained technologists,
a Montreal startup about five or six years old. They've
grown incredibly fast. They use generat AI to make building
HVAC systems much smarter, so they cut consumption by twenty
(29:21):
to twenty five percent, and they can tell you with
ninety nine percent accuracy how many people who's going to
be in this space six hours from now, right, And
they can tell you the weather, and they can tell
you how much renewables are going to be on the grid,
and they can tell you the utility costs. Right, So
then they can say, okay, we got six hours to
get the temperature to the optimal point for when people
(29:43):
are in that space. We don't have to spike the energy,
which raises cost and draises carbon.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
We have the technologies and that's AI powering a system.
And so what that CEO said to me, Sam Ramdoi
really struck home. He was like, the future is really
for solving climate change. Is taking software and intelligence, you know,
in the digital world, and mapping it and marrying it
to the physical infrastructure, and that's how that's how we
(30:09):
move forward. And I think he's right, and I think
those are just when you can find him. I think
those are really enormous opportunities.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
One of the things that's going on in Washington, just
for Shorthand, is this kind of abandonment of the role
of government in capturing a lot of that data. And
so we're seeing orphan databases, some particularly around weather, which
would be key to the scenario you just describe, where
the HVAC system knows what's coming both today and over
(30:39):
the long term. Is there an opportunity in this kind
of moment of de federalization of data gathering for companies
to start up or to pick up one of these
databases and begin to use it in a way that
could be both profitable and better.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
For the world. I mean, I absolutely think so. I
think I suspect you think so as well. And we've
seen that underway probably also for I think about half
a decade. I actually in between some of these ventures,
in between well probably right before I started that second
(31:15):
furniture company, simply I mentioned I was the CEO of
a center called the Collider in Ashville that NOAH so
National Oceanic Atmosphere Admistration. It's data headquarters is in Ashville,
the National Centers for Invite right, the NCEI. And so
we spun up the center to say could we take
(31:35):
that data and these big brains and this ecosystem of
small businesses that are here using that data and create
a climate analytics innovation center. And so then you start
to say, okay, well, yeah, we want to look at
all this big data. We want to look at more
weather data. Noah has their balloons, sens and satellites and
all their how they're going. But then you have like
sale drones going out into the oceans collecting more data, right,
(31:59):
you have more nodes, You have citizen science where people
are collecting data on their phone. So these are massive opportunities.
I think that yes, because of AI and because of
ability to ingest that data and actually you know, gain
actual insights out of it. Yeah, I think that component
is you know, is potentially really big, really big.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That's really interesting because if you think about it, it's
a different organizing point for the environmental movement in this
context where we're all sort of grasping for what we
do next in order to make.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Progress completely completely. And and that piece around especially, I
mean that piece around citizen science is fascinating right where
you can do it around I've seen it. I've seen
it around soil and taking readings. I've seen it around
pollution and using iPhones to you know, to capture certain
amounts of data. And yeah, I think I think that
(32:49):
organizing that data, organizing the effort to understand, you know,
the physical world and what's happening, and then put it
into these smarter you know lll ms AI systems that
can create insights. I actually haven't even really thought about
it in a while since you raise it, but my
head's probably going to be spinning on three am.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Well, I'm glad we kept you up. I think it
seems like good things happen when you stay awake at night. Josh,
this has been a super cool conversation, as I expected
it would be. Thank you. How can people keep up
on what you're doing, which obviously would take a lot
of effort to really keep up on everything.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Thank you so much. Mitch. Get super dot Cool. That's
the website for our weekly newsletter, our weekly podcast. We're
on social I tend to be mostly on LinkedIn personally
kind of engaging and having conversation, posting information and would
love to connect with listeners who may be interested.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Well, Josh, thanks for joining us today. It's been fascinating.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Thank you, Mitch, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
You've been listening to a conversation with Josh Dorfman. He's
the host of The Lazy Environmentalist on Serious Exam and
the Sun Dance Channel, and he's also the CEO of Planted,
a low carb construction materials company who also recently launched
the super Coal podcast, which you can find at get
super dot Cool, Get supers All, one word, no space,
(34:10):
no dash, Get super dot Cool. Seeing the world through
the eyes of an entrepreneur is always interesting to me
because even the worst case scenario can be it can
blossom into a perceived opportunity, and the question is whether
the entrepreneur, as Josh says, has the passion and persistence
necessary to transform low value assets into a high value
(34:31):
product or service. And on the other side of that
equation is the challenge of getting people to embrace that
new value and integrated in their lives in other words,
how do you get consumer adoption of something that's green, sustainable,
and ultimately regenerative of our environment. So, in a nutshell,
that's the challenge faced by the environmental movement in these
deeply divided times. How do we create a middle ground
(34:53):
in which reasonable people can discuss new paths forward and
organize demand to drive adoption of a an environmentally responsible
and regenerative lifestyle. Now that lifestyle, of course, is not
a monolithic one way experience, my way or the highway approach,
but a personal collage of choices that each of us
makes to move away from an extractive, single use linear economy.
(35:17):
If enough of us take those steps, no matter what
those steps might be, they will add up to a
change in direction, to the opportunity to start to draw
down atmospheric co two and, as the Swiss reinsurance Company
A Leon's s recently suggested, even save capitalism from burning
down its foundations. If in fact this is the capitalist
(35:37):
center of the world, let's save it, let's not tear
it down. Josh's work at Supercool is another important source
of insight, and I urge you to tune into the show,
but also take a look at planted his construction material
startup because it's another model, one of many, for creating
opportunities to change society's environmental impact. At a time when
the United States is turning back to the past to
(35:59):
fossil fuels and continued global warming, as the rest of
the world is racing ahead to create a renewable future,
we need to lead the green transition to be the
economic leader in the renewable era that we have been
in the industrial era, when sustainability and regeneration will not
just be a consumer preference but the source of new
(36:19):
value creation. It's going to be a long road, and
now's the time to double down on our personal commitment
to reduce our impact and create a circular economy, which,
by the way, is a powerful way to reshore industry
as we kind of close down the borders. As Josh
and I talked about, logistics and local efficiencies are keys
(36:40):
to unleashing economic growth without tearing date nature down. Even
more so, folks, stay tuned. We're going to stay the
course no matter how bumpy this ride gets. And I
hope you'll take a look at another episode of sustainability
in your ear and learn a little bit more and
take action today. We've got more than five hundred shows
to share with your community, So write a review on
your favorite podcast platform to help your neighbors find us. Folks,
(37:03):
you're the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your coworkers,
the people you meet on the street that they can
find sustainability in your ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
Audible or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness that you prefer.
Thanks for your support. I'm Atracliffe. This is sustainability in
(37:25):
your ear and we will be back with another innovator
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and please let's all take
care of this beautiful planet of ours.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Have a green day.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable, carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Ratcliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today. The challenge of making
sustainable choices can often feel overwhelming, expensive and convenient, or
(00:30):
just plain confusing. But what if being eco responsible didn't
have to be hard? What if sustainability could seamlessly integrate
into daily life without sacrificing style, comfort or efficiency. Few
have tackled this question as creatively as our guest today,
Josh Dorfmann. From hosting The Lazy Environmentalist on Serious XM
(00:50):
and the Sundance Channel, to launching innovative green businesses like vine,
which is a green retail shop on Amazon, or Planted,
which is Plant with a D, a carbon building materials company,
Josh has made sustainability accessible, engaging, in even effortless. Now,
as the founder of super Cool, he's exploring the intersection
(01:11):
of climate tech and cultural transformation, spotlighting groundbreaking innovations that
could shape a greener future. We're going to dive into
Josh's journey how he went from writing best selling books
on eco living to developing carbon negative building materials, as
well as rethinking the way we shop for impact. We'll
also explore what it takes to build a truly impactful
(01:31):
environmental movement and how business can drive real change without
compromising on convenience or profitability. You can learn more about
Josh and his current project at get supercool dot com.
Get super cool is all one word, no space, no dash,
getsupercool dot com. We'll jump into the conversation right after
this quick commercial break. Welcome to the show, Josh. How
(01:58):
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I'm doing wonderful. Mitch, how are you doing well?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Doing well? It's a little early in the morning, but
it's always good to talk to an interesting person like you.
You've done a lot of different things. What started the
lazy environmentalist in the first place? How did you? How
did you start thinking about changing public perceptions about environmentalism?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, the if there's a quick version, it starts in
for me going to China in the mid nineties. When
I finished up college nineteen ninety four, I was looking
around as an international relations major and was pretty clear
for some reason that this that China was going to
be a big deal in the twenty first century. So
(02:39):
I went over to Nanjing. I got a job teaching English.
Was thinking about State department, maybe in some you know,
fantasy Cia, but I was just like, I need to
get over there, learn this culture, learn this language, you know,
understand this country. And I got a part time job
working for Kryptonite bikelocks in their first factory in mainland
China about events from ours teaching, and then went to
(03:01):
work for them full time. We opened more factories, we
were looking at the Chinese market, and my second year there,
I just had this realization. I just thought, oh my gosh,
there's a billion people riding bicycles here, but nobody wants
to bike. Everybody wants a car. And you can see
the bridge's tunnels. How is all this infrastructure coming in
so fast? And I thought, you know, I don't know
anything about global warming, but this is going to be problematic.
(03:24):
And you've got India and Eastern Europe and everyone's developing.
What's going to happen as we move, you know, as
everyone in advances develops, and we get more more cars
on the road, and we just keep increasing our consumer
habits that ultimately led me to come back to the
States continue to think about that and eventually felt, you
know what, I live in a consumer driven culture. I
(03:46):
am going to aim to shift consumption into more sustainable direction.
Lazy Environmentals wasn't my first foray. That was a little
bit of an accidental brand when I had started a
monitor design eco friendly furniture company back in two thousand
for and my first employee, on her last day working
for me, took that opportunity to tell me what a
terrible environmentalist I was in my personal life, even though
(04:08):
I was selling all this green stuff. Hence the lazy
environmentalist was born.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
You hit on an important point, which is a lot
of folks expect perfection, and perfection takes well pretty much forever.
Why does the perception of environmentalism need to change before
we start any the other part of this conversation, why
do we need to change it?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, if we're I think there's a number of perceptions
that probably need to change. The view that I came
to I didn't start there, you know. I think I
probably went through a process that I think a lot
of people go through. When when I started becoming attuned
to environmental issues, I became panicked, obsessive, crazy nobody. And
(04:55):
what I started just recognizing was like, man, like, nobody
who I love or care about wants to hang out
with me anymore. I'm not actually influencing anybody to change
their behavior just because I'm so you know, panicked about
the future. And I thought that I have to find
a way to just be in my life and be
more comfortable and find a way to communicate that I
(05:19):
think can break through. And I do think that a
lot of people are open to a conversation and a
message that has a practical element to it that that
doesn't write. I think maybe that's where you're going with
the question, But that's that's early on after some real pain.
I mean, I remember walking with my mom in New
York State when I came home from China and being like,
(05:40):
why are all the lights on? You know, it was
like ten o'clock at night, right, And she's like a child, like,
I think we need to find you some therapy, you know,
But uh so, I so I have a lot of
empathy for that perfection or that you know, that where
that where that where that comes from. But I do
think that the practicality can potentially well, I do think
(06:01):
it's more impactful. I do think you can dry more
change that way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Now I know this feeling. I mean, having written about
recycling and sustainable living now for a decade and having
cared about it since the eighties when I did kind
of go crazy. It's what I've realized is people want
actionable opportunities. You know, they want to consider something, but
they don't want to be told what to do. Is
(06:25):
that part of the problem that the environmental movement has
had is it's been very prescriptive.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
It's the challenge that it's been very prescriptive. I think
that the challenge is that, to me, there's so many
opportunities to frame what's good for the environment also in
people's own personal self interest, and I think maybe environmentalists
(06:50):
may struggle with that with that concept, right, it's not
just this pure no I'm doing this to like you know,
it's pure environmentalism for the planet. But it's like, well, hey,
like we live on this planet, and you know, there's
there's just you think about health, right, you think about
you know. One of the things that I've gotten very
excited about over the last couple of years is look
(07:11):
at you know, hospitals that get built green and patient
outcomes improve, or or schools that build green, build get
built green, and attendance goes up. You know, bad behavior
goes down, performance goes up, Students, teachers, everyone's happier. Communities
are happier. That's great for the planet, that's great for humans,
(07:32):
and it improves our life. And so I think if
you want to encourage change over the long haul for
most people, because you got to be in this for decades,
just like you, right, I mean, and we're trying, We've
got twenty fifty targets. I just think the way to
say to people, we're going to do something really great
for the planet, and in the process, we're going to
(07:54):
we're going to enhance what it means, we're going to
enhance our civilization, We're going to enhance our quality of life.
I don't think those things are run counter to each other.
I think there is a path where they are aligned.
I personally find that very appealing, and I think a
lot of people do as well.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and I think that that alignment is the interesting
question is that we all want to go somewhere together,
and together is the key word. But right now we're
tearing ourselves apart in order to decide where we're going
to go. So, I and what I like about what
you're doing with super cool And by the way, I'm
inviting a competitor on my show. It doesn't bother me, Right, Okay,
(08:32):
we need this movement. Let's all go somewhere. But what's
the right way to make environmentalism cool in the Trump era?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, the right way to make it cool in the
traub Gosh, I really like how you frame your questions,
Mitch to me again, I think this is about well,
Trump error, non Trump error. I mean, okay, right, we
live in it. We live, certainly in the US in
the most capitalist I believe society on the planet. Maybe
(09:01):
there's I don't know, maybe you could say Singapore or
somewhere else more free market. But but right, so, so
to me, there's a conversation to be had that that
resonates where there's this a financial component to it, or
there's an economic component to it. There is that, and
again that comes back to it doesn't have to be
just personal self interest.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
We did We did a story. It's probably a story
you would do too. We went and looked at Iowa
because Iowa has as a percentage of its energy the
most wind energy you know, on its grid, and and
exports energy to other states as well. And so what
I wanted to understand was, well, one, how that happened,
but too who why and who benefits? Right, And so
it's not just it's not just the planet farmers, right
(09:44):
who are leasing land. But then also that tax base
for rural communities, and so ural communities can get more
fire departments and police stations and libraries built as a
result of clean energy, regardless of the politics of the
people in that community. And you know, those those echo
gnomic arguments and those kinds of I think stories or
(10:04):
situations are just incredibly compelling because there's such a practicality,
and I do think that's a way that you transcend,
you know, these left right divides. There's a through line
there that I think speaks to people in a way
that has a lot of resonance.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, when you start making a living being sustainable, it
really changes the game. But when you tell everybody they
need to be sustainable so that they might have a
living in the future, you present them a quandary they
cannot resolve. Yeah, I think, you know, you do that
with you, the lazy environmentalist. You've done that. You're a
multimedia monster. Right. So this started as a blog, it
became a radio show, then a TV series and a
(10:41):
book set of books. How does your approach to environmental
advocacy reflect the media environment that you've grown into?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So their through line from lazy environments is to super cool.
There is this through line of practicality, self interest lazing environments.
As we were talking about consumer facing stories, now we're
talking about business facing stories, right. But to me, okay,
I want to tell you about a great business I
think there's a business case here for name a company
company called zoom z u M that's that's essentially electrifying
(11:13):
student bus transportation and using AI to optimize school bus routes.
Are an amazing company, right, I want the business case
is incredible for that, But to go tell that story.
It's a story, right, So how do we take this
business case, wrap a narrative around it that's going to
be incredibly appealing, bring in data that actually gives it
some quantification. Right? So there's so there's more to latch
(11:36):
onto and more for the naysayers to, you know, less
for them to kind of dismiss right and then spend
the economic argument on it, or what it does for schools,
what it does for businesses, what it does for homes.
That's been the through line for me. All of it
has to be around great story. I just don't see
how else you break through and really reach people.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So what are a couple of great stories about? Here?
You changed your personal.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Behavior, how I've changed my personal behavior?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I could get less imperfect.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I married a woman who's more of an environmentalist than
I am, So that was you know, that's a good
that's a good forcing mechanism. When we were first dating
and getting to know each other, I think we had
take out Japanese and she was cleaning out the little
wabi thing to recycle, and I thought, Man, I'm gonna
I'm gonna marry this woman. This is very She's over
(12:27):
there just shaking her head, you know. To me, I'm
always looking for the so yes, the easy ways, the
easy convenient to life. Always one of the things that
I've come across recently that I'm very excited about. Have
you seen Climate First Bank? What I like about that?
This is so we always talk, but there's a lot
of talk in the environmental movement about shift your money,
get it out of the banks, get it out of
(12:48):
you know, so you're not under writing fossil fuels. Since
most of the major bank, all of them, I think,
still onder write fossil full of them. But I hadn't
seen a bank an alternative until Climate First Bank that
that not only offered the personal banking but also commercial
business banking. So that feels new to me. I'm excited
about that. So as a small business owner, I can
shift my you know, I can shift my finances along
(13:10):
with my personal finances and align that all with with
within my values. That's an easy, exciting you know. I
think there's a lot of upside opportunity in that, you know,
and then you know, it kind of goes back to
super cool. This week on the show, we looked at
this coming called Upweigh that is essentially coming into the
the e bike market, which is growing, you know, probably
(13:32):
faster than the electric vehicle market. That's fascinating, and but
what's been missing is sort of this carvana like secondhand,
well structured used market. And that's so these guys from
Uber you know, built this company called Upway that's streamlining
and using all their kind of operational expertise to you know, one,
(13:54):
make e bikes like fifty or sixty percent cheaper to
a customer if you want to get if you want
it for the same you know, for a for a
really good bike. Well it was interesting to me. So
that's the consumer facing side, but from the super cool side,
what really struck me was Upweys doing this recommerce thing.
So if you're buying a bike from say Avanton or
Electric or somebody else, I'm online e by company and
(14:15):
you don't want it, that return is actually going to upweigh, right.
They're handling all those back end third party logistics, and
that creates a lot that kind of makes the whole
industry grow and become more buoyant and lets people focus
on what they're good at.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So well, and you're hitting on a really really important point,
which is right now, most of the hard work in
this is a logistical challenge. You mentioned optimizing roads and
streets earlier. How do you see the place we are
in the evolution of technology, which many people see as
a threat as well in terms of our opportunity to
(14:50):
actually solve these problems.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We're having this conversation a lot. I've been reflecting a
lot over the last six weeks or so on this
question of do we have enough technology here to solve
climate change already? I think the answer is probably yes.
We're going to get more, it's going to get better.
The real question, I think it still goes to what
we've been talking about in this conversation is how do
you gain adoption? Right? Okay, you've got solar, you've got
(15:17):
storage now for home batteries, right, you can pair them up,
you can create your turn your your house into its
own mini power plant. That's awesome. How do you get
more people to do it? So that's the thing that
kind of lights me up. We were talking to this
guy who you ever Have you ever spoken to Eric
Corey Freed? He wrote Green Building for Dummies. He's like
(15:37):
this architect been around forever, as he says, he's been practicing,
you know, green architecture since the late nineteen hundreds, But
about five years ago he joined a firm called Cannon
Design as their head of sustainability, and Can Design is
one of the largest architecture firms in the world, and
so he's got his platform right, and they're doing incredible
(15:58):
net zero building. They've done some with the federal government
that are just stunning. They've even done like retrofit net
zero energy buildings, which is really fascinating. Right, it's not
even a new build. And so I was talking to
and said, well, well, what's different. He's like, we don't
ask for permission anymore. We're not asking you, we're not
waiting for the RFP that says, hey, we want a
(16:19):
green building, can you guys do it. We get a client,
it's like, we're giving you a green building because it's healthier,
it's higher performance. Everyone's going to love it. You know,
we'll couch it. And however, you need to get on
board with the client. But this is happening, right, And
so I just think there's like this different, this different
approach that is extremely compelling to me when you think
(16:41):
about adoption, how do you get adoption? And that's because
the products he can build a building that is his
client's going to love and he's going to do all
the green stuff that he wants to do. At the
same time.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
That's interesting. In my consulting work, we're taking the same strategy,
which is, if you want to do something, we're going
to help you do it regeneratively. It's better solution, and
the result with the client is often wow, you were right. Yeah,
but if you start with it, if you lead with it,
you stopped the conversation about two thirds of the time.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. You know. The other thing that I would say related,
We did a show. I found this guy, Kyle wagon Shoots,
who in twenty ten, the mayor of Memphis hired him
to try to get Memphis off the Worst Place to
Bicycle list from Bicycle Magazine two years running. Like that
was his He was one of like a handful of
bike activists in Memphis. He got plucked. He'd just done
(17:37):
his masters and like, get me off the list, that's
your soul mandate. He did it. He learned a lot
about how do you build how do you build a
coalition of support in a place that really has no
biking culture? Right? How do you go do that in
Middle America? And so he ran he led this program
or this trial, I guess you could say, with People
(17:58):
for Bikes that youtional advocacy group for biking. And they
went into New Orleans Province, relying Pittsburgh, Denver, and Austin
and they said, okay, it takes decades to get bike
lanes built in our cities, like it should take months,
but it takes forever. We think we know why. And
so they did it in twenty four months. They built
(18:20):
collectively three hundred and thirty five bike bike lanes, safe
connected bike lanes in these cities. And I just thought, man,
that's amazing. I want to understand that. And so he
said a lot of interesting things, but one of the
things he said that really struck me. He said, look like,
if you're going to go do this for a city,
the last thing you need to do is spend your
time getting bicyclists on board with your plan. They're already
(18:40):
on board. Don't even talk to them. The people that
you need to get on board with your plan are
the people who are never going to use those bike
lanes are their car drivers. And if you can figure
that out, then that clears the runway and bike lanes
go forward and say, okay, well how do you do that?
And so Kyle says, well, we tested a lot of
things in many places. You appealed to nostalgia. Remember, and
you were growing up, win streets were a little slower
(19:02):
when everyone could be outside and you knew your name
is you know that whole stick, so to speak. He's like,
but it has a lot of resonance, and and we
kind of we put this playbox together and we can
get the outcomes that everybody wants, right, And so it's
a little bit counterintuitive, but I find that there's a
lot of people now who are looking at you know,
innovation isn't just technology. Innovation is all of this is
(19:24):
innovation because you're doing something in a different way to
get the result.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, it's behavior change at scale.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's behavior change at scale. Yeah, how do you do that? Really? Really?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well? Well, this is why I knew this was going
to be interesting conversation. There's so many interesting stories here.
I want to continue, but we need to take a
quick commercial break. We're going to be right back.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Let's get back to the conversation with Josh Dorfmann. He's
the host of The Lazy Environmentalist and a Super Cool podcast.
He also is the author of two books called The
Lazy Environmentalist, and he recently launched a project called Plant
at the Low Carbon Materials Company. Josh, you've got a
lot of balls in the air. What what what possessed
you to co found Plant to create carbon negative building
(20:09):
materials it seems like yet another twenty four hour a
day job.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Well, my friends do joke that, you know, I did
create this brand of lazy environmentalist, but they're like, dude,
we never lie you all you're doing. Yeah. So six
years ago, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I had started a
monitor design, my second Monitige sustainable furniture company, this time manufacturing.
It was called Simbly like simple Assembly, so it was
kind of like a Kia style all, you know, FSC
(20:36):
certified woods, local manufacturing in North Carolina, trying to do
this as sustainably and attainably priced as possible. It was fun.
The COVID hit, Our ability to make new product and
manufacture really of course was impaired. Our ability to source
material was extremely impaired. And when I could get this
FCY certified when it was called apple Ply, was actually
(20:58):
coming from Oregon. It's the highest quality FC certified apply
with probably on the planet. It's beautiful. The quality was
going down, probably as a result of COVID, and the
prices were skyrocketing. So I was thinking a lot about materials,
and I was also thinking about was there a way
to do something that actually where we don't necessarily have
to cut down trees to make furniture other products. In
(21:19):
that moment, I was introduced to another entrepreneur in North Carolina,
where I was living in Nashville at the time, and
he was also in manufacturing. We got to talking. I'm
starting to go off about materials and I mentioned maybe hemp,
maybe something else, something that grows fast. And this guy,
Wada said to me. He's like, well, you know, I've
(21:41):
got six bags of industrial hemp in my garage. And
I was like, oh wait, wait, wait, wait, who are you?
What do you like? Where'd you come from? How did
you eat? And he's like, well, I just spent the
last eight years at SpaceX designing the life support systems
to keep astronauts alive on the Dragon Crew spacecraft. But
I left. I put a spreadsheet together, you know, as
a good entrepreneur would of all the places in the
(22:03):
country where we could move. Raleigh came to the top
of the list. We showed up, we liked it. We're here,
and so I said, Oka, wait a second, you're from SpaceX,
you have six bags of industrial help in your garage,
You're thinking about materials and carbon removal. Let's just shut
our companies and go build a materials company and think
about a carbon move. So we did. That's actually how
(22:24):
we got started. So we said, okay, can we find
something that grows faster than trees? We looked at hemp
for a while and realized that it just economically wasn't
going to work for our purposes. We got more space
exers to come to North Carolina and so we said, okay,
here's what we're going to do. Eventually, we found this
fast growing grass similar to bamboo. It's not but has
(22:46):
similar structural properties. It's thinner. We can actually mechanically harvest it,
which is really important. We're going to pull carbon from
the atmosphere by growing something that grows nine to ten
times faster than trees. We're going to go build an
electric production line o smoke stack, so we don't give
this carbon back in the manufacturing to get to true
carbon negativity where we can sequester carbon in the walls
(23:09):
and floors and roofs of homes. And we're going to
make a product that's better than what builders use today,
which is either plywood or now what's replaced plywood Oriented
strandboard or OSB. It's cheaper still structural we're going to
go do that, and so we decided to do that
four years ago and that's actually what we're doing. So
I started as founding CEO. I was there for the
(23:30):
first three years, raised a couple of rounds of funding.
We established a relationship with d R. Horden, the largest
home builder in the country. Just this past fall they
gave us an order for ten million panels, which is
a lot more than we have the capability to make today.
So we're going to be working on that for a while.
But thank you. Yeah, and it's been very exciting. It's
been a really it was a wonderful it's a wonderful venture.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
And you've been named one of Fast Company's World's most
innovative companies. How did that change the ability to raise
capital and to get the attention of somebody like d R.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Horton, I would say more than anything else. And the
timing was right for this business. When we started thinking
about it four years ago, the markets were a little
more flush than they are today, so people were willing
to cast around and be open to an idea like
planted that might be harder to get off the ground today,
(24:20):
honestly than it was four years ago. What's interesting in
the home building market is that, of course, at the
on the one end, you have green builders who build
incredibly beautifully many right, not exclusively, but like you have
incredible craftsmen, green builders who of course share these values.
(24:42):
And we could go to those builders all day long
and be like, hey, we're going to use hemp or
some other thing and we're going to make a carbon
negative blobbay blah. You know, would you be interested? You know,
And for the most part they would say yes. They
also might say like, well, if it's new, maybe not
right away because I need to see that, right I'm
building a house. But whatever, there's they care. You go
(25:02):
to the top of the market to you know, a
lot of the public builders, not all, but a lot
of them who are beholden to shareholders and and are
more attuned to the sustainability conversation because there's some there's
some financial pressure coming from Wall Street and there's some
interest there too. And so we got i would say,
we were in the right place with the right team.
(25:23):
We got a little bit lucky, and we got deer
Horden to take an interest and take notice. And then
you have the massive middle that really is not paying
attention at all to sustainability. So you have this really
strange bifurcation. You kind of have to pick your strategy.
Are you're going to go try and reach the green
builders and go you know, wide with your distribution, or
are you're going to go narrow and kind of partner
(25:44):
up if you can with a large builder you know,
bees are homes another one that's doing all you know
net zero already building and pick your path to market.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, you know my experiences, which goes back to the eighties,
is that recessions and downturns and shocks like we're going
through right now, and we'll see how bad this recession
might be, actually yielded the most productive explosion of innovation
that I've ever seen, and may have been the most
explosive moment of innovation in history. We got mobile computing,
(26:13):
the web. AI emerged in that same timeframe too, but
it took a long time to mature. Based on what
you know about the market from your experience with planted
on a scale are one to ten, how achievable is
a net zero built environment?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, I have to look at that in two ways.
I think there are because I think there's two components
to it. There, you have the materials systems component systems.
I would say we're very far along the path to we.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Have the technologies we need.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
As you said, yeah, materials, there's not as much material
innovation taking place that as I would like to see.
I mean, for planted it's nice. I don't think you know,
from an al turn to timber that can compete in
a commodity market. We don't see. We don't see a
lot of competition. I see some cool things happening in Europe.
(27:08):
I've seen straw bale starting to actually really kind of
commercialize and and and move kind of out of its
its niche and and kind of take more market share.
That's incredibly exciting. But I have some so I have
some concerns. On the home building side. You see a
lot of stuff happening around, you know, low carbon or
zero carbon concrete, those technologies are coming. There's still a
(27:32):
lot to be figured out. I think. I mean, I'm
an optimist. I think we're going to get there, but
I don't see it as a straight shot linear path.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I mean, not to take away you'r an next business idea,
but if you were talking to a young entrepreneur who
wanted to start a company today in this space, what
would you recommend they do?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I don't know if I could assign an industry, I'm
not really sure that I could do that. I would
probably just have to give some really general advice. I
would say, what causes you the most personal gain, what
you irritates you the most, Well, what you see because
it's going to take a long time and you need
persistence and persevere. Right Like, I think because every industry,
(28:10):
every industry is changing, whether it's because they're adopting AI,
which I've been a skeptic of from an environmental point
of view, but I see so many use cases where
it's driving carbon reduction more and really around efficiency more
than anything else. But so many use cases for that.
I think it's a very like you're saying, I think, yeah,
this pain, I think this moment we're in will create
(28:31):
a lot of opportunities. And I think just still every
industry is right for disruption. If you want to go big,
you have to go to industries that are heavy, that
actually have a big physical footprint in some way and
change them.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So you wouldn't recommend somebody start a company you pen
the phrase AI to it and then go try to
raise money. You'd actually go hard, good and focus on
the building.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Is that what I'm What I mean by that, Mitch,
is so you take a company called it like brain
Box AI. Brain Box AI was just acquired by trained technologists,
a Montreal startup about five or six years old. They've
grown incredibly fast. They use generat AI to make building
HVAC systems much smarter, so they cut consumption by twenty
(29:21):
to twenty five percent, and they can tell you with
ninety nine percent accuracy how many people who's going to
be in this space six hours from now, right, And
they can tell you the weather, and they can tell
you how much renewables are going to be on the grid,
and they can tell you the utility costs. Right, So
then they can say, okay, we got six hours to
get the temperature to the optimal point for when people
(29:43):
are in that space. We don't have to spike the energy,
which raises cost and draises carbon.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
We have the technologies and that's AI powering a system.
And so what that CEO said to me, Sam Ramdoi
really struck home. He was like, the future is really
for solving climate change. Is taking software and intelligence, you know,
in the digital world, and mapping it and marrying it
to the physical infrastructure, and that's how that's how we
(30:09):
move forward. And I think he's right, and I think
those are just when you can find him. I think
those are really enormous opportunities.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
One of the things that's going on in Washington, just
for Shorthand, is this kind of abandonment of the role
of government in capturing a lot of that data. And
so we're seeing orphan databases, some particularly around weather, which
would be key to the scenario you just describe, where
the HVAC system knows what's coming both today and over
(30:39):
the long term. Is there an opportunity in this kind
of moment of de federalization of data gathering for companies
to start up or to pick up one of these
databases and begin to use it in a way that
could be both profitable and better.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
For the world. I mean, I absolutely think so. I
think I suspect you think so as well. And we've
seen that underway probably also for I think about half
a decade. I actually in between some of these ventures,
in between well probably right before I started that second
(31:15):
furniture company, simply I mentioned I was the CEO of
a center called the Collider in Ashville that NOAH so
National Oceanic Atmosphere Admistration. It's data headquarters is in Ashville,
the National Centers for Invite right, the NCEI. And so
we spun up the center to say could we take
(31:35):
that data and these big brains and this ecosystem of
small businesses that are here using that data and create
a climate analytics innovation center. And so then you start
to say, okay, well, yeah, we want to look at
all this big data. We want to look at more
weather data. Noah has their balloons, sens and satellites and
all their how they're going. But then you have like
sale drones going out into the oceans collecting more data, right,
(31:59):
you have more nodes, You have citizen science where people
are collecting data on their phone. So these are massive opportunities.
I think that yes, because of AI and because of
ability to ingest that data and actually you know, gain
actual insights out of it. Yeah, I think that component
is you know, is potentially really big, really big.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That's really interesting because if you think about it, it's
a different organizing point for the environmental movement in this
context where we're all sort of grasping for what we
do next in order to make.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Progress completely completely. And and that piece around especially, I
mean that piece around citizen science is fascinating right where
you can do it around I've seen it. I've seen
it around soil and taking readings. I've seen it around
pollution and using iPhones to you know, to capture certain
amounts of data. And yeah, I think I think that
(32:49):
organizing that data, organizing the effort to understand, you know,
the physical world and what's happening, and then put it
into these smarter you know lll ms AI systems that
can create insights. I actually haven't even really thought about
it in a while since you raise it, but my
head's probably going to be spinning on three am.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Well, I'm glad we kept you up. I think it
seems like good things happen when you stay awake at night. Josh,
this has been a super cool conversation, as I expected
it would be. Thank you. How can people keep up
on what you're doing, which obviously would take a lot
of effort to really keep up on everything.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Thank you so much. Mitch. Get super dot Cool. That's
the website for our weekly newsletter, our weekly podcast. We're
on social I tend to be mostly on LinkedIn personally
kind of engaging and having conversation, posting information and would
love to connect with listeners who may be interested.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Well, Josh, thanks for joining us today. It's been fascinating.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Thank you, Mitch, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
You've been listening to a conversation with Josh Dorfman. He's
the host of The Lazy Environmentalist on Serious Exam and
the Sun Dance Channel, and he's also the CEO of Planted,
a low carb construction materials company who also recently launched
the super Coal podcast, which you can find at get
super dot Cool, Get supers All, one word, no space,
(34:10):
no dash, Get super dot Cool. Seeing the world through
the eyes of an entrepreneur is always interesting to me
because even the worst case scenario can be it can
blossom into a perceived opportunity, and the question is whether
the entrepreneur, as Josh says, has the passion and persistence
necessary to transform low value assets into a high value
(34:31):
product or service. And on the other side of that
equation is the challenge of getting people to embrace that
new value and integrated in their lives in other words,
how do you get consumer adoption of something that's green, sustainable,
and ultimately regenerative of our environment. So, in a nutshell,
that's the challenge faced by the environmental movement in these
deeply divided times. How do we create a middle ground
(34:53):
in which reasonable people can discuss new paths forward and
organize demand to drive adoption of a an environmentally responsible
and regenerative lifestyle. Now that lifestyle, of course, is not
a monolithic one way experience, my way or the highway approach,
but a personal collage of choices that each of us
makes to move away from an extractive, single use linear economy.
(35:17):
If enough of us take those steps, no matter what
those steps might be, they will add up to a
change in direction, to the opportunity to start to draw
down atmospheric co two and, as the Swiss reinsurance Company
A Leon's s recently suggested, even save capitalism from burning
down its foundations. If in fact this is the capitalist
(35:37):
center of the world, let's save it, let's not tear
it down. Josh's work at Supercool is another important source
of insight, and I urge you to tune into the show,
but also take a look at planted his construction material
startup because it's another model, one of many, for creating
opportunities to change society's environmental impact. At a time when
the United States is turning back to the past to
(35:59):
fossil fuels and continued global warming, as the rest of
the world is racing ahead to create a renewable future,
we need to lead the green transition to be the
economic leader in the renewable era that we have been
in the industrial era, when sustainability and regeneration will not
just be a consumer preference but the source of new
(36:19):
value creation. It's going to be a long road, and
now's the time to double down on our personal commitment
to reduce our impact and create a circular economy, which,
by the way, is a powerful way to reshore industry
as we kind of close down the borders. As Josh
and I talked about, logistics and local efficiencies are keys
(36:40):
to unleashing economic growth without tearing date nature down. Even
more so, folks, stay tuned. We're going to stay the
course no matter how bumpy this ride gets. And I
hope you'll take a look at another episode of sustainability
in your ear and learn a little bit more and
take action today. We've got more than five hundred shows
to share with your community, So write a review on
your favorite podcast platform to help your neighbors find us. Folks,
(37:03):
you're the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your coworkers,
the people you meet on the street that they can
find sustainability in your ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
Audible or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness that you prefer.
Thanks for your support. I'm Atracliffe. This is sustainability in
(37:25):
your ear and we will be back with another innovator
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and please let's all take
care of this beautiful planet of ours.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Have a green day.
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