ishopnsavetheplanet

Too small, too crooked, too fat, too thin or past its due date. In Germany, a truckload of food is wasted and thrown away every minute. Per year this amounts to 18 million tons of food waste in Germany alone. Sounds crazy? If food waste were a country it would be the third largest CO2 emitter in the world after China and the USA (Check out: Food Waste – The Dumbest Problem video). This shows how reducing food waste is one of the two major factors we need to focus on in order to help halt climate destruction.  SIRPLUS is a young Berlin-based Social Impact Startup, which focuses on saving…

While on a family vacation in Kauai in 2010, Jeremy Lang, the founder, and CEO of Pela Case saw first hand the damage plastic was doing to our oceans.  Jeremy spent years experimenting with new materials to try and find an alternative to plastic that could be used for everyday products. He came up with a 100% compostable sustainable, eco-friendly material free of BPA, lead, cadmium, and phthalates. The Pela phone case has the potential to replace the more than 1 Billion plastic phone cases sold every year around the globe while returning back to the earth gracefully when you’re done with it.  All you have to do is throw…

Sophia Hoffmann is a vegan chef and cookbook author from Berlin, Germany. She also describes herself as an activist as she effortlessly branches out to connected topics such as social justice, environmentalism, and conscious consumerism. Currently, you can enjoy her delicious recipes at Isla Coffee, a Berlin-based Café focused on a Circular Economy.  Sophia also gives and participates in talks aimed at Zero Waste cooking, food value and conscious consumerism at numerous conferences and workshops. What I like about Sophia’s work is that she touches on topics that are interconnected. Food waste is a major issue and driving force to the climate crisis we are witnessing. Food production is only possible…

Ecosia is a search engine that uses its profit from your searches to plant trees where they are most needed. With the free browser extension and the Ecosia APP you automatically plant trees with every search. Trees make for a happy environment, healthy people, and strong economies and Ecosia is planting trees all around the world. The more we use this search engine, the closer we get to saving our planet. Ecosia finances and coordinates an ever-growing list of projects which seem like all my dreams are coming true! However, compared to the mass destruction of valuable biodiversity around the globe (National Geographic), it’s more like a race against time…

Otter Surfboards are carefully manufactured in Cornwall, UK, by James Otter and his team of woodworkers and surfers. Wooden surfboards stand separate from the vast majority of petrochemical-derived surfboards as they glide smoothly and gracefully through the water. Otter Surfboards are designed and handcrafted to last. They also look beautiful showing the grains and natural patterns within the sustainably sourced, local timber. These hollow, skin and frame wooden surfboards not only are superior in quality and duress, but they also cause no harm to the planet. Since the first wave riding tools were constructed, wood has been used as material. Otter Surfboards strive to find the perfect match of best…

Norton Point is an eyewear brand based on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, MA, US. They believe that the 8 million metric tons of plastic flowing into our oceans is one of our planet’s greatest environmental challenges and so they have chosen to become part of the solution. Norton Point has developed the first line of eyewear made from recovered high-density-polyethylene (HDPE) ocean plastics. HDPE is a consumer plastic used in millions of products around the world and is one of the most common plastics you will find today. For every product sold they are committed to clean-up one pound of plastic from the ocean. They also give back 5%…

Addiopizzo is a Non-Profit organization based in Sicily. This cultural revolution and volunteer-based,  non-partisan association opposing the Mafia system,  was born by a fantastic idea of a group of young people in Palermo in 2004. Their initial action was to print an anti-mafia slogan on small stickers and to plaster the city of Palermo secretly by night bringing awareness to one of the main problems facing Palermo.  Pizzo is Sicilian slang for the protection money that the Mafia manages to extort from about 80 percent of small businesses in Palermo and throughout the Island of Sicily.  Addiopizzo literally means “goodbye pizzo” and the bold idea behind it is to cut…

Plastic Bank, a Social Enterprise based in Vancouver, BC, has created a groundbreaking and yet so simple approach to stopping plastic from entering the ocean. In collaboration with various sponsors, Plastic Bank currently operates in Haiti, the Philippines, and Indonesia. And, as it is growing, plans to expand across the globe to locations next in line such as Brazil, South Africa, the Vatican, Panama, and India.  Founded in 2013 by Shaun Frankson and David Katz, their mission builds on two paradigms. In order to prevent an ever growing amount of plastic from flowing into the ocean, the plastic tap, aka the production of new, virgin plastic needs to be turned…

When people die, usually one of two things happen to their bodies: Either they are buried below ground in caskets, or they are cremated, reduced to bone fragments by intense heat. However, thanks to recent initiatives we could soon experience another option—human composting. This turns the body into nutrient-rich soil naturally in about 30 days. Just a few weeks ago I held a workshop at a primary school on Earth Day and met Susan Koswan, an inspiring eco-activist, and instigator of the Good Green Death Project. In summary, her project aims to make human remains composting a realistic, full-circle and eco-friendly alternative to the pros and cons of today’s funeral…

In case you haven’t heard of or read about one of my favorite initiatives, I feel excited to introduce to you Precious Plastic. Founded in 2013, this group of creatives based in the Netherlands provides open source machines, tools, knowledge, and infrastructures to transform plastic waste into valuable products. Their vision is to boost plastic recycling worldwide. The bottom-up approach aims to bring Precious Plastic technologies and knowledge to everyone, for free. The machines empower people around the planet to start recycling plastic and create new financial value from this ubiquitous free resource – plastic waste. The machines and workspace are specifically designed and developed using universal materials and basic…