Zero Waste Trash Talk
21 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago -A zero waste sustainability podcast offering global solutions and ideas originating from our East Nashville neighborhood. We discuss universal issues like circularity, recycling, reusing, composting, energy and climate justice. We'll share what our friends, neighbors and local businesses are doing and connect with innovative programs in other cities around the globe.
Homepage Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Zero Waste Coffee with Crema Nashville
May 21, 2021 14:50 - 51 minutes - 72.3 MBNashville's Crema Coffee business model is how we wish all businesses would operate. In our interview with Rachel Lehman we find out that Crema was one of the first Zero Waste businesses in Nashville and how they keep innovating to reduce waste and make the coffee world a better place. In addition to developing compostable coffee packaging, Crema implements costly innovations like electric delivery vehicles, reusable wholesale delivery crates and pays living wages for employees and growers...
Chat With Chattanooga Zero Waste
March 13, 2021 17:41 - 53 minutes - 74.6 MBWould you sneak a plastic bag monster costume into your State's Legislature and wear it to meet with lawmakers? This is just one of the interesting things we found out in this inspirational interview with Sadie and Zach, the organizers behind Zero Waste Chattanooga. We discuss their Zero Waste journey and how they educate their community about environmental issues. Sadie has a great take on "Remedy Messaging" as it relates to recycling. She sites studies that show people are more prone t...
How to Stay Environmentally Motivated During A Pandemic
February 04, 2021 20:21 - 15 minutes - 22.4 MBWith world wide Covid-19 deaths in the millions, political upheaval, social unrest and a tumultuous economy, continuing the conversation about sustainability sometimes feels like some kind of privileged guilty pleasure. Michael and Maris discuss the struggles of the past year and the importance of talking about sustainability in order to engage listeners and unify our environmental efforts to slow down the impending climate catastrophe.
Episode 17: Tennessee Environmental Council 50th Anniversary
December 08, 2020 17:33 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBDo you feel like you're the only one recycling, composting your food scraps and getting dirty looks from cashiers for bringing your own bags? Finding and supporting your local environmental organizations can be a great way to stay connected and leverage your environmental actions. ZWTT is active locally with Tennessee Environmental Council. Join us as we chat with CEO Jeff Barrie about the 50 year history of TEC and what their plans are for the future.
Episode 16: Zero Waste Gift Giving
November 22, 2020 19:23 - 44 minutes - 61.6 MBHave you thought about sustainable gift giving? How do you personalize a gift experience when sending an electronic gift card? Why do we even give gifts? Maris and Michael have a conversation about how to approach gift giving as Zero Waste practitioners.
Episode 15: How We Do Zero Waste
November 09, 2020 15:28 - 1 hour - 89.7 MBHow do you "pull a Maris"? Is there a waiter in East Nashville with a zero waste chopstick injury from Jess? How does Michael offset air conditioning for furry Akitas? Life is full of trade offs for what's good for us, the environment and our pocketbooks. Zero Waste isn't just trying to fit all of your trash into a mason jar. It's about conserving and reusing resources. The Trash Talk hosts share some of the things they do on a daily basis to lower consumption and produce less waste.
Episode 14: The Bloody Truth about Tampons & Pads
October 25, 2020 15:27 - 1 hour - 88.8 MBHey Ladies! Did you know that tampons and pads that we have been told to use our whole lives are actually toxic to our bodies? Maybe this isn’t news to you, but really these foreign objects we’re putting into our bodies are NOT good for us! and they are just going to be thrown AWAY - which we all know by now that there is no away. For this episode we invited fellow Zero Waste Nashville group member Larissa Maestro to explore the opportunities for healthier more sustainable feminine hygiene o...
Episode 13: Back To School Composting, Gardening and Food Donation Programs
October 05, 2020 22:19 - 1 hour - 85.7 MBKaren McIntyre from Nashville's Westmead Elementary is much more than a librarian. She's helped start a compost program, a school garden, recycling drives and a way for students to donate uneaten food from the lunchroom. She shares her successes and the lessons learned along the way to making her school an example for the entire Nashville school system. Karen is proof that one persons dedication can affect systemic change. Find out how you can support what she's doing and/or get inspired...
Episode 12: The Environmental Impact of Renting Your Items
September 20, 2020 16:46 - 48 minutes - 67.1 MBThere are a lot of items that sit in our closets, attics or basements that only get used a couple of times a year. Do you know how many resources it took to produce, ship and sell all that stuff so that it can just sit around unused? Ruckify is a new peer-to-peer rental marketplace that makes it super easy to put unused items back into circulation AND make money in the process! THEY ALSO PLANT A FRICKEN TREE FOR EVERY TRANSACTION! In episode 12, founder Steve Cody tells us how he started t...
Why You Need a Bidet
September 06, 2020 15:45 - 42 minutes - 59.3 MBIn this episode, Michael talks about his experience with his new bidet and about how the process works down to the nitty gritty detail. We also hear from a couple of listeners who gave us audio testimonials about why they love their bidets. Save some fricken trees by using a bidet and/or toilet paper made from recycled or sustainable materials. The average American uses 184 trees worth of toilet paper in their lifetime. That's a forest about the size of three football fields. Using tre...
Episode 10: Nashville Metro Zero Waste Master Plan
August 23, 2020 13:53 - 57 minutes - 80.8 MBDoes your city have a Zero Waste Plan? If it does, is it being implemented and/or championed by your elected officials? The Chairman of the Nashville Solid Waste Board, John Sherman, gives us some background on how and why Nashville has a Zero Waste Master Plan and what we need to do to support it.
Episode 9: Gleaning to End Food Waste
August 09, 2020 15:09 - 55 minutes - 77.4 MBGleaning is an ancient practice mentioned in the Old Testament and codified into law in some countries. Normally, over 1/3 of the food produced in the world is wasted but during the pandemic shutdown this was exacerbated as crops were being plowed under and milk dumped down drains as distribution channels shifted from institutions and restaurants to grocery stores. Jeannie Hunter from The Society of St. Andrew tells us how their program uses gleaning as a tool to end world hunger and help...
Episode 8: What's a Food Co-op and How Do You Start One
July 26, 2020 16:27 - 35 minutes - 49.7 MBWho wouldn't want a grocery store where they are part owners and can vote on the items being sold, where they come from and how they are packaged. Learn what a grocery co-op is and how to start one in our conversation with Ellery Richardson from Nashville Food Co-op. This is the first episode in a series about food waste and production. The concept of Zero Waste is to be circular and regenerative instead of linear and destructive. Food production, packaging, shipping, cooking and dispo...
Episode 7: The Insanity of Plastic Recycling
July 19, 2020 14:39 - 55 minutes - 75.9 MBIf plastic recycling is broken, why do we do it? It makes no sense financially or by any measure of success when it's a 90% failure rate. Even if it worked better, plastic can't be recycled more than 2-3 times before it falls apart so all we are doing is delaying the inevitable. We invited Alex Truelove, Director of U.S. PIRG’s Zero Waste program, to discuss his recent article "The insanity of plastic recycling" where he points out that doing the same thing over and over and expecting ...
Episode 6: Industrial Composting
July 10, 2020 14:23 - 1 hour - 96.1 MBIn this episode, Maris and Michael have a conversation with Clay Ezell from The Compost Company, an industrial composting facility, about how industrial composting differs from backyard composting and why Nashville is one of the few cities in the country who have a service like this that accepts food scraps and compostable plastics. We discuss why burying organic waste in a landfill is not composting and bounce around ideas for large scale composting including a look at Sevierville Solid...
Episode 5: Interview with Nashville Metro Public Works
June 20, 2020 22:33 - 1 hour - 102 MBJenn Harrman, the Nashville Public Works Waste Reduction Program Manager, answers our questions about what's recyclable in Nashville and where does it go? Like many cities, Nashville has had to adapt to a changing markets for recyclables. The rules for what plastics can be recycled have changed twice in the last year, causing some confusion. Listen to this episode to get to the nitty gritty of how things work at our Materials Recovery Facility and how the private contractor, Waste Managem...
Episode 4: Dumping is not Donating
June 13, 2020 13:59 - 1 hour - 102 MBWe touch base with Zero Waste Trash Talk family member Jess Johnson to discuss her experiences with donations as a home organizer. In addition to asking what each organization is accepting before just dumping items on them, she finds out what they do with the items they can't use. Then we have a chat with the amazing Leah Sherry from Turnip Green Creative Reuse. Her organization's goal is to divert usable materials from the landfill and from being recycled. Reuse is their mantra and t...
Down In The Dumps with The Story Of Plastic
May 23, 2020 18:21 - 1 hour - 124 MBIn Episode 3 we talk about watching the new documentary The Story of Plastic on Amazon Prime and we interview our friend John Hawkins, a Nashville waste diversion specialist and musician, to get his take on the problems with recycling. We discuss if we should stop recycling since it's broken and I think Michael might've even encouraged armed insurrection "John Wick Style". Did we mention that this isn't your normal Zero Waste Podcast with tips about crafting your garbage and stuffing ev...
Episode 2: Filling Good with Megan from The Good Fill
May 15, 2020 19:48 - 1 hour - 93.8 MBNashville's first zero waste, package free refill store owner, Megan Gill, talks to us about her zero waste journey. She moved back to the States from Costa Rica where she taught women who had been sex traffic victims how to become beauticians. Seeing how different consumerism is here in America, it made her want to start an ethical and sustainable zero waste store in Tennessee. We discuss how the recent tornado affected her business that was followed by the pandemic stay at home closure ...
Episode 1: Nothing Goes Away
May 08, 2020 15:02 - 39 minutes - 55.4 MBIn this first episode we talk about sustainability in Nashville and what we are doing to strengthen our community. It's a hyper local conversation with ideas that can be applied to communities all across the globe. We cover city composting options; new plastic recycling regulations and the problems with the triangle numbering system; how to dine out sustainably, and what you can do as individuals to limit your environmental footprint.
Teaser Episode
May 02, 2020 17:03 - 46 seconds - 2.19 MBIf you care about the planet and are the type of person who takes trash home with them to sort, you are the right audience for this podcast.