Sustainability In Your Ear Transcript: SePRO's Mark Heilman On Phosphorus, Waterways, And Invasive Species

Mitch Ratcliffe 0:08
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, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining me today.

Several of our recent interviews have turned on the problem of agricultural and home lawn products runoff into our waterways, and today we're going to talk about the consequences of and approaches to cleaning up this mess. Every summer, the same story repeats across America in one form or another. Lakes that families have enjoyed for generations suddenly turn a toxic green one summer. Half a million people in Toledo lose their drinking water overnight when Lake Erie blooms with poison algae. In Florida in 2018, a red tide cost the state $2.7 billion in lost tourism.

When phosphorus from fertilizers and runoff enters our waters, it acts like Miracle Grow for algae, creating massive blooms that choke aquatic life and produce toxins that can cause liver damage, neurological problems and even death in animals and humans. But some of the most damaged bodies of water in America are coming back to life, and our guest today is part of the solution.

Dr. Mark Heilman is vice president of environmental restoration and advocacy at SePRO. Mark has spent over two decades developing technologies that restore polluted lakes and rivers, and under his leadership, SePRO has restored 1.4 million acres of water and wetlands across North America. Take Moses Lake in Washington State—his team achieved a 42% reduction in harmful phosphorus levels, protecting more than $300 million in annual tourism revenue. And at Lake Maumelle in Arkansas, their work protected drinking water that 450,000 people rely on every day.

So get ready to explore how your weekend lawn care connects to toxic algae blooms, what emerging technologies might transform water protection, and what each of us can do to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. You can learn more about SePRO's restoration work at sepro.com—that's spelled S-E-P-R-O, sepro.com. We'll jump into water remediation after a quick commercial break. Stay tuned.

Mitch Ratcliffe 2:38
Welcome to the show, Mark.

Dr. Mark Heilman 2:39
How you doing today? Doing great, Mitch. How about yourself?

Mitch Ratcliffe 2:43
It's another sunny morning here in Southern Oregon.

I've lived on lakes for most of the past 30 years, and we've had a few instances of algae or other forms of water life growing into a green, gross mess. And I'm wondering, you know, I would stand there and look at the lake and think, "Ick." But what do you see and think, as a scientist, when you see that green, gooey surface starting to emerge?

Dr. Mark Heilman 3:10
Well, I go quickly to, first off, if it's an algal bloom, are people actively using the water in ways where maybe that's not the best idea? And then obviously, as a scientist, I'm thinking immediately about what's causing this—what are the factors that really drive the challenges, whether it's harmful algae or excessive weed growth, basically the things that make the water gross and not really attractive—and also what it means for the lake's ecology. Those are the things that run in my mind quickly. And then, how do you resolve those things?

Mitch Ratcliffe 3:48
Looking back over your two decades in the water treatment business, how has the water pollution problem, and particularly this kind of phosphorus runoff, changed? Is it getting worse, or are we getting better at managing this?

Dr. Mark Heilman 4:01
Well, unfortunately, I'd say that the trend is towards worse. EPA national lakes assessment shows that the number of overly productive lakes with poor water quality is increasing, and even some of our higher quality lakes are also seeing change. And so we've seen just more frequency, maybe more intensity, of particularly harmful algal blooms.

And then over that same period, I think we've increased our understanding of some of the challenges and risks associated with that environmental problem. What does it mean for animal life, ecology, and obviously human health when there's these bloom events going on? And what are the exposures that may create risk to human health in the environment?

Mitch Ratcliffe 4:57
So why is phosphorus in particular the villain in so many of these situations?

Dr. Mark Heilman 5:02
Well, in freshwater ecosystems, phosphorus is really the limiting nutrient that drives productivity. So plants and algae—well, all life needs a certain amount of phosphorus—but plants and algae need it for their metabolism, productivity, growth. And in freshwater systems, because of the chemistry, it's frequently in forms that are not immediately available.

So when phosphorus becomes more available in a freshwater environment, the productivity increases. And so what we've seen over decades and maybe in some cases centuries is the increased loading of phosphorus to our aquatic ecosystems, whether they be lakes, reservoirs or river systems, and eventually down to our coasts. And that has just translated into greater productivity and at some point tips into a different state of the ecosystem, where you have lots of planktonic algae growth. Mostly that's cyanobacteria growth, because they are very successful in acquiring and utilizing that phosphorus. And then ultimately you get the green scums, the excess growth, the poor water clarity, all of those things.

Mitch Ratcliffe 6:20
Are there other chemicals of concern, like glyphosate, that we need to think about that might not enhance productivity but actually kill the life in the water?

Dr. Mark Heilman 6:30
Yeah, I mean, US EPA has multiple functions in terms of regulating how things are used in the environment. The use of pesticides, both on the land or even in the water, is tightly regulated by US EPA, and they look at these factors and basically assess risk. So there's always a consideration of hazard with these materials. But when it gets down to assessing risk, it's a much more complex exercise, and that's the task that EPA has, and does a solid job at mitigating the risk to human health and the environment associated with those products.

Mitch Ratcliffe 7:11
At the end of the day, though, it comes down to how we use them. The regulations can give us guidance. Most people assume when they put fertilizer on their lawn in the spring that, you know, that's where it stays. How does it get into the waterways? And can you talk about some of the paths that that might be following that we would be surprised by?

Dr. Mark Heilman 7:30
So to talk about fertilizer—well, first off, back to your question on the pesticides: follow the label. That's really important. The label basically is critical to minimizing the risk associated with the use and mitigating all those things.

The fertilizer question's an interesting one, because we obviously, in a lot of settings, utilize fertilizer to increase productivity of crops, of lawns, gardens. If you go basically and use those materials right around water, it's not hard for stray material to enter the water. You may get some surface runoff that could take clippings, other material from the garden or the lawn or the crop, and move it more directly into the water, and those plant tissues carry nutrients.

I did a quick look into the literature, and about a bushel of grass clippings contains about a tenth of a pound of phosphorus. A bushel is like a small garbage bag. So just to calibrate, if you just dump your grass clippings right into a waterway, that tenth of a pound of phosphorus can grow up to 50 pounds of algae. And so that's just something to think about.

People, just in your common practices and how we use fertilizers, we just want to minimize their ability to quickly get to the water and make sure that the biomass, the plant vegetation biomass that they're helping produce, that's also staying as much as possible on the landscape and not moving to the water.

Mitch Ratcliffe 9:13
It's interesting—a bushel of clippings produces as much phosphorus as a box of Miracle Grow, based on what I've read on the cover of a box of Miracle Grow.

Dr. Mark Heilman 9:23
It's a well-recognized phenomenon that plant material has the nutrients. So I just encourage everyone, in that spirit of thinking locally or acting locally, thinking globally, to just take common sense practices that you learn about how to best maintain your property and utilize those relative to nutrients and how they might be influencing our water quality.

Mitch Ratcliffe 9:50
So let's talk about one of the stories of recovery that you've participated in—Moses Lake, Washington. Moses Lake is an interesting lake because it's out in the middle of this high desert. There's an Air Force base there. Was it primarily agricultural runoff, or was there also runoff from the base that contributed to the algal bloom that you were treating?

Dr. Mark Heilman 10:13
You know, Moses Lake had a lot of different sources. Agricultural is one, the other land uses around the lake. I'm not as familiar with all of them, but Moses Lake is well documented in terms of phosphorus loading in a variety of routes to the water, from the watershed to the lake or to the reservoir in this case.

Now, our efforts were designed to—after a long period of discussion, assessment and some search for resources by various local regional government partners—they were able to implement some initial start of restoring the lake, dealing with the excess phosphorus in that system, with a combined strategy of dealing with some of the legacy phosphorus loading to the lake sediments, which is definitely a major driver of a lot of what we see in poor water quality in our lake systems. And then they also looked at the external—the most obvious external load to the reservoir, which was one creek coming in from the north. And we designed an initial strategy to address that immediate external loading of new phosphorus into the system.

Mitch Ratcliffe 11:23
So how do you get the phosphorus out? Is it a matter of treating the water by chemical application, or is it a process that you extract the water, treat it and put it back? Can you talk us through that?

Dr. Mark Heilman 11:36
Our processes are involved in adding naturally occurring minerals in custom design formulations and taking advantage of reactions that naturally occur to make phosphorus in a free form less available. So we're looking to basically sequester that readily available phosphorus and put it into an unavailable form, similar to what it was before it was ever mobilized by some of our activities to utilize fertilizers and things like that. So ultimately, that's the strategy. We want to directly tie up the excess phosphorus in the impacted environments and make it readily unavailable so we can shut down this runaway cycle of productivity.

Mitch Ratcliffe 12:21
So as you mentioned a moment ago, that sediment can also hold this phosphorus over time. After a treatment like that, does it tend to return because of the affected sediments?

Dr. Mark Heilman 12:33
What we're trying to do in the sediment—our process—we assess the availability of different fractions of phosphorus in the sediment. And the sediment profile will contain a variety of forms of phosphorus: some that are soluble and reactive and readily available, others in an organic form that are less available but soon will be available, and then there's other fractions. And we calculate the most readily available phosphorus, and that's what we target in a program designed to address that excess phosphorus and then, as a result, shift the water quality back towards what it should be.

Mitch Ratcliffe 13:11
When you treat a lake, it sounds like you're performing surgery on an entire ecosystem. How do you assess and prepare that patient? You visited Moses Lake, for instance. What was the process you went through to understand all the potential outcomes that you had to address, rather than simply just, you know, "We have to deal with phosphorus alone," because it's not just a point problem—it's a systems problem.

Dr. Mark Heilman 13:37
The first step in that is assessing the available data for the lake. Hopefully, there's a good data set of water quality monitoring and some of the related environmental factors that influence the poor water quality of the system. So we assess that available data closely, determine if it's sufficient to design a strategy to begin to improve the water quality, identify gaps if it's not, and determine an efficient strategy to collect that information to be able to complete the full plan, or what we call prescription, for management.

That prescription, again, identifies all these factors and designs the best strategy that we can to improve the lake's water quality predictably, you know, driven by addressing excess phosphorus and shifting the system again so the water quality improves. And then in that process, we also—there's a lot of public education, outreach, engagement, allowing stakeholders to understand how this all works, what the process would look like, and then also decision makers, who need to help find the resources to do this kind of work. There's a lot of discussions around that.

And ultimately, when all that aligns, you have local consensus, you have the resources available, we implement the management program. And the management program could take several years, based on funding and the scope of the problem, to design something that is going to have the longer term best impact. However, usually right up front in the first number of months or year of work in a multi-year program, we see very clear changes in water quality, because we're right at that point addressing the immediately most available forms of phosphorus with the management program.

Mitch Ratcliffe 15:45
Who typically pays for these kinds of services? Is this a community cost? Is it the states that are dealing with this, or does the federal government intervene and provide funding for this kind of cleanup?

Dr. Mark Heilman 15:56
All of it. I think smaller water bodies—often it becomes necessary for the private citizen stakeholders to engage and do the work. Smaller lakes, lake associations engage and can support the work. And as the lakes get larger, the systems, the public systems increase in scale. Obviously, regional or municipal, regional, state and even federal resources are needed. And that's generally been the model.

EPA, under the Clean Water Act, has had grant programs for water quality improvement and dealing with point source and non-point source pollution. Much of this is falling in the realm of non-point source coming into lakes and reservoirs, and so there's programs at the federal level that cost share with states to allow this kind of work, to support this kind of work. But those resources are, relative to the scope of the problem, insufficient.

Mitch Ratcliffe 16:56
Let's imagine it's Saturday morning, and I'm standing in the backyard and Gary, my neighbor, is using his fertilizer spreader. What should I tell him about all the ways that his activity might hit my wallet, his wallet and both of our health?

Dr. Mark Heilman 17:12
Great question. Essentially, the practices that we do at local scale, small scales, our individual activities probably don't immediately move the needle at scale, but when you add up all the activity that's happening in a watershed, they do make a difference. And I think everyone just needs to understand these principles.

You know, I would basically just see if he understands—he or she understands—the links associated with excess nutrients, again, on our properties and our landscape, and what it might mean for water quality. And just, again, shift the thinking to, "Well, maybe I can use less. Maybe I need to be more targeted in where I use this. Maybe I can change certain parts of my property to be less intensive as far as their nutrient needs."

I think that's the beginning of the process—just incremental improvements that we can do in our everyday practices with our own properties, things we're engaged with directly. And if enough of that occurs, we'll move the needle at scale.

Mitch Ratcliffe 18:22
This is a great place to stop and take a break because we're into the process, but there's a lot more to unpack. Stay tuned, folks. We'll be right back.

Mitch Ratcliffe 18:35
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let's get back to the water pollution remediation meditation with Dr. Mark Heilman, who is vice president of environmental restoration and advocacy at SePRO.

Mark, in Arkansas, Lake Maumelle—I think I'm pronouncing it correctly—you were protecting the drinking water of 450,000 people. How does a city get into that kind of a pickle in the first place, and how close did they come to really running out of water?

Dr. Mark Heilman 19:05
Lake Maumelle—the situation there was an invasive aquatic plant that grew over a large section of the reservoir, which again has primary drinking water function for that area. And the plants themselves are different relative to things like harmful algae. This system actually has good water quality. It's not having issues with harmful algal blooms, but the excessive vegetation, submersed plants, was creating a shift in availability of organic carbon in the reservoir.

That organic carbon and productivity, basically, when the water enters the treatment plant, they need to take those things out and clean up the water. And that process can become more complicated as the organic material increases in the bulk water. So that was ultimately, I think, their primary concern—just longer term, that excess productivity from the invasive aquatic plant that was putting some pressure on their processes, and they didn't want that to occur over the long run.

Mitch Ratcliffe 20:16
So do you treat that again with the minerals that you were describing before? Or is that more like harvesting the weeds?

Dr. Mark Heilman 20:23
Well, there'd be a variety of strategies, depending on scale. Hydrilla is a particularly challenging invasive aquatic plant. It reproduces from subterranean propagules called tubers, and can do so successfully year after year after year, even if you remove the actively growing parts on top.

So utilities in a variety of places around the United States who are dealing with this plant are shifting to looking at, "Can we use appropriate aquatic herbicides approved by US EPA to, in a very targeted and selective manner, remove the problem plant like hydrilla and dial it in such that there's no conflicts with the drinking water treatment process? There's no conflicts with any of the municipal water uses." So it's a very detailed strategy implemented very well, and it has been done successfully in different systems now for 10 or 20 years.

Mitch Ratcliffe 21:25
Does the rising temperature of the planet, which includes the incidence of stronger storms, longer droughts and other impacts, change the problem that we face over the course of the next 10 to 15 years? Are we going to see algal blooms or plant infestations like you're describing with hydrilla more frequently, more intensely? What should we be getting ready for?

Dr. Mark Heilman 21:52
Well, warming temperatures of our waterways—that increases, again, productivity, metabolism in terms of the algal issues, or cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria like that warmer water, so their growth can be favored by warmer water temperatures.

Your invasive plants, such as hydrilla, are disturbance specialists. So changing environmental conditions, heavy precipitation events, changes in water quality or habitat quality—those things favor invasive species, and our invasive plants can get a foothold easier and be competitively more successful in that disturbed environment. So anything we see changing relative to longer term trends and changing rapidly in the environment can stimulate challenges with some of the water quality invasive species issues that we're seeing today.

Mitch Ratcliffe 22:51
Disturbance specialists is a very interesting phrase. So what you're saying is that there are plants or algae that are prepared to take advantage of the disruptions that are ahead. So what are the three that we should be most observant with regard to?

Dr. Mark Heilman 23:08
Well, relative to invasive aquatic plants, hydrilla is the number one problem plant that we see in the water, in lakes and reservoirs here in the US. From an emergent perspective, we see plants like Phragmites in the Great Lakes and many other places around some of our waterways. That plant is in that category of a non-native and very invasive species. So those are two that come to mind right off the top of my head on the invasive plant side.

When you talk about invasive animals, there's a whole—in aquatic sites—there's a whole myriad of problem species, from fish to invasive mussels. Probably too much to get into much detail here.

Mitch Ratcliffe 23:58
Sounds good. I don't want to get too deep into that, because it's going to sound like we're overwhelmed by this problem. And it sounds as though we are fairly well prepared—I don't want to overstate it—that we're headed into this potentially with the tools we need to respond. Is that a fair assessment?

Dr. Mark Heilman 24:14
I think lake managers have a good handle on strategies to address these problems. One of the number one actions that we can all take is related to prevention. Preventing these problems, whether it's an invasive species or a water quality issue—it's easier to prevent, takes less resources and investment to prevent them than to actually try to resolve them once these problems are in the environment as a new species introduced or a lake that is highly impaired. It's easier to protect these systems than it is to restore them.

Mitch Ratcliffe 24:53
Well, talk a little about what you're doing with local communities and tribal communities. How important is the human element in the prevention and restoration work that you do at SePRO?

Dr. Mark Heilman 25:05
Critical. Water is a public resource at all levels, and we need our communities to understand and protect the value of that water. And everyone is looking through that or looking at those issues through a different lens. You have your shoreline residents. You have your casual lake users who come in to recreate. Fishermen, waterfowl hunters, tribal communities that have long-term cultural practices around the utilization of lakes and their intersection of their lives with the lake on many levels. These are all things that are really critical to recognize.

And so I think that public education and outreach is really a critical piece, and then overlaying that with the activities, the engagement and ultimately, political levels, to align organizations across the landscape to deal with large scale problems like this. And that's some of the more challenging aspects of it—the people and the politics.

Mitch Ratcliffe 26:16
Do you find people don't want to deal with the problem or acknowledge the problem, or is it more a matter of changing the way they think about the problem?

Dr. Mark Heilman 26:24
I would say the latter. I think, especially if the problem is very obvious relative to how we all perceive water. When you see green algal scums from cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms, it's very obvious, just instinctively that that's not good water. And the smells and things that come off of those bloom events, you recognize immediately that that's not right. When you see lakes covered over with invasive aquatic plants, it should be open water—it's very obvious that it's a problem.

The issue gets down to, "Okay, well, how do we resolve these things, and what's the best strategy? What's going to provide short term relief versus long term, sustainable outcomes and benefits?" And that's where the discussions get more dynamic, because there's lots of different perspectives on how to implement these things and where should energy and resources be placed to this issue relative to all the other things that we're dealing with in society.

Mitch Ratcliffe 27:28
Another thing I wanted to ask you about is runoff from wildfire. About a third of Americans' drinking water comes from our national forests, and we're both seeing those burn more frequently, which produces a lot of unusual runoff relative to historical levels, but there's also the use of various fire suppressants. Does that contribute to downstream impacts that we need to be aware of?

Dr. Mark Heilman 27:52
I will say I'm not as familiar with some of the fire practices that are occurring out in the west. I certainly recognize some of the challenges in the intensity and frequency and magnitude of fires. I wouldn't be able to comment too much on the consequences other than disturbed landscapes like that do lead to runoff that can impact the water quality associated with our lakes and reservoirs and streams in areas around wildfire events.

Mitch Ratcliffe 28:23
Again, disturbance specialists get their opportunity because of the disruption to the ecosystem. That's what we have to be thinking about. Interesting.

We have listeners who want to take action. What can they do to be part of the solution and not the problem? What are the three things that they should think about doing differently, starting this weekend?

Dr. Mark Heilman 28:42
Well, I think the practices around properties relative to water quality, we already talked about some of those things. You know, how we encourage our plant communities on our properties to be as productive and as healthy as possible with an efficient—the least amount of nutrients added. I think that's a good step.

Mitch Ratcliffe 29:06
Let me ask about that. Should we be thinking about using—because you mentioned that a bushel of clippings also has a great deal of phosphorus in it—is mulching and composting potentially contributing to the runoff of phosphorus? Or is that a healthier way than using, for instance, a commercial product, dumping a lot of it on the ground?

Dr. Mark Heilman 29:26
Well, I think as much as you can recycle the biomass that is growing on an individual property or area and feeding it back into growth for that area, that makes total sense. And that would be just a simple choice—look for those kinds of opportunities. Again, put your clippings back on your yard through a mulching of your lawnmower, for example, versus collecting the clippings and sending them to your landfill or wherever. Those are simple steps.

I think on the other things, you know, a couple other things would be: be aware of the water quality issues in your community.

Mitch Ratcliffe 30:09
How would you suggest I do that? I mean, obviously there's walking around and looking, but are there typically reports that the city or the water management organization in the city publishes that I should be paying attention to?

Dr. Mark Heilman 30:23
Yeah, actually, your municipal drinking water systems provide regular reports. But I think also, if you dig through website information from county or water management districts in the region, you can generally get a lot of great information about how lakes and reservoirs, your streams and rivers, how all those are functioning, and just look for that information. I mean, you're going to see more of it in the media, in news stories, et cetera. But I think also everyone can seek out this information, learn a little bit more each day, reach out to university and other folks who have good information about what's going on in an area, a region or a state. Universities have great resources there on water quality and water management. So look for those kinds of things.

And then obviously, when you are living in an affected area, describe this issue to your representatives in state legislature or local government or whatever. Be active as a citizen. Let them know that this is a problem. They need to understand that so that they can process it and calibrate on it relative to all the issues that they're dealing with. And so I would just encourage those, I think, three activities.

Mitch Ratcliffe 31:49
It only becomes important to our political leaders when the citizens make it important to them—an absolutely critical point. I'm wondering if you are also looking at some emerging technologies or alternative solutions, natural solutions as well, that might be emerging over the next decade or so as we head into a deeper form of climate change.

Dr. Mark Heilman 32:11
I led our aquatic research effort with the company for about 20 years, and we were always looking for innovative strategies to deal with these challenges, and that's going to continue. We just need to continuously get better at our methods, better at our strategies, make them more targeted, reduce any risks associated with use in the environment as best we can. And that's just the iterative process involved.

Mitch Ratcliffe 32:41
Well, Mark, this has been really interesting. Thank you so much for your time. How can folks learn more about SePRO and your work?

Dr. Mark Heilman 32:48
Obviously, go to our website. That's the fastest way to get in touch with us—sepro.com. And we also have our water quality division, eutrofix.com. And both those are great starting points to learn more about us and what we do.

Mitch Ratcliffe 33:03
Thank you, Mark. Appreciate the time today. Take care.

Dr. Mark Heilman 33:06
Take care.

Mitch Ratcliffe 33:07
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You've been listening to a conversation with Dr. Mark Heilman, Vice President of Environmental Restoration and Advocacy at the waterway remediation company, SePRO Corporation. SePRO is spelled S-E-P-R-O, and you can learn more about SePRO at sepro.com.

You know, wetlands are an essential carbon sink. They're breeding grounds for wildlife, birds and fish, as well as beautiful locations to enjoy and appreciate. But synthetic fertilizers and agricultural runoff are contributing to the continuing loss of pristine waters in our lakes, streams, along our coastlines and in many wetlands across the country. We need to care for them and, unfortunately, restore them when they're damaged by invasive species like hydrilla and cyanobacteria.

The best thing we can do, as Mark explained, is prevent the escape of lawn care products and discarded biomass that raise phosphorus levels. I was particularly struck by the fact that a bushel of leaves or lawn clippings can pollute waterways with as much phosphorus as a box of Miracle Grow. It points to another mistake in American gardening: the removal of material that should be reintegrated into the lawn and garden, rather than shipped to a landfill for disposal.

Nature covers the ground with leaves for a reason. They are the ingredients for next year's growth. And we talk a lot about creating circular economies on this show, and here's one you can easily start at home and keep biomass in circulation on your land by mulching, composting, and—I know, perish the thought, it's a big conversation topic here at my house—leaving the leaves laying beneath your favorite trees. Don't rake them up. They were part of an annual ecological cycle long before we arrived, until we invented the rake and began imitating British and French gardeners.

Nature is a balanced system, and we interrupt it when we over-fertilize or bag and dump our gardening waste. In fact, nature doesn't see waste anywhere. We invented that idea. So let's stop contributing and leave that stuff on the ground where it belongs.

Mark's work focuses on disturbance specialist species, as he explained. They see a niche and they invade it, pushing out native species and ruining local ecosystem cycles. But we are the disturbers that open the door for those invaders. If we take the time to understand where our runoff flows, how to use the gifts of autumn from leaves to garden clippings to better manage our ecological impact, we can be a preserver, not a disturber, and nature will thank you.

So stay tuned. We'll continue to watch wetlands, water and invasive species in the future. Hey, and I hope you can do me a favor and share an episode of Sustainability In Your Ear with your friends or family. We've got more than 500 shows to share with your community, and if you take a moment to write a review on your favorite podcast platform, we'd really appreciate it. It'll help your neighbors find us.

You folks are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas so we create less waste. Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, 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 they prefer. Thank you for your support, folks. We appreciate it.

I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let's all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.