Remarkable People Behind the Podcast: Sustainable Technologies

Hi, everybody, it's Peg Fitzpatrick, and we are here for behind the Podcast for Remarkable People with Jeffrey C. Jeffrey.

Wow.

If you're mad, just write. Jeffrey. Jeffrey, how could you do that? Jeffrey? Mr. Kawasaki is not joining us today, so you're going to have us. We'll be talking about this week's podcast, which was a fascinating topic that we have not covered before. And I love the depth of, of, of different guests that we have on the podcast. Yeah, I say it's my podcast, it's guys podcast. But I've, you know, we've worked on it. We work a lot since the very, very start. So I always feel like it's mine too, because I've been producing it for so long and Jeff's been with us since it went public. Since our first. Right. Since we went live on our first one. Yeah. So, yeah. So everybody, hello and Happy Wednesday. Leave a comment and tell us, did you listen to the episode yet? And where did you listen to it? Do you like to go to Apple Podcasts, podchaser, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcast?

Yeah.

Is it Google Podcast?

I think it's Google Podcast. I think that's what it is now. It changes. But by the way, folks, if you haven't done it yet, you can go here. Yeah, you can keep mentioning them all there. If you go to the website, you can, you can, you can easily find. Subscribe to your favorite player. If you click. If you hold this up and just, you know, put your phone there, you can actually go right to it and check it out. So we'd love it if you guys would leave a rating and review, because it really does help us out. But I did not see, I did not see this podcast coming, this subject, because it was like.

Yeah.

And it was. But it was fascinating. Very fascinating.

Yes.

So, yes, today it's all about. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Oh, it's about sustainable, you know, living. And I mean, what would you, what would you call it, Peg?

Well, it's waste management, really. It's. It's. Yeah. And it's really things that I think this. The person that. Our guest was Australian. Olympia Yerger is Australian. But it's a global issue. Food waste. There's huge amounts of waste, especially in America. I read a stat that was like 30 to 40% of our food production gets sent to the landfill, which is horrible. There's not room for this. It's, you know, we've lived in this disposable society. We, meaning everybody globally, and we're just throwing stuff out and we're you know, we're killing our planet. So this guest has a really, really interesting solution for handling waste. So let's throw up our icebreakers.

Yes, this is interesting one. Are you concerned about waste? So, you know, when you're a kid, like, I was thinking about this question is like, I, I, you know, you don't care. But now when you're older, you think about your kids and your grandkids and how messy the planet is and how, you know, we waste, at least in. In our society. Like, if you've ever gone overseas and, like, went on to India and, you know, Egypt and some other places, you know, how, you know, it's different over there, and they don't tend to waste like we do here in America. And I'm very concerned about waste. I want to teach my kid not to waste. I was that parent who was like.

Or both kids.

Just one. Just one of the kids. Yeah. The other one's.

Jeff's kids are gonna be.

But that I wanted to, you know, I want to make sure that they. I was a kid, the dad who made them clean their plate. I mean, I was. I raised. I don't know if you were raised that way, Peg, but I was. So I always. Yeah, you don't waste stuff, so.

Right. Yeah. We didn't have a lot of food growing up, so, yeah, we didn't waste it either. But the thing is, you know, I think in America and. And maybe I don't know if it's the same everywhere else, but, you know, you put your. You do your trash, you put it out, you put it through the road, and it would go. And when we were little, there wasn't even recycling. So you think that you did your part by just getting your trash out, and then where does that go? Nobody knows where that goes. Nobody knows what happens to that. It was just getting shipped off. And now other countries are like, hey, we don't want your garbage. You know, hey, America, you are wasteful. So we have to.

Yeah, this is a whole other subject. But that trash they're talking about, you know, there's so much microplastics now in the ocean, and there's these huge floating garbage islands now. It's really scary. So that's a whole new subject.

I just read an article the other day that said babies have a lot of microplastic in them because of the water.

Yeah, that's. Yeah.

So we're concerned about waste. Are you guys concerned about waste?

Yes, we are concerned about waste. So this is so on that same line of Thinking is like, how much food do you throw away a week? This is a interesting question. So I think I. And I think we've gotten a lot better with this, especially since the kids are out and we've really kind of streamlined things. But just like you were saying, Peg, that what was the stat that you had found about how much we throw away as a nation?

Oh, well, foods takes up more space in US landfills than anything else. And globally, we waste about 1.54 billion tons of food every year. But Americans discard more food than any other country. 40 million tons, or 30 to 40% of the entire food supply, which is a lot. And then the other. The other really scary stat I found was, according to the World Wildlife Federation, the production of wasted food in the United States is equivalent to the greenhouse emissions of 30, 37 million cars. If American continues on the same path with food loss, the environmental impact could be huge. So, food waste. We had a refrigerator that was not that old when we moved into the house now, but it did not work well. And there was, like, only a small section of the refrigerator that didn't freeze stuff. So if you put celery on the wrong tray, it froze it. So we had so much food waste, and it was really frustrating. I finally was like, we have to get a new fridge because, you know, we're wasting a lot of food, and it's not our fault. It's just, you know, you have lettuce and it's bad within a day or something like that. So we now have a new refrigerator, which is totally efficient and amazing. So the. Our food waste has gone way down because things are staying better in the refrigerator.

Right.

I did see another little stat that said that people read the food expiration dates wrong. And that's a big reason that people in the. In the United States are.

My son. So paranoid research that, like, at midnight on the night the milk goes out, he won't drink it. He just. He can't stand. And I'm like, it's not that. Just. It's not clumpy. Anyway, so we've got John Rogers saying the Remarkable People podcast day was awesome. Love me some bugs that eat food waste. So we're gonna talk about that. That. Yeah. So that was the whole thing about this. And one of the things you're talking about throwing things away. I don't know if you've ever worked in, like, a food kitchen or. A lot of times they'll get, like, not. Not bad, but, like, yesterday's food to serve, you know, and you take it and you think about how much. And that's just like a small percentage of those restaurants, you know, give that away. But there's a lot of it. And you think about just one. Those. And then compounded from, you know, across the nation, there's a lot of stuff we throw away.

Right? What is that? Harvest America. There's some, there's some company that started that that they are connecting, you know, so the food doesn't get thrown out.

Yeah.

It gets given to people. So.

So on that same line, what, how, how, how many of you guys have tried plant based meat substitute that's been, you know, this past year? It's kind of been in the news. Didn't impossible meat go public or something like that?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And Wendy's or Burger King, I can't remember which one has the impossible burger.

Burger King.

Burger King. In fact, a lot of my. So I do Home chef. It's like what I do is I get home stuff in. That's one of the ways we cut. We don't have any waste. We have enough for my wife and my. I cook it, we eat it, it's done. So we don't have any waste. But they have a. For one of their meat options, you can substitute impossible meat. So which is. It's starting to become everywhere. So have you tried any of the plant based meat substitutes, Peg? Have you done it?

I have. I actually like some. There's some good ones. One of our daughters was vegetarian for quite a while, so we did a lot of those things. And I tested different kinds. I've done like the Morning Star little burger.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We have the veggie patties. There's a brand called like corn. It's Q, U O R M. They make a, like a meat crumble that is very good because sometimes they're just weird if you try to make like something with it. Like the texture is weird or something. But that one is very good. So you just have to like play around. There are so many options now and Aldi's and Whole Foods and we have a co op here which is kind of like a. It's like a local co op and they have a lot of good choices. So it's a lot easier to find plant based meat substitutes. And that is a way. Another way that you can help the planet is to not eat meat every day, which is a tough one for some people. Just in Texas. Texas is like, nope, we need meat twice a day.

Well, there is. I mean, it's really surprising you can find plant based substitutes in all the stores. So it's not like Texas is the only people without it. So I mean there's a lot of people who do eat that. So John says he has eaten it and it's great. So he likes it. So thanks John for over on YouTube watching us over there and saying how much you like it. So that leads right into what we're going to be talking about the, the whole podcast day. If you haven't checked out the podcast, you can find out more about that@remarkablepeople.com so make sure you guys head over there and if you haven't subscribed and or downloaded it, it's right there ready for you. The transcripts there. It looks beautiful. Peg has got a new little player.

It's not on this post but.

But it's coming. It's still, it's still beautiful no matter what's happening. But the, this is one of the things about this episode is that using bugs as a food substitute but also taking care of waste. And so this is the question have you ever eaten bugs? And would you. So have you ever eaten bugs? Not. I mean, I think we all have. What do they say? Like every year we eat like 10 spiders while we're sleeping or something. They crawl in our mouth.

So does it count if you ate one of the things in Mexico that came in the tequila?

No. That's cheating that. So I have. And it, you know, I, I have. There's a, at a. I can't remember what museum it is, but you. They was even, they were, they even had like a dispensary dispenser, like a, a snack machine that would serve bugs in a thing. And it was like barbecued crickets. And I ate a box of those. They weren't bad.

It tastes like, like barbecue. Yeah.

I mean it wasn't bad. It was crunchy. It was crunchy. So I, you know, and they talk a lot about this on the podcast about the ick factor. So, you know, getting over the ick factor. And it's so funny because I just, I don't know. You've seen the movie oh Ice Piercer about. It's got Chris Evans and it's about. It's a science fiction thing. It's a train. It circles the. The globe and it's because of this cataclysm. And anyway they, there's a. The poor people in the back and the rich people are up front and they have a revolt. But anyway they eat these Titanic on a Train. Yeah. They eat these protein bars and they break into the next car where all the proteins bars are being made and they're eating them. They're like, oh, it's still warm. And Chris Evans lifts open the top of it and looks down and it's all bugs. And they're grinding up bugs to make this. And he's like. And so we. I mean, there's a built in, ick factor, but they are so how. They're so green. I mean, how much you can grow them, you know, and how much protein they put out. So, Peg, would you eat bugs?

I don't know. I do remember in geography, like, watching different culture things where they would, like, cook the grubs and things, and they were like, they would serve them to me. You can be like, here's great, you know, so in different parts of the world, people eat this kind of thing and it's no big deal at all. And our. In America, there's nothing that's in our food repertoire that, you know, if you could put bugs with ranch dressing, we'd probably be.

Or barbecue sauce here in Texas.

Yeah, barbecue sauce or ranch dressing, sure.

Well, that's like. And even Guy brings it up in the podcast is that, you know, we eat escargot and we think that's a dissel and that's snails. We in East Texas, we eat crawfish, which are pretty much cockroaches that live in the creeks. You know, water cockroaches.

They're baby lobster.

Yeah, exactly. Which are. But there's. Those are cockroaches. Lobsters are pretty much, you know, ocean cockroaches.

Yeah. Back when the Pilgrims landed, lobsters were all over the beach and they were like. They were like these land spiders. And they thought they were like. They were like, so plentiful. They at first they didn't want to eat them because they were like, those are gross. But then somebody had the idea of butter on there.

It's probably your ancestors because you came across. So we've got some people who are chiming in saying, Joseph goes, no bugs to eat, please. He is not a fan of the bugs. But what if it was the only.

Thing there was to eat? Would you eat it if you could make this.

Of course.

If you would make a burger out of bugs and.

And you know that's coming. You know that's coming. They're making. They're gonna make it. And we made impossible meat. We're gonna make an impossible bug burger or something like that, and it'll be fine. And the thing is, they're. It's so sustainable. I think it's, it's all in your mind because you think about what other cultures eat and then what they think is gross that we eat, you know? Right. It is just in the mind.

It is cultural. I mean, in, in some of the, some other countries, they eat like all of the chicken. They eat like all the parts of all the things. And in our country we're just like, oh, we like the way we don't.

Even know how the chicken gets to there. I mean, no, you gotta. I still remember, you know, grandma butchering chickens, you know, to eat. And I'm like, you don't remember that?

My grandma did not know.

But I mean, there's also like all this stuff we have. Like. They didn't have sliced cheese. I just went blurry. They didn't have sliced cheese when we were kids. I mean. Well, when we were, I don't know.

We didn't have craft slices. Well, we just had to get, we had Velveeta and we had to use that big, huge slice.

I love Velveeta, so don't get me started.

So Velveeta is expensive. Have you looked at that lately? It's like $20 for a thing of Velveeta. You're like, do I really want Velveeta?

So you really haven't answered the questions. If you would eat bugs, it would have to be in like, it wouldn't be like, you wouldn't pick up a cricket and eat it, but it have to be like ground up.

I probably would try it if it was like the kind of thing in a museum where it was like, you know, you want to try the freeze dried air, you know, astronaut ice cream.

Right. Here's some crickets.

I would be like, sure, wash it.

Down with some astronaut ice cream. Yeah.

So they eat up a lot of protein in other cultures. They do, you know, it is part of what they eat, so.

Right.

I'm sure our ancestors did.

Yeah, I. So crickets and the crunchy things I think would be easier for me than what we're talking about on this show, which is maggots. And if you want to know why on earth are Jeff and Peg talking about eating bugs on this show? It's because this is fascinating. This is a fascinating episode. You would, you could, if you would have said, Jeff, think of a, a really strange title or a topic that guy would talk about. I never would have picked this. So it is very fascinating.

Really cool episode. Yeah.

So go ahead.

I'M sorry, I was gonna say at the beginning of it, you know, mostly we're talking about this bugs end, the, the sustainable portions. But Olympia is a Marine family. Her husband was in the Marines. And the whole, probably the first half of the show is about what it's like being a military family, what it was like for her family, and post traumatic stress disorder, which her husband has. So it's also very interesting if you, you know, if you're interested in that topic. She's, she's a very interesting person. She's Australian, but her husband obviously is from America.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's. Yeah, it was just a fascinating episode. So that, that goes. So make sure you go to remarkable people.com and if you need some help, you can just hold up your handy dandy smartphone and there you go, the QR code that will take you right to where you need to be.

Or you could do my favorite thing and you can say, hey, Siri, play Guy Kawasaki's last podcast episode.

And I'm so glad that I don't. I have headphones in, so. Oh, there you go.

The latest episode of Remarkable People.

Why is he talking? As a accident.

My Siri is a British man.

Oh, okay. Very cool. I was like, does Rich know Anyway, so.

Yes, he does. This is like, who is that?

So this, this leads into the another thing because it's not just. She just didn't talk about eating bugs and how great that is for the environment and all that stuff, but we talked about this at the beginning, how much food we threw away and how much restaurants throw away. One of the things that she talks about is how her company, she's developed this robotic thing using the maggots of Black Soldier fly. Is that correct?

Yep.

And it actually, they have this really cool box and it goes through and it eats all this waste and they come and it's like, they don't have to do pickup every day, like trash pickup. It's like once a week or every other day or something. And it cuts down costs for them. It's all this stuff. So here's the question. Would you have a colony of maggots on your street if it would eat your garbage?

It's controlled maggots. So it'd be in a special. It's a really cool process.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you wouldn't bother dump it? No, not if it was like a high tech thing where you just kind of like open it up and put your stuff in and.

Yeah, I think it's almost sounds like, like A trash compactor and it's, it's got robotic stuff in. They have to just come in and replace the maggots. And the maggots, they were saying, can be used as a food source. Now one of the things he did talk at length about is like different if, like if your maggots are eating, you know, by, you know, medical, medical waste, you're not wanting to eat those maggots. There's different, like there's different grades of what you, you know, you want to have food grade maggots. It's almost. Well, it is, it's like the, it's like what they do for, you know, grading, you know, organic and all that kind of stuff. So you want to have green. If you're going to eat the maggots, you got to have a. They have to eat something that's good for them as well, that's not toxic to humans. But this can take away a lot of junk, A lot of waste that we use is these maggots. And you can use them, I think she even said, for feed and all sorts of other things you could use them for. So I.

So what do you think? Did you use it? Yeah. Cool, right?

I'm actually fascinated by this after I started going down this rabbit hole because it makes a lot of sense.

The thing is we have to have new ideas that are sustainable. We can't do the same old thing like just dump it in the garbage and not worry if we recycled or what we're doing or we can't just keep doing the same thing in so many different areas. Whether it's fashion or food or waste or electric cars or solar. There's so many different ways that globally we need to just step it up. And this is a cool idea. And hopefully there's going to be more ideas like this. I mean, we need innovative thinkers that are coming up with different solutions for these crazy problems that we have ignored for so long because we didn't even know it was a problem.

And there's a lot of cool stuff about this, about how much it just how much it actually takes away bad stuff and replaces it with good stuff. I mean, this is, you know, she was even talking about, on some of the other ones that, you know, it takes more energy to actually be renewable and that's not what you want. But this is a process that actually is clean and finding those processes that don't sound good, like, but, you know, you're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. You're actually, actually doing a net benefit for the environment and what's good. And also. So, yeah, I think I would. I would love it. I think it. Soon as they have it. So I can have it in my house where I could just, you know, the maggot people would come once a month and I could, you know, but I could. I just think it's cool. I just think anything that's like off the grid and you taking, you know, take care of stuff is really, really cool.

Yeah.

So.

And leaving then you have less of it lowers your carbon footprint.

Yeah. And I want to lower footprint. So this is the other question when we're talking about bugs and what to eat when. And you know, the ick factor. So would you eat meat that is grown in a lab? Not impossible. Burger. You know, not that. But like meat that is grown like it never lived, but they were. They're able to grow it. Like there's, you know, I think they even have a chicken breast thing or that they grew.

Well, probably we'll all be eating that in the future.

So.

Right. Maybe if you're. If you're Matt Damon. Right. And you're on Mars and you're the.

Only guy eat potatoes. Yeah. So this is. This I have. I would rather eat insects than eat meat grown in a lab. I don't know why, because that just does. Still doesn't sound natural to me. Insects are natural. There's just the ick factor.

A lot of what you eat is manufactured.

I know, I know, but I just. Something about meat that's grown is just weird to me. I would rather eat a cricket, you know, churro burger. Cricket. Churro. Then meat that's grown. I don't know. I don't know why. If it's just. That's a mental.

Yeah. It seems a little way too manufactured. But, you know, I think if we keep doing what we're doing to our planet, there's going to be a lot of this stuff that's just not going to be available anymore. Like honey. Yeah. Or, you know, and if, if the bee population keeps dwindling, then we're going.

To be in a pickle. I mean, they do more than just.

We're not going to have. Yeah. It's not just honey. It's all the plants that need to be pollinated. So, yeah, I think these other solutions are going to be. And also weather. I mean, our weather's so crazy now that it's affecting a lot of growing. Like the local farms around here lost all their watermelons and melons because too much rain. They got like Too much rain and it, it's, it like they got moldy.

Yeah. So if this stuff interests you and it should make sure you go to remarkablepeople.com because it's really fascinating. It'll get your head thinking. It got mine thinking about what we can do, even those little. And I think what it's going to be is like it's going to come to the point where what will we give up and be okay with it as a society? Like everyone's now is like, you can't take my steak from me. But if we could take and make a replacement steak and you know, maybe have steak once a year on my birthday, on everybody's birthday, I'll eat that steak and then eat, you know, cricket steaks. Other than that, if it tastes the same, I mean, I think that could, I think that could happen. So. But it's going to take all of us, I think, to make those choices and changes to, to do right. So.

So before we go though, I did want to mention last week we talked about having a community and we talked about some different ideas, talked about Facebook and other things. And we do have a new community that we're starting for remarkable people on an app called Circle. It's either desktop or an app. So after the show, I'm going to put a link in the comments on all the different platforms that we're streaming and you guys can join this community and Guy will be in there, Jeff will be in there and I will be in there. And he' hopefully you will be in there too.

Yes.

So we're not sure what we're going to do there, what we're going to have yet, but we're definitely going to be, you know, sharing some behind more different behind the scenes things. Share the podcast. It's just a way to connect a little bit deeper.

It's good to have backup plan because as we know this week certain things went down and if that would have been on that day, it would have been hard. So that's what we're just trying. But this is a great way, like if you have, you have an idea for remarkable people, it'd be, this is the place that would be great to put it in there. If you have a question like, hey, I remember somebody talked about this, but I can't remember what episode. That's a great question to ask, you know, if you're struggling with. I need to teach my mom how to download a podcast. Well, we're there to help. So we make sure you guys go to remarkablepeople.com and subscribe and then you'll.

Have the link for Circle which is where our community will be. So we'll be sharing more about that and we'll share the link to that. But it would be great if you.

Guys joined and what would you want, what would you want the community to look like? We are still putting this together. We would love to know what would make the community the best it could be for you. So let us know in the comments.

So it's very Google plus looking, I have to say. As far as.

Well, it's called the circles.

I know. I was like, is that Google or is it the circle of the movie? Which would be kind of a negative choice.

Circle of life. So that's what we're talking about. Bugs. Bugs.

Life. So anyway, we should have called that episode.

That's right. Make sure you guys go check this out because it really is fascinating. It's even if you don't or you. I mean, I would love for you guys to try to poke holes in it and let us know, is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? Why wouldn't it work? Would you have bugs on your block if it was taking care of waste? So let us know in the comments because we'd love to know. And make sure you go to remarkablepeople.com subscribe, follow all the good stuff and we will see you next week. See you guys.

We will. Bye.