There is a rising interest in global issues. Issues like climate change action and human rights activism stand at the forefront of many peoples’ minds and conversations. More people are turning to podcasts. They serve as a quick and easy source of information. From well-being to activism to diversity and mental health, top sustainability podcasts offer a broad scope of unique perspectives on the sustainability movement and how listeners can get involved.
Since podcasts are so easy to digest, you can listen when you’re out for a daily walk, run, or even in the background as you grill or watch your kids play. There is plenty to learn about sustainability. To make things easier, we have compiled a curated list of the top 10 best sustainability podcasts.
Building Sustainability Podcast
Most homes currently being constructed are bad for the earth, the future occupants who will live there, and the builder’s health. Listeners can join Jeffrey Hart every two weeks as he talks to dreamers, designers, builders, makers, and doers. Hart and his guests explore the wide world of sustainability in the housing environment by talking to inventive people doing innovative things. Whether you are interested in learning more about natural materials or are navigating your self-build, this podcast is for you.
Listeners will discover that better alternatives are out there. One notable episode is “An Architect’s Guide to Achieving a Work/Life Balance.” This podcast episode contains tips, ideas, and how-tos covering all aspects of designing a working life that suits the individual and her business. The episode explains in clear and accessible language how one can avoid the common pitfalls of low pay and long hours. It gives helpful tips on juggling work with family commitments and setting a career path and design priorities. This podcast rocks.
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Breaking Green Ceilings
Breaking Green Ceilings highlights passionate environmentalists we don’t often have access to or hear enough from. Guests include those from underrepresented groups like Trans, Disabled, Queer, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This sustainability podcast is released weekly and is hosted by self-proclaimed “eco-nerd” Sapna Mulki. Breaking Green Ceilings listeners hear about the journeys of success and failure, challenges won, and aspirations of everyday eco-warriors.
Breaking Green Ceilings features interviews with innovative environmentalists like Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy. Dr. Ingrid Waldron, the author of There’s Something in the Water, has also been featured on the podcast. Isaias Hernandez of “QueerBrownVegan,” and native Peruvian Indigenous scholar, Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano, have also been interviewed. One exciting episode of Breaking Green Ceilings is “Inviting More Black Folks to the Outdoors,” which shares the story of Earl B. Hunter, Jr. He is a business owner of an outdoor recreational and marketing company committed to getting more Black folks out in nature. He also encourages white allies to extend invites on their outdoor excursions. Breaking Green Ceilings is a must-listen.
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The Energy Gang
The Energy Gang is a weekly discussion about the latest trends in renewables, energy, cleantech, and the environment with host Wood Mackenzie. An excellent episode includes “What Does the IRA Mean for the World?” In this episode of The Energy Gang, the host and guests revisit the surprise of the summer: the Great American Climate Bill. They explore the question of now that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been signed into law, what’s next? Energy Gang member Dr. Melissa Lott stepped in as host that week while Ed Crooks took a well-earned holiday. Joining Melissa was Robbie Orvis of Energy Innovation and UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Dr. Linus Mofor.
A press release from the white house estimated the IRA will result in a reduction of one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030. Many people consider the bill a high point of decades of work in pulling together a piece of significant energy and climate legislation in the US. The bill helps protect public health and mitigate the impacts of climate change. The advantages are not just for the hundreds of millions living in the United States but for people’s health worldwide. The Energy Gang is an excellent podcast on sustainability.
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Green Dreamer
Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast and journal exploring paths to biocultural revitalization, collective healing, and true abundance and wellness for all people. This podcast attempts to unravel the dominant narratives stunting peoples’ imaginations and helps spark unbounded visions of what could be. Green Dreamer inquisitively offers dialogues with various thought leaders. Each featured conversation inspires a deepening and broadening of consciousness in unique ways.
The sustainability podcast’s host and producer is Kamea Chayne. She is an independent writer and creative who has hosted Green Dreamer since its inception. Chayne was born and raised in Taiwan. She grew up practicing ancestral and land veneration as a part of her Hakka-Taiwanese cultural upbringing. Listeners can subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer in any podcast app. They can also sign up for the excellent podcast newsletter to receive the latest episode highlights and resources.
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WARDROBE CRISIS
The Wardrobe Crisis is a sustainable fashion podcast driven by the creators’ passion for communication, learning, and shared knowledge through stories. While the podcast creators love fashion, they don’t believe clothes made in an ugly way can be beautiful. They stand for a cleaner, fairer, greener fashion industry that respects people and the planet. Their optimal fashion ecosystem recognizes the power of learning, listening, and dialogue. The podcast’s mission is sustainability knowledge sharing.
The Wardrobe Crisis was launched in July 2012 and has grown as a chart-topping podcast since then. It is now in its seventh series. Each week, the host Clare Press meets with fashion insiders, designers, change-makers, academics, and creatives about fashion, social justice, ethics, and environmental sustainability. Podcast creators also offer The Academy as an online course platform focused on sustainability. It is marketed as something unlike anything else out there. It makes sustainability education accessible and provides a framework for taking positive action based on values. Listeners can subscribe to this excellent podcast for free in their favorite podcast app.
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Sustainability Defined
The Sustainability Defined podcast started out of shared passions for the environment, good conversation, and bad jokes. Since originating at a Washington, D.C. happy hour in early 2016, the operation blossomed from a spreadsheet of personal sustainability contacts to a respected podcast that features a listener base in over 100 countries. Sustainability Defined is included in course curricula at national universities and is regularly listed as one of GreenBiz’s most popular sustainability podcasts.
Jay Siegel and Scott Breen host the podcast. Jay is an urbanist, an environmentalist, and a humorist. Focusing his career on environmental and financial sustainability, Jay is driven by communicating the big picture of sustainability to move action towards a healthier and more resilient future. Scott Breen is the Sustainability at the Can Manufacturers Institute vice president. The organization represents U.S. metal can manufacturers and their suppliers. Breen is often described as a “funny Spock” with his mixture of logic and jokes. He enjoys jogging around Washington, D.C., picking up aluminum cans to recycle during his runs. Sustainability Defined is as funny as it is informative.
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Conscious Chatter
Conscious Chatter is an inclusive audio space that opens the door to dialogue about the many layers of stories, meaning, and impact connected to fashion and what we wear. Kestrel Jenkins hosts this podcast. Conscious Chatter reimagines the narrative around sustainability while exploring the importance of resourcefulness. It questions conscious consumerism while working to deconstruct how oppressive systems negatively impact the sustainable fashion space.
Kestrel Jenkins is a storyteller and conscious style maven. She believes fashion and ethics can coexist and even thrive together. For over ten years, she’s been enthralled with asking questions about where our clothes are made, their materials, and who makes them. Jenkins got her start interning with People Tree in London. She quickly knew the only world she wanted to live in was one she could embrace her style without sacrificing values. The podcast’s host offers a grounded, safe, and holistic space for her guests and listeners to explore conscious fashion.
Podcast Website
Sustainable Minimalists
The creators of Sustainable Minimalists work each week to create eco-minimalist, non-toxic homes “without the extra work.” Minimalism has experienced an upswing in popularity in recent years. The popular “less is more” movement has been utilized for centuries. Yet today’s minimalist influencers have brought minimalism back with a decidedly consumerist spin.
Modern minimalism is often synonymous with decluttering. While there’s much chatter about tidying, there is radio silence and crickets regarding sustainability instruction. This fact results in aspiring minimalists finding themselves on a hopeless hamster wheel of purchasing, decluttering, purchasing more, and purging again. Overemphasizing decluttering and underemphasizing the roots of why we overbuy in the first place is insanely inconsistent with the movement of slow living. Consumption without intention is bad for the planet, too.
The podcast’s host, Stephanie Seferian, is a stay-at-home mom and author who believes that minimalism, eco-friendliness, and non-toxic living are connected. Seferian explores sustainability, conscious consumerism, and environmentally friendly parenting practices with like-minded parents. This sustainability podcast is one of the nation’s best.
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Low Tox Life
Alexx Stuart hosts the Low Tox Life podcast. She began recording the audio program after years of writing and researching health and sustainability for the lowtoxlife.com website. Stuart is thrilled to bring the podcast to listeners and subscribers as an extension of the online community.
The living concept of a Low Tox Life rejects perfection. There is no room for black and white notions of there being only one way to do it right. Instead, the host and her guests take a relaxed and curious approach to making wise choices to incorporate into people’s lives as and if they fit. Low Tox is stressed instead of ‘no tox,’ which, to most listeners who aren’t on an off-grid hippy commune, just can’t be achieved. There’s nothing more that makes podcast producers sad than having people quit before they get started because they feel like failures. They would rather have listeners feel remarkable about what we can do and learn. This excellent podcast covers many low-tox topics around farming, sustainability, health, fashion, and lowering the toxic load.
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Sustainababble
Sustainababble is a weekly podcast that speaks on the environment for and by the confused. The podcast hosts are Ol and Dave. Each week, experts support them on how to save the planet. They work to answer the question of how everything got to be so confusing in sustainability. Each week they work to get a little bit closer to enlightenment. While they may not always find the easy answer, program producers sift through the most egregious eco-guff out there and distinguish the real eco villains from the hapless incompetents.
Sustainababble’s music for the podcast was made by the marvelous Dicky Moore of Bearcraft. One recent episode is “Liz Truss.” It answers the questions of what or who is a Liz Truss and why anyone should care. Approximately 17 old white men from wealthy England just made her boss of Blighty. There are going to be some changes around here. Or are there? While Liz Truss is an MP with a low environmentalist perspective, there may be hope on the horizon. The podcast is topical, funny, and more than a little cathartic. Listeners are encouraged to “subscribe now for your weekly dose of Babble, delivered straight into your earholes.”
Podcast Website
Action Plans
Sustainability can sound and feel complicated. Tending to the environment doesn’t have to be complicated. Small decisions can make a difference. Here are some simple ways consumers can do more to waste less while lessening their impact on the planet!
- Think before you purchase
Overconsumption is a substantial part of the problem when it comes to pollution. Simply buying less already makes you a better consumer. - Try recyclable packaging
If you’re buying things like soft drinks, buy aluminum instead of plastic bottles. Aluminum is infinitely recyclable. Plastic is not. You can buy products in glass instead of plastic. Consider purchasing products that prioritize sustainable packaging. - Celebrate small steps
Lastly, celebrate the small things. For example, if everyone in the U.S. chose certain drawstring trash bags constructed using less plastic, we could save 100 million pounds of plastic from going into landfills annually. It’s a small choice. It can have a significant impact. - Education
There is a lot to learn on the subject of sustainability. Top sustainability podcasts can give you insight into lowering your own carbon footprint and the cutting edge initiatives in many sectors. But what if you are a business professional? Try looking into a top Online MBA in Sustainability, a sustainability certificate, or an online course. There are many ways for you to get involved.
Related Resources:
Guide to a Sustainability Online MBA
Top Online MBA Sustainability Specializations
