What On Earth: The Sustainable Podcast
Issue #04
In the podcast “What On Earth: The Sustainable Podcast” the presenter Sarah Divall discusses all kinds of issues that our planet is facing in weekly, about 30 minutes long episodes. She does this in a lighthearted, yet informative way that is entertaining for the listener while also educating them.
The podcast is backed up by the environmental charity “Hubbub” and gets some of its information from experts working for this charity, which makes it credible and trustworthy. Hubbub aims to inspire people to live a more sustainable life. They work with companies like Ikea and TkMaxx and create sustainable behaviour campaigns, but also create challenges for everyone to participate in. On their website, you can also find interesting tips, right now especially about having sustainable holidays.
Each episode of “What On Earth” focusses on a different topic, ranging from gardening or food to fashion or travel. One of the episodes of the podcast is called “Can you do a sustainable Christmas?”. In this episode Sarah and producer Ross Buchanan discuss how to have a Christmas celebration that isn’t harming the environment while also not taking any of the fun away.
The episode starts off with the two presenters explaining some of the history of Christmas and how it turned into the way we celebrate it today, from a celebration into a more stressful time very focussed on materialistic things.
Next up, Ross tries to guess what things that are not sustainable about Christmas. He quickly realises that almost every aspect concerning Christmas is not very sustainable. This includes Christmas cards and wrapping paper that can’t be recycled due to glitter and plastic coating, food that gets wasted because people buy way too much and gifts that are packaged in tons of plastic and don’t get used.
After making the listener aware of all the issues around Christmas, Sarah and Ross start to give solutions to these problems, for example sending electronic Christmas cards or using cards and wrapping paper without glitter or plastic layers, so it can be recycled.
A suggested solution for presents, is to not actually buy things for people but to make something yourself or give experiences to people rather than giving materialistic things they don’t need. This is a tip that I personally really like, because often homemade gifts are a lot more thoughtful than bought things and actually make the person you’re giving it to more happy! Plus it is often cheaper to make something than to buy something.
This podcast is a great way for people who are interested in sustainability to get entertained while also giving some tips to implement if you want to make your own life more environmentally friendly. Especially the Christmas episode was very eye-opening to me since there were things that make Christmas unsustainable I did not have in mind before.
Thanks to the solutions they provided, I was inspired to make some changes on how I do Christmas this year. If you’re interested, the podcast can be found on any streaming platform like Spotify and Apple Music or under this link.
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