SF Bay Climate Tech: April 3 - April 10
Indigenous filmmakers, wildfires and data, climate migration, cocktails, and more!
Hi friends,
SF Climate Week is on the horizon!
Start the week of tomorrow in SF with Indigenous Brazilian filmmakers or learn about big data and wildfires at USF. If you’re in Marin, head to the Nature’s Hope and Fury art exhibition.
On Wednesday, stay in SF for the Women and Climate San Francisco get together or head to Oakland for the Urban Foodscape Tour, or swing by the South Bay for Sustainability: How Messaging Impacts Adoption.
Thursday, Berkeley is the place to be, with a talk on Climate Migration, followed by Climate Tech Cocktails.
Then on Friday, Berkeley will also host the AgTech & FoodTech against Climate Change conference, then close out the week with an art party at Climate(ish) in SF.
Read on for more details about this week’s happenings and upcoming events this month
Cheers,
Alec, Sonam, and Tamar
This month, NY Climate Tech is spotlighting the “circular economy,” starting with an overview of what it is, and why it matters.
Hot Take: Going in Circles
By Tamar Honig
The circular economy is an economic model which formalized in the 1990s, drawing upon the principle that ‘’everything is an input to everything else,” in clear contrast to the linear take-make-dispose model. This framework for production and consumption has three main principles: 1) eliminate waste and pollution, 2) keep products and materials in use, and 3) regenerate natural systems.
Sustainable design is central to the application of a circular economy. Products are thoughtfully designed to last and also for repair. By doing so, businesses can reduce their reliance on virgin materials, conserve natural resources, and minimize waste.
Unfortunately, we’re using and throwing away more material than ever. Our global economy is now only 7% circular, meaning of the 100 billion tonnes of virgin natural materials extracted from earth annually, only 7% make it back into the economy. Global circularity is actually shrinking, from 9.1% in 2018, to 8.6% 2020, and now 7.2% in 2023 (more about the Global Circularity Metric methodology here).
Transitioning from a linear to a circular economy can help businesses develop new revenue streams, meet consumer demand for sustainable offerings, reduce the cost of natural resource extraction and landfill disposal, and build more resilient supply chains – not to mention the myriad climate benefits. So what’s holding up implementation? Key challenges include:
Redesigning value chains: From our food to our phones, our clothes to our cookware, the products we use and consume in our daily lives are part of a long chain of production and distribution participants, often spanning continents and jurisdictions. These participants make decisions that influence the circularity of each product across many stages of the value chain. They often view any disruption in the chain as a risk. Appropriate policies are needed to regulate trade and trade flows such that value chains can be redesigned or optimized in alignment with circular principles, with all partners reaping the benefits.
Footing the bill for transition costs: While transitioning to a circular economy-aligned business model will pay off in the long run, the upfront costs of R&D, asset investments, and digital infrastructure may deter would-be circular businesses. Moreover, competition with often cheaper virgin materials makes the business case for recovering materials relatively uneconomic.
Changing consumer behavior: Our linear system designs products to fail after a certain time, to become outdated and off trend. Consumers may also lack awareness of circular designs, creating limited demand and little incentive for corporations to undertake the shift to circular supply chains and durable products. Meeting this challenge will require educating consumers on the benefits of transitioning to circular practices and the consequences of our current take-make-waste system. Identifying and elevating cultural leaders who can champion circularity in the popular zeitgeist will also be key.
Designing effective policy solutions: Legislation to promote the circular economy has too often fallen short due to lack of global consensus, unclear definitions, and import bans on circular products for protectionist reasons. Implementing financial incentives for the promotion of circularity and pricing products and services in a way that incorporates the costs of ecological damages is critical to facilitating the circular transition. Existing success stories give hope, like the EU’s efforts to ban single use plastics and the EU Green Deal Circular Economy Action Plan.
A key part of transitioning to a circular economy is finding creative ways to reduce, avoid, or repurpose our waste – something Americans tend to produce a lot of. To be precise, the average person in the U.S. produces 4.9 pounds of trash per day, as of 2018, which equates to about 147 pounds of trash per person per month, or 1,788.5 pounds per year. Against this backdrop of disheartening statistics, San Francisco has become a leader in the zero waste movement, proving itself a model for waste management.
Two decades ago, in 2003, San Francisco became one of the first cities to pass a public zero waste resolution, aimed at fostering a society where no discarded materials end up in a landfill or destined for high-temperature destruction. Instead, recyclable or compostable materials would be worked back into the production cycle, creating a circular system.
How have these ambitious goals changed the city? One lingering and visible result is San Francisco’s innovative three-stream citywide residential and commercial collection program, emblematized by a row of three bins: blue for recycling, green for composting, and black for trash. Outreach on the proper recyclables and compostables for each bin leans on imagery and a variety of languages to ensure San Franciscans of all stripes know what to do with their waste.
In 2009, San Francisco went a step further, passing a Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance, which required all private citizens and businesses alike to keep their recycles, compost, and trash separate. Such a law might seem straightforward enough, but research suggests that American adults remain largely confused about the proper ways and materials to recycle. Nearly half do not know that boxes should be emptied and broken down for pickup (49%), where they can drop off recycling (46%), or information about their designated recycling days (44%).
How has San Francisco done in cutting through the confusion and getting waste to its proper destination? Quite well, through a combination of effective education and heavy-handed legislation. The city achieved Phase 1 of its masterplan to divert 75% of its waste by 2010 two years early. With that goal checked off, San Francisco has its sights set on 100% diversion. A series of measures is helping the city on its pathway to a true circular economy, including the Checkout Bag Charge and Recyclable or Compostable Pre-Checkout Bag Ordinance; the Polystyrene Foam and the Food Service and Packaging Waste Reduction Ordinance; the Plastic, Litter, and Toxics Reduction Law; and the Refuse Separation Law.
San Francisco, with its circular economy-aligned legislation and relentless determination to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost, is well positioned to reach zero waste. It will take more than each of us thinking twice before tossing our leftovers in the trash, but also enforcement of waste diversion policies and insistence that producers design better products and take responsibility for their entire lifecycle. With these measures, let’s put waste in the rearview, not in the landfill.
Events This Week
🌱 Indigenous Storytelling & Technology: Tue, Apr 4
🔥 2023 USF José de Acosta Lecture on the Environment: Tue, Apr 4
🖼 Nature’s Hope and Fury: Tue, Apr 4
🌾 Urban Foodscape Tour: Innovators Nourishing the East Bay: Wed, Apr 5
👩💻 Women and Climate San Francisco Get Together!: Wed, Apr 5
🍀 Sustainability: How Messaging Impacts Adoption: Wed, Apr 5
🌎 Putting Contemporary Climate Migration in Context: Thu, Apr 6
🍹 Climate Tech Cocktails @UC Berkeley Haas Part Deux: Thu, Apr 6
👩🌾 AgTech & FoodTech against Climate Change: Fri, Apr 7
🎨 Climate(ish): Fri, Apr 7
Read on for more details about this week’s happenings and upcoming events this month
Events This Month
🐄 Regenerative Agriculture Salon: Tue, Apr 11
🐙 Changing Planet: Rob Verchick: Wed, Apr 12
♻️ The Climate Crisis: Causes, Solutions, and What You Can Do: Thu, Apr 13
🏗 Climate as Praxis: Sat, Apr 15
🌎 San Francisco Climate Week: Mon, Apr 17
🌱 Nature X Carbon Bay Area Monthly Meetup: Mon, Apr 17
📈 Grants, RFPs, Venture, Debt - What's Right for My Company?: Thu, Apr 20
✊ March & Rally for Climate Justice: Fri, Apr 21
🍷 How a Changing Climate Is Altering the Way We Drink: Tue, Apr 25
🔌 Building Electrification and Decarbonization: Thu, Apr 27
Events This Week
🌱 Indigenous Storytelling & Technology - A Revolution to Protect the Amazon
When: Tue, Apr 4th from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Where: 188 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105
Join us to hear stories directly from Priscila Tapajowara and Eric Terena, creators and co-founders of Mídia Índia, the largest Indigenous media collective platform in Brazil with over 185,000 followers, over 10 million views, and who have trained over 800 Indigenous people, primarily youth, in audiovisual production and territorial monitoring in different communities of across Brazil.
🔥 2023 USF José de Acosta Lecture on the Environment
When: Tue, Apr 4th from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Where: University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117
This year, we are fortunate to have Ilkay Altintas, Chief Data Science Officer of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, as our featured speaker. Her talk, "Harnessing Big Data and the Digital Continuum for Next-Generation Wildland Fire Science and Management", presents a novel approach for using composable systems at the intersection of scientific computing, artificial intelligence (AI), physics-driven simulations, and remote sensing at the edge, including the first working example of a composable infrastructure for fire science.
🖼 Nature’s Hope and Fury
When: Tue, Apr 4th from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Where: Mill Valley Recreation, 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley, CA 94941
We invite you to explore these questions through the lens of art at Nature’s Hope and Fury, our Earth Day Marin Art Exhibit in the lobby of the Mill Valley Community Center. Please join us for the free opening reception on Tuesday, April 4th, 5:30-7:30pm!
🌾 Urban Foodscape Tour: Innovators Nourishing the East Bay
When: Wed, Apr 5th from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Where: Residence Inn by Marriott Berkeley, 2121 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
Join Bay Area Green Tours, 501(c)(3), on a profoundly moving tour. All are welcome to register for this tour that is especially designed for attendees of the annual Bioneers Conference. This diverse, uplifting experience will take you to Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland to see unique East Bay food production and leading urban farm sites.
👩💻 Women and Climate San Francisco Get Together!
When: Wed, Apr 5th from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Vic's Winehouse, 1870 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
If you are looking for an opportunity to talk climate with professionals identifying as women, you are in the right place! No climate experience necessary. Our gatherings are a fun way to make new friends and chat about all topics with the backdrop of climate. See a summary of our past events here. We're proud to support Vic's Winehouse, a female owned local business! There will be an option to do a guided wine tasting as well!
🍀 Sustainability: How Messaging Impacts Adoption
When: Wed, Apr 5th from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Where: 360 Industrial Road, San Carlos, CA 94070
Join the Penn Club of Silicon Valley and the Northern California Chapter of Columbia Alumni Association for a panel discussion on how messaging impacts adoption of sustainability practices and technologies.
🌎 Putting Contemporary Climate Migration in Context
When: Thu, Apr 6th from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Where: 223 Moses Hall, Moses Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
“Climate-related migration,” “disaster mobility,” and “climate refugees” have become salient topics in the last decade in both the political and scholarly realms. Most of the discourse looks to the future, with mass migrations expected in the wake of ever more severe climate change. These climate mobilities tend to be regarded as a novel phenomenon. Yet, they are not new: Although the scope of these mobilities has never been larger, environmental factors and disasters have played a role in the movement of people throughout history.
🍹 Climate Tech Cocktails @UC Berkeley Haas Part Deux
When: Thu, Apr 6th from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Haas School of Business, 2220 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720
🤷🏻♂️ Regional banking crisis? Pfft. We ain't going nowhere. 🎉 That's right, climate warriors. Last year's Climate Tech Cocktails @Haas was so insanely awesome we're bringing the circus back for part deux! 🏙️One small change--instead of risking the cold + rain outdoors like last year, we'll be inside at the Spieker Forum! 🐻 Awesome UC Berkeley alumni climate tech startups?!? 🍷 Drinks + munchies?!? 📻 Crowdsourced playlist?!? ☄️CTC FTW!
👩🌾 AgTech & FoodTech against Climate Change
When: Fri, Apr 7th from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Where: Spieker Forum, Chou Hall, 2220 Piedmont Ave Haas School of Business Berkeley, CA 94720
AgTech & FoodTech against Climate Change is a dynamic one-day conference that unites the Bay Area's FoodTech community. The conference features an exciting lineup of expert speakers and informative panels, aimed at showcasing how the AgTech and FoodTech industries are leading the charge against climate change.
🎨 Climate(ish)
When: Fri, Apr 7th from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Where: 2051 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
An evening of reflection, joy, and solidarity. Featuring pop-up artists, live climate art, music, dancing, and a (mostly) environment-related exhibition! Ticket proceeds go to the Defend the Forest movement in ATL.
Join the Fun!
Submit Events
We know all of you are cooking up great events across that highlight the latest and greatest in our collective effort to save our city - and our planet! 🌍 We would love to spread the word. Please share any event details and we'll add them to the list!
Climate Tech Cities
We are expanding! We started as an 8-person dinner and now have over 4,000 members in our community. We’ve had people across the world reach out to us to start their own chapters - so we’re launching a new Climate Tech Cities organization this year! If you have friends who are interested in becoming chapter leads, please share the word. Here’s to a global network of local communities making a positive impact!
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