Solar-Powered Car Delivers Zero Waste Wholesale To Zero Waste Retail Store: The Future Is Now
I may be the world’s biggest fan of Zachary Shahan. (His wife and kids may argue…) When Zach first gave a talk entitled “The Future is Now,” it sort of became the ad-hoc tagline for CleanTechnica. And it’s true — all the solutions we need are right here, right in front of us.
For my team, it seems normal — our company makes zero-waste personal care and cleaning products using the milkman model (buying the containers back to clean and refill them). I drive a Tesla (of course I do — I am a CleanTechnica junkie after all). And I have solar PV on my roof that powers said Tesla. So, when a zero waste retail (yes, brick and mortar) store held its grand opening earlier this month, it was only logical that we would deliver the first order of our wholesale products on opening day with a Tesla driven on sunshine.
The Future is Now
I’ve been listening to “Drilled,” a podcast by Amy Westervelt, in which she chronicles the corrupt (and anti-human for lack of a better way to describe them) tactics of the fossil industries, which seem hellbent on sending us to hell. If you haven’t listened yet, it’s an amazing series, and I’d highly encourage it, but if you don’t have time or inclination, I’ll sum up — the fossil industry has given up on any pretense of civility. Their gloves came off long ago and it’s clear that they (for now, at least) will stop at nothing short of our world turning into a Mad Max dystopia rather than admitting they were wrong.
If you read CleanTechnica often (ahem, subscribe here if not!), you know that the fossil world is not somewhere you’d want to invest your money. A huge wind power win this week coupled with three fossil pipeline losses combine with headwinds from a world that simply isn’t burning oil or coal the way it used to, and closing coal plants at a rapid pace, often as much as 16 years ahead of schedule. COVID is also providing headwinds for the fossil industry. Clean energy is simply cheaper and sexier, and prospects for the 2020 election look likely to end fossil corruption’s tight grip on Washington. Here in Hawaii, our state legislature passed a law last week that should ensure we close our last coal powered plant in 2 years.
The punches just keep coming, and while the game ain’t over, they are starting to queue the credits.
But what about plastic?
Ah — the foil. As COVID spreads like wildfire, especially in places that moved to reopen too early under pressure from the dumb-dumb in chief, rest assured big oil has a plan. Here in Hawaii, where we passed a truly groundbreaking single-use plastic ban last year, lobbyists are hard at work trying to overturn it based on the pandemic, arguing that it will be necessary to prevent the spread of disease.
Many of the fossil industry’s big players (Saudi Aramco, Exxon, Eastman Chemical …) have publicly stated their intention to make up for lost revenue on fuels by creating a whole lot more virgin plastic. You do know that plastic is made from oil and other fossils, right? So selling more plastic is a way to recoup more of the losses of an industry in decline and rescue their stranded assets for a few more years.
Screw that. It’s time to ramp up the pressure and kick plastic to the curb in every way we can, and demonstrating it by showing we can make zero waste products, sell them, and distribute them without fossils. The future … it’s now.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
