About Us
Our Mission
The goal of our podcast is to educate listeners on important conversations and challenges guiding our transition to a closed-loop, circular economy through an anthropogenic era some have called the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Each season we’ll explore a different industry, talking with experts driving forth circularity in their respective fields. We’ll also discuss relevant terminology and the differences between sustainability, circularity and regeneration. Our topics will cover climate change, behavior change, and the systemic barriers that need our strategic collaboration. One of our goals is to unify the experience of older generations and the energy of younger ones.
By emphasizing intergenerationality and inviting industry professionals, government officials, educators, activists, and others as guests, we can expand conversations of sustainability beyond the "green bubble" and invite passionate people of all ages, races, life experiences, and skill sets to contribute their strengths to a sustainable future.
How Our Podcast Works
Each season will be co-hosted by Alexa Smith, author of An Economic Eclipse: Shifting Toward a Sustainable Future by Eliminating Waste, and Sharon Silbermann, a 30 year fashion design and production veteran with a Master's in Business for Social Impact and Sustainability focused on fashion. She is the Textile Waste Committee Chair for the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board and is President of Shamann Productions, her apparel and textile waste diversion services and consultancy business.
Our goal is to drive conversations about sustainable transformation, benefitted by intergenerational knowledge exchange and collaboration. We all have unique assets to contribute and roles to play in addressing the shift to a circular and more socially just economy. The goal of this podcast is to educate, inform, and bring us together, inclusively, to innovate solutions that effectively and fairly meet the challenges before us as we reduce and irradiate our negative collective impacts on climate change and human rights.
We are kicking off this series discussing the textile and apparel industry. While we will be unpacking some pretty nitty gritty, complex topics, please don’t feel as though you need to be an industry professional or circularity expert to listen to what we have to say. In fact, we hope that by producing this podcast we can inspire more people to join our movement and extend our audience to people of all ages and backgrounds!
This Season's Co-Hosts
Alexa Smith
Author, An Economic Eclipse: Shifting Toward a Sustainable Future by Eliminating Waste
Biography:
My name is Alexa Smith, and I am the Amazon #1 best-selling author in Green Business of An Economic Eclipse: Shifting Toward a Sustainable Future by Eliminating Waste. I am also an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying environmental science and sustainability. Through the coalescence of my book writing journey, social entrepreneurship experience, and plentiful encouragement from my peers, I have begun to dissect the circular economy and uncover the true meaning of "waste." My career and life goal which I have pursued through various passion projects is to push the limits of my own environmentalism and inspire other members of our complex, linear society to be more conscious of the waste they create everyday.
Sharon Silbermann
Textile Waste Committee Chair,
Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board and President of Shamann Productions, my apparel and textile waste diversion, innovation, and consulting services business
Biography:
My name is Sharon Silbermann. I'm a 30 year fashion design and production veteran, and I hold a Master's in Business for Social Impact and Sustainability with a focus on the fashion and textile industry. I am the Textile Waste Committee Chair for the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board, and I am the Founder and President of Shamann Productions, my apparel and textile waste diversion, innovation, and consultancy business. My professional goal is to create a pre and post-consumer circular apparel and textile waste recycling and innovation industry in New York City and to develop that into a model that can be replicated throughout the US and internationally.