After growing up in England and Egypt, and a 25-year stint in Australia, Nigel Mason moved to Bali, Indonesia. There he met his wife, they ran a restaurant and a rafting company, and became highly concerned about the plight and extinction of Sumatran Elephants. Visiting Sumatra, seeing the gross attack on its forests, the dire consequences of deforestation for palm oil that displaced elephants, orangutans, tigers, monkeys, and rhinos, Nigel and his wife decided to take action. Over three trips and a seven-year period, they rescued 27 elephants and created an elephant park in Taro, Bali.

Ted asks Nigel about moving the herd to Bali, a 1,700-kilometer voyage over land and sea. Nigel explains that yes, it was very challenging, particularly getting enough food and water to sustain the elephants for the five-day trip. Elephants consumer 250 kilos of food a day... plus lots of water, the latter made hugely challenging during one trip during an intense drought in Java. But the transport was successful, and the elephants that would have lived only 3 - 7 years in captivity in Sumatra, now had a special park in Bali with all the food and drink and care that they needed to live for 50 - 60 years. Today there are less than 1,000 Sumatran Elephants in the wild.

Nigel describes the care that his herd of elephants get. Elephants tend to succumb to death in many cases due to problems with their feet. Nigel devised a special material for the paths that they walk that is cooler than concrete yet with enough grit to properly scale back the elephants' nails and to maintain the health of their feet. Each elephant has a "mahout," a "carer," who looks after the elephant from morning to night... bathing it, feeding it, and giving it the interaction with which they thrive. Since opening the park in 1997, six babies have been born and raised there too. The park is proud of having met the strict, 200+ standards of the Asian Captive Elephants Standards, being certified for over ten years.

Despite Nigel's good rescue deed, for the past few months the park has been embroiled in a major controversy with animal rights groups that claimed that elephants in Indonesia have been subject to cruel behavior. The groups took particular exception to the practice of riding elephants. While Nigel made clear the need for elephants to get sufficient exercise -- they normally walk 20 kilometers a day, versus 7 - 8 km in the park -- and the relative light weight of the riders, the animal rights groups would hear nothing of it. Then the Indonesian government suddenly banned riding elephants outright causing the number of visitors to the park to plummet from 400 to 40 a day. Nigel and his family have had to subsidize the park -- which employs nearly 200 locals -- to care for and feed the elephant herd.

The park continues to be supported by Nigel and his family with only the fees paid by park visitors. The park gets no government funding. Now the challenge continues... finding new ways to bring in visitors without the popular riding. Visitors now walk the elephants, and wash them, and swim with them. Visitors also enjoy the lush habitat and the park's restaurant. Nigel, his wife, and two sons remain dedicated to the park. Nigel makes clear that they will carry on and will find new ways to care for the elephants and to welcome visitors to this unique experience. If and when you're in Bali, please make sure to visit the Mason Elephant Park.

Richard Savoie is the CoFounder and CEO of Adiona Tech, a high-tech logistics company that helps suppliers of both B2B and B2C -- business and consumer services -- optimize the efficiency of their delivery fleets. Richard's passion for and contribution to sustainability is pronounced. Since 2021, his firm has enabled delivery fleet operators to save millions of miles of travel, hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, and 7.2 million kilograms of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. Using machine learning, and artificial intelligence, Adiona Tech optimizes the efficiency of delivery fleets in real time, reducing the number of trucks and clarifying delivery times.

Richard was born and raised in New Hampshire. After studying at Northeastern University in Boston, Richard and his wife moved to Australia where he worked for a number of years in medical device engineering. Then Richard flexed his entrepreneurial side... ultimately cofounding Adiona Tech with a partner who specializes in optimization and computer science. They saw massive inefficiencies in the delivery supply chain and built software address this. Their first client was CocaCola.

Today Adiona Tech has clients throughout Australia, New Zealand, in parts of Southeast Asia, and pilot programs in the United States. He notes that Australia Post... one of the world's largest postal distributors... is a key client that Adiona Tech helped to greatly increase the efficiency of its operations. In fact, Adiona Tech helped it to cut its fleet size, increase its delivery services, while providing a 100x return on the cost of the delivery optimization.

The conversation hits on several facets of the supply chain, notably the last mile. Traditionally and on average, trucks serving the last mile have been only 60% full. Using Adiona Tech's services, delivery trucks can be 80-90% full, fleets can be smaller, and tremendous financial and environmental gains can be realized.

Adiona Tech starts with its focus on both the supply side -- where products originate -- and the demand side, where they are delivered to businesses and consumers. Factors and optimization parameters considered include cargo size, weight, and volume; whether the products are palletized or not, the types of fleet vehicles used and more. Routes vary based on demands and on actual traffic patterns through what Richard calls "dynamic routing."

The conversation shifts to the rise and potential for electric vehicles, noting range considerations that alter routes, but also the efficiency of EVs and their promise to further increase the efficiency and decarbonization of logistics. Autonomous vehicles are discussed, with Richard explaining the necessary orchestration of three technologies: AI, autonomous vehicles, and robotics. We are not there yet, but Richard anticipates the effective convergence of these in the next ten years... further enhancing the efficiency of delivery services. These advances will continue to boost Adiona Tech's outsized beneficial environmental impact.

Millennial Potash has a big mission... to feed the world's growing population. Global population growth is expected to rise from 7+ billion currently to some 12 billion by 2050. Millennial Potash is in the fertilizer business. Potash is a form of potassium - potassium chloride. It is considered the king of fertilizers. It strengthens crop roots, enhances water retention, replenishes the soil, and thus boosts agricultural yields. Potassium is one of the big three chemicals that make up NPK, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Today, many countries are classifying it as a critical mineral given its huge importance with agriculture and food production.

Farhad Abasov is the Chairman, Director and Co-Founder of Millennial Potash. It's his 8th company. His past works have also been mining ventures, extracting lithium, uranium, and other minerals. Millennial is based in Saskatchewan, but Farhad is based in Dubai and beams in from the the United Arab Emirates for the podcast conversation. He explains that Dubai is strategically located as Millennial's big new venture is developing a potash mine in Gabon, Africa. The mine, known as the Banio project, is 1,238 square kilometers in size, about half the State of Rhode Island.

Potash is naturally occurring in soils, and is also found in rich deposits that formed from ancient seas that evaporated over time. Farhad explains that there is a huge amount of potash on the planet... enough for centuries and centuries of production at today's use rates. The challenge, he explains, is that potash reserves are not where potash is used. The biggest users of potash are the United States, China, Brazil, and India, while the largest potash reserves are in Canada, Russia, and Belarus. The Gabon location is strategically located in a politically stable country and along the coast. Millennial is building an export port in the Atlantic to move its material to key global markets.

Ted asks about the environmental impacts of potash mining. Is it strip-mined like coal? No, explains Farhad. Instead solution mining used, a process in which water (in this case sea water) is injected into the Earth forcing the mineral to the surface where it is dried and the loaded onto cargo ships for export. There is very little impact on the surface, no underground work, no subsidence or sink holes, the mine appearing more like a natural gas facility than mineral mine. As for the impact of drying the material in a jungle-like environment, Millennial is building a 25 MW natural gas power plant for this function, a relatively small facility given the enormity of the mine that will be Gabon's largest industry and largest employer... and the billions of tons of potash that will be extracted there to feed the world.