What if we could eliminate the 1.8 billion disposable coffee cups Australians send to landfill every year? That's exactly what Saxon Wright is working towards with Borrow by Huskee, a revolutionary reusable cup system that's making sustainability not just possible, but convenient.

The journey begins with Wright's origins as founder of Pablo & Rusty's coffee company, where sourcing trips to coffee farms revealed mountains of discarded coffee husk waste. This sparked the creation of the original Huskee Cup, incorporating this agricultural byproduct into reusable cups that found global success. But Saxon realised individual reusable cups, while helpful, weren't creating the systemic change needed to truly solve the disposable cup crisis.

Enter Borrow by Huskee – a comprehensive system where customers use an app to scan and borrow cups, returning them to any participating venue or smart bin within 14 days. The cups are collected, professionally washed, and redistributed to cafes in a seamless circular economy. Each cup is tracked through individualised QR codes, ensuring accountability and allowing each cup to be used hundreds of times before replacement.

The system is seeing remarkable success at Sydney's Barangaroo precinct, approaching 20% adoption through collaboration between building owners, waste operators, and precinct managers. What's fascinating is that many customers choose the system not primarily for environmental reasons, but simply because they prefer the superior drinking experience the cups provide – proving sustainability works best when it's also the more attractive option.

Wright's vision extends far beyond coffee cups to food containers, cold cups, wine glasses and eventually all forms of packaging. He envisions entire cities becoming single-use free through interconnected systems of smart bins, cleaning facilities, and household reuse bins alongside traditional recycling.

Ready to be part of the solution? Download the Borrow by Huskee app today to find participating venues near you and experience firsthand how convenience and sustainability can work together to create meaningful change.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

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Chances are you’ve owned a pair of leather shoes, but have you ever stopped to consider their—excuse the pun—footprint?

As we all know, leather comes from cows and cows contribute to climate change through their burps and farts and the deforestation that often occurs to give them land to live on.

If that’s not enough, the tanning process causes damage too, using chemicals with nasty names like chromium and aldehyde which, in many parts of the world end up in the soil and rivers, which then leach into the food system and yes, into us.

Alt.Leather founder Tina Funder is on a mission to change all this by creating a whole new kind of leather from nothing but plant materials.

In this episode she gives us the inside story on:

👜 How a humble handbag brand sparked the idea for a whole new material

🔬 The deep-tech innovation process, from tubs in the garage to a fully functional scientific lab

🤝 Why finding your customers before you even have the product is a great way of creating product-market fit

😬 How putting yourself out there before you feel ready is a great way to speed up the process

💰 Three things to look for in an investor

👶 The importance of finding time for family in a world of infinite to-do lists


Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen...

What if the leather in your shoes, handbags, and car seats could be made without harming animals or the planet? Tina Funder, founder of Alt Leather, has created exactly that – a 100% plant-based leather alternative that's turning heads from Australian retailers to Paris Fashion Week.

The journey began when Tina discovered the dark side of both traditional and "vegan" leather options. Animal agriculture contributes 14.5% of global emissions while occupying over half the Earth's land surface. The tanning process uses toxic chemicals that poison waterways and harm workers. Meanwhile, so-called "vegan leathers" are typically just petroleum-based plastics with clever marketing. Searching for genuine solutions, Tina began experimenting in a garage with a leather application specialist, creating prototypes that initially "looked like scrambled eggs."

After relocating to CoLab (the "WeWork of biotech") and eventually Monash University, the Alt Leather team developed a revolutionary material incorporating wine industry waste. Their vision extends beyond simply replacing leather – they aim to transform manufacturing itself. While animal hides have irregular shapes causing up to 60% cutting floor waste, Alt Leather will be produced in continuous rolls and eventually molded directly into product shapes, eliminating waste entirely.

The business has gained powerful supporters, including Tesla chair Robin Denham's family office and $1.15 million in government funding. Alt Leather recently debuted at Paris Fashion Week, signed its first commercial partnership with a luxury winemaker, and is preparing for a seed funding round to build their pilot manufacturing facility.

Curious about sustainable fashion's future? Follow Alt Leather's remarkable story at alt-leather.com or @alt.leather_ on Instagram. Within a year, you might be walking in shoes that look and feel like premium leather – but leave a dramatically smaller footprint on our planet.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

Learn more at goodtrepreneur.co

How much stuff have you got in your life? Go on, count it in your mind…

Every book, pot and pan, every sock and pair of jeans. The couch, the stuff behind the couch. And so much more.

According to the LA Times, the average US home contains around 300,000 items. Most of us don’t need most of it, but we still buy more, using up our home planet’s resources in the process.

For 10 years the Garage Sale Trail has been swapping consumerism for community and making it more fun to buy second hand than new.

In this episode we speak to Co-Founder Andrew Valder, GM Barbara Gill and long time supporter, trail lover and TV legend ❤️ Barry Du Bois about:

👯 The power of community to drive sustainability

💥 How sparking creativity sparks change

👕 Barry's awesome idea for tracking which clothes you wear and which you don't

👩‍💼 Working with local councils to create Australia's biggest day of fun and reuse

😁 Why getting rid of your old stuff is even more rewarding than getting new stuff

Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen...

Ever wondered what happens to all that stuff accumulating in your home? With the average US household containing a staggering 300,000 items, our consumption habits have reached unsustainable levels – if everyone lived like Australians, we'd need four Earths to support us.

The Garage Sale Trail offers a brilliantly simple solution that transforms waste into opportunity and strangers into neighbours. What began as a small community initiative in Bondi Beach has evolved into Australia's largest secondhand event, helping millions of people buy and sell pre-loved items while creating meaningful connections.

Co-founder Andrew Valder, GM Barbara Gill, and longtime champion Barry Dubois share the remarkable story behind this movement that's changing how Australians think about consumption. Their conversation reveals how a "glorious accident" became a nationwide phenomenon that's kept mountains of useful items out of landfill while addressing social isolation.

The magic isn't just in the environmental benefits – it's in the stories. A Barbie camper van purchase leads to an ongoing friendship between neighbours who would never have met otherwise. A woman regularly spots her neighbour wearing the favourite jeans she sold her. A man finds a vintage bicycle identical to one from his childhood, creating an unexpected bond with the seller. These connections form the true heart of the Garage Sale Trail experience.

The initiative has become a catalyst for creativity and community building, with participants giving their sales unique names, creating themed displays, and turning transactions into celebrations. Perhaps most remarkably, about one-third of shoppers had never previously bought secondhand goods, showing how the Trail is shifting consumer behaviour by making secondhand shopping fun, social, and rewarding.

Ready to join the movement? Mark your calendar for November 8-9 and 15-16, and discover the treasures – both material and relational – waiting just down your street. Visit garagesaletrail.com.au to register your sale or find trails near you.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

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It has been said that all change starts with mindset.

And that to solve the environmental challenges of this world, we first need to people to believe that the environment does matter, a better world is possible, and all those excuses for why renewable energy or protection of our wild places can't happen are just that excuses.

Natalie Kyriacou is making it her life's work to just that. Her latest creation is 'Nature's Last Dance', a book that adventures into the wonders of our planet and makes the environmental fascinating and fun.

This special episode:

🐵 Starts with an underwear-stealing Orangutan and gets wilder from there

🚢 Takes you on a ride from Borneo to Costa Rica to explore how systems change is essential if we want environmental change

🐋 Uses the words ‘whale poo’ at least twice

🌳 Sees our guest getting stuck up a tree with her whole family

💪 Has a whole lot of depth too as we discuss topics like the importance of women and children to the environmental movement, how everyone everywhere can play a role in making the world we want, and what it takes to stay positive in a sometimes challenging world.

Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen:

Meet Natalie Kiriakou, an environmentalist whose journey began when an orangutan named Miko stole her underwear in the jungles of Borneo. That unexpected encounter sparked a career dedicated to reimagining our relationship with the natural world – not through dry statistics or corporate jargon, but through captivating storytelling that makes environmentalism fascinating again.

Natalie's approach is refreshingly different. Rather than focusing on isolated solutions like tree planting (though important), she challenges the underlying systems that perpetuate environmental harm. "If we made these systems up, we can change them," she explains, highlighting Costa Rica's remarkable transformation from a war-torn nation to an ecological paradise through deliberate systems change. By abolishing their military and redirecting funds to education and environmental protection, Costa Rica demonstrates what's possible when we dare to reimagine our priorities.

Her upcoming book "Nature's Last Dance" weaves quirky tales – from Australia's failed war against emus to the climate-regulating powers of whale poo – into profound insights about our interconnectedness with nature. It's her rebellion against the tedium that often surrounds environmental discussions, offering instead a love letter to our planet that's as entertaining as it is enlightening. Natalie also highlights the disproportionate impact of climate disasters on women, especially Indigenous women and women of colour, while emphasizing their crucial role in creating lasting solutions.

Despite the overwhelming nature of global environmental challenges, Natalie finds hope in connection – with nature, community, and the countless individuals quietly working to make a difference. Her philosophy is beautifully simple: "At the end of the day, my goal is pretty simple: to live a life that creates more good than harm." This begins with small actions – how we treat the barista, whether we smile at strangers, if we stop to help an injured bird – and grows into larger commitments to community and planet.

Discover "Nature's Last Dance" is now available at all bookstores. Connect with Natalie at nataliekyriacou.com and join her mission to make environmentalism engaging, accessible, and genuinely inspiring once again.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

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Plastic is a global problem.

Since 1950 it’s estimated that together we humans have produced over 9 billion tonnes of the stuff - and half of that in the last 13 years alone.

Every piece ever made still exists and much of it makes its way into our oceans, breaking down into microplastics that end up in our food chain and, eventually, us.

Lucy Jackson and Ricky Gilbey have made it their mission to help solve the problem by creating ocean toys out of ocean plastics.

In this episode you'll hear the story of how they've made it happen, and it's a story that has it all.

❤️ Love. It starts with them meeting over a shared passion for the ocean and explores how their relationship has evolved alongside the challenge of being entrepreneurs while still having time for partner and family.

👊 Determination. It's all too easy in this world to take no for an answer, but in this story determination makes the impossible possible.

⚡️ Ingenuity. We all build skills throughout our lives but the way Lucy and Rikki put their collective skills and resources together, from woodwork to marketing, is deft.

🥾 Adventure. The most fulfilling journey's aren't always the easiest, and you don't always end up where you thought you would, but Lucy and Rikki show the importance of an adventure mindset that embraces the unknown.

🌊 Community. If determination is what makes the WAW Badfish possible, it is the ability to bring the bodysurfing community together that ultimately makes it a success.


Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen:

When Rikki Gilbey discovered body surfing hand planes while working at Patagonia, he was instantly hooked by both the experience and the sustainable ethos behind them. Starting with handcrafted wooden versions made from reclaimed timber, he quickly identified both a market opportunity and a production ceiling—he could only make about 60 per week by hand. The solution? Create hand planes from recycled ocean plastic.

This seemingly simple idea launched Rikki and his partner, Lucy into a three-year journey filled with rejections, challenges, and unwavering persistence. Manufacturers repeatedly told them it was impossible, but Rikki's self-described "naivety" kept them pushing forward. By partnering with beach cleanup organisations and connecting with the right manufacturer, they eventually created the "Bad Fish"—hand planes made from plastic collected from the Great Barrier Reef.

Their dedication earned them National Geographic's Defy Plastics award and sparked media attention that propelled their business forward. Today, they've expanded into sustainable golf gear with Wild Golf while maintaining a flexible lifestyle that allows them to prioritise family alongside entrepreneurship.

What makes their story remarkable isn't just the products they've created, but how they've demonstrated that seemingly impossible sustainability challenges can be overcome with passion, community support, and persistent problem-solving.

Ready to ride the wave of positive change? Check out their products at wawhandplanes.com.au or wearewildgolf.com and see how you can join their mission to clean our oceans, one hand plane at a time.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

Learn more at goodtrepreneur.co

A two minute introduction that introduces you to the idea of a Goodtrepreneur and what to expect from this podcast.

Goodtrepreneur is the podcast about good people with good ideas for a better world.

Please 👀 follow, 👂listen, 🌟 rate and share 📢 to help spread the word and deliver on our mission to inspire and enable more people to create more world changing ideas - and succeed - more often.

Learn more at goodtrepreneur.co