My impressions, reflections and highlights of SF Climate Week 2024

Sunday morning I kicked it off with the Women in Cleantech and Sustainability for a relaxed hike through one of San Francisco’s stunning green spaces and a chance to forge new connections and discuss innovative ideas in the field of sustainability at Lands End Lookout while exploring the scenic and refreshing pathways taking in the views of the Golden Gate Bridge and blue water along with the healthy and colorful bright nasturtium flowers ?growing up through the trees! Thank you Sara Eve Fuentes (she/her) of Smart Waste and the others from WCS who organized and hosted this great event to kick-off SF Climate Week!?

Note: When I met founder Lisa Ann Pinkerton at the Women in Green Forum in 2013, I told her I'd been doing Sustainability work for awhile but didn’t know what Cleantech was.? Then a friend recruited me to volunteer at the Cleantech Open Global Forum later that year and I was hooked!? In 2021 I convinced my longtime friends to go through the Cleantech Accelerator with their patented underwater energy technology which is when I joined the team. We followed that by going through LACI. So now I’m really in the know!? It was fun to meet and walk and talk to other people with shared interest:

Shamir Hyman about his start-up WasteX |A simpler way for teams to manage their waste operations.? Alex Momand M&R Solutions mostly about how delicious Afghan food is, but he is up to some really great work around the world! ? And Rohit Chadha visiting from NYC and Laura Wasserson of Metal Plant (Carbon Removal)!

Afterwards I played the Climate Fresk Game (Climate Communications)

The description drew my friend and I into wanting to play this “game” …and it was so popular that it was wait-listed twice until they added a third one which we acted fast enough to get into!

Thank you Catherine Kherian, Diane Guerin and Angela Tseng for hosting!

Monday

I attended SF ClimateHack Presents: Dancing with Elephants (Energy)

By John Greenfield , Santhi Analytis, Ph.D. , Edo Perry , Miranda Nover ?

Which took place at the brand new?9Zero building, a pioneering climate innovation hub and co-working space starting in San Francisco, which served as primary hub for SF Climate Week.?

There was a fireside chat with Areeb Malik from Glacier, a company using AI & Robotics to fight climate change and extract value from the $123B worth of recyclables that fill landfills and oceans.? He discussed ways of potentially making toothpaste tubes more recyclable…among other topics. It was a great event for networking: Gilad Laor an MBA student at Cal looking to intern in agtech, or AI,

Andrers Swittrup Kristensen with Plug and Play Tech Center?

Haran Cohen Hillel and Evyatar cohen of New Light: Sailing toward hydrogen powered shipping

Followed by

Seed Founder-Investor Speed Networking with Better Ventures, Urban Innovation Fund & More! (Superorganism and Valia Ventures) at the Cooley, LLC offices (with amazing views from the 20th floor of an Embarcadero Building on a clear day)?(Carbon Capture, Energy, Transportation)

Climate tech funders met with Climate Tech start-ups during roundtable rotations for intros and quick discussions.?I met Hitesh Manglani who showed me a fiber made from kelp and corn ag waste! Neev Efrat who recently launched Spiral Media Productions, whose mission is to produce media that makes your innovation easy to understand while also selling the vision of your company. Wei Shung Chung with Wildfire Detector and I took in the beautiful views along with Oscar Valentin Castillo Valdez of?Green Fluidics Breathing Buildings!

Followed By

SF Climate Week Welcome Ceremony with City of San Francisco (policy)

By SF Climate Week & Climatebase and held at the 9Zero building

Tyrone Jue ?? Director, San Francisco Environment spoke of the recent passing of Pastor Cecil Williams and his great impact on social and environmental justice and that it is now up to all of us to continue his legacy.

I got to meet up with my friend Anya Deepak ?Senior Racial Equity Director at the Environment Department?in SF, met Adara Schneider of Premier Packaging, got to meet Agneta Rosenberg whom I'd met on Zoom Calls with GreenTV.com, Amy Golan of Planet Renu, Chiko Scozzafava on the boards of Films for the Planet and EcoWomen and Vessy, all from the Climatebase Fellowship!

Tuesday

Climate Week Morning Coffee at Phil’s Coffee hosted by

Arbor Day Foundation

Where I chatted with:

Reetu Gupta who is a member of Portfolia, Sachi Shiroma who is moving into ESG, Cher Lei with Cyclei a solution focused on reuse of single use, Maile Hartsook, Sustainability Mgr at Brown-Forman, Patrick Farrar of Impact Labs in Nova Scotia, Graham Pansing Brooks?and Hillary Prince of the Arbor Day Foundation

Followed by

Strategic Narrative-How to Raise Capital, Close Deals, and Ignite Market-Defining Moments (Climate Communications)

Where I met John Novitsky who shared stories of growing robust tomatoes and turning an urban college boy into a farmer!?

Followed by

Carbon Cocktails: Future Carbon/Innovation: From California to Denmark(Carbon Capture)?

Where I learned that the Country of Denmark spends approx $60 per citizen on climate reduction, which is a lot different than the US.? The entire footprint of Denmark fits into a small portion of California!? Underneath their soil is a layer of sandstone, which makes a wonderful carbon sink for future sequestration.

And Innovation Centre Denmark has formed a partnership with Silicon Valley to collaborate on research, entrepreneurship and innovation!

It was great to see fellow LACI cohort Vince Wong of Electric Fish there and cross paths again with Ardilla Deneys whose work includes Carbon Negative Furniture and circularity

Followed by

Pizza and sunset for reuse enthusiasts (hosted by Yoodlize) (Materials and Circular Economy) By Yoodilize Co-Founders Natalie Fairbourne, and Jason Fairbourne & SF Climate Week?

Where I met and had impassioned conversations with Amir Gur? Urgently Fix Climate, Innovate, Disrupt, Collaborate, Drastic action and solution scale and Sean Craig? of Back Market who's mission is to fight e-waste by giving expertly renewed devices a second life, among others.

Wednesday

?Why a Human Rights Approach is Essential for Success in Fighting Climate Change (Environmental Justice) Hosted by Climate Rights International & SF Climate Week

They are doing very important work building awareness and exposing human and environmental rights and abuses around the world. This was just one example.

Note: There were so many events competing for my interest and attention Wednesday evening, but when my local SF friend told me she’d go with me to this one, we did!

“Reinventing Recycling" Documentary Screening, Q&A with Filmmaker, Jay Windland and Brightmark CEO, Bob Powell (Materials & Circularity)

By SF Climate Week, APCO & Brightmark?

Here is a link to see the trailer and/or panel discussion and a link for pay per view the entire film: https://www.recycling.film/??

This film screening and Q&A was hosted at Brightmark, a circular innovation company with a mission to Reimagine Waste. Both the film and panel were great! One topic discussed was whether “bioplastics” are best industrially composted or processed with petroleum-based plastics... transformed through shredding, removing metals, drying, and pelletizing, heated and vaporized into liquids and gas sent to partners for future lives as circular plastic products and even biofuel.

Sidenote: While taking the intro to Waste Management and Recycling class at UCLA several years ago, I asked my teacher what I could do to make up for the class I would miss during my New England fall leaves trip, and he recommended getting a tour of a local MRF there. But somehow we ended up at a Waste-to-Energy plant in Agawam, MA. I recall the guy giving us a tour saying they like burning plastic best because it gets the hottest and the gas is used to heat homes around there. I find it interesting that this video shared by Mar Vin Foo on Singapore's use of them showcased here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CZgWBvggBOY

I also met Nilpa Jhaveri there. She’s been co-designing the mobile app and admin web portal for Connected Hydration, a wearable that helps people stay healthy when working in extreme heat conditions.

Note: Well it was about this time that other SF Climate week attendees would ask what were my? favorite events or what have I learned from my time there.? With the interactive events on Sunday, and with only one day left before returning home, this was actually the first of several events that got me most engaged and my juices flowing!?

Thursday

I intended to go to this: Activate x Anglo American: Unleashing early-stage startup potential with corporate venture capital

But when the host of this event hadn’t confirmed whether my registration would be accepted by 9:30 pm the night before, I arranged to have a breakfast meeting with a local friend with a background in renewable on demand energy and building industry, who rearranged her schedule to make the time work for us to meet. Then that organization notified me at 9:50 pm that I could attend their event! And wouldn’t you know it, my friend was discussing the topic of converting materials into biogas!?

Followed by

Otherlab & Friends Demo Day which was a real highlight for me!

A beautiful historic building houses an amazing group in a hardware workshop of current and spin-off projects which inlude:

Gradient, Aikido, Anchorbot (by Otherlab), Channing Street Copper Co., Trofix and ISTARI!

Thank you to the start-ups and staff for opening your wonderful Climate Tech R&D phase workshop with us, Charlie, Jim McBride, co-founder and CTO, Jake Lacore, Sr Technician, Margaret Long, Shop Manager and Founder and Chief Scientist, Saul Griffith, whom I discovered is also founder of Rewiring America, as well as the writer of Electrify!?

Side note: I was introduced to Rewiring America through my cousin Ben’s podcast of Asa, a 7 year old boy, nearly a year ago. climatepapa.com/fathers-day #6: Father's Day - Rewiring America x Climate Papa - Let's #ElectrifyFathersDay

I also ran into Nate Springer of Fresh Consulting whom I met at Verge23 last year. His father teaches at a University in MI, and chose “Electrify” for book of the month!? So Nate was excited to have the author autograph a book to give to his dad!

Followed by

Gigaton Salon: Let’s sell some gigatons! Presented by the Abundance Institute and Harvest, Impulse, and Starshot.

Look. We know we’re preaching to the choir here at SF Climate Week. Join marketing, social science, and influencer leaders for tips, tricks, and hacks to sell a livable planet to everyone - even if they don’t know they want it.

Staci Roberts-Steel of https://yellowdotstudios.com/ was being interviewed when this happened: Watch this video!

Followed by

Sustainable Fashion Exhibition (Materials and Circular Economy)

By Serotonin Creative at the Hibernia

The highlights for me were the gorgeous space we were, reconnecting with longtime friend and associate Marissa LaMagna of Bay Area Green Tours and meeting Alivia Kaplan who introduced us to Inversa Leathers, from invasive species!

I attended this event because I had produced Sustainable Fashion events in San Francisco before and was curious about who was hosting and addressing that topic now. The first speaker panel was on creating the fashion garments and the second was on End of Use. I’d known both Heather Podoll with Fibershed and Annie Guillingsrud from the past who is now part of Trashie, which recently launched and was featured on the Good Morning America Show that morning.

So between the "Reimagine Waste" film and breakfast convo with my friend, I found myself wondering by the end of the evening, since plastic can be pyrolyzed into biogas and biofuel, why bio and petroleum-based "waste" textiles too, to prevent them from ending up at landfills around the world like THIS at the very least!