Sept 1, 2024

Hi and welcome to newsletter #45 of OneBeautifulPlanet.org!

This message goes to my 212 subscribers, with a big Thank you for signing up. If you have just subscribed, check out the Newsletter archive. I wrote the first issue in June 2023, and an overview of the effort at the 100th subscriber milestone.

Litter Cleanups

After recently completing several cleanups, mostly around Greater Philadelphia and during my travels, I wanted to highlight one I did on a quick business trip to Boston, Massachusetts.

Thanks to the Terra.do Learning for Action program, which I completed earlier this year (shout out to fellow #Fossas cohort on this email list!!), and its amazing Slack community of over 4,000 students and alumni, I was able to recruit a fellow environmental enthusiast, Katya Stupina, to join me. We had a great time cleaning up Boston Commons and part of the Charles River Esplanade just before sunset. Together, we filled two 13-gallon trash bags with litter, leaving this lovely area better than we found it!

Several people thanked us and asked if we were part of an organized volunteer group, like the Charles River Conservancy, or The Esplanade Association. The area was full of people working out, running, hanging out, and even dancing—there was a Zumba class right on the Esplanade! This experience showed me that this beautiful area, which attracts both residents and tourists, offers an excellent opportunity for organizations to find volunteers, raise awareness, and make a positive impact.

Mindset

“A single year of sunshine exceeds all known existing energy reserves of oil, coal, natural gas and uranium put together. The future is renewable.” 

— Aidan Charron - Earthday.org

In The Works

Who likes the smell of gas and sound of leaf blowers and lawn equipment on a quiet Saturday morning? Or any other morning for that matter.

Yeah, me neither.

No, I am not talking about banning these machines, though that may surely help.

I am highlighting an opportunity to make the change and transition to quitter, cleaner electric tools that even the workers themselves will enjoy using. No one likes having to wear earmuffs and smell like gas for hours while hard at work in a field or around people's houses.

The residential market has already begun to adapt and it's time for the commercial lawn care & landscaping market to take notice. The US has more than 600,000 landscaping service enterprises, in a highly fragmented $83 billion annual market.

After researching the opportunity to move to electric over the past few weeks, I wrote the article below. If you or anyone in your network operates a traditional gas-powered landscape services businesses, please check out the how-to guide. It's been reviewed &edited by Stephen Gault - CEO of all electric EcoMow in Dallas, Texas and co-host of the Electric Lawn Talk podcast.

If you found this newsletter helpful or interesting, please share it. Thank you. And of course, if you would like to collaborate in some way, whether in writing, or volunteering together at a cleanup, please let me know.

Razvan