E85: Commons: sustainable shopping made easy

04/17/25 • 30 min

This week on Everybody in the Pool, it’s Earth Month of personal climate action! This week we’re tackling an all-too-common question: I want to shop more sustainably, but I’m not sure what to buy (or what not to buy)! Commons is an app and website that helps you easily find sustainable alternatives to everyday items — mostly clothes and textiles now, with more to come. Founder Sanchali Pal is a self-described data nerd who’s been tracking her own carbon footprint, and the impact of her personal choices, for over a decade now. And here’s the thing: we keep getting told that we’re powerless and companies need to make meaningful change, but the truth is, they’re listening to us, and the votes of our dollars matter now more than ever.

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E84: HomeBoost: a home energy assessment in a box

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re continuing our Earth Month of personal climate action! If your house is anything like mine, it’s a leaky sieve of escaping heat or cool air, your HVAC filters are disgusting, and there are sneaky fluorescent bulbs hanging around the house. It’s costing you money, and it’s wasting energy, meaning it’s contributing to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in a way that’s probably fairly easy to avoid. This week, I’m talking to Evite founder Selina Tobaccowala about the company she has since founded, HomeBoost, and how it’s helping homeowners make their homes more comfortable, energy efficient, and lower utility bills as a result.

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E86: Savor and the science of building a better butter

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re still diving into the choices that you can make as a consumer, in our Earth Month of personal climate action! And this one is a biggie: food. We love a climate entrepreneur with a vision to solve a big problem who goes looking around and lands on one you might not have thought of. Savor founder Kathleen Alexander did her research and landed on fats and oils, which are detrimental in all kinds of ways, from the way we practice agriculture to deforestation to energy use. Her company uses molecular construction to create replacement versions of fats and oils, starting with a butter that’s good enough to be in the chocolates of a Michelin-star restaurant. Taste test within!