Cattle are one of the most consequential climate problems hiding in plain sight on the dinner table. Livestock are responsible for roughly 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and cattle alone account for about 65% of that sector’s output. Most of it doesn’t come from manure or land use — it comes from inside the cow. Approximately one billion cattle on the planet burp around 3.7 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually, more than the aviation and shipping industries combined. A growing number of researchers and companies are focused on a deceptively simple approach: change what a cow eats. A red seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis contains bromoform, a compound that blocks the enzymes used by methane-producing microbes in the rumen. Today’s guests didn’t learn about this from a graduate seminar. They’re high school students, and they built an idea for their first company around it. Every January, I judge a Shark Tank-style competition that caps a month-long entrepreneurship program at the Bush School in Seattle. This year, a pitch by three students stopped me cold. Zara, Ellie, and Kai Aizawa are the co-founders of MooBlue, whose tagline — Cut the burp, keep the beef — got a laugh, but whose business concept is entirely serious. Kai is heading to Haverford College in the fall. Zara and Ellie are still freshmen.
MooBlue proposes harvesting Asparagopsis from the Mediterranean, where it is an invasive species currently harming marine ecosystems, processing it into an oil-based feed additive and building a certification and labeling system so consumers can identify beef and dairy products raised using reduced-methane feeds. What struck me wasn’t just the idea. It was the depth of the research: from the biochemistry of rumen fermentation to the intellectual property landscape to a two-segment go-to-market strategy targeting large corporate operations and family farms. They covered the competitive white space, the supply chain, the financial incentives for farmers, and the consumer psychology of premium labeling, all with the ease of people who had genuinely internalized what they were talking about.
The conversation shows that the internet has exploded ceiling of what a curious teenager can discover. When Zara, Ellie, and Kai needed to understand the biochemistry of enteric fermentation, they found recent, peer-reviewed research. When I was their age, those journals would have been available only at a university library, if they existed at all. Today, a high school freshman in Seattle can find a paper out of, understand the biochemistry well enough to explain it clearly, and build a company around the discovery. That changes what a generation can imagine. And it may change what we can collectively accomplish.
You can learn more about the Bush School’s entrepreneurship program at bush.edu.
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Interview Transcript
Mitch Ratcliffe 0:09
Hello! Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours, welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation.
Today we’re going to talk gas, specifically, the methane gas ruminating in the gut of cattle around the world. Livestock are responsible for roughly 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Cattle alone account for about 65% of the livestock sector’s greenhouse gas output, and most of that isn’t from manure or land use. It’s due to enteric fermentation, the microbial process in a cow’s rumen — its gut — that produces methane that reaches the atmosphere as a burp or a fart.
Approximately one billion cattle live on the planet, and they emit around 3.7 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually — more than the entire aviation and shipping industries combined. That hamburger on your plate isn’t coming without a significant environmental price. Methane is a particularly potent problem: over a 20-year period, it traps about 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, because methane breaks down in the atmosphere in roughly a decade. Reducing the volume of this bovine gas can deliver climate benefits faster than almost any other intervention, and that’s why the Global Methane Pledge, signed by more than 150 countries, aims to reduce methane emissions by 30% before 2030.
That’s also why a growing number of researchers and startups are focused on a deceptively simple question: can you change what a cow eats and meaningfully change the climate math? The answer increasingly appears to be yes. A red seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis contains bromoform, a compound that inhibits the enzymes relied on by methane-producing microbes in a cow’s gut — in other words, it stops the gas. Peer-reviewed studies, including landmark research out of UC Davis and James Cook University in Australia, have shown that adding small amounts of Asparagopsis to cattle feed can reduce enteric methane emissions by up to 80%, with no adverse effects on the animal, its milk, or its meat production.
But I didn’t learn about this from reading research. It was explained to a group of adults by three high school students, and here’s the backstory. For the past couple of years, in January, I’ve been a judge at a Shark Tank competition that caps a month-long entrepreneurship program at the Bush School in Seattle. The class is taught by a friend and former business partner of mine, and it’s a rigorous program: students research real markets, build real business plans, and pitch to a panel that doesn’t pull punches. I’m the meanest shark, by the way.
This January, a pitch by three students struck me deeply, and I turned into the shark who was ready to invest. So my guests today are Zara, Ellie, and Kai Aizawa, co-founders of MooBlue.
Their tagline, Cut the burp, keep the beef, Got a laugh, but their Asparagopsis-based business concept is serious. MooBlue proposes harvesting the red seaweed from the Mediterranean, processing it into an oil-based feed additive, rather than a powder, as many other companies are considering, and building a certification system so that consumers can identify beef and dairy products raised using reduced-methane feeds.
What struck me wasn’t just the idea. It was the depth of the research these students had done, from the biochemistry of the rumen fermentation process to the competitive intellectual property landscape to a two-segment go-to-market strategy targeting both large corporate operations and smaller farms. They talked about these topics with ease, and it got me thinking about how much more information is available to students now than 50 years ago, when I was their age. They stand not just on the shoulders of historic giants like Newton or Einstein, but of cutting-edge researchers who, in the 1970s, typically worked out of sight and out of mind, sometimes for decades, until their research was found to be relevant and useful. But today, students can find out what’s going on in the lab almost immediately, and that changes the potential for innovation in everything.
So we’re going to talk with Zara, Ellie, and Kai about how they discovered the science behind Asparagopsis, why they chose an oil-based formulation over what competitors are doing, how they think about the intellectual property challenges in this space, and what it’s like to build a climate tech business plan when you’re still in high school. You can learn more about the Bush School at bush.edu.
So, can three high school students with a seaweed, a tagline, and a serious grasp of atmospheric chemistry chart a path toward lower-methane beef? Let’s find out, right after this quick commercial break.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Mitch Ratcliffe 5:14
Welcome to the show, Zara, Ellie, and Kai. Could each of you introduce yourself so folks can hear your voice?
Zara 5:20
My name is Zara, and I’m a freshman at the Bush School.
Ellie 5:24
My name is Ellie, and I’m also a freshman at the Bush School.
Kai 5:27
I’m Kai, and I’m a senior at the Bush School.
Mitch Ratcliffe 5:29
Well, welcome to the show, guys. You did a great job during the Shark Tank competition, and I wanted to start off by asking you to quickly do the pitch you did for us.
Zara 5:38
So our idea is a product called MooBlue. Together, we can cut the burp and keep the beef. It would be a for-profit business working to make the livestock industry more sustainable.
Kai 5:49
In order to do this, our product would use Asparagopsis, a seaweed found in tropical areas that has been shown to reduce methane emissions from cows by up to 98%. Our company aims to harvest and turn Asparagopsis into oil-based feed additive capsules.
Zara 6:04
Currently, there’s a lack of sustainability in the agricultural industry, especially with the over-farming of ruminant animals, which are a high contributor to methane emission output. We hope that people will feel better when they buy methane-reduced meat or dairy products, because they’re helping the environment by contributing minimal methane output to the atmosphere.
Ellie 6:25
We have clearly identified this problem for decades, and scientists have discovered this natural solution years ago. Yet this technology isn’t well known, and so it hasn’t been implemented on a wide scale. We want to make it easier for people to help.
Kai 6:36
The two potential target audiences that we identified were large corporate farms and smaller farms in rural areas. We decided to focus on large corporate farms that have thousands of cattle. If one farm adopts your product, you can reduce emissions at scale immediately, which can help reduce methane emissions more quickly. They also have more capital and face increasing pressures from regulators, investors, and food companies to reduce emissions.
Ellie 7:00
Currently, there are a handful of companies trying to do the same thing as us, but this is still a very new market with lots of white space. We were also thinking that within a cooperative competitive relationship, we could help increase widespread adoption of sustainability, because at the end of the day, our goal is sustainability, not just profit.
Kai 7:20
A brief overview of our marketing plan would be to promote our product through agricultural media, such as Successful Farming magazine, and a strategic partnership with Wendy’s. With Wendy’s, we plan to create a limited-edition burger made using beef from calves with reduced methane emissions. This partnership builds off Wendy’s iconic Where’s the Beef? advertising campaign by reintroducing it as Where’s the Methane?. To distribute our product at scale, including in rural areas, we hope to partner with Cargill, the largest cattle feed distributor in the United States. We’ll also place a clear, visible “methane reduced” label on all of our meat products in stores. This allows farmers to differentiate their beef and charge a higher price for verified low-methane products, giving them an incentive to use our product.
Ellie 8:00
We hope to harvest our Asparagopsis from areas in the Mediterranean, relieving those ecosystems of the negative effects of this invasive species.
Zara 8:09
So in the long run, this product will improve air quality and public health by reducing methane-related ozone pollution, and it will slow climate change by targeting one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. So you should cut the burp and keep the beef with our company. Thanks.
Mitch Ratcliffe 8:24
That was great. And again, this is exactly why I was so impressed with your presentation. You thought this through end to end, not something you would expect in a high school entrepreneurship competition. Tell us how the three of you came together as a team, and what was it that sparked your interest in methane emissions from cattle in the first place?
Ellie 8:46
So for the Cascades program, each of us had to do an individual two-minute elevator pitch on our own unique idea. For me, I’d always kind of known about cows and how they’re a massive contributor to global methane emissions. It’s one of those facts that you learn and it just always stays in the back of your mind. I actually think I first learned it from a weird-but-true book I read in elementary school. I had also done a small project on the effects of Asparagopsis in middle school, but it wasn’t really anything concrete. So when I was running out of ideas for the class pitch, I decided to take my bare-bones MooBlue idea to the class, and it was received really well by my classmates and the teacher. The teacher ended up pairing us three together for the final project.
Speaking just for myself, I was excited to continue this business venture because I wanted to do something that mattered — not just to the individual consumer, but on a wider scale, touching the entire chain from farmers to consumers to the earth. So, basically, how Asparagopsis works: not just cows, but actually all ruminant animals — sheep, goats, even giraffes — have something called a rumen, the largest section of their four-part digestive system. The rumen is essentially a big fermentation vat. It contains tons of microbes and methanogens that help the animal break down the very fibrous plant matter it’s eating. When you see cows chewing their cud, that’s the regurgitation from the rumen to help break things down further, because it’s hard to digest.
This whole process of microbes breaking down fiber is called enteric fermentation, and this is what creates methane as a waste byproduct of the anaerobic microbes. The cow releases it through burping — which is a common misconception, because most people think it comes from farts. Asparagopsis reduces methane because it contains the active compound bromoform. When ingested by the cow — even at just 1% of their diet — bromoform blocks the enzymes used by the microbe to create methane. And there’s actually some hope that the energy the cow no longer wastes on producing methane could be redirected into feed efficiency, potentially lowering costs and boosting productivity for farmers.
Mitch Ratcliffe 11:08
That’s a really impressive and thorough explanation. How did you learn about all of that? One of the things that impressed me most is the research you had access to. How did you find it, and what was the process you went through?
Zara 11:23
During the time we were discovering what our unmet need was, we were looking for clear research, images, or articles that could point to the core of what our solution was going to be. I researched on many reputable sources, such as ScienceDirect, the National Institutes of Health, and Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. We wanted our unmet need to be grounded in a specific research topic: reducing methane emissions in the atmosphere.
I came across an article from UC Santa Cruz written by Sarah Mastrani on algae adoption for cattle feed to help reduce the methane emissions cows were producing. It gave people the main idea of our product in simpler terms. This research article provided me with the reputable knowledge needed to see the real effects of algae — how, in very simple terms, people could really understand the main mission of our company.
Mitch Ratcliffe 12:21
One of the ways you translate the mission of the company is into your labeling that you want to put on beef products, dairy products, and so forth. Tell us about methane-reduced labeling. How’d you come up with that idea?
Zara 12:33
We looked at the cage-free eggs comparison. Why do people choose to buy cage-free eggs? They’re more expensive, but consumers want to make a more humane choice. So we came up with a similar incentive for methane-reduced meat — yes, it’ll be more expensive, but it helps the environment and reduces the methane in the atmosphere. We played off the cage-free eggs example and the kind of motivation that makes people pay a premium for something that does good.
Mitch Ratcliffe 13:06
When you think about what that label looks like — is it a big, prominent label? And how do you convince people it’s legitimate? Because a lot of consumers wonder: can I trust this label, or is this just marketing?
Ellie 13:22
I think it’s really important, with something that has a large emotional marketing factor and represents newer technology, that it be authentic. As this technology gains more momentum, we hope to have an actual governing third-party oversight board, or some type of committee, that could certify products like this. A large label on the packaging that simply says “methane reduced” immediately draws the consumer’s eye, and I think even though it’s framed neutrally, it conveys the same weight that “grass-fed beef” and “cage-free eggs” do. Even though the idea is different, it draws out the same emotions and motivations in consumers.
Ultimately, people want to help the earth. They just don’t know how to do it, and they feel helpless. Something as simple as a label on beef can make people feel happy and proud and guilt-free about their food choices — the same way buying a carton of cage-free milk does.
Mitch Ratcliffe 14:33
Kai, you were the marketing mind behind this. Tell us more about your thinking.
Kai 14:38
We really wanted consumers to be bought in — we wanted returning customers, people who cared about the environment. By having a methane-reduced label, they could feel like they’re contributing, like they’re invested in our meat products.
We were always thinking about incentives. The science alone wasn’t going to keep our product afloat. Even if the technology works, adoption is only going to happen when there’s a clear benefit for the farmers, for the company, and for the consumers who feel like they’re helping the environment. So the label was an easy way to align all three of those values quickly: for consumers, it created an easy emotional signal that the purchase was going to make a difference; for producers and food companies, it created a market advantage against other meat products that don’t carry the methane-reduced label.
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:29
As I listen to you, what I’m struck by is that you believe business can make a positive impact in the world. What attracted you to the entrepreneurship program in the first place? How do you feel about the tools you have available to create a better world?
Zara 15:45
For me personally, I got into entrepreneurship from watching my mom start her own company — career consulting and college counseling. Seeing her go through the steps of finding customers and running a business over the past few years was really influential. And then when I saw the Cascades program, I got excited, because I’d attended a summer entrepreneurial program called eBay, in Berkeley, about two years ago, where you created a company based on one of your ideas and pitched it to your family after a three-week course. I really just enjoyed the idea of building a business, and those two experiences played a huge part.
Kai 16:52
During our Shark Tank program, we got to visit a lot of businesses outside the sustainability space as well — we heard the whole story from Nor’east Candles on how they grew their business from start to finish. I was personally really inspired by how quickly someone can build a business. The key factor was that you have to solve a problem. A clear problem in our world is climate change and global warming, and a really powerful way to address it is to bring as many people as possible into the solution. Creating a product to reduce methane emissions is one way to do that.
Mitch Ratcliffe 17:40
And Ellie — you were the initial founder. What about you?
Ellie 17:44
What drew me to entrepreneurship was the impact it can have when done right. You can go into government and fight for policy, and you can be a scientist and come up with new things, but it’s all somewhat wasted if there’s not someone actively working to implement it. I had noticed that California had passed policy to reduce methane. I read an article saying Asparagopsis was the future of agriculture. And I thought: we have the policy to move it forward, and we have the solution — but nobody is working to connect the two and actually solve this pressing problem. That’s what drew me to entrepreneurship: the impact it can have, and the way it brings people together to actually solve a big issue.
Mitch Ratcliffe 18:46
That’s a great place for us to take a break. We’ve set the table for a great methane-free conversation. Let’s take a quick commercial break — we’ll be right back. Stay tuned.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue the conversation with Zara, Ellie, and Kai Aizawa, co-creators of the MooBlue project and students at Seattle’s Bush School. As I listen to you, one thing I wanted to ask: would you be as interested in entrepreneurship and business in general if there weren’t shows like Shark Tank, which of course was the idea that brought us together in the first place?
Kai 19:31
I personally love watching Shark Tank, and it’s been a pretty big motivator for me to try entrepreneurship. But I think the core of entrepreneurship is trying to make as many people happy as possible.
Zara 19:48
Watching Shark Tank and other entrepreneurial shows definitely played a big part for me. When I was younger, my dad would work out in the gym and I’d come in and sit on this little bench watching whatever he was watching, and it always turned out to be Shark Tank. We’d watch episodes back to back, and it became a big bonding thing. It really influenced me into wanting to see the entrepreneurial world create connections between people who watch it and people who want to do good. And the idea of being able to build your own company — to profit or to do good for the environment — played a big part too.
Ellie 20:43
I’m a little different from Zara. I don’t really like watching Shark Tank because I don’t like seeing the investors tear down the business owners. But I think I’d still be just as interested in entrepreneurship without it, because to me, the marketing for entrepreneurship is the outcome. All of these successful businesses are really what made me think, huh, maybe I could do this one day. The success stories are actually a really big draw.
Mitch Ratcliffe 21:20
I want to jump back into the actual plan. One of the things you were particularly focused on was the difference between an oil-based approach to using Asparagopsis in feed versus powder, which is what most companies do. What was the reasoning behind that decision?
Zara 21:41
The oil form is typically considered better than the powder because it offers better stability for the active compound bromoform — lasting at least 12 weeks — whereas the powder can lose its effectiveness a lot faster. The oil also masks the seaweed’s strong taste and smell, making it easier for the cows to consume the product and increasing palatability — meaning it enhances voluntary intake. Cows are more willing to eat it because it doesn’t smell as bad and it tastes a little better mixed into their feed.
Mitch Ratcliffe 22:26
It’s great that you thought about the cows, too, rather than just force-feeding them. Another element of the plan was harvesting the seaweed in the Mediterranean, where it’s an invasive species. Who would do the harvesting, and how did you think about the full supply chain and the benefits it could create for people in those regions?
Ellie 22:47
One thing we noticed when we were researching this is that there’s currently no way to farm Asparagopsis on a scale that would support a business — it’s all very small, experimental farms just getting started, with a lot of ongoing research into the future of that. Rather than our company spending more time and money investing in that research, we decided we could temporarily kill two birds with one stone and harvest Asparagopsis in parts of the Mediterranean where it’s an invasive species wreaking havoc on some natural ecosystems.
We thought we could create partnerships with environmental task forces overseas that are already looking to remove Asparagopsis from those areas, as well as with local divers. We would pay them to harvest it and ship it back to the United States, where our scientists would process it. To be clear, Asparagopsis is causing real harm in those invasive environments — it creates behavioral feeding issues in some invertebrates and releases bromoform into the marine environment, which is toxic to submarine life. We acknowledge that as research progresses and someone does find an efficient way to farm Asparagopsis, it may no longer be cost-effective to import and hand-harvest it. But hopefully by that point, we’ll have made a real impact on the Mediterranean ecosystem as well.
Mitch Ratcliffe 24:47
Another element of your idea was to focus on large cattle feeding operations — CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations — compared to small farms, to make your initial impact and prove the product’s efficacy. Why not start with a small farm and actually measure and reduce their emissions? I’m curious about your thinking there.
Kai 25:11
That’s a really good question, and we went back and forth on it for a long time. During our initial presentation, we actually said smaller farms, and then we revised that multiple times. I do see the argument for starting with smaller farms — you could test it out, see how it works, and change your approach if needed. But with our MVP being so achievable, I think jumping straight to the large corporate farms could be a pretty valuable move.
Ellie 25:42
Part of our reasoning for targeting bigger corporations is that smaller and family farms are a lot more likely to try this simply because they’re less profit-driven and more invested in the craft of farming. We didn’t want to take the easier path. Large corporations aren’t keen on spending extra when they don’t need to, so bringing them the research on potential feed efficiency improvements would be meaningful — and they also simply have more cattle, so the emissions impact is much greater.
Mitch Ratcliffe 26:28
So you found that using the Asparagopsis oil might actually mean you have to feed the cattle less, saving farmers money in the long run?
Ellie 26:38
Yes — the research is still ongoing, but scientists are suggesting that because the bromoform inhibits methane production, the energy that used to be wasted as a byproduct of that process could instead be redirected into feeding energy. It’s still being investigated, but if confirmed, it would create a meaningful financial incentive for farmers on top of the environmental benefits.
Mitch Ratcliffe 27:10
You have a slide in your pitch called Why This Matters, pointing out that we are in the process of breaching the 1.5°C threshold right now, which increases the urgency of reducing emissions. Cattle methane is a significant source, at around 14% of annual emissions. How do you respond to people who say the real answer is just to stop eating beef altogether?
Zara 27:34
I think we would respond by saying that beef and dairy are a huge staple in many communities’ diets. I’m not a vegetarian, and a lot of people rely on dairy products to feed their families. Cows also provide natural fertilizer, which is often overlooked.
Ellie 27:58
I do think the over-consumption of meat and dairy products is unsustainable as it is right now, especially with factory farms. Maybe one day we’ll be able to consume less beef and dairy or diminish factory farm herd sizes. But I also think it’s easier for people to add things to their lives than to take things away. If all farms used Asparagopsis — not even as a marketing strategy, just as a standard practice — we would virtually eliminate cattle’s effect on the climate from enteric fermentation. And I think it’s ultimately up to the consumer. For most of them, it’s easier to wrap their head around buying a piece of beef with less methane output than giving up steak forever. Reducing herd sizes would also take too long to implement, because it would drastically reduce profits for farms that depend on that income.
Mitch Ratcliffe 29:04
That’s a fair answer, and it’s a debate that’s going to continue for a long time. As you talk about your access to information and research, I’m really impressed with how much you know. But I wonder — what’s your perception of your ability to find out anything in this world? When I was your age, the likelihood that any of this information would have been available at my local library was very low. You can get on your computer or phone and find this information instantly. Do you have a sense that anything is discoverable and anything is possible if you just find the information you need?
Ellie 29:44
I think it’s a great tool that we have access to so many of these sources, because — drawing it back to this specific example — this research has been out for nearly a decade and almost nobody knows about it, even with the internet. And it makes you think: if we didn’t have the internet, how much less would it be known? We probably wouldn’t even be developing this product, because it wouldn’t show up anywhere we’d find it. I think internet access is really moving science forward by making more people’s work findable. But it can also be dangerous if you’re reading the wrong things.
Zara 30:35
Going off Ellie’s point — on the internet, you don’t know how many people are actually seeing the same document you’re seeing, or whether they’re trying to solve the same problem. So I also think a good research approach involves direct, physical conversations with someone who’s been directly affected by or connected to the problem you’re trying to solve. Those firsthand experiences bring in sources directly from the source, and that allows you to see what people have actually lived, rather than just what the internet describes.
Mitch Ratcliffe 31:36
You’re going to continue your educations, and I’m curious: do you think higher education, the way we traditionally think about it, is the right path for you to keep making progress toward a positive impact on the world? What are your thoughts on your next steps?
Ellie 32:04
Kai’s the next one going to college.
Zara 32:06
Yeah, he’s the one.
Kai 32:08
I’m obviously pretty interested in entrepreneurship. This fall, I’m going to Haverford College. I want to continue doing projects like this, where I’m trying to solve a problem. And I think it’s important to know that it’s not just the knowledge itself you’re gaining, but also the mentorship networks and the environment where people are constantly pushing you to think more and think bigger.
For me, the goal was to combine traditional education with hands-on experience — exactly like the Shark Tank program. This project wouldn’t have happened without the mentorship we had. David, our teacher and mentor, was such a great guide. He walked us through all the steps. I went into this literally knowing nothing about entrepreneurship, and by the end I felt like a pro — like I could walk someone else through building their own business step by step. Having someone constantly challenging your ideas makes a huge difference.
Mitch Ratcliffe 33:11
It sounds like the experience of learning is what’s most engaging for each of you. Is that right?
Zara 33:19
That’s fair, yeah. Our school really prioritizes experiential education, which is what the Cascades program was designed to do — we got to go visit local businesses and see how they were actually operating. That played a big part in letting us retain so much information, because we got to see how things worked in practice. And as Kai said, David always challenged our ideas and always gave us something to think about, which really pushed us to want to discover more and make the idea even better.
Mitch Ratcliffe 33:56
What’s your advice for adults? What would you recommend they do to unlock all of this knowledge you have and give you a shot at changing the world? How can adults help you get there faster?
Ellie 34:10
Well, everyone always says kids are the future, which is true. But when people say that, it sounds like they’re saying, “Okay, let’s wait 20 years for some kid to do this great thing.” Adults are still in power, and kids are always coming up with newer ideas and fresh perspectives. That’s genuinely great. But without adults using their power — in government, pushing for new legislation, or just supporting these ideas in practice — a lot of these ideas won’t get off the ground. Adults have experience that these kids don’t. If they use that experience to advocate for young people’s ideas and make them more widespread, that would really help get them off the ground.
Zara 35:07
I agree with Ellie on that. Kids are the future, but why would you wait 30 years for a problem you could solve today if you just helped a kid out? We can definitely come up with great ideas, but we can’t execute them without adult support — parents, ultimately, have the final say. If we had a joint team effort with everyone working together, it would really help take big ideas to the next level.
Mitch Ratcliffe 35:42
Multi-generational solutions are where we need to go. How would you change school? Would you make it more like adult life? Or more like childhood used to be, before students had to work 24/7 to impress parents and get good grades?
Kai 36:01
I mean, personally, I would love to be prepared for what I’m actually going to do in the future. But I also understand the value of letting people creatively express themselves, and a lot of that involves experiential learning — at the Bush School, that’s really highly valued. You’re always trying to solve problems on your own, not relying on someone else to hand you the answer. I think that’s very valuable.
Mitch Ratcliffe 36:25
The Bush School is a remarkable environment. It does allow you to stand up and do your thing, and that’s a great model for the rest of the country’s educational system.
Zara 36:35
We’re all very grateful to be able to attend this school.
Mitch Ratcliffe 36:38
What’s one thing that each of you learned during this project — whether about climate science, business, or entrepreneurship — that surprised you or changed the way you think about our potential to build a sustainable world?
Zara 36:50
I think the biggest thing for me was learning about scale in business. We start with these small ideas, but if we can scale a product, it can reach bigger communities and bigger levels. MooBlue is about creating a more sustainable atmosphere by reducing methane emissions from cattle. That’s a good idea, but an idea needs to be scaled and taken in steps to actually be achieved. If we could get it in front of people with more power than three students, that would take it to the next level. Scale is the big thing I learned.
Kai 37:47
For me, it was the importance of aligning incentives. At the beginning, I personally assumed that if something was a good idea and people could easily see its value, it would naturally become a successful product. But that’s not how it works. As we got deeper into the project, we realized that adoption only happens once it also makes financial sense. It kind of shifted how I view entrepreneurship entirely.
Ellie 38:16
For me, drawing it into the climate science aspect of your question: doing research into the sustainability side of science has really opened my eyes to just how much work has been done to create environmentally conscious solutions to some of the most pressing environmental issues. The discovery of Asparagopsis as a viable way to reduce methane is great research, but as I’ve said before, it’s essentially nothing if we fail to implement it. Sustainability will continue to build momentum, but only with the help of business owners working to implement it and make it achievable for ordinary people.
Mitch Ratcliffe 38:51
Y’all have done such an amazing job, both on the pitch and in this conversation. Thank you so much. So — is MooBlue going to be a world-changing effort? Are you going to stick with it?
Zara 39:04
One day, we’d love to see meaningful methane reduction in the atmosphere. We’d have to talk about it as a team, but I think it would be incredible to see that happen.
Mitch Ratcliffe 39:19
Well, thank you so much for your time, guys.
Zara 39:23
Thank you so much for having us.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Mitch Ratcliffe 39:30
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Zara, Ellie, and Kai Aizawa, co-founders of MooBlue, a business concept developed as part of the entrepreneurship program at the Bush School in Seattle. Their idea — harvesting Asparagopsis, a methane-suppressing red seaweed, and processing it into an oil-based cattle feed additive to reduce emissions — is serious climate tech by any measure, even if its authors are still a freshman, a freshman, and a senior in high school.
What struck me most in this conversation is how clearly these three students understand the full shape of the problem they’re trying to solve. They didn’t arrive at Asparagopsis by accident. They found peer-reviewed research from UC Davis, James Cook University, and the National Institutes of Health, synthesized it, and then built a go-to-market strategy that accounts for farmer incentives, consumer psychology, supply chain logistics, and competitive intellectual property dynamics.
The clarity of their problem framing — that a scientifically validated solution has existed for nearly a decade and simply hasn’t been implemented effectively at scale — reflects the kind of systems thinking that is usually hard-won in adulthood, not assumed by people who are still learning to drive. And Zara, Ellie, and Kai’s understanding of the role business can play in bringing scientific ideas to life is a challenge to the idea that profit will always win over positive outcomes.
Ellie put it precisely: you can have policy and you can have research, but if nobody is working to connect them, the problem doesn’t get solved. And Kai came to the same conclusion from a different angle — he started with the assumption that a good idea would naturally succeed, then learned through the project that adoption only follows when incentives are aligned for everyone in the chain, from the farmer’s feed costs to the consumer’s sense of agency at the grocery store. That insight is one that a lot of experienced entrepreneurs are still working out.
Starting with the problem rather than a solution in search of a problem is the best first step when launching a company. And our conversation about media and information access was the most encouraging segment for me, and I think the most consequential.
The Shark Tank format was familiar; it’s a model that equipped them with tools for presenting and pressure-testing an idea, and it clearly shaped their intuition about what was fundable and what a good pitch looks like. But the deeper point is that the internet has done something extraordinary to the ceiling of what a curious teenager can discover. When I was their age, the journals containing this research would not have been available at my local library. They would have been at a university library, if they existed at all. Most of these journals are a product of the internet.
Today, a high school freshman in Seattle can find a paper out of James Cook University, understand the biochemistry well enough to explain it clearly, and identify white space in the competitive landscape, and then think about building a company around what she found. That changes what a generation can imagine, expanding the scope of what’s possible for all of us, and it can give us genuine hope in the climate era.
I think Zara, Ellie, and Kai are living proof of that. The harder question, which they answered honestly, is what it takes to close the gap between discovery and impact. Their answer: adult support, legislative leverage, and the willingness of established businesses to act on incentives that align sustainability with profitability. These are key to thinking about the future of our circular economy, our sustainable economy, and human life.
Kids are the future. And as Ellie challenged us: why would you wait 30 years for a problem you could solve today? That’s not being naive. That’s exactly the kind of impatience we need. Adults can step up and help these kids make the changes they imagine. After all, it is a multigenerational challenge that we face, and we’ve left the world in a state that’s going to take generations to repair.
So stay tuned, and I hope you’ll take a look at our archive of more than 540 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear — perhaps sharing one with your friends. Writing a review on your favorite podcast platform helps your neighbors find us. You’re the amplifiers that spread ideas and create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, and the people you meet on the street that they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.
Thank you for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
The post Sustainability In Your Ear: The MooBlue Team Keeps The Beef, Without The Burp appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/sustainability-in-your-ear-the-mooblue-team-keeps-the-beef-without-the-burp/
What’s not to love about a go-to dress in your wardrobe? The right one can be dressed up or down, it can be worn alone, or worn as a skirt with the right top layered on. A dress is arguably the easiest outfit to put together that still looks put together. The right sustainable dress is the kind of closet staple you can reach for on any kind of summer day, even when you have no idea what to wear.
From t-shirt dresses and house dresses to chic midi frocks and fun mini’s for a night out, this roundup of sustainable dresses has just about everything.
So if you’re looking for that perfect eco-friendly dress to complement your wardrobe this year, I’ve got you covered with this guide to sustainably and ethically-made dresses. This guide has brands with both casual and more formal dresses, but if you’re shopping for exclusively special occasion dresses, I’d recommend also browsing my guide to formal dresses.
What Qualifies As (More) Sustainable Dresses?
Wearing what we have in our closets is the most sustainable approach! But if you’re here, you probably already evaluated that option and you’re looking to add something fresh to your closet.
Secondhand Dresses are Sustainable Dresses
The second most sustainable option is to look secondhand. ThredUp can be a versatile option for pieces at any price point and The RealReal is my favorite choice for more premium brands.
Online secondhand marketplaces like Poshmark or Depop are also good options — but something to watch out when it comes to peer-to-peer marketplaces is that they can sometimes contain new fast fashion disguised as “vintage” pieces, so it can require some additional digging.
For more suggestions, find my full guide to secondhand clothing retailers in this post.
If you’re looking for a new sustainably-made dress, here are some considerations:
- Materials: what is it made from? Is it made with a natural fabric like hemp, linen, or organic cotton? Perhaps made from deadstock or upcycled materials?
- Production Practices: does the brand take efforts to not overproduce? Do they produce in small batches? (No matter how “eco-conscious” the material is, if a brand is throwing away 30% of their stock, that’s not sustainable!)
- Timelessness and Quality: this doesn’t have to mean boring and doesn’t necessarily mean the brand never participates in a trend. But does the brand constantly hop on every single trend and push you to buy more and more? Or do they encourage slow mindful consumption with well-designed dresses? Do they pay attention to construction and details that ensure you’ll be wearing this dress year after year?
- Manufacturing: most brands do not produce their own clothing, but are they sourcing from facilities that pay their workers fairly? Do those facilities minimize waste, use renewable energy, and responsibly manage chemical usage?
- Ethical Production: who made the dress? were they paid fairly and were they working in safe conditions? do they have worker’s rights, such as the right to organize? how does the brand ensure this? Certifications can be helpful here. But sometimes factories cannot afford these, so look for other assurances, such as that the founder personally visits the factories.
- Ownership: is it a small woman-owned business or major fashion brand owned by billionaires? What are your values when it comes to where your money is going?
I know that’s a lot! But these are elements to start looking for as you browse through brands. This isn’t about perfection — it’s just about learning and doing the best we can.
My Top Picks for Ethical and Sustainable Dresses
To help you out (because I get it — it’s complicated!) I’ve curated retailers and brands with sustainable and ethical dresses. These brands aren’t necessarily perfect, but they’re doing things better for people and the planet. I’ve included “Conscious Qualities” by each brand or retailer, so you can get an idea about why the brand is on the list and which sustainability criteria they meet.
I’ve also curated brands at a range of price points, to accommodate for different budgets.
This Guide’s Price Range Key:
- $ = Dresses under $100
- $$ = Dresses $100 – $200
- $$$ = Dresses $200+
Keep in mind that while price and quality aren’t necessarily directly tied to each other, lower prices may sometimes mean a sacrifice on quality and the highest quality picks are often on the higher end of the price spectrum. Better quality fabrics cost more, more skilled seamstresses are typically paid more, and many of the details that take a piece from good to great — such as pockets, well-fastened buttons, and linings — add to the product cost as well.
This article features affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (which helps us fund this website) if you choose to purchase through one of these links. As always, we only feature brands that meet high standards for sustainability that we love and that we think you’ll love too!
1. Christy Dawn
Best for romantic dresses
Crafting “dresses you want to live in”, Christy Dawn’s pieces are a fairytale come true with their romantic silhouettes and dreamy prints. The sustainably-minded brand sources organic cotton as well as regenerative organic cotton grown in India by their partners Oshadi Collective. This “Farm-to-Closet” collection is also vegetable-dyed and block-printed in India using traditional time-honored practices.
Conscious Qualities: Organic & Regenerative Fabrics, Local & Ethical Production
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
2. Whimsy + Row
Best for cocktail dresses
If you want a sustainable dress that doesn’t scream “sustainable”, Los Angeles-based Whimsy + Row is the brand for you.
The slow fashion label manufacturers their clothing in limited batches just a few miles away from their office and sources repurposed fabrics (i.e. deadstock) and lower-impact natural materials (such as linen and organic cotton) for their unapologetically feminine clothing. And don’t sleep on their bridesmaid dress options!
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Small Batch Production
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
3. Tradlands
Best for work-friendly dresses
Created out of co-founder Sadie’s desire for classic, high-quality pieces, Tradlands is designed with longevity and versatility top of mind. And their effortless dresses are just as simple to care for — Tradlands uses natural — but washable! — fibers like cotton and linen.
The 100% cotton tiered dress I have from Tradlands (this one’s similar) is one of my summer go-to’s — breathable, flattering, and easy to dress up or down. I can wear it as a house dress working from home, or paired with jewelry and elegant sandals to dinner. (Monofiber fabrics — i.e. 100% of one fiber — is also easier to recycle than fabric blends.)
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Small Batch Production, Extended Sizing
Size Range: XS-4XL
Price Range: $$
4. Magic Linen
Best for 100% linen dresses
Versatile, breezy, and perfect for simmering temps, Magic Linen’s relaxed styles offer everything you need to feel calm and collected all summer long. Crafted from pure linen that has been stone-washed to provide unparalleled softness against your skin, these relaxed fits are the ideal intersection between vacation chic and functional style.
All of Magic Linen’s summer-ready pieces are created on a made-to-order basis, ensuring their garments are not overproduced. The brand also minimizes wastage by repurposing most of its fabric offcuts to create smaller items.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Natural Materials, Woman-Owned, Made-To-Order
Size Range: US 2–18
Price Range: $$-$$$
5. Rare & Fair
Best for elegant evening dresses
Made thoughtfully with time-honored practices by master artisans and craftspeople in small batches, Rare & Fair has truly exceptional sustainable dresses. Each piece is made in a fully transparent, traceable process from fiber to final stitch.
Conscious Qualities: Sustainable Fabrics & Processes, Artisan Made, Cultural Preservation
Size Range: XXS-XL
Price Range: $$$
6. tentree
Best for casual weekend dresses
When warm weather approaches, all you want is a dress you can breathe easy in. And if your style skews minimalist, all you desire is a dress that has interesting details but doesn’t make too much of a fuss or song and dance about itself. Lucky for you, tentree has an array of simple dresses that fit the bill.
Button-down, wrap, cami, or even hooded, these pieces make everyday dressing feel like a breeze. Made from breathable materials like modal, hemp, TENCEL
Lyocell, linen, and organic cotton, these dresses are an ideal investment for the long haul.
Conscious Qualities: Eco Materials, Supply Chain Transparency, Plants Trees, Circularity Programs
Size Range: XS–XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
7. OMNES
Best for wedding guest dresses
Finding an ethical dress for a wedding, graduation, or black tie event is not easy. Most sustainable brands lean casual! But OMNES is a rare exception. Their occasion wear holds its own against conventional designer options, with elevated silhouettes and polished prints that look nothing like they came with an eco-conscience attached.
OMNES’ dresses are made from responsibly sourced materials including organic cotton, linen, LENZING ECOVERO viscose, and certified recycled polyester (from plastic bottles, which isn’t ideal — but considering 88% of polyester is virgin (fossil fuel-based), we’ll take it as a step in the right direction).
Conscious Qualities: Carbon Offset (125%), Audited Supply Chain, Lower Impact Materials, Living Wage Employer
Size Range: 4–18
Price Range: $$$
8. OhSevenDays
Best for elevated, independent designer dresses
OhSevenDays’ dresses feature feminine silhouettes, muted colors, and unique details to impress. Made from deadstock fabrics sourced from Istanbul, Turkey. The slow fashion brand also offers a transparent behind the scenes look at their production process, all done in-house by a team of four tailors.
With the level of detail on OhSevenDays dresses, all you need is an elevated pair of sustainably-made sandals and you’ve got a complete look.
Conscious Qualities: Reclaimed Fabrics, Transparent Production
Size Range: S-L + custom sizing
Price Range: $
9. No Nasties
Best for vacation dresses with vibrant hues
No Nasties creates 100% organic cotton fair trade dresses perfect for wearing to the beach with flip flops or pairing with heeled sandals for date night. Their versatile sustainable dresses are comfy, organic, and affordable with most pieces priced at under $100.
Conscious Qualities: Organic Fabrics, Traceable Supply Chain, Fair Trade
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $
10. MATE
Best for non-toxic dresses
There’s nothing more satisfying than finding summer dresses that make you look instantly put together without much effort – and MATE’s curation checks every box.
From breezy maxi dresses to functional dresses that come with a removable belt bag, their styles are made using GOTS Certified Organic Linen, ideal for keeping the heat at bay when the mercury rises to unbearable temperatures.
What’s more? You can work up a sweat feeling relieved knowing that all of their pieces are made using non-toxic dyes that don’t rely on harmful chemicals like pesticides, BPA, PFAS, and formaldehyde.
Size Range: XS – XL
Price Range: $$
11. Míe
Best for dresses you won’t see anywhere else
Míe is an independent fashion brand prioritizing natural fibers like linen and distinguished design details like tiered puff sleeves and unique necklines. Based in Nigeria and only sold in select global retailers, you’re unlikely to see anyone else wearing something similar.
Each dress is designed and handcrafted responsibly at their atelier in Lagos, Nigeria.
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Black Woman-Owned
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
12. Reformation
Best for girls night out dresses
Reformation is one of the more transparent and accountable mainstream sustainable brands. In 2023, Reformation used 97% recycled, regenerative, or renewable materials and nearly 1 in 5 of their sales were resale, vintage, or rental. They also have a number of circularity programs. (Find more details in their sustainability report.)
That said, they’re still a growth-focused brand selling trend-driven clothing, which has inherent sustainability limits.
Conscious Qualities: Responsible Material Sourcing, Circularity Initiatives, Traceability
Size Range: 0 – 12 and 14 – 24 in select styles
Price Range: $$$
13. Toad & Co
Best for casual summer dresses
Crafted from fabrics like hemp, TENCEL, and organic cotton, and designed with easygoing silhouettes, Toad & Co’s has the perfect natural fiber dresses for warm sunny days.
The airy dresses can be worn as naturally breathable house dresses or with their delicate details and subtle prints, easily worn out with a pair of strappy sandals or slingbacks.
My top picks would be the brands midi dresses, but they also have wrap and tank dresses that hit mid-thigh if you prefer a shorter hemline.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Resale Program, Factory Transparency
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$
14. LANIUS
Best for effortless warm-weather dresses
Some fair trade brands make you choose between doing good and looking good. LANIUS, a family-run slow fashion house out of Cologne in Germany, doesn’t ask you to compromise. Founded in 1999, the brand has spent 25 years making feminine, considered designs in certified organic materials under fair conditions.
Their casual dresses are the kind you reach for on repeat. Think organic linen that feels weightless against the skin, relaxed silhouettes that work for a farmers market or the office, and details like a a slightly flared hem that elevate without fuss. And in case you needed more reason to love this brand’s ethos: they only produce two collections per year, prioritizing intentionality over hype.
Conscious Qualities: GOTS Certified, Fair Wear Foundation Audited, Organic & Natural Materials, No Harmful Chemicals, Care & Repair Program
Size Range: 34–44 (German sizing, roughly US 4–14)
Price Range: $$
15. Beaumont Organic
Best for elevated everyday dresses
Beaumont Organic makes the kind of dresses that feel intentional without trying too hard. Rooted in natural materials and quiet craftsmanship, their pieces sit somewhere between elevated basics and timeless wardrobe investments — the sort of thing you reach for because it just feels right.
Their linen dresses are a standout. Take the Ottillie-May: a boxy, sleeveless silhouette that blooms into a shirred waistband and A-line skirt, with pockets. Made entirely in Portugal — from spinning and weaving to dyeing and finishing — the supply chain is fully traceable and listed right on the product page.
The brand offers free repair and resale schemes, visits suppliers regularly, and builds exclusively with living wage factories. Beaumont Organic is fashion with a long view.
Conscious Qualities: Fully Traceable Supply Chain, Living Wage Factories, Natural & Organic Materials, Made in Portugal, Repair & Resale Program
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $$$
You Might Also Be Wondering…
Are sustainable dresses worth the higher price tag?
It depends! The key here is to look at cost-per-wear. A $250 organic linen dress you wear 80 times costs $3.12 per wear. A $40 fast fashion dress you wear 5 times costs $8 per wear. More sustainable dresses tend to have timeless design and be made with higher quality materials and construction, meaning they last longer, hold their shape better, and don’t need replacing as often. That said, always look at the care instructions! Natural fibers may require a bit more attention than synthetic fibers (such as air-drying instead of throwing in a machine dryer) but they’re well worth the additional effort.
And there are also genuinely affordable sustainable options (like No Nasties and tentree) that prove sustainability doesn’t always mean expensive. Some brands are priced very competitively with their less sustainably-minded couterparts.
What certifications should I look for when buying a sustainable dress?
The most meaningful certifications for dresses are:
- GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) for organic fibers and other sustainability assurances during production
- OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 for chemical safety in finished garments (note that this is a product certification, not a material certification — and many brands miscommunicate this label)
- Made in Fair Trade Certified factories which ensure that the brand is paying into a premium that goes to a Community Development Fund that workers can vote on to determine how to use those funds
However, many small brands cannot afford to buy certified products, fabrics, or pay into fair trade programs. There are other ways to ensure ethical sourcing as well, so look into a brand’s sustainability or sourcing pages too.
What’s the most sustainable type of fabric for a dress?
This is a nearly impossible question to answer because no single fiber is the “best” by all measures. There are so many considerations (land use, water use, biodegradability, longevity, carbon emissions, and so on) that I cannot tell you the single “best” fiber.
That said, I avoid synthetic materials, which are made from fossil fuels and release microplastics into our environment when washed. Among natural options, different fibers have different use cases, so I recommend looking for the best version of each. This deep dive has much more on fabrics.
But even then there are nuances — is 50% organic cotton blend with hemp or linen better than a 100% conventional cotton fabric considering that monofiber fabrics are much easier to recycle at the end of their life? As you can see, the most sustainable question is complicated.
Should I buy secondhand instead of new sustainable dresses?
From a pure environmental standpoint, secondhand is almost always the better choice — no new resources used, no new manufacturing emissions. Platforms like ThredUp, The RealReal, Poshmark, and Depop are great starting points. That said, buying new from sustainably-minded brands does serve a purpose: it signals market demand for responsible production and can support artisans, ethical manufacturers, and/or women-owned small businesses, depending on the brand. The best approach in my mind? Check secondhand first. If you can’t find what you need, then invest in a quality piece from a trusted more sustainable brand if you can.
What sustainable dresses come in plus sizes or extended sizes?
Size inclusivity is an area where sustainable fashion has historically underperformed — but it’s improving. LOUD BODIES is the standout on this list, offering 15 sizes from XXS to 10XL. Christy Dawn goes up to 3XL in some styles, Míe up to 3XL, and Tradlands to 4XL. When shopping, always check the full size range on the brand’s website, as some brands offer extended sizes only in select styles.
The post 15 Best Sustainable Dresses That Are Anything But Basic (2026) appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
What’s not to love about a go-to dress in your wardrobe? The right one can be dressed up or down, it can be worn alone, or worn as a skirt with the right top layered on. A dress is arguably the easiest outfit to put together that still looks put together. The right sustainable dress is the kind of closet staple you can reach for on any kind of summer day, even when you have no idea what to wear.
From t-shirt dresses and house dresses to chic midi frocks and fun mini’s for a night out, this roundup of sustainable dresses has just about everything.
So if you’re looking for that perfect eco-friendly dress to complement your wardrobe this year, I’ve got you covered with this guide to sustainably and ethically-made dresses. This guide has brands with both casual and more formal dresses, but if you’re shopping for exclusively special occasion dresses, I’d recommend also browsing my guide to formal dresses.
What Qualifies As (More) Sustainable Dresses?
Wearing what we have in our closets is the most sustainable approach! But if you’re here, you probably already evaluated that option and you’re looking to add something fresh to your closet.
Secondhand Dresses are Sustainable Dresses
The second most sustainable option is to look secondhand. ThredUp can be a versatile option for pieces at any price point and The RealReal is my favorite choice for more premium brands.
Online secondhand marketplaces like Poshmark or Depop are also good options — but something to watch out when it comes to peer-to-peer marketplaces is that they can sometimes contain new fast fashion disguised as “vintage” pieces, so it can require some additional digging.
For more suggestions, find my full guide to secondhand clothing retailers in this post.
If you’re looking for a new sustainably-made dress, here are some considerations:
- Materials: what is it made from? Is it made with a natural fabric like hemp, linen, or organic cotton? Perhaps made from deadstock or upcycled materials?
- Production Practices: does the brand take efforts to not overproduce? Do they produce in small batches? (No matter how “eco-conscious” the material is, if a brand is throwing away 30% of their stock, that’s not sustainable!)
- Timelessness and Quality: this doesn’t have to mean boring and doesn’t necessarily mean the brand never participates in a trend. But does the brand constantly hop on every single trend and push you to buy more and more? Or do they encourage slow mindful consumption with well-designed dresses? Do they pay attention to construction and details that ensure you’ll be wearing this dress year after year?
- Manufacturing: most brands do not produce their own clothing, but are they sourcing from facilities that pay their workers fairly? Do those facilities minimize waste, use renewable energy, and responsibly manage chemical usage?
- Ethical Production: who made the dress? were they paid fairly and were they working in safe conditions? do they have worker’s rights, such as the right to organize? how does the brand ensure this? Certifications can be helpful here. But sometimes factories cannot afford these, so look for other assurances, such as that the founder personally visits the factories.
- Ownership: is it a small woman-owned business or major fashion brand owned by billionaires? What are your values when it comes to where your money is going?
I know that’s a lot! But these are elements to start looking for as you browse through brands. This isn’t about perfection — it’s just about learning and doing the best we can.
My Top Picks for Ethical and Sustainable Dresses
To help you out (because I get it — it’s complicated!) I’ve curated retailers and brands with sustainable and ethical dresses. These brands aren’t necessarily perfect, but they’re doing things better for people and the planet. I’ve included “Conscious Qualities” by each brand or retailer, so you can get an idea about why the brand is on the list and which sustainability criteria they meet.
I’ve also curated brands at a range of price points, to accommodate for different budgets.
This Guide’s Price Range Key:
- $ = Dresses under $100
- $$ = Dresses $100 – $200
- $$$ = Dresses $200+
Keep in mind that while price and quality aren’t necessarily directly tied to each other, lower prices may sometimes mean a sacrifice on quality and the highest quality picks are often on the higher end of the price spectrum. Better quality fabrics cost more, more skilled seamstresses are typically paid more, and many of the details that take a piece from good to great — such as pockets, well-fastened buttons, and linings — add to the product cost as well.
This article features affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (which helps us fund this website) if you choose to purchase through one of these links. As always, we only feature brands that meet high standards for sustainability that we love and that we think you’ll love too!
1. Christy Dawn
Best for flowy, romantic dresses
Crafting “dresses you want to live in”, Christy Dawn’s pieces are a fairytale come true with their romantic silhouettes and dreamy prints. The sustainably-minded brand sources organic cotton as well as regenerative organic cotton grown in India by their partners Oshadi Collective. This “Farm-to-Closet” collection is also vegetable-dyed and block-printed in India using traditional time-honored practices.
Conscious Qualities: Organic & Regenerative Fabrics, Local & Ethical Production
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
2. Whimsy + Row
Best for flirty and feminine frocks
If you want a sustainable dress that doesn’t scream “sustainable”, Los Angeles-based Whimsy + Row is the brand for you.
The slow fashion label manufacturers their clothing in limited batches just a few miles away from their office and sources repurposed fabrics (i.e. deadstock) and lower-impact natural materials (such as linen and organic cotton) for their unapologetically feminine clothing. And don’t sleep on their bridesmaid dress options!
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Small Batch Production
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
3. Tradlands
Best for effortless house dresses
Created out of co-founder Sadie’s desire for classic, high-quality pieces, Tradlands is designed with longevity and versatility top of mind. And their effortless dresses are just as simple to care for — Tradlands uses natural — but washable! — fibers like cotton and linen.
The 100% cotton tiered dress I have from Tradlands (this one’s similar) is one of my summer go-to’s — breathable, flattering, and easy to dress up or down. I can wear it as a house dress working from home, or paired with jewelry and elegant sandals to dinner. (Monofiber fabrics — i.e. 100% of one fiber — is also easier to recycle than fabric blends.)
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Small Batch Production, Extended Sizing
Size Range: XS-4XL
Price Range: $$
4. Magic Linen
Best for 100% linen dresses
Versatile, breezy, and perfect for simmering temps, Magic Linen’s relaxed styles offer everything you need to feel calm and collected all summer long. Crafted from pure linen that has been stone-washed to provide unparalleled softness against your skin, these relaxed fits are the ideal intersection between vacation chic and functional style.
All of Magic Linen’s summer-ready pieces are created on a made-to-order basis, ensuring their garments are not overproduced. The brand also minimizes wastage by repurposing most of its fabric offcuts to create smaller items.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Natural Materials, Woman-Owned, Made-To-Order
Size Range: US 2–18
Price Range: $$-$$$
5. Rare & Fair
Best for special occasionwear
Made thoughtfully with time-honored practices by master artisans and craftspeople in small batches, Rare & Fair has truly exceptional sustainable dresses. Each piece is made in a fully transparent, traceable process from fiber to final stitch.
Conscious Qualities: Sustainable Fabrics & Processes, Artisan Made, Cultural Preservation
Size Range: XXS-XL
Price Range: $$$
6. tentree
Best for casual weekend dresses
When warm weather approaches, all you want is a dress you can throw on. And if your style skews minimalist, all you desire is a dress that has interesting details but doesn’t make too much of a fuss or song and dance about itself. Lucky for you, tentree has an array of simple dresses that fit the bill.
Button-down, wrap, cami, or even hooded, these pieces make everyday dressing feel like a breeze. Made from breathable materials like modal, hemp, TENCEL
Lyocell, linen, and organic cotton, these dresses are an ideal investment for the long haul.
Conscious Qualities: Eco Materials, Supply Chain Transparency, Plants Trees, Circularity Programs
Size Range: XS–XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
7. MATE
Best for non-toxic dresses
There’s nothing more satisfying than finding summer dresses that make you look instantly put together without much effort – and MATE’s curation checks every box.
From breezy maxi dresses to functional dresses that come with a removable belt bag, their styles are made using GOTS Certified Organic Linen, ideal for keeping the heat at bay when the mercury rises to unbearable temperatures.
What’s more? You can work up a sweat feeling relieved knowing that all of their pieces are made using non-toxic dyes that don’t rely on harmful chemicals like pesticides, BPA, PFAS, and formaldehyde.
Size Range: XS – XL
Price Range: $ – $$$
8. OhSevenDays
Best for elevated dresses with a point of view
OhSevenDays’ dresses feature feminine silhouettes, muted colors, and unique details to impress. Made from deadstock fabrics sourced from Istanbul, Turkey. The slow fashion brand also offers a transparent behind the scenes look at their production process, all done in-house by a team of four tailors.
With the level of detail on OhSevenDays dresses, all you need is an elevated pair of sustainably-made sandals and you’ve got a complete look.
Conscious Qualities: Reclaimed Fabrics, Transparent Production
Size Range: S-L + custom sizing
Price Range: $
9. No Nasties
Best for vacation dresses with vibrant hues
No Nasties creates 100% organic cotton fair trade dresses perfect for wearing to the beach with flip flops or pairing with heeled sandals for date night. Their versatile sustainable dresses are comfy, organic, and affordable with most pieces priced at under $100.
Conscious Qualities: Organic Fabrics, Traceable Supply Chain, Fair Trade
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $
10. Míe
Best for dresses you won’t see anywhere else
Míe is an independent fashion brand prioritizing natural fibers like linen and distinguished design details like tiered puff sleeves and unique necklines. Based in Nigeria and only sold in select global retailers, you’re unlikely to see anyone else wearing something similar.
Each dress is designed and handcrafted responsibly at their atelier in Lagos, Nigeria.
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Black Woman-Owned
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
11. Reformation
Best for going out styles
Reformation is one of the more transparent and accountable mainstream sustainable brands. In 2023, Reformation used 97% recycled, regenerative, or renewable materials and nearly 1 in 5 of their sales were resale, vintage, or rental. They also have a number of circularity programs. (Find more details in their sustainability report.)
That said, they’re still a growth-focused brand selling trend-driven clothing, which has inherent sustainability limits.
Conscious Qualities: Responsible Material Sourcing, Circularity Initiatives, Traceability
Size Range: 0 – 12 and 14 – 24 in select styles
Price Range: $$$
12. Toad & Co
Crafted from fabrics like hemp, TENCEL, and organic cotton, and designed with easygoing silhouettes, Toad & Co’s has the perfect natural fiber dresses for warm sunny days.
The airy dresses can be worn as naturally breathable house dresses or with their delicate details and subtle prints, easily worn out with a pair of strappy sandals or slingbacks.
My top picks would be the brands midi dresses, but they also have wrap and tank dresses that hit mid-thigh if you prefer a shorter hemline.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Resale Program, Factory Transparency
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$
You Might Also Be Wondering…
Are sustainable dresses worth the higher price tag?
It depends! The key here is to look at cost-per-wear. A $250 organic linen dress you wear 80 times costs $3.12 per wear. A $40 fast fashion dress you wear 5 times costs $8 per wear. More sustainable dresses tend to have timeless design and be made with higher quality materials and construction, meaning they last longer, hold their shape better, and don’t need replacing as often. That said, always look at the care instructions! Natural fibers may require a bit more attention than synthetic fibers (such as air-drying instead of throwing in a machine dryer) but they’re well worth the additional effort.
And there are also genuinely affordable sustainable options (like No Nasties and tentree) that prove sustainability doesn’t always mean expensive. Some brands are priced very competitively with their less sustainably-minded couterparts.
What certifications should I look for when buying a sustainable dress?
The most meaningful certifications for dresses are:
- GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) for organic fibers and other sustainability assurances during production
- OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 for chemical safety in finished garments (note that this is a product certification, not a material certification — and many brands miscommunicate this label)
- Made in Fair Trade Certified factories which ensure that the brand is paying into a premium that goes to a Community Development Fund that workers can vote on to determine how to use those funds
However, many small brands cannot afford to buy certified products, fabrics, or pay into fair trade programs. There are other ways to ensure ethical sourcing as well, so look into a brand’s sustainability or sourcing pages too.
What’s the most sustainable type of fabric for a dress?
This is a nearly impossible question to answer because no single fiber is the “best” by all measures. There are so many considerations (land use, water use, biodegradability, longevity, carbon emissions, and so on) that I cannot tell you the single “best” fiber.
That said, I avoid synthetic materials, which are made from fossil fuels and release microplastics into our environment when washed. Among natural options, different fibers have different use cases, so I recommend looking for the best version of each. This deep dive has much more on fabrics.
But even then there are nuances — is 50% organic cotton blend with hemp or linen better than a 100% conventional cotton fabric considering that monofiber fabrics are much easier to recycle at the end of their life? As you can see, the most sustainable question is complicated.
Should I buy secondhand instead of new sustainable dresses?
From a pure environmental standpoint, secondhand is almost always the better choice — no new resources used, no new manufacturing emissions. Platforms like ThredUp, The RealReal, Poshmark, and Depop are great starting points. That said, buying new from sustainably-minded brands does serve a purpose: it signals market demand for responsible production and can support artisans, ethical manufacturers, and/or women-owned small businesses, depending on the brand. The best approach in my mind? Check secondhand first. If you can’t find what you need, then invest in a quality piece from a trusted more sustainable brand if you can.
What sustainable dresses come in plus sizes or extended sizes?
Size inclusivity is an area where sustainable fashion has historically underperformed — but it’s improving. LOUD BODIES is the standout on this list, offering 15 sizes from XXS to 10XL. Christy Dawn goes up to 3XL in some styles, Míe up to 3XL, and Tradlands to 4XL. When shopping, always check the full size range on the brand’s website, as some brands offer extended sizes only in select styles.
The post The Best Sustainable Dresses — for Any Budget (2026) appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
Green Living
Sustainability In Your Ear: Kendra MacDonald Steers to the Blue Economy at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster
The ocean produces about half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs roughly 30% of the carbon dioxide we emit, and takes up about 90% of the excess heat those emissions trap, according to the United Nations. It is the planet’s largest life-support system — and also its least-funded one. Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the goal for life below water consistently draws the least money. Canada, which has the longest coastline in the world, is trying to flip that equation, and you can watch it happen close to real time.
Our guest this week is Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow what’s come to be called the blue economy. Under her leadership, the Supercluster has grown into a community of roughly 1,000 members co-investing in more than 150 projects. She came to the role after 25 years at Deloitte, where she served as Chief Audit Executive, and she runs it from St. John’s, Newfoundland. The model is built on co-investment: at least two companies put money in, often alongside Indigenous communities, researchers, and global corporations, so no single player carries the risk alone. The projects range from graphene hull coatings that cut a ship’s fuel use to wave-powered desalination and the $4.4 million Membertou Electric Lobster Boat, billed as Canada’s first zero-emission commercial fishing vessel, led by the Membertou First Nation.
Kendra’s thesis fits in seven words: you can go faster alone, but farther together. In our conversation, she’s candid about where that gets hard — most of these collaborations are small companies that don’t individually hold every capability, and the upfront work of sorting out who owns which piece of intellectual property is what separates the partnerships that succeed from the ones that stall. She’s just as candid about the catch: the Supercluster is funded by the Government of Canada to de-risk small Canadian firms, and when those firms succeed, they’re often acquired by international buyers — the value-capture problem at the heart of every public innovation program. That tension between strong science and thin capital, she says, keeps her up at night, and it points back to the blue-finance gap. It also shapes how she talks about aquaculture, which in 2022 surpassed wild capture as the world’s main source of farmed aquatic animals, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and is now the fastest-growing source of animal protein. Kendra rejects the idea that ocean health and productivity are in trade-off, arguing that a healthier ocean is more productive. And just before we recorded, the Trump administration reopened nearly half a million square miles of the Pacific to commercial fishing, the third such rollback in little more than a year. One model treats the ocean as a commons to protect and co-invest in; the other treats marine protection as an obstacle to clear. She thinks the contrast opens a door for Canada to lead.
To learn more about the Ocean Supercluster, visit oceansupercluster.ca. MacDonald writes about ocean-economy investment on her Substack, Saltwater Signals, and she’s easy to find on LinkedIn.
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Interview Transcript
Mitch Ratcliffe 0:10
Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
The topic is accelerating innovation. When we talk about the climate fight, we usually picture it on land: forests and wildfires, EVs and the power grid, solar panels on roofs everywhere. But the largest climate system on the planet is the one we understand the least, and it covers more than 70% of the Earth. The ocean absorbs our heat, feeds billions of people, moves nearly everything we buy, and it’s been treated for most of human history as something to extract from rather than invest in. And that’s the starting point to change, and Canada is one of the places where you can watch that happen in real time.
My guest today is at the center of this epochal shift. Kendra MacDonald is the CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow what’s come to be called the blue economy. We’ve talked about it on the show several times. Think of it as a table where startups, century-old fishing and shipping companies, Indigenous partners, researchers, and global corporations all sit down together and co-invest in ideas that no single one of them could pull off alone.
Under Kendra’s leadership, that community now spans roughly 1,000 members working together on over 100 projects — everything from graphene hull coatings that cut a ship’s fuel use by making it easier to go through the waves, to wave-power desalination, and an electric lobster boat built in partnership with the Membertou First Nation.
Kendra came to this from 25 years at Deloitte, the global consulting firm, where she last served as Chief Audit Executive. She’s been named to her region’s Top 50 CEO Hall of Fame, and she leads all of this from St. John’s, Newfoundland — a relatively remote vantage point, she’ll tell you, that is a feature, not a limitation of her job. Her thesis in seven words: you can go faster alone, but farther together.
We’re going to test that idea today — on collaboration, on who actually captures the value when small companies scale up, and whether the blue economy can grow and stay healthy at the same time, as well as what it takes to lead through a decade of constant disruption. We’ll get to the conversation right after this brief commercial break.
Hey, welcome to the show, Kendra. How you doing today?
Kendra MacDonald 2:46
I am doing great. How are you?
Mitch Ratcliffe 2:48
I’m doing well, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it. You live in a remote location in Newfoundland; I live in a remote location in southern Oregon, and we both somehow stay connected to the world. How do you do that? From your perspective, your seat is quite connected. How do you stay in touch with folks?
Kendra MacDonald 3:05
Yeah, so, certainly virtual. I started this role late in 2018, and by 2020 we were in the middle of the pandemic, and so it became very natural to connect virtually. So I think that has helped — it’s helped us connect across the country, and people got more used to virtual platforms.
But I do also spend a lot of time in person. I’m just coming from — I was in Ottawa, and I was in Halifax, and next week I’ll be somewhere else. So I do try to get face to face with our members as well, which, from St. John’s, Newfoundland — we’re a big country, so St. John’s to Victoria is about a nine-hour trip. Sometimes it’s easier to get to Europe than it is to get across the country. But I do spend a lot of time trying to get with our members, all over.
Mitch Ratcliffe 3:49
Your members are all related to the ocean, but why does the ocean belong at the center of the conversation now? For someone who doesn’t live near a coast, what’s the connection they should feel between the ocean, their personal health, and well-being?
Kendra MacDonald 4:01
That’s a great question. I mean, I think, in terms of — let’s talk about us as people first. Why the ocean matters: if you think about where your goods come from, over 80% of the goods that we get, whether we’re ordering from Amazon or ordering from wherever, they’re coming by sea. So there’s a huge amount of shipping that happens on the ocean. You think about the internet — most of our internet, if you’re getting it from some kind of overseas site, 98% of that is subsea cables that are going underneath the ocean.
If you look at then what the ocean means for the planet: 70%, but two-thirds, of the planet is ocean. About 50% of the oxygen comes from the ocean, so no matter where you are on the planet, oxygen matters. That’s really important, whether you’re close to the coast or you are not. It absorbs 90% of our excess heat, so a lot of the heat regulation is happening in the ocean. But 30% of our carbon — I don’t know about you, I learned in school all about the rainforest. I didn’t learn very much about the ocean, but the ocean actually plays a huge role in terms of being a carbon sink and absorbing excess carbon.
And then, I guess the last one, maybe 80% of our biodiversity on the planet — although some would argue there’s a lot of it undiscovered — but about 80% of biodiversity actually sits in the ocean. So when you talk about health, and we think about a lot of the natural solutions that we’re starting to see, whether that is natural fabrics going into fashion or natural ingredients going into beauty — we’re starting to see seaweed coming into both nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, as well as fertilizers, for example. All of those natural ingredients — increasingly, we’re turning to the ocean.
Mitch Ratcliffe 5:40
How does the Ocean Supercluster function to address all of the different kinds of issues that you just described?
Kendra MacDonald 5:46
So that’s a great question. We don’t equally address all of them. Where we really are focused, in terms of trying to grow the ocean economy for Canada, is acceleration of technology commercialization. So the bulk of our projects are in technology commercialization. About 50% of our projects are what’s called domain awareness, or ocean observation — so, how do we understand things better. That has a different flavor.
We are cross-sectoral, so we touch aquaculture, shipping, offshore energy, and we would see different flavors of those technologies being applied. So if you’re an aquaculture farm, you want to make sure that you’re using an underwater drone, for example, to be able to inspect your nets, to make sure that you don’t have escapes. You might be sitting in the Arctic, and you want to better understand what’s happening with the coastline, or be able to monitor diversity.
Increasingly, we’re seeing this trend toward dual-use technologies in defense, for example — so technologies that you can use to find a whale, you could also use, potentially, to be finding a submarine. And then, if you look at offshore wind: how do you do surveys better? How do you remotely monitor infrastructure in the ocean? So there’s all these flavors of how do we better understand the ocean to make better decisions, and also to be able to operate more sustainably across all of these different sectors.
Mitch Ratcliffe 7:03
Now, of course, you just described systems in which there are many stakeholders. Who’s involved in all of these conversations? What’s the structure of the investments that allows communities to participate?
Kendra MacDonald 7:14
Yeah, so we are a co-investment model, so we need to have at least two companies that are co-investing. In a lot of cases, we would also have broader collaborators. So if you look at, for example, in the aquaculture space — aquaculture touches a number of communities all along our coast. We would have a project, for example, on the West Coast that would include an Indigenous community as the final operator and participant in the project. So you’ll see the technology providers, you will see the users of the technology, and then, depending on where it is, you will also see a community problem that the solution is trying to solve.
Mitch Ratcliffe 7:55
When you joined this industry, were you surprised by the way it actually operates? Is it different than land-centered business?
Kendra MacDonald 8:05
Yes. And no. So, my background — I worked with a large consulting firm, was part of Deloitte. I’m an auditor by background, so I spent a lot of time looking at systems, and I was actually a systems auditor — so, on the information technology side of how information is produced to get to the financial statements. And so I had spent a lot of time looking at digitalization of industries. You’re seeing increasingly digital, whether it’s media or transportation — these trends — and so that same trend is coming into ocean, where you’re seeing more and more instrumentation to be able to get more information, make better decisions, all the same things that we are trying to do in a number of sectors.
Where it gets more complicated is the environment that you’re operating in. So we don’t have a data network now the way that we would — I know there are still remote parts on land, so we don’t have as good a bandwidth — but they get much more remote when you start going on the ocean. You’re trying to now put technologies into salty water, high pressure, low visibility, and so the operating conditions become much more difficult for the types of problems that you’re trying to solve.
Mitch Ratcliffe 9:14
This is a national sovereign wealth fund, or a variation thereon. Sovereignty is playing a greater and greater role in geopolitics right now, and you’ve said you can go faster alone but farther together. How does Canada need to work with the rest of the world in order to really leverage the investments that you’re making?
Kendra MacDonald 9:33
So, great question. We are part of what’s called the Blue Tech Cluster Alliance, and Canada right now is chairing that. That includes a number of clusters around the world — so right now it’s Canada, the US, Japan, Ireland, the UK, France, Norway, Portugal, and Spain. I think I got all nine; hopefully I didn’t miss anybody. And so we are constantly looking at how do we create conditions so that the companies can engage with each other and work together to be able to solve global problems, because if you look at the ocean, it’s all interconnected. Decisions that you’re making in one country do eventually work through, around the entire world.
And so, for these big challenges that we’re trying to solve for — can we work together to be able to move faster? Can we bring more breadth of thinking to a problem? I was somewhere the other day, and I said, you know, in some cases we’re competing, in some cases we’re cooperating. And so we’re trying to do that at a national scale, and we are also trying to do that at a global scale. So you are seeing more and more focus on what we call, in our defense industrial strategy, sovereign capabilities — so how do you build the sovereign capabilities, but how do you also work with your partners to be able to learn from each other and be able to go further together.
Mitch Ratcliffe 10:53
Collaboration like that isn’t easy. Where do you find that it becomes more difficult? What are the big challenges you’re facing right now?
Kendra MacDonald 11:00
Yes. So collaboration is, I would say, like any other relationship, right? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And I would say the devil is in the details. If you think about your personal relationships — or for me, with my husband — did we spend enough time in advance talking about how we wanted to raise our kids, or where we wanted to live, or whose career was the priority? All of those things. So that plays in. Now, you’re probably not signing on for life when you’re collaborating at a business level, but you need to spend the time really looking at: is what we’re trying to achieve consistent? How do we incent the teams? Are we going to get to a common outcome?
When we collaborate with other governments, for example, you look at political cycles, and at IP sharing — so are we very clear on background IP that we’re bringing, foreground IP, how that IP is being shared or held going forward? We are co-funding, so we fund a portion, the companies fund a portion. Are we clear on who is funding what? What happens if it starts going over budget? What happens if we’re not achieving the outcomes on the timelines that we intended? What happens if one company is achieving their outcomes, but the other one’s not?
And so it really does require a lot of discussion. We now have over 150 projects. You’ve got those that come to the table, I would say, with a light-touch thinking on their collaboration; you’ve got others that spend a lot more time thinking through it. And those ones that spend a lot more time thinking through it — not only do they have a better chance of success, we will often see them recognize the benefits. Because I think one of the key benefits of collaboration: we have a lot of small companies working together, and they don’t have all the capabilities to do everything. We are in a world where getting some of these capabilities is challenging, especially technical expertise. And so now, if you can work with a partner, you can deliver a bigger solution to a broader problem, and that helps you be able to get further than you would be able to get on your own.
Mitch Ratcliffe 13:04
97% or so of your projects are actually led by smaller startup businesses. How do you keep those small firms from getting swallowed when they sit down at the table with a multinational who might be a partner?
Kendra MacDonald 13:15
Yeah. So I would say, when we first created the Supercluster, that was one of the big concerns — that you would have these collaborations between small and large, and so the small would be at high risk of losing their IP. I would say we haven’t seen that, partially because we don’t have a lot of large companies; we have a lot of small working with small, so they are more hyper-aware of this challenge. But also, the model was really designed to allow the companies to choose how they bring their IP in, and then how it’s shared going forward. A lot of our larger companies — and maybe it’s just the nature of the companies that we work with — they’re really interested in being first customer or having early access to the data, but they’re not necessarily trying to take over the IP of the company in terms of how it’s designed.
We also do actually have an IP director and some pretty strong guidelines within the program, so that IP director is someone that companies can consult. To make sure that — smaller companies don’t necessarily have the IP expertise — so, how do we help them in thinking through the types of questions they want to be asking? How do we make sure we have an IP chart in every one of our agreements that lays out the background IP and the foreground IP, and then someone that helps the companies to be able to work through that? So it’s not perfect, but we haven’t actually seen, knock on wood, at this point, a lot of concerns around IP going to the larger companies. What we do see is we shine a light on these companies, and then they get internationally acquired. So that is the actual question: how do you maintain the benefits to Canada, in a program that is Government of Canada–funded, in a situation where you’re seeing them scale with funding that comes from somewhere else?
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:00
So would you describe that governance model as templated, applied across all deals, or are each of them negotiated? Is the governance negotiated individually?
Kendra MacDonald 15:09
So I would say there is flexibility within a frame. You have flexibility in terms of how you do the sharing, but everyone has to think through the sharing. Same thing with governance — so we have a steering committee model, and you can think about who’s on that steering committee, and you have some flexibility. And then there is some common reporting. So there is definitely a common structure, and then you have some flexibility within your particular project on how you want to operate with your partners.
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:38
Earlier, you mentioned that sometimes collaboration doesn’t work, and that learning is really important to the progress that the industry can make, even though the individual entity didn’t make the success expected. How do you integrate that kind of learning, and what’s your tolerance for risk in the context of the lessons you need to learn about such a big topic that we understand so little about?
Kendra MacDonald 16:02
Yeah, so that’s a great question. We do a number of member education sessions, and talking about experience with collaboration is one of those things. Certainly we spend more time, for example, on collaboration with Indigenous communities, because speed — and speed of trust, and how you engage — is very important for the success of the project. It’s important always, but when you get into more complexity around different cultures, we try to do some education and some help and some learnings there.
And then I would say our evaluators, now that we’re 150-plus projects in, they are getting better at the types of questions to ask. There is a presentation that is done by the various participants, and so you can ask very pointed questions and get a sense of: are these three individual companies that are giving you a presentation, or are they companies that have actually thought this through together — are they synchronized in terms of their responses? You can tell that there is sort of some magical sauce that is already being demonstrated, in how they work together in that presentation.
Mitch Ratcliffe 17:10
I think we have the lay of the land — or maybe the better way to put it is the contour of the shore. I want to take a quick commercial break, folks. We’re going to be right back to continue the conversation.
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue my conversation with Kendra MacDonald. She’s CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster program, and it’s a national, industry-led innovation cluster focused on transforming Canada’s ocean economy through collaboration, technology, and, importantly, sustainability. Kendra, let’s talk about some phrases that listeners should understand, and the first one is sustainable aquaculture, which makes some environmentalists nervous, given the history of the industry. What does getting sustainable aquaculture right look like, and how do you hold the line on that?
Kendra MacDonald 17:58
Yeah, so I think a couple of things are important to understand around aquaculture. The first is that it is already one of the most sustainable sources of animal protein in the world, when you compare it to land-based agriculture, for example. The second is that it has already tipped — so if you look at since 2022, we actually get more of our fish coming out of aquaculture than coming out of wild fishery. So we are predominantly aquaculture around the world. And then the third one, and the World Bank, I think, just came out with this recently: we’re expecting to see possibly up to 22 million new jobs by 2050 in aquaculture. So it continues to be the fastest-growing source of protein.
Now, having said that, agriculture has been around much longer, and so has developed maybe more sustainability practices. Aquaculture is trying really hard to catch up really quickly. And so we need to make sure — and any of the aquaculture farmers I talk to recognize they want to make sure — that it is sustainable. So you are seeing a lot of technology solutions that are being brought to make sure that it is doing more good than harm, whether that is genomics, for example. We have a project on the West Coast that is looking at how do you look at genomics data to be able to improve animal health. We have a project that is looking at alternative sources of food — so how do you create a different food out of methanol as an input — because fish feed is part of the big footprint of aquaculture.
How do you reduce the die-offs, which is another big risk? That’s tied to environment, so now you’re seeing a change — the heating of waters that happens really quickly, and then you end up with a die-off. So how do you manage the cages? How do you manage the environmental monitoring and tracking to be able to reduce that risk? So it is already a sustainable source of food; we need to do much better, or continue on that journey as fast as we can, to make sure that the aquaculture farms are minimizing their input. So it is definitely a concern to continue to monitor, but I think there’s been a lot of progress made and will continue to be made.
Mitch Ratcliffe 20:16
We’ve had a few folks who work in the area on the show, and of course it remains controversial as to whether or not we’re recreating the concentrated animal feeding operations that we have on land in the sea. The next phrase that I want to ask you about is the blue economy, and that can sound to a lot of people like a license to industrialize the ocean. How do you think in terms of keeping growth and protection from becoming a zero-sum trade-off in the projects that you fund?
Kendra MacDonald 20:42
Well, that’s a great question. So, just as we launched in 2018, the High Level Panel on Sustainability for the Ocean at that time had 18 countries — it continues to increase in terms of the number of countries that are involved — and they really talked about protection, production, and prosperity as interlinked. And so that is one of the things that we really focus on. It’s not always that we have our environmental objectives and our economic objectives linking, but actually, a healthier ocean is also a more productive ocean. So that’s one of the things that we focus on: if we can improve the health of our ocean, that actually also improves the economic output of the ocean, which is really important.
I think the other piece that is really important is — and the High Level Panel came out with a report that said about a third to half of the solutions around improving the overall sustainability and health of the planet come from ocean solutions, whether that is offshore energy or more sustainable protein or carbon dioxide removal. So we need ocean to be a really important part of the overall health-of-the-planet conversation. So what excites me is, because they come together, a lot of the solutions that we see are, as a minimum, trying not to cause harm, and in a lot of cases trying to leave the ocean better than they found it, in terms of the solutions they’re developing.
Mitch Ratcliffe 22:05
We touched on sovereignty in the first segment, and I want to ask about this in the context of the fact that most of the ocean is not owned by anybody — it isn’t claimed by anybody. How do we avoid a tragedy of the commons as we move toward a more comprehensive aquacultural solution to humanity’s food and protein needs? In particular, are there treaties? Are there agreements that we need to have in place, or are we setting the stage already with the legislation and agreements that are in place now?
Kendra MacDonald 22:38
Yeah, so there are a number of agreements that are in place, and this is not my area of expertise, but, for example, I just completed my master’s, and I did one of my courses on maritime law. So you look at hundreds and hundreds of years of law trying to govern international shipping, which is very international in terms of moving through international waters as well as moving through international ports. You are seeing it now — so in January, they approved, through the United Nations … a lot of the agreements need to be agreed to, obviously, by multiple countries, and so the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction agreement was approved. So, how do we manage and protect biodiversity in our common waters?
You’re also seeing the conversation play out in the Arctic, as more waters are becoming more accessible — and so what does that mean in terms of rights and access? I haven’t seen it play out as much in terms of food, particularly; I see it much more in terms of things like carbon dioxide removal solutions and protection of biodiversity. But how we use those waters as they become more accessible, as we have more technology, as we have more instrumentation, and how we work together, is really important, and it does require international agreement. And so, how do we get — especially in this moment in time that we’re in — how do we get the international alignment that we need to protect our ocean and manage what happens in the deep ocean, at the same time as we have a shift in the geopolitical environment?
Mitch Ratcliffe 24:07
The times we’re in are challenging. The Trump administration, the week that we’re speaking, removed fishing protections in three protected marine areas, with — for lack of a better word — a rogue regime stirring up the entire sustainability conversation globally. Is this an opportunity for Canada to step forward, in Mark Carney’s terms, for a middle power to consolidate a bloc and really begin to lead the world in a different direction?
Kendra MacDonald 24:35
So, I think so. I think that Canada was working hard to step forward already, and this allows us to provide additional leadership in this space. We have seen, with the Ocean Supercluster and just the growth in the blue economy overall, that Canada has some really strong capabilities. You talk about marine protected areas as a perfect example — so we have worked hard in terms of increasing our marine protected areas. Now, looking at how do you monitor and actually ensure the effectiveness of those areas — I think that’s really important as well.
But yes, I think we are seeing more interest in working with Canada, and interest in Canadian technologies. I used to say, you know, internationally, no one’s really paying attention to what’s going on in Canada. I think that has changed in terms of what we are seeing, and so there is an interest. I think the US is still an important part of the Canadian conversation — they are important neighbors, they are an important market — but I do think that Canada has a strong … we’re seeing the whole climate conversation moving, but we have a strong reputation for clean tech, and I think clean tech and ocean tech very much align, and so there’s an opportunity to lead a broader conversation around the world.
Mitch Ratcliffe 25:49
Is more capital flowing to Canada now that the United States is a place where international investors are treading more carefully?
Kendra MacDonald 25:57
That’s a great question. Certainly, the flow of capital is a huge focus for us, and continues to be a challenge for our companies. So I think, on the one hand, there is more interest. On the other hand, you are seeing a slowdown in access to capital overall, you’re seeing a change in some of those models, and you’re seeing — certainly in sustainable solutions, in some of these big areas — the whole blue finance conversation is really accelerating. So Sustainable Development Goal 14, which is life below water, is the least funded of the Sustainable Development Goals. And so there is a tremendous focus on being able to increase the creativity of financial models — it hurts my accountant heart to say “creativity” — but trying to find better ways to bring philanthropic dollars and the capital markets together to be able to fund some of these solutions.
So that is a beyond-Canada challenge. Capital continues to be a challenge. How do we help our companies scale in Canada? We don’t have the funds focused on the blue economy the way that you are seeing them now emerge in a number of countries, certainly in Europe, for example. But more broadly, there’s a bigger push to be able to get more investors to be focused on the blue economy — opportunities, but also challenges.
Mitch Ratcliffe 27:16
When I was doing some of the reading to get ready for this conversation, I noticed that you said the shipping sector’s decarbonization efforts are not as slow as they used to be, which is sort of faint praise. What’s actually changed, and how do you see Canada leading that movement versus being one of the followers — or is being an important follower more important?
Kendra MacDonald 27:36
Yeah, so I think we are not as big a player in the international shipping space, but what is driving that is international regulations. You have seen a bit of a slowdown in terms of the push to decarbonization, but the International Maritime Organization is really pushing for decarbonization. You are also seeing the bigger companies, as they’re focused on their supply chain and decarbonizing throughout their supply chain, that that also puts a push on the shipping companies in terms of dealing with decarbonization.
You are also seeing an acceleration of some of the solutions that are being developed to help, because it’s considered a hard-to-abate industry. The alternative fuels conversation continues to move forward, so you are seeing this focus in the short term on how do you improve operational effectiveness — so something like better prediction of weather. If you can change the route just a little bit, you can actually save on diesel, and that obviously helps with emissions. We have a project in ports that is actually looking at how do you park the boats more effectively in the ports to be able to reduce emissions, how do you move the cargo around more efficiently to be able to reduce emissions. So there’s an operational effectiveness piece, but then there is this broader agenda of how do you get alternative fuels that are significantly less emissions.
Mitch Ratcliffe 28:55
We’ve been talking in various ways about systems throughout this conversation, and you’ve made a lot of comments about women’s leadership and also the AI readiness gap, which, if we can solve it, will allow us to see into those systems much more deeply than we do now. What are you seeing in those areas, and what would you say to a female leader who is hesitating at the edge of a hard decision right now — where they don’t necessarily feel like they have the data, or they feel like they have the data, but not the commitment of a group of stakeholders? What’s your advice?
Kendra MacDonald 29:26
Yeah, so I would say dig in and try it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that for the big-ticket item to start with — so ideally you are doing some testing and things before you get to that item — but adoption is a huge challenge when it comes to AI. And I can speak to that, certainly, from a Canadian perspective, because Canada are leaders in AI research, and yet we are much slower to adopt the technology. And that’s not just an AI problem; we see that in a lot of technologies that Canada has developed, that they’re slow to adopt. But we know that AI is fundamentally changing, or going to fundamentally change, the way that businesses operate.
I think we’re in an interesting moment in time where companies are looking and saying, well, I’m not sure I’m getting the value of the spend, I’m not sure that we’re actually measuring the productivity savings, I’m doing pilots, but I don’t necessarily have enterprise-wide impact. And so if you, as a female leader, can really cut through the noise, continue to experiment, and really try to reinvent — I heard a futurist speak the other day, and they said, you know, use a comic strip to reinvent what the world could look like. So how do you fundamentally reinvent what the world could look like, and then start experimenting to be able to get there?
But I think the key thing is, nobody should say — no one is an expert. We don’t have a lot of experts; we’re all learning through this journey together. So make sure that you stay on the learning journey, and don’t just stay on the side waiting for it to all play itself out, because then you will be too far behind.
Mitch Ratcliffe 30:59
Do you feel like AI is a key to unlocking the major challenges that we face, or is the jury still out?
Kendra MacDonald 31:07
I think, in my experience — you talked about the internet — in my experience with technology, it is less about the technology, and it’s more about being able to articulate the challenges. I think what AI allows is a very powerful technology that can tackle these challenges, maybe in a way that other technologies previously couldn’t. I went through the blockchain and cryptocurrency, when that was happening; the internet, when it came in — it was going to fundamentally change businesses. I think the hard part is actually defining the problem. And so I think if you can better define the problem — I don’t think it’s just about the technology, I actually think it’s about the business models. It is about the overall systems and processes that surround it.
If we focus only on the technology — and I think that’s the moment that we’re in, as companies are trying to find their AI strategy — well, it’s not. It’s a business strategy that’s enabled by AI. You might not need an agentic AI; you might just need a much more powerful database and analytics tool that doesn’t take you right out on the edge of the technology, but would be much more efficient in solving your problem. And so that’s the trick: stepping back and saying, what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Globally, what are the problems that we’re trying to solve? And then how do we bring these much more powerful tools to be able to solve that problem in a different way?
Mitch Ratcliffe 32:24
What does Canada’s ocean economy look like in 2035 if things go the way that you would like them to go? And what’s different? What does it mean for the rest of the world, not just for Canada?
Kendra MacDonald 32:37
That’s a great question. So we’ve actually set ourselves an ambition, 2035, which is five times growth. Canada has the longest coastline in the world, and we have the fourth-largest ocean territory, but we don’t even contribute world-average percentage to our GDP. So we are definitely under scale, and so we’re working very, very hard to be able to grow our ocean economy. And so I think, if we do that — although if we grow by five times, it’s still a relatively small percentage of the $3 trillion US dollar economy that’s expected by 2030, and in fact even bigger; they’ve got now projections out to 2050.
And so I think, in that situation, Canada is — certainly in terms of the Arctic conversation, half of our coastline is in the Arctic, and the Arctic will continue … I mean, imagine what the Arctic looks like in 2035. So industry is different, community is different, and I think we can be a big part of the leadership in that conversation, but also with the capabilities that we have around ocean technology, and making sure that we are relevant to industries all around the world. So it means a lot more domestic activity in Canada. It means using our own waters to be able to have aquaculture — aquaculture is a very small percentage of our overall coastline — so stronger domestic, but also stronger leadership in terms of exporting those capabilities to the rest of the world, and being a key player in the Arctic conversation.
Mitch Ratcliffe 34:02
What keeps you up at night when you’re thinking about Ambition 2035? What are the things that need to go right that are absolutely critical to the success — not just of that plan, but of our transition to a more sustainable economy overall?
Kendra MacDonald 34:16
Yeah, so our ability to scale solutions is maybe the number one thing that keeps me up at night, in terms of how do we ensure that we are not just bringing solutions to a certain size and then they’re going somewhere else to scale, or they’re not scaling at all. So we have — I talked about this challenge — how do we get enough blue financing to be able to scale the solutions that we need, whether that’s food, whether that’s energy, etc., across the sectors? I think it’s quite lumpy in terms of which ocean sectors get funding and which ones do not. And so, you know, there’s lots of great ideas out there, but can we scale the ones that we need for the planet that we want, fast enough?
Mitch Ratcliffe 35:04
How do we scale while also recognizing that local ecosystems are unique? In other words, how do we avoid turning the ocean into the monoculture environment that land-based agriculture is?
Kendra MacDonald 35:17
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I think community. So I had the opportunity to spend some time in South Africa, with Ocean Innovation Africa, and the number of things that they are doing in the ocean economy — and I spent some time in Northern Canada, and it was surprising, the parallels in the community conversation. And so, how do you make sure — the ocean touches so many communities, it is rural and urban, it is all along our coasts — how do you make sure that how you do that is inclusive of those communities, and the needs of those communities, and is right-sized for the needs of those communities?
So if you look at here, we have Fogo Island and the Fogo Island Inn and the Shorefast Foundation, and one of the things that they’re focused on, in working with communities, is there’s not a same-size-fits-all in terms of meeting community needs, economic development, inclusion, and capacity building — but that we need to be thinking that through as we build out these solutions. I think communities is a key part of this, but I think ocean is a key part of the solutions for sustainable, prosperous communities.
Mitch Ratcliffe 36:29
The Ocean Supercluster does a lot of work. It’s really interesting. How can people follow along as you continue to move this rock up the hill?
Kendra MacDonald 36:36
Absolutely. So you can certainly find us easily on oceansupercluster.ca, and we have a newsletter that you can sign up for to get more information. I also personally write on some of the opportunities — certainly investment opportunities — in the ocean economy. I have Saltwater Signals, which is my Substack that I write, and so between those two, you should be able to find lots of information. If, for whatever reason, you can’t, I’m also very easy to find on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me and get more information.
Mitch Ratcliffe 37:08
Kendra, thanks so much. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate the time today.
Kendra MacDonald 37:12
Thank you.
Mitch Ratcliffe 37:19
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow the blue economy by getting startups, century-old fishing and shipping firms, Indigenous partners, researchers, and global corporations to co-invest in projects. You can learn more about the Supercluster’s roughly 1,000 members and 150-plus projects at oceansupercluster.ca — Ocean Supercluster is all one word, no space, no dash. And Kendra writes about ocean economy investments on her Substack, which is called Saltwater Signals.
The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet, produces about half the oxygen we breathe, and absorbs something like 90% of the excess heat and a third of the carbon that we put into the atmosphere. We’ve spent most of human history treating the ocean as a place to extract from rather than to invest in or to preserve, and frankly, it was a pretty big thing, and we were overawed by it. But now we have a better understanding of how the systems work. Kendra’s model is a wager that the way to change that is structural, not inspirational. You can go faster alone, she says, but farther together. And the interesting part is what “together” actually requires, and that’s where I want to spend these few minutes.
First, she said, the devil’s in the details. Collaboration in the blue economy doesn’t succeed because everyone loves the ocean; it succeeds because partners do the unglamorous upfront work of establishing who owns background IP, who owns foreground IP, who funds what, and what happens when a project runs over budget — as well as what happens when one company hits its milestones and the other doesn’t. These are the kinds of rules of the game that make it feasible to play for small and large companies, communities, and investors. Kendra said her Ocean Supercluster evaluators have gotten good enough, 150 projects in, that they can sit through a pitch and tell whether three companies actually planned together or just showed up in the same room and tried to make a sale. The ones who did the hard prenuptial work aren’t only more likely to succeed, they are more likely to capture a larger share of the benefit.
That’s a lesson that travels well beyond saltwater. It’s the same discipline that Kevin Shaffer of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District described when we talked in January about how wastewater utilities build successful cross-sector partnerships. The value is real, but only if the governance is there first.
Then there’s the limits of any early-stage accelerator. The capital can only go so far, and Kendra gets points for raising that issue before I did. The Supercluster is funded by the Government of Canada to de-risk small Canadian companies, and it works. In her words, the program shines a light on those companies, and they get acquired internationally, scaling on capital from foreign investors. That’s the value-capture problem at the heart of every public innovation program: the country that pays to nurture a technology isn’t guaranteed to be the country that profits when it scales.
It connects to the bigger gap that she flagged: blue finance. Sustainable Development Goal 14 — that’s life below water — is the least funded of all the SDGs, and the funds dedicated to the ocean economy that are emerging in Europe haven’t really emerged in Canada yet. You can build the best pipeline of companies in the world and still watch the returns sail off into another harbor, or have no financing show up in the first place, so that things don’t get off the ground. That tension between strong science and thin capital is the thing that she says keeps her up at night, and it should keep policymakers up at night as well.
Finally, the reframe I want all of us to think about is that health and productivity are not a trade-off. In fact, they cannot be if we’re going to survive as a species. The fear baked into the phrase “blue economy” is that it’s a license to industrialize the ocean, and Kendra’s answer is that a healthier ocean is a more productive ocean, and she frames protection and prosperity as interlinked rather than opposed. And I don’t think that’s rhetoric.
Mitch Ratcliffe 41:17
Aquaculture quietly passed a milestone in 2022: for the first time, farmed aquatic animals outproduced wild-caught fish — that is, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization — and the sector is now the fastest-growing source of animal protein on the planet. Whether that growth recreates the worst of factory farming or leaves the water better than it found it depends entirely on whether we accept her premise that the two goals pull in the same direction. And that’s also the circular economy logic that Elizabeth Blankenship Singh of Overlay Capital described during another interview earlier this year. She said the system only works long-term when doing the right thing and making money are united in a clear mission.
There’s a sharp edge under all of this, and it’s why the timing of this conversation matters. The week that we recorded, the Trump administration in Washington signed a proclamation reopening nearly half a million square miles of Pacific Ocean to commercial fishing, and that was the third such rollback in 16 months. So you have one model that treats the ocean as a commons to protect and co-invest in, and another that treats marine protection as an obstacle that must be cleared out of the way. Kendra thinks this opens a door for Canada — with its longest coastline in the world and a credible clean-tech reputation — to lead a different conversation than the one that’s starting in Washington. And perhaps so, but leadership in the blue economy will be measured the same way Milwaukee’s Kevin Shaffer measures a utility’s value to the community: not by what you announced, but by what’s still standing two or three decades from now. Canada has set itself a 2035 goal to grow its blue economy fivefold, and we’ll be watching to find out whether the capital shows up to match that amazing coastline.
Hey folks, if this conversation gave you something to think about, please share it with one person who would find it useful, because you folks are the amplifiers that spread more ideas to create less waste, and word of mouth is how this show reaches its next listener. You’ll find more than 500 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear waiting for you in our archives on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness you prefer. Please subscribe and leave a review, and pass an episode along. Thanks for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day
The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Kendra MacDonald Steers to the Blue Economy at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/sustainability-in-your-ear-kendra-macdonald-steers-to-the-blue-economy-at-canadas-ocean-supercluster/
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