The Better Business Show Narrative Matters

About 30% of the word’s total land is used not to grow grains, fruits and vegetables that we directly eat as human beings, but to support the chickens, pigs and cattle that we eventually eat.

And the environmental impact of all this large-scale meat production is having serious implications for the world’s climate. Animal waste releases methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouse gases that are 25 and 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, respectively.

Step forward Illtud Dunsford, CEO of Cellular Agriculture, our guest on this week’s show. He says: There is a better way. And it involves tissue engineering technology, producing the exact same meat but in a laboratory. Enjoy our chat.

So, this week we get to meet the company refusing to accept when a lithium ion battery is ‘dead’.

Lithium-ion batteries continue to be the technology of choice for all the major consumer gadget players; it's no wonder that the market is set to explode in the next few years. But what happens to these lithium-ion batteries when they reach the end of their life?

This time, we catch up with Amrit Chandan, co-founder of Aceleron, a business that hopes to revolutionise the way people use and think about low-cost energy storage. A business dreamt up by Amrit and his partner and co-founder Carlton Cummins during their lunch breaks working for a management consultancy, it is on a mission to repackage lithium-ion batteries in a way that is safe, cost effective and useful again.

This week, we report from inside the HQ of the world's biggest food business, Nestlé to explore a wealth of solutions designed to solve the global nutrition crisis – including contact lenses that can monitor your glucose levels and smart watches that use your doctors' notes to prescribe exactly the right diet.

Around 795 million people go to bed hungry every night, while 2.1 billion people are overweight or obese; something's got to give. Hearing from businesses, NGOs, academics and consumer-bahaviour experts, this special edition of the show delves into the challenges of the food system – and why it is time to act now if we are to sustain 10 billion healthy people on this planet by 2050.

This week, you get the chance to step inside the most talked about business on the planet right now.

Hampton Creek’s CEO Josh Tetrick gives us a flavour of what makes his company tick – from attracting investment to staying true to your mission. Learn how this San Francisco unicorn plans to change the way we eat forever by not appealing to hearts and minds, just making great food.

Human rights: It is the one issue that no company wants to be embroiled in – yet a subject that every business is almost certainly exposed to and at risk of. That’s why we’ve dedicated this episode to the subject and we’re super excited to have grabbed Richard Boele, KPMG's head of specialist human rights and social impact group, to appear on the show.

Friday Five - 14 April 2017

This is the Better Business Show Friday Five, released at the end of every week and digesting the very best stories from across the world of sustainable business in the last 7 days.

This week, we’re talking about:
- Christina Figueres latest assessment of peak emissions (http://bit.ly/2o9z40T_
- London’s ambitious coffee cup recycling programme (http://bit.ly/2jsrC1I)
- Riversimple's fundraising target being smashed (http://bit.ly/2p031W9)
- H&M wants to become ‘climate positive’ (http://bit.ly/2pwG1Kw)
- How mushrooms might replace sugar in our sweets (http://bit.ly/2oC4S2u)

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