Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones, just in time for Valentine’s Day. And what could be more romantic than letting your spouse write this edition while you sit back and eat bonbons.

This is the first official HB interview, so once you read it, lmk if we should keep doing these. If so, what would make them even 10% better? As always, you can just press Reply to send your thoughts.

And while I’m making asks upfront, if there’s someone you've been meaning to forward Hot Bones to, Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to make that happen. After all, the greatest gift you can give is not letting a snake into your house.

G has had to put up with years of me passing her my laptop and saying, “hey can you read this really quickly,” always about some document draft and always in the short window between dinner and bed. This is also when I bring up financial matters, so I can’t believe we’re still married.

Since she’s the copilot for all editions of Hot Bones, I thought it was high time she got to take the mic. G is the smartest, sharpest, and nicest person I know, and she’s been passionate about sustainability and the environment for decades — as proven by the fact that she has, on more than one occasion, worn Chacos with socks. I’m sure she’d also like to use this interview to set the record straight on some of my stories.

And just so you know, G and I both edited this conversation for length and clarity, so don’t worry about anything in it ruining our Valentines. Me bringing up 2024 taxes on the car ride back from dinner will do that all on its own.

We're officially recording. We only have 30 minutes, because after that my free transcription stops. 

I also think, can we make this less than 30 minutes? 

Yeah, but I'm making that the subject line. 

No, don't do that. That's not funny! You make me out to be a materialistic villain in all of these emails.

This is the time to put the record straight. Let me put the microphone closer to you, Senator.

…

Big first question, so let me get through the preamble: A lot of climate scientists say that for regular people like us, one of the most effective actions we can take is just to talk about climate change more with friends, family, coworkers and stuff, which I've always thought is a great idea abstractly but a terrible way to spend your chips at a cocktail party. It seems really awkward and maybe inorganic. 

But you're the queen of communications, so how would you recommend or maybe, how have you talked casually about climate things? 

You know, Charlotte, I just can't connect to the idea of a conversation that's difficult to have :)

Wow I hate you so much.

But seriously, I think that when you decide what's important to you, it's top of mind more. Rather than having one big conversation with the people in my life at any given time, I’m peppering it throughout the conversations that I have every day.

Maybe I'm talking to a friend and they’re talking about something they just bought for their house, or a product they just switched to, or something they just thrifted. And as we're talking about it, it just sort of comes out honestly as little comments like, “Oh and it's more sustainable, it's the more sustainable option.” 

So it becomes more of a thread that I feel responsible for — injecting or celebrating. 

It can be as simple as, “Hey this is something we're thinking about a lot right now,” which can lead to follow-on questions. 

I like that. Okay, next up is a softball: What's your favorite sustainable brand? 

There's a skincare brand I really like called Dieux.

Oh yeah, we get their boxes a lot.

We get their boxes a lot. Their products are absolutely incredible, but they’re constantly iterating on things like packaging and transparency processes to minimize their footprint. 

For example, this moisturizer I really love (it's called Instant Angel): The tube used to be a lot bigger, and I believe it's a totally recyclable tube. But a few months ago, they wrote me and were like, “Hey, our packaging is changing. We found a way to get the same amount of product in a smaller tube, which means we're using less materials. We're diverting more from recycling plants even, which is a better option than just the landfill.”

I feel like they do a great job about communicating around their iteration practices for minimizing waste.

Nice. Favorite sustainable product?

Well those Biom wipes you got for that Hot Bones edition smell really good, and I wish we could use them and buy the little reusable container, but you won't let me. They smell so great, like I love opening under the sink because it smells so good.

They don't work very well. 

I do like the Dip shampoo you've been using because that smells really good too. 

So it's all smell based. 

Yeah, if you can make your sustainable product smell good, I'm probably gonna be interested. 

I also always feel really good about doing Nuuly. There's some basics that obviously I buy new but for Nuuly and Poshmark, I feel a lot better shopping secondhand. 

It’s a clothing subscription service where you get six items of clothing a month for about $100 and you get to try new things on in your wardrobe. You get to have the variety you might be looking for when you're shopping for full price, but you aren’t necessarily contributing to the pipeline of new textile creation or the waste element.

And what about buying them afterward — what's the best deal you've ever gotten? 

Oh my gosh. One time there was a $90 sweater that I could have bought for $20 and I didn't buy it, but I almost did, because it would have been cool to get like $70 off this really great sweater.

I don't know why I didn't buy that. 

The sweater that got away. 

The sweater that got away.

Maybe I could get it back. Do you want a sweater for Valentine's Day?

No, I want marmalade. 

What’s been your favorite edition of Hot Bones so far?

Ooh, what a great question.

They're all the same question. They're just favorites. 

Yeah, I like favorite-based questions.

I really liked the e-bike edition because it was a date that you tricked me with. I also liked the sort of Mythbusters test factor of the disinfectant wipes and then really the Hot Bones throwback, the one where you rewrote the story of the snake in our room — mostly because I lived it and my knees were literally jelly as that was happening, but as you rewrote it, I was laughing out loud.

That was a wild day. What's a sustainability sin you're guilty of?

Oh God. So many. I really like leaving lights on, like select little lamps, and I just leave them on all day.

Yeah, actually why do you do that?

Well I could go into the long story about how my grandmother grew up in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere Kentucky, and her family had no nice things and no lights on after dark, because I think for a large part of her childhood, they probably didn't have electricity. And so when she became a woman and she got married and she got a nice house in Nashville, she always liked having little lights on, because she didn't have that as a kid.

And so we joke that that's part of my family’s DNA, but also I think it just makes it feel cozy and like people live here.

Not ghosts. 

Not ghosts. So that's definitely one sin. Also when I get lazy and I don't want to rinse out the peanut butter jar, I just throw it away. 

Yeah, I do that one too. Peanut butter is really hard. 

I hate to bring work into this, but ever since I’ve known you, you’ve brought sustainability to all of your — very different — jobs. How would you recommend people learn more about making any job a climate job?

Part of it is just deciding that it's a priority. It starts by deciding that you will look at the world through a sustainability-focused lens, right? 

No one can do everything, but everyone can do a little something. 

You have to honestly read the room around what you can control and what you feel empowered and able to make a difference on, and then go away and learn as much about it as you can. 

It can be through great resources like Rewiring America or The Cool Down, or platforms like We Don't Have Time or the newsletter Heated. In Charlottesville, we have the Community Climate Collaborative, the Piedmont Environmental Council, things like that. 

Donnel Baird is a great climate tech follow, as is Katherine Hayhoe. She often has really specific, seemingly niche but also impactful stories. I saw one recently that I shared with a colleague about how Dickinson is one of the most sustainable universities in the country, and that was just interesting to read her perspective on.

In terms of employee resources, Drew Wilkinson is an amazing follow on LinkedIn. So is Holly Alpine. They both really embody the idea of making sustainability a part of their job. 

Also, lean on your co-workers. Do you have a friend in the office who, just like you, turns off the lights after every meeting? Or who, just like you, presents vegan options for lunch? Start to build those connections in your workplace. And build your power in numbers, your strength in numbers.

Project Drawdown has a lot of resources on making any job a climate job, too.

Switching gears: Often sustainability practices are broken down into four sectors: energy usage, water, waste, and ecosystems. Which is most important to you?

I’m particularly interested in water because my wife seems to use a lot of it. 

Damn, no punches.

But I think waste is often where I feel like I have the most control over my own individual habits. 

I make a decision every day to buy certain products, or throw things away or not, or buy packaging that's recyclable. It's more materially a part of my life than saying “Wow, I'd really like to reduce my kilowatt usage by 10% every month.” It's nearly impossible for the average person to actually wrap their mind around an actionable plan that's also inspiring or makes you feel good. That’s probably why I care a lot and know the most about waste. 

Lastly, what gives you hope for a sustainable future? 

Honestly, all the young people that are so passionate about climate action. I mean, I'm not old, I'm not young—

I am an old woman, named after my mother.

—But the urgency factor today feels very different than when I was picking a college major or a career path. It's a lot more mainstream now, I think, than even 10, 15 years ago.

And it gives me hope that in history, things have also seemed really bad, and we've always found a way through it. 

It's not like one generation is carrying the flag for climate action. It's actually an ever growing, probably pretty angry, generational set of young people who are ready to do something about it. 

On the other side of the spectrum, one of my favorites are the climate grannies — it's not like climate change is going to affect them to the same degree, and yet, they're still doing so much. They can kind of go balls to the wall with all of this. 

Yeah, it’s all so personal. One thing that Katharine Hayhoe just posted about was the Science Moms ad from the Super Bowl. She said, “I don't care about climate because I'm a scientist, but I care about climate because I'm a mom.”

A surprising amount of climate founders I’ve talked to for work have changed careers and gotten into the climate space because they became parents. Pretty cool to see that shift.

Okay, with 20 seconds left, here’s the most important question: Where should we go on our next dinner date in Charlottesville, once the Valentine’s hustle dies down?

Oooo, I really want to go to the wine store on the Mall and order big bowls of Luce pasta. And I’d love to try that nice restaurant in the Wool Factory, Broadcloth, I think is what it's called. 

Done and done, but only if they have a dairy-free dessert.