The fashion industry has its fair share of dirty secrets, but one of the lesser-known is how much it pollutes our waterways. Every year, garment factories use as much as 2 trillion gallons of water to dye clothes, and most of that water, now filled with harmful chemicals, flows untreated into rivers, streams and lakes. Those pollutants can turn rivers black, harm marine life and cause cancer. Macarena Cataldo, a chemical engineer based in Vancouver, has come up with an ingenious way to remove these contaminants before they even reach the water. In this episode, Cataldo talks to Manjula Selvarajah about the global water crisis, how her technology works and efforts to get major fashion brands to change their ways.

Featured in this episode:

Macarena Cataldo is the CEO and CTO of Viridis Research, which she co-founded in 2019 to solve various global water challenges by eliminating pollutants from water sources. She has a PhD in chemical engineering, and has spent more than 15 years applying electrochemistry to drinking and wastewater treatment working with the European Space Agency, the Metropolitan Water Company of Turin and others.

Further reading:

Asian rivers are turning black. And our colourful closets are to blame

Why colouring clothes has a big environmental impact

World enters era of “global water bankruptcy”

Water crisis in Chile: Are we close to day zero?

Subscribe to Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World here. And below, find a transcript to “Colour block.”

Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and a registered charity. MaRS supports startups and accelerates the adoption of high-impact solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. For more information, visit marsdd.com.

There’s no denying that technology plays — and will continue to play — a critical role in addressing the climate crisis. But could super-intelligent AI actually solve the problem for us, as several tech billionaires claim? Or is this over-reliance on speculative technology simply a way to distract us from tackling big, real-world problems. Manjula Selvarajah sits down with astrophysicist and author Adam Becker to separate the hype from reality.

Featured in this episode:

Adam Becker is an astrophysicist, journalist and the author of More Everything Forever, a book that examines the futuristic ideologies of Silicon Valley’s tech titans. He is a former science journalism fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and was also a science communicator in residence at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley.

Marcius Extavour is a scientist, creative technologist and communicator who develops solutions for climate change and clean energy. As a partner at Ode, a technology and creative design firm specializing in geospatial AI. He previously built the energy, climate and carbon removal practice at XPRIZE.

Further reading:

Silicon Valley is at an inflection point
Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy
Travelling to Mars and beating death: The futurist creed of tech’s apostles

More Everything Forever

Subscribe to Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World here. And below, find a transcript to “Infinity quest.”

Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and a registered charity. MaRS supports startups and accelerates the adoption of high-impact solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. For more information, visit marsdd.com.

Our energy grid is something most of us only think about when it isn’t working. But growing demand for electricity is placing an even greater strain on a system that’s already facing increased pressure from extreme weather events. Can we build a more sustainable and dependable grid? In this episode, which originally aired September 2022, we explore how when it comes to climate change the challenge of greening the grid is as much an issue of complex engineering as it is about policy and equity.

Featured in this episode:

• Josh Wong is the former CEO of Opus One Solutions, which was acquired by General Electric. In 2024, Josh founded a new company called ThinkLabsAI and is developing software that will help utilities to integrate renewable sources of energy and improve grid resilience.
• Destenie Nock is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in public policy, civil and environmental engineering. She’s an expert on how our changing climate is impacting the grid, and what that means for the future. Focusing on energy equity, Destenie explains what’s important to consider in our transition to clean energy.
• Dana Tizya-Tramm is the former chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in Old Crow, Yukon. Dana helped establish the Old Crow Solar Project — shifting the northern remote community off diesel to renewables. Through his efforts, Old Crow is making inroads toward energy sovereignty. He is now the director of Nadlii and is working on developing a framework for Indigenous data sovereignty and ethical AI.

Further reading:

• 2021 placed exceptional demands on electricity markets around the world
• Renewable Energy Is Great—but the Grid Can Slow It Down
• Global heat waves are so bad that utilities are paying their customers to use less energy
• “Nation-building” investments in electricity grid needed to reach net-zero, experts say
• How Old Crow’s solar farm is changing green energy projects in Yukon | CBC News

Subscribe to Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World here

Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and a registered charity. MaRS supports startups and accelerates the adoption of high-impact solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. For more information, visit marsdd.com.