Sneaker Impact News

Leading the Green Business Revolution: Yadira Diaz of Gradible

• Bryan The Botanist, Yadira Diaz • Season 1 • Episode 25

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In this episode of Sneaker Impact News, host Bryan the Botanist converses with Yadira Diaz, founder and chief impact officer of Gradible, about pioneering sustainable solutions for companies. Yadira shares her motivation from a young age, inspired by environmental changes and a pivotal documentary on waste. She details how Gradible helps businesses become more eco-friendly through innovative waste management and energy efficiency solutions. The conversation explores her partnerships with organizations like the Miami Marathon, various hotels, music festivals, and government agencies, aiming to reduce waste significantly. Furthermore, Yadira discusses the personal journey that led her to sustainability, exploring how individuals can implement small changes to create a big impact. Tune in for an immersive discussion about balancing sustainability with business growth and how collective action can push toward a greener future.

Bryan The Botanist:

Okay, welcome back to Sneaker Impact News. My name is Bryan the Botanist, and today our very special guest is Yadira Diaz, the founder of Gradible. Welcome, Yadira. How are you?

Yadira Diaz:

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Bryan The Botanist:

We're excited to have you. So guys, Gradible is dedicated to pioneering innovative sustainability solutions that empower organizations to become more eco friendly, resilient, and forward thinking in their infrastructure and design. Yadira's expertise allows her to guide businesses in integrating effective waste, energy, and water management strategies, enhancing both their environmental impact and financial performance. Yadira, that's awesome. You're the founder of Gradible. You're the chief impact officer we were talking about beforehand. This is incredible. Tell us more about, catch us up, get us up to speed just before we get into your background.

Yadira Diaz:

Have you heard

Bryan The Botanist:

it's your first time at Sneaker Impact or have you been here before?

Yadira Diaz:

I have not been here before. I'm blown away. I think maybe I should have done the tour after because now I'm just like on cloud nine. Just these really innovative companies that I'm finding throughout this journey are just blowing me away and keeping me inspired. And so seeing what Sneaker Impact is up to is. Yeah, just monumental. Yeah, you got to take a tour

Bryan The Botanist:

with Moe, our founder.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, it was awesome. We

Bryan The Botanist:

met you at the Chamber of Commerce Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Sustainability Heroes. Luncheon at the Biltmore Hotel a couple of months ago. And I could tell right away that you were a very passionate leader in the industry. So we wanted to have you on the podcast as soon as possible. So thank you for coming today. So we're going to get into Gradible, which is your company Your passion project for environmental solutions. But let's talk about first, where were you born and raised?

Yadira Diaz:

So I was born in Puerto Rico. My dad's Puerto Rican, mom's Colombian. But they saw an opportunity for central Florida. Their eyes were set on that area, Kissimmee, Florida. It's 20 minutes south of Orlando, right around Disney. So I come from where I was born. Dreams come true. Yeah. And yeah, no, it was a great place to grow up, really rural, and yeah, just spent a lot of time outside and in nature, and we lived next to farms, and it was just really great to see, and then, as I get older, you start seeing the new development come in, and, Things getting taken down, parks, and you're just like, wait a minute. What's going on? Obviously that comes with growth, but typically now that I'm older, I understand now that

Bryan The Botanist:

it's always about. Yeah, same thing where I grew up in Southern Wisconsin. It's been a urban sprawl to the maximum outside of Madison, the capital city. I grew up half an hour outside of it and similar to Orlando, it's just, everyone wants to live there, cause it's a great place to live. Yeah. But it ends up terrorizing the, farm fields in the open spaces.

Yadira Diaz:

Wait, so I got it confused. Is it rural is okay.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. No, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking sustainable urbanism last week

Bryan The Botanist:

with Esteban, who you got to meet from Greenloop. Yeah. Shout out to Esteban. Hey, Esteban. That episode's going up same time as yours. And yeah, they do sustainable urbanism, so like city planning.

Yadira Diaz:

Okay.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah. I wanted to make sure I didn't

Yadira Diaz:

get the two confused. It's okay. Okay, yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

So tell us about did you have any brothers and sisters and how did your childhood impact you to become such a passionate environmentalist? So

Yadira Diaz:

my dad's a stud. He had eight kids and we're all, yeah, just I know, spread out a little bit.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah, he's a stud for sure.

Yadira Diaz:

So So, we had a lot of years between my closest brother and sister, and so I was the middle child, and just just the crazy one all over the, they call me Hurricane in my family, but yeah, growing up in such a green area, and then it just taught me. It's country

Bryan The Botanist:

up there more than city. So country, but now,

Yadira Diaz:

Where all the farmland used to be is now all like single family homes. Yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

suburbs.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, dude, it's crazy to see that's where, that's eye opening where you want to be a part of preserving that, and a lot of that has been happening in Miami, which is really cool to see, like they're shutting down like a water park. Or making sure that our parks here, Florida parks, aren't being turned into golf courses and hotels. Yeah, I saw that recently. That

Bryan The Botanist:

was a big protest.

Yadira Diaz:

So shout out the community who stands up and is just enough is enough. We have enough homes and hotels. Yeah, that's a very

Bryan The Botanist:

good point. They were going to open up the parks to development. The citizens were like, no. They shut

Yadira Diaz:

that

Bryan The Botanist:

down. Yeah. They said no strongly.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah. That was big. That was cool. So what brought you to Miami and how did your youth, influence your environmental passion?

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah when I got into sustainability, it dates back to when I had a professor make us watch this documentary called Trash Inc. The Secret Life of Garbage. Okay. And this was back in 2009. And I really saw. Just the global landfill crisis that we have, right? And I just couldn't believe it, right? Because In my hometown, you never saw it. You never saw garbage, right? It's very hidden from us, right? Fast forward, Miami has a landfall crisis. So it's a Mount Trashmore. Mount Trashmore. And it's a really full circle. And I just got goosebumps. It's just crazy. I read

Bryan The Botanist:

about it.

Yadira Diaz:

Full circle moment for me. They're going to have

Bryan The Botanist:

to ship it up north because they're running out of space down here. They're already shipping it.

Yadira Diaz:

They're already shipping

Bryan The Botanist:

it. It's

Yadira Diaz:

being shipped in trains.

Bryan The Botanist:

Okay.

Yadira Diaz:

In trucks, to St. Cloud, Florida, to Georgia.

Bryan The Botanist:

Hours away. Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

For anybody who will take it.

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure.

Yadira Diaz:

And has space for it. So we don't

Bryan The Botanist:

have a sustainable waste solution here. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

and to think that we have to take it to Georgia, because that's like the closest place that can actually take it, is pretty mind blowing. But so I watched this documentary, I'm like, okay, what else have I not seen? Scene with my own eyes. And what is out there that like, I don't know about?'cause it's being hush hushed, right? And then just went down the road of, okay, what can I do to reduce, refuse, recycle, be vegan, compost, learn about the oceans, and just went down this rabbit hole. Sure. And then I moved to California for a little bit where I was in heaven. Oh, wow. San Diego. Okay. They have it all figured out. And then COVID happened. I'm like, all right, I need to be closer to family. And I didn't want to move back to my hometown. So I thought Miami is the best next option where I'm close enough.

Bryan The Botanist:

Did you have friends here or? What brought you, what did you, was there a reason Miami is just close to Puerto Rico too? There's a lot of Puerto Ricans. Yeah. A lot of reasons.

Yadira Diaz:

A lot of reasons. It was open during COVID. I had friends here that moved here, loved it. It's growing. And you were living in

Bryan The Botanist:

California. That makes sense. Yeah. Just.

Yadira Diaz:

Just nothing where it's too stark of a You

Bryan The Botanist:

seem like you could have been born and raised here. Just when I met you at the chamber meeting, you were so outgoing that everyone knew you and you just had immersed yourself in the Miami, industry.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. So when I moved here, I wasn't supposed to be an entrepreneur. I was doing real estate. I wanted to be more independent. In fact, when I lived in San Diego, I was working for Pepsi. Oh, wow. One of the top three biggest plastic polluters in the world. Wow. It taught me a lot. It taught me how to get out there and sell and be in a very male dominant world. It's important

Bryan The Botanist:

to learn how to sell. I was listening to the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, yesterday while I'm swimming. Robert Kiyosaki, shout out. Yeah. And he talks about, this best selling, or not best selling, it's an author who's struggling, but then he's the best selling author. But he's not the best writing author, he's the best selling author. So you have to be good at selling even as an author, even as anything in life. He teaches you. If you're specialized in some, everything nowadays about specialization, it's a total randomness tangent, but it's more important to learn how to also sell because that's even what the McDonald's model has shown is they don't make the best burger, he says they do the best job of selling and delivering it.

Yadira Diaz:

That and real estate. And everyone's

Bryan The Botanist:

trying to improve the burger when they should be trying to improve The delivery and scaling of it because we can all make a great burger, but I'm in veggie burger, whatever, and we can talk about, the environmental. Impact of all that stuff. But let's stay on topic with Gradible, with Yadira's journey. Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

So yeah moving us

Bryan The Botanist:

back on track. Yep.

Yadira Diaz:

Move to Miami. And then

Bryan The Botanist:

California.

Yadira Diaz:

From California. Really see the day and night difference of like waste management and how we run things. And I'm like, Oh, this doesn't look really that great. But so then I decided to get involved in the climate community. What's out there for me? What groups can I be involved in? And. Another rabbit hole I went down where I start learning about Miami being ground zero for climate change. Rising

Bryan The Botanist:

above Miami Beach is a big one. All of it,

Yadira Diaz:

The beach cleanups and hearing about our landfill crisis, hearing that we have septic tanks underground, 11, 000 that need to be removed and all the health implications of that. The list goes on and on and I'm like, whoa. I don't know if I can sell houses anymore. I need to. Oh, so

Bryan The Botanist:

you were in real estate. That's right. Correct. Okay. And you're having a crisis of mind then where you're like, here I am selling these homes to millionaires. And

Yadira Diaz:

I wanted to stop. The reason why I decided to do real estate, A, real estate was booming. B, I wanted to be more independent. I was micromanaged through my corporate route. You make a lot of money

Bryan The Botanist:

doing it too. Yeah. I have friends that have done very well in real estate in Miami. It's boomed in the last 20 years. We

Yadira Diaz:

saw one good home here in your set for the year at least. Anywho, I was like, just so taken back on, on how bad the situation was in Miami that I was like, okay, how can I make a difference without reinventing the wheel, knowing that the solutions are out there? And Gradible was born. Gradible stems from the word biodeGradible. Originally, I wanted to grade businesses on their sustainability. Oh, that's cool. So

Bryan The Botanist:

it's got a dual meaning, Gradible and then biodeGradible.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, but then I realized when I'm out and about visiting these businesses, I'm like, whoa, it's actually a lot worse than I thought. Wow. And I'm not going to You're just

Bryan The Botanist:

helping them getting started versus grading them at this point.

Yadira Diaz:

Correct. Where we want to make them Gradible.

Bryan The Botanist:

You want to make them Gradible.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, where eventually I can give them that A for action.

Bryan The Botanist:

So yeah, that's it. Some are doing a better job than others. So we'll talk about that today. There's hotels I know in Miami Beach that care a lot about the environment and then there's some that probably could do a better job.

Yadira Diaz:

Absolutely.

Bryan The Botanist:

Let's dive into it then. So you went from PepsiCo to founding Gradible. Was that kind of, you had a, just, you moved to Miami, you got involved In the climate change movement. And then you realized that you needed to help businesses. Yeah. There's a lot of business here. A lot of business, tourism,

Yadira Diaz:

hotels, use your

Bryan The Botanist:

corporate experience to

Yadira Diaz:

sports. Miami has it all.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

And it's this emerging global city that's compared to Dubai and Singapore. And there's so much opportunity. However, there's also a lot of really pretty

Bryan The Botanist:

problems. Yeah. Problems. Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. But that means opportunity. Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

Biscayne Bay was a problem. It still is, with the fish and the,

Yadira Diaz:

It's worth 64 billion of economic output every year and Biscayne Bay is dying. Yeah. Yeah. It's literally dying. Yeah. Nothing thrives in it anymore. There's so much pollution. We rely heavily on Biscayne Bay for our economy, for the port of Miami, everything that's coming in and out.

Bryan The Botanist:

Recreation, yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

What?

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Within the islands, they, people wouldn't even take their, they were putting trash on the island versus taking it off. You would think that if you have your own boat, you should ever, most boaters know this, like 99%. It's the 0. 1 percent I heard that's causing the problem because I know many boaters and the people were leaving trash on, they were taking it off their boats and putting it on the spoil, they're called spoil islands. Yes. And that was a big problem. This was recently in the last three months where they had to Shut down the islands because we can't take good enough care of them.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, there was the So then they

Bryan The Botanist:

opened them back up after they did a lot of education. Yeah, there was the leave no trace,

Yadira Diaz:

yeah, the policy that they put behind, but it didn't work. That's the problem. It's the change in behavior, but look

Bryan The Botanist:

Let's talk about how Gradible, I was looking at your website this morning. It provides over a hundred solutions for food and beverage, for all types of businesses to not only be environmentally friendly, but reduce waste and be profitable.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

And run the business in a green way.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

So tell us about some of the services that you offer to customers. Any type of company.

Yadira Diaz:

It started when I'm out and about going to these businesses, trying to grade them, I realized I didn't want to be the bad cop, right? Giving these businesses big fat Fs. So that's when I went more to the solution focused route. So I'm like, okay, what companies are in Miami right now that are out there doing good for businesses? And so I found two companies, Compost for Life. Okay. What they do is they, pick up food scraps and turn them into compost. And they do that for businesses and residential. And then when I met with him, he was like, Hey, you should look into Lean Orb that does compostable food service packaging. So think cups, utensils, plates, but out of compostable material. And it was a perfect duo because those products could be composted with that service. Perfect. And I was like, let me start with restaurants and hotels and have this like duo of services that I offer. Okay. And so that's where I started is those two. And then I'm like, okay, what else is out there and who else can I represent? So I have this commission model. When I generate business for these companies on our portfolio, we make a small percentage of the business that we generate them. Okay. So we expand their reach, we represent them or this hub for these innovative companies and yeah, it went from those two. To now over a hundred. Yeah, I saw

Bryan The Botanist:

that you have over a hundred resources and businesses you can connect. Yep. Services. Product,

Yadira Diaz:

services, technologies, with the focus of waste reduction, energy efficiency, and water conservation. Okay. My biggest focus was on waste reduction originally because of our landfill crisis in Miami. Yeah, I

Bryan The Botanist:

saw your metrics on the website. I'm going to pull it up while you're talking, but it,

Yadira Diaz:

yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

under success story, it says just in the last year that you have diverted. 118, 358 plastic bottles, 105, 000 aluminum bottles, food scraps you've diverted 3, 700 pounds and total diverted from landfills 12, 700 pounds. So that's great. This is trackable. The businesses. Yeah. So for them, you're delivering some data.

Yadira Diaz:

Yep. All basically, data is so important. We do the same

Bryan The Botanist:

thing at Sneaker Impact. You have to. Carbon saved, pounds diverted from the landfill.

Yadira Diaz:

What that means as far as gallons of water saved, gas, like how many char, how many phones have been charged yet. All that is so exciting to see, right? It's like a bird's eye view of the impact that you're having, but people. Need to hear that and see that. And even when you put it in the most simplest terms of like even what we were talking about earlier about the clothing, we have enough clothing on this planet to clothe the next six generations.

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure. Overproduction and overconsumption.

Yadira Diaz:

When you think about those things, you're like, there's so much

Bryan The Botanist:

junk in the world. We were talking about that on our walk with our founder and so many shoes alone. But then think about all the touristy junk that you don't really need. And it's just like consumerism at its worst. Everything's

Yadira Diaz:

in plastic. It's going to be

Bryan The Botanist:

that, yeah, you see it on, in these, Futuristic Movies like WALL E and stuff where or some of these, shout out to WALL E. Yeah. No, I love that movie. Environmentalists love that one. And then there's the Lorax, or is it the Lorax with the chopping down the trees or even the new Dory movie. Oh yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen that one.

Yadira Diaz:

Oh my gosh. It's an environmental, it has an environmental message to it. Yeah. Finding Nemo, I think it is. And it's just, yeah, the

Bryan The Botanist:

oceans.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. These fish are trapped in like these tanks at the aquarium and yeah, anyways.

Bryan The Botanist:

So I'm on your website and I'm looking at some of the partners that you've worked with. I see the Miami Marathon. That's really cool. So how have you helped the Miami Marathon?

Yadira Diaz:

Shout out Frankie Ruiz. I met Frankie, I can't remember. I think it might've been at the last year's luncheon for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, South Florida. And I'm like, Hey, like I, I see you're doing big things. Please connect me out a call with him. He put me in touch with Lifetime Marathon. And then for the last Lifetime Marathon, we implemented some recycling bins, diverted. Composted. Amazing. It was food

Bryan The Botanist:

was composted. Things are recycled, clothing probably collected. No, you guys handle the, no, but that's something we're

Yadira Diaz:

going to, yeah. So what I do is I get my foot in the door. Let's just do so great. The

Bryan The Botanist:

food alone is an issue. Yeah. I've worked a lot of those events where there's a lot of leftover and there's a lot of stuff that also gets thrown away. That's it could be composted.

Yadira Diaz:

So for the 305 one that they had, the 305K. All the things that were left over, there was like 40 or 50 meals and a bunch of snacks. I called up the non profit, shout out Curly's House, day of, I'm like, hey, look, I didn't, I'm sorry for the short notice, but there's all this food, all the snacks. Literally 30, 45 minutes later, she shows up with the truck, it's loaded and taken to the people in need that they feed every day, which is like 800 people. So I was like, let's go, quick win. But it worked and it, and yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

so really cool. Cool. So do you see yourself helping them again this year? Is that? Oh yeah, we're already talking about it. It's sold out, I'm a runner through and through, so I can't run in it, unfortunately, because it's sold out, but also because I'm having a foot surgery in December, but I'm running in a marathon in Spain, December 1st. I got my flight yesterday. It's in Valencia. It's world famous, but Frankie wants to go there someday. He said to but I've run Miami. I did the full in 2010. I loved it.

Yadira Diaz:

If your foot's feeling better, maybe we can find a spot for you to like volunteer or something. If

Bryan The Botanist:

there was, oh, I would love to volunteer. Maybe we do something with textiles. Yeah, maybe Sneaker Impact this year. We always want to get, we do stuff at the expo, but I would love to get a cheering station put together or just get involved in the recycling efforts because that's huge. There's 25, 000 runners just that one morning.

Yadira Diaz:

You know what I want to talk to Lifetime Marathon about? And I don't even know the name of the brand, but there's these now seaweed gel packs of water, hydration, or Gatorade. The ones

Bryan The Botanist:

you bite into, and then You just pop in

Yadira Diaz:

your mouth and you swallow the thing. Oh, you swallow

Bryan The Botanist:

it? Yeah. I'm not sure if it's gonna be sanitary, though.

Yadira Diaz:

How they handle

Bryan The Botanist:

that, because that's a big deal.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, but the Because in the

Bryan The Botanist:

past, they had the bags you bit into them. And then you sucked on them.

Yadira Diaz:

So the Indiana Pacers. the

Bryan The Botanist:

ground but they were having trouble cleaning them up because those were actually even, there was a local guy who created those. They tried them in the Miami Marathon.

Yadira Diaz:

No, these you just pop in. The cups are a

Bryan The Botanist:

big problem.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. They

Bryan The Botanist:

do the street sweeping, they do the brooms, they do everything they can but.

Yadira Diaz:

I know the Indiana Pacers, the same

Bryan The Botanist:

ones that I'm talking about. There must be some type of wrapper on it then because it wouldn't be sanitary to just hand out because the thing is there's, 10, 000 volunteers or whatever, handing out these things. You can't have. Maybe they

Yadira Diaz:

would just have gloves. Maybe that's the case. Yeah. Gloves would definitely fix that. And we have biodeGradible gloves that we offer. I'm all for

Bryan The Botanist:

that. I don't like the cups as a runner. I'm,

Yadira Diaz:

maybe that's something I can talk to them about. Cause I know there's a big NBA team. Maybe it wasn't the Indiana Pacers, but I know that they put, Gatorade inside of these. And again, just popping them in. You can

Bryan The Botanist:

put your own liquids in there. That's another way to brand it, cause Boston Marathon, they do that. All the races have a partner, for. Electrolytes. I think Iterate

Yadira Diaz:

does Lifetime Marathon. Anyways we'll talk, but the, I just love connecting dots and knowing that these solutions are out there, they're, and the problem is that these solutions are all over the place.

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure.

Yadira Diaz:

So Gradible, I'm hoping, is that hub for them.

Bryan The Botanist:

So you're consulting, and you're also a directory and technology, it seems also, and Market. Not marketing as much as more helping just create, businesses to run better and to just make it easy,

Yadira Diaz:

convenient, accessible, right? It doesn't have to cost

Bryan The Botanist:

a lot of money either.

Yadira Diaz:

I've taken, I've spent. Oh, I

Bryan The Botanist:

don't want to have to buy biodeGradible everything. There's eventually as volume goes up, the cost goes down too.

Yadira Diaz:

And you

Bryan The Botanist:

can be a leader, like I'll shout out the one hotel, like they are plastic free, right? There's certain hotels in Miami Beach that are plastic free, and they talk about it a lot in their marketing and in their hotel.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

And on their literature that you see.

Yadira Diaz:

Out of all, and I don't mean to talk bad about anybody else, but Miami Beach has just been doing just some incredible things, like banning plastic balloons, banning styrofoam. You know what's crazy about that styrofoam ban? Think of a place like what's that smoothie place, Smoothie King, that uses styrofoam for their cups. Because of that ban, they switched over to another alternative. But then, imagine when other cities and places are banning these materials and now they make this domino effect where now Smoothie King now bans all styrofoam in all locations, because why would they just do it for one? They would do it for all. Really, that domino

Bryan The Botanist:

effect hopefully the companies, too, will start doing it before they get regulated to have to do it because like Hawaii and Florida, we're sensitive places. Hawaii has a lot of bans on certain cosmetics. I used to work in the cosmetic and skincare industry and there are certain sunscreens that are banded and banned in Key West in Hawaii because they hurt their coral reefs. And Oxybenzone is the ingredient. And so zinc oxide doesn't, and zinc oxide is safe to use. on everyone but oxybenzone can actually is linked to like cancers and stuff yes like it's banned in hawaii because hawaii has sensitive coral reefs and oceans and miami is the same way but literally smoothie king we're not picking on you but they should go nationwide before The whole state, before the U. S. government tells you have to ban, these things, the same thing with Pepsi. They should all have a solution by now. They have plenty of money. They just need to see that it's actually good business to go green because consumers will appreciate without being extremist about it because, there's some groups that can get a little extremist, as you've probably, we, there's the green pieces.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, so going back to One Hotel really quickly just because I love them and Paula, their Director of Sustainability is a champion and then she shows up for a community, but they give out sunscreen and it's coral reef safe. Sure, yeah. Back to Pepsi and Coke, look, yeah, we are all very dependent on plastic. Plastic is everywhere, right? Yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

and aluminum. It's

Yadira Diaz:

now found in some parts of our body that it shouldn't be there for men and women, and but Plas, or Pepsi and Coca Cola are doing these things where they're funding recycling programs or in for example, Replenish they have this free recycling program that's powered by Pepsi and essentially what happens is Now Pepsi can offer a free recycling program at no cost. There's data and metrics involved. There's even money back from the material that's collected. So you get a kickback. Oh, really? Yeah. And then you get this really cool app. You schedule your pickup. It's very seamless. Really? I didn't know

Bryan The Botanist:

about this. And they

Yadira Diaz:

don't just take Pepsi and they take Coke products. So a

Bryan The Botanist:

business or a school or a. And now they have a

Yadira Diaz:

free recycling program. Everyone wins. Everyone gets money back. It's like just great. Yeah. So even though of course, yeah, there's so much innovative

Bryan The Botanist:

solutions need to happen with packaging, And with bottled water, especially like I have a cross country team. I will not, I stopped buying bottled water a couple years ago, but I'm no saint. No one is. And this is what someone who is an advisor of the company advised me, is none of us are perfect. Every single one of us has an environmental impact.

Yadira Diaz:

Yes.

Bryan The Botanist:

I just flew to Chicago to see my family last weekend, but I hadn't seen them in six, but anyways, we all have an environmental impact. Even when we're vegan, even when we're, plastic free, we're still not plastic free. And there's still carbon being used all the time in our planet. We have to use it just with our banking system and with our Transportation models, we don't have it set in place where any of us can be perfect, so we have to support each other. And I think that's what Gradible, I think, and your personality is great for, and background is, not lecturing people, but supporting them.

Yadira Diaz:

So I

Bryan The Botanist:

think that's really cool. So that's what I see with Gradible doing is you're coming in and helping, the Elser, Hyatt Centric Vantage, Conrad, Factory Town, Miami Department of Development Authority, some other great organizations on here. Tell us about some of these, like we're talking, we're in the partner section now.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. Yeah, for me, I've just been trying to be as strategic as possible. First time founder, first time entrepreneur, and just navigating what that looks like. It's been an incredible journey, but for me, just knocking on every door, showing up, never going away, and finding the people who get it. I'm gonna probably talk about the Elzer Hotel right now, which is a High Gate property. I met their GM, former GM, Michael C. Stephen's at a toy drive for it was a brunch and I'm sitting next to him and I'm just talking about my work. He's that's really interesting because I've helped other hotels go zero waste internationally. And I'm like, wait, what? And he's yeah. And I'm at the Elzer and the Elzer is two blocks from where I live. And I'm like, wow. Okay, Michael, please. And they were like, he was like, yeah, this is a perfect timing because I'm at the Elzer. It's LEED certified. It's a brand new building. Oh, we love

Bryan The Botanist:

LEED certified. We were talking with Esteban about this last week. Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

And he was like, where is the

Bryan The Botanist:

Elzer? Let's give him a little bit more of a shout out.

Yadira Diaz:

So the Elzer is right by the Heat Arena, right in front of the Port of Miami on Biscayne Boulevard. Wow. 616 Keys. On Biscayne.

Bryan The Botanist:

So right by the NBA arena.

Yadira Diaz:

By the bay, and it's two or three years old. Gorgeous

Bryan The Botanist:

building. Their stock just went up.

Yadira Diaz:

Some of the Heat players live there. I don't know who, but look. So they

Bryan The Botanist:

have residences and their hotel.

Yadira Diaz:

So it starts with the brunch. I go and meet Michael. Michael's look, we want to do this. I want to do this. I've done this before. I'm just shocked that we haven't done this. We have, the staff to do it. So we start with forming a green team, and it starts with me, Michael, who's the GM, his executive assistant, and the director of operation, it starts with us four, and we meet for an hour, and we're like, let's start with lowest hanging fruit, what we can do, literally a month or two later, Yeah, Month or two later, we now have the Director of F& B, the Director of Housekeeping, the Director of Marketing, the Executive Chef. I don't know if I said Director of Engineering, but now we're a team of executives. Figuring it out, where every department's involved, and let me backtrack. Gradible offers solutions tailored by department. So we have things specific to food and beverage, specific to housekeeping, specific to engineering, and some things for marketing, just because a lot of this work does need to be spoken about. It's going to help with people coming back and supporting the brand and getting employees to stay and and to make the brand look good for what they're doing that's good for the environment. Totally. And in a matter of six or seven months, we implement nine different sustainability initiatives at the Elzer Hotel. Wow. Really validating us as this environmental concierge, which I didn't get to say earlier. Yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

that's what the Gradible that's what you're, I love that on your website, you're Trusted Environmental Concierge.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. That's great. We like to be bougie in Miami.

Bryan The Botanist:

I like the website's all green with trees on it and it's,

Yadira Diaz:

but, going back to the concept of forming a green team, these things could be done in any organization.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah, there should be a Chief Sustainability Officer or some type of, or a team.

Yadira Diaz:

Or a team, and ideally a team because

Bryan The Botanist:

We have a Chief Sustainability Officer.

Yadira Diaz:

Okay, great. Yeah, but, we, that chief, hopefully that Chief Sustainability Officer is getting the support that they need, but it almost, I know here they do, but in a lot of He's

Bryan The Botanist:

doing our technology too, he's, Great. Yeah. No, we have a small team, but we have a chief sustain, but we're a sustainability company.

Yadira Diaz:

So you don't really fall in this, but what I've seen in other organizations, it's one person in a huge organization doing it all.

Bryan The Botanist:

And

Yadira Diaz:

that's just not fair. But that's where we come in as a concierge and we help support these sustainability leaders. We're making it more convenient for them to find these solutions that we've aggregated. Just to make it more free flowing.

Bryan The Botanist:

So the Elsler has been a great success story. Are there any other clients? I know before we were talking about Factory Town before in Miami. I don't want to, yeah. Factory Town. I like music, so I can mention that.

Yadira Diaz:

Let's go into music. I focused on hotels cause they generate a significant amount of waste. I actually will take the time right now to say that Miami Dade County residents generate a Four more pounds of solid waste every day. I saw the stat. That the average American

Bryan The Botanist:

pounds versus five. No, it was like

Yadira Diaz:

7. 9 that we generate every day versus 3. 9. Got it.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah. I saw the stat recently too, as well, that Miami Dade County generates more waste than the nation on average. Yes. Which is why we

Yadira Diaz:

have a landfill crisis.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

And then. It's also

Bryan The Botanist:

a lot of tourism, I think.

Yadira Diaz:

Perfect that you mentioned that.

Bryan The Botanist:

And then also businesses. Let's serve the tourists.

Yadira Diaz:

When I look into it.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

When tourists come here, they double those numbers.

Bryan The Botanist:

They're all buying disposable stuff in the Keys and the beaches. Travel size. Yeah. They're going to Miami Beach and they're servicing all the places that.

Yadira Diaz:

And plastic.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

And to go containers. Sure. It just. Takeout

Bryan The Botanist:

meals. Yeah. I got goosebumps

Yadira Diaz:

again. I like this. There's

Bryan The Botanist:

a major problem and there needs to be, that's why like Sneaker Impact addresses the major problem of footwear that's getting wasted in the U. S. and you're addressing the amount of waste in general with everything, with the whole, businesses and there's such a need. So hopefully. It's great to see some of these organizations like Miami Marathon and Factory Town. How does Factory Town get involved?

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, let's talk about that. Hotels was really hard even though there's this big push on ecotourism and more sustainable tourism. It was just a very unsustainable path for me, knocking down the doors, getting to the decision makers. They're busy, high season, all that. So I like going to music festivals too. And I'm going to them and realizing these aren't really set up for sustainability either. So Lifetime Marathon was a great opportunity. It's this massive marathon, a lot of people, a lot of waste and so Similar to

Bryan The Botanist:

a music festival.

Yadira Diaz:

Similar to a music festival and then Factory Town. So I'm going to Factory Town, I'm going to Club Space I, that's where I go to dance, to move, this drama. It's in Hialeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

which is near Wynwood. Miami. It's a part of Miami.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, so for those who don't know, I thought it was, I actually

Bryan The Botanist:

haven't been inside Factory Times.

Yadira Diaz:

No, you're right because Three Points is in Wynwood, but so for everyone who doesn't know what Club Space is. Oh, you work with Three

Bryan The Botanist:

Points?

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, they're under Club Space.

Bryan The Botanist:

Oh my god, that's incredible. Yeah, I'm the biggest Three Points fan, so we're going to talk about that.

Yadira Diaz:

Yes, and yes, so it's Club Space, it's in downtown Miami, next to 11.

Bryan The Botanist:

David Sinopoli, we can give a shout out to.

Yadira Diaz:

Yep, and Coloma, and Lucas and so Club Space is this great place where people come together for housing. Music, Techno, all that good stuff. And then they had, they opened up Factory Town in Hialeah in an area that's predominantly For car garages and shops and just like junk concrete. Yeah, but then they come in they buy this space they bring green infrastructure in They do just an incredible job at getting they use tree sources. Shout out tree sources. They're on our platform And they got like old trees that would have typically been grinded and they moved them to factory town This oasis. It's just

Bryan The Botanist:

awesome. But then I've heard a lot about it every year for Miami Music Week and stuff and Art Basel. It's a major venue. I am ashamed of myself for not having gone, but I used to go in the past. Yeah, I'm going to get you in there.

Yadira Diaz:

Just so you could see. And now what we've done and

Bryan The Botanist:

I, and let's give a shout out to Club Space too, cause I noticed and I saw it on their social media. I've been there in the past too, in the last 10 years. I love it there. I've only gone a handful of times, I would say. But they have, been a super green business. They have, and is that okay? Wow, because I saw them trying, they removed straws, they removed plastic cups, they removed a lot of things they offered, I think boxed water. I don't want to assume too much, but they offered a lot of healthy snacks to like coconut waters and I'm missing a ton of stuff. I know they have yoga on Saturdays. My friend Nick is the yoga organics, so there's so many people that are associated with them. And I know that the owners are extremely caring people. Cause I've met them and we all know who they are in the community. So we're getting goosebumps, but tell us about like that success story.

Yadira Diaz:

So I can't take

Bryan The Botanist:

credit for

Yadira Diaz:

that stuff that's happened at Club Space.

Bryan The Botanist:

They were always environmentally think friendly people.

Yadira Diaz:

And then there's always room for improvement. So what I did when I came in, I started doing things for Factory Town and getting things like recycling in place and getting that stuff picked up the plastic. Yeah. Not officially yet, but for their three joints event, we've launched the full sustainability program, so we were doing, we were already doing the recycling and getting sure that stuff had chain of custody, so it wasn't ending up in landfill, which is a lot of Yeah,

Bryan The Botanist:

can you show a client that it's 100 percent getting recycled? I don't want to go into too much of a ramble. Absolutely

Yadira Diaz:

yeah. I have Brickell that up cycles. Plastic into merchandise, products operational products, furniture so I'm happy to talk about maybe getting that stuff. Yeah, even from sneakers. So Factory

Bryan The Botanist:

Town has gotten environmentally minded as a music festival.

Yadira Diaz:

When they didn't really, other than the green infrastructure, didn't really have anything for waste management. I'm even talking to them about possibly doing things like their stages being run on renewable energy, solar even doing things for water conservation, like recycling all the gray water for their plants. That'd be huge

Bryan The Botanist:

to run everything off of solar slash batteries, maybe like the Tesla. And just know

Yadira Diaz:

that Club Space was bought, part of their owners is Insomniac, which is EDC. Sure, I heard that's Insomniac. And then above Insomniac is Live Nation. So Live Nation pays me. So my whole tactic is Building this case study and I have a few other Live Nation accounts that I've been engaging where I'm going to build this case study and take it to Live Nation, right? And so There's

Bryan The Botanist:

Club Space and Factory Town. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

Tortuga Music Festival does an incredible, they have gone down to recycling the plastic film from the ice bags.

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure, because they're all about the sea turtles.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah I just love and music is a great way to bring people together, it unites us

Bryan The Botanist:

all,

Yadira Diaz:

And then you have the dancing, people are feeling good about what they're doing, they're recycling, and, everyone's in a better mood, they're a part of something beautiful, and there's music, it's just awesome,

Bryan The Botanist:

yeah, I went to a music festival in Albania a couple times for Anjuna Deep, And they are very environmentally minded. They leave no trace and it's, yeah, engine deep out of the UK. So I would go to Albania and we were in the middle of nowhere on this hitting coastline and it was about 5, 000 people and they, every time they did it, they've only done it since 2019 is they're very environmentally minded in every aspect, and so you're seeing it more and more now, especially, they're a European brand.

Yadira Diaz:

So

Bryan The Botanist:

kudos Gradible and Yadira for helping Disrupt and change for the better the, in the music industry.

Yadira Diaz:

Let's

Bryan The Botanist:

support you in that. And I want to see, I would love to, I hope the club space guys might get a little sound bite. I probably screwed up a bunch, but I have mad respect for them because, people think of, music heads as just party animals, but these guys are actually, and girls are actually very creative people, artists, and they are super intelligent and they're doing things to help Miami because they care about Miami.

Yadira Diaz:

Can I just, I add really quickly how cool, and even the little small details that you don't notice, but at Club Space, there's these orange planters that It came from plastic or some, I think, glass up cycled that a student from had made and now it's in club space as a planter on, the ceiling. So

Bryan The Botanist:

There is so many benefits, not

Yadira Diaz:

just from marketing the standpoint. But reducing waste, like I have collected so much material from a event at Factory Town that could fill an entire dumpster that costs like 2, 000 to haul off the property that has saved them that money that now can go towards other things. And it's just, there's so many benefits in like, when you reduce waste, you save money. When you reduce energy, you save money. When you reduce water usage, you save money. So it can be about planets, profits and the people. So that's, yeah. So that's a

Bryan The Botanist:

big part of Gradible is that it doesn't have to. Be negative on the profit. It can actually help grow a business to be stronger through environmental solutions instead of because you know It could someone could get worried about costs for certain things.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, everyone thinks sustainability costs more I don't know who put that out there

Bryan The Botanist:

It started with organic food, you know It's better for the environment, but it's more expensive. But it's also you're supporting local farmers.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

And it's also like media and food are similar in that there's fast food and then there's fast media and you don't want to consume either too much.

Yadira Diaz:

Whoa, that's a good one. I'm going to use that.

Bryan The Botanist:

Seriously. There's fast food media and it's very similar. Great way to put it. Polluting our minds like we pollute our bodies. And so do you want to buy organic greens and not put all these chemicals in your body? Or do you want to watch, just trash TV where it's just like someone's life and they're fighting the whole time or something? I don't know. This, don't get us started down the moderate.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, I, look, I'm all about feeling good, putting things in my body, on my body.

Bryan The Botanist:

you are.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. And I need to be feeling good, and that way I can continue to work harder and, I, No, but

Bryan The Botanist:

your business is built around being green, so I'm assuming your personal life. Let's talk a little bit. What are some of your favorite, this is the Miami section, favorite things to do in Miami? Besides helping businesses, yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

and dancing at space all night it's so crazy because I'll do a 12 hour shift at Factory Town and then I'm like, I want to go home but I'm just like, so so you

Bryan The Botanist:

work the events too, you actually supervise. Oh, I'm there.

Yadira Diaz:

Oh, what? That's part

Bryan The Botanist:

of the deal is,

Yadira Diaz:

I used to, I was dumpster diving, I've dumpster dived at events trying to get things that maybe were thrown away by the janitorial staff that wasn't supposed to be thrown away so we can go through it and get stuff out I've been that person. Is there a lot of

Bryan The Botanist:

separation of trash at these events or does that happen second hand?

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, I was going to get to that. So in the, when I first started, it was just, let's go through trash and get as much as we can, get the data, tell people how much, take pictures, really show them what's in the back of the house, which, kept me up at night. But then the next step, let's get recycling bins. Let's make sure that the, that are the right recycling bins. There's signage and people were maybe standing at the bin and educating and now we don't have to sort at the end of the night. And now we just, put these big sacks of recyclables into the super sacks that are going to be hauled off. Everything has just been this dance to make it easier for us, for the client but yeah, going back to Miami. Yeah, your

Bryan The Botanist:

favorite things to do in Miami?

Yadira Diaz:

So my favorite things to do I grew up in Florida, I used to love tanning outside for hours, cooking like a piece of bacon, in this case, vegan bacon and I can't do that anymore. I can't be out there for more than four or five minutes before I'm like, my skin's like literally on fire. So that's really sad to see just the before and after. Space game nights with my friends, trying to be as wholesome as possible. In fact, Miami starting this is the third time I've lived in Miami. Really? And I always say third time's a charm, the first two times I got chewed up and spit out, I was like, getting sucked into the party scene and trying to escape the realities. Everyone

Bryan The Botanist:

deals with it in some way. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

Or living

Bryan The Botanist:

downtown and there's so much, yeah, craziness.

Yadira Diaz:

Coffee and chill.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yes.

Yadira Diaz:

How cool. Getting people up on a Sunday morning, and doing things for health and wellness and the, it's been great to see even the climate community is suggesting farmer's markets. And Miami is definitely turning. We have a lot of people from California, New York. And so that to me is the upside of Miami where typically we're known for the, in the party and the lids. What's your

Bryan The Botanist:

favorite I'm like stuck in my bubble in downtown. So you live downtown or you frequent downtown?

Yadira Diaz:

I'm in downtown. I use the Metromover. Yeah. I'm in Brickell. I'm walking around. I'm like the city girl now. You

Bryan The Botanist:

don't need a car down there either. No.

Yadira Diaz:

I don't. But Food Hall is a great place. What's that place in downtown that just opened up? Do you know what I'm talking about? No. I'm blanking. I'm going to shout

Bryan The Botanist:

out the Hideout Cafe on 22nd because they're one of our partners. Okay, great. We got a run club from them. Check out the Hideout Cafe. They're on 22nd in Biscayne.

Yadira Diaz:

I'm blanking on Food Hall. My

Bryan The Botanist:

friends are the owners of that.

Yadira Diaz:

But, they're

Bryan The Botanist:

super green. I'm going to connect you with some of these places.

Yadira Diaz:

Let's talk about the Miami DDA really quick. Yeah, DDA.

Bryan The Botanist:

Tell us.

Yadira Diaz:

The Downtown Development Authority they've been a huge partner for us. They actually just approved 10, 000 rebate. Not to us we're actually gonna be working with the restaurants that will receive a 1, 000 rebate each. 10 restaurants, total of 10, 000, where that 1, 000 rebate, they'll be able to use to, for the Gradible things that we offer, like recycling, composting, reusable foodware to, we even offer this deep fryer adapter that extends the life of their cooking oil, it saves them money, extends the cooking oil, makes it healthier, so shout out to the DDA, because the DDA has been doing a really good job with downtown and even giving These businesses, a 50, 000 rebate for property improvements and for 2, 000 grant for smart lighting.

Bryan The Botanist:

And so there's some grants available and things for businesses if they want to get green. Correct. And they can actually get rebates? Yes. They like purchase green technology.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

And it's just

Yadira Diaz:

cool to see. Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

That's new. That probably wasn't happening in 1990.

Yadira Diaz:

No.

Bryan The Botanist:

And so it's a good time to be in the environmental, I think, industry, even though there's a lot of sad things, here and there, but overall more successes, the state balloon ban was huge.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. And I want to say as a female minority founder Yeah, I wanted to ask

Bryan The Botanist:

you what your take on that is.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. I, when I moved here, turned my passion into entrepreneurship, never in a million years thought that I would be here, and I always complain that even when I was in school or this wasn't really talked about, because had it been talked about more, maybe I would have done this sooner, but, whatever, it is what it is, but the resources, the opportunities like this, thank you again, just The startup programs free reduced it's just incredible what I've been able to achieve in such a short period of time because of what's out there for people in my space and in the tech space. Oh, by the way Florida, or I'm sorry, South Florida was just federally recognized to be a tech hub.

Bryan The Botanist:

Oh yeah, I believe that. There's a lot of tech moving into Miami in the last five to eight years.

Yadira Diaz:

There's only 31 in the United States. Okay. And we're the only one focused on climate resilience. We just got 19. 5 million of federal funding and phase two is going to be about another 62 million that we, South Florida, get for our ecosystem, for startups, for clean energy. Infrastructure for resilience, for sustainability, all of it. So very exciting.

Bryan The Botanist:

It's going to be a highly impacted place if and when bad things happen. Unfortunately. Eyes are on us. Yeah. We're going to be ground zero. My brother's a geologist. We are ground zero. Yeah. Cause it's our sea level. We're not more than what. I have a couple of feet above sea level. So it's very, yeah, I've seen it. We also, the sunny day flooding in Miami beach and the King tides and the, floods when it isn't even a super storm, it's going to flood more in the future.

Yadira Diaz:

I wasn't raised here, but something that. Stood out to me, Francesca from the county, she was like speaking at an event and she said something that like blew my mind, because I have the example of being, not being able to tan outside as much anymore, because it's just beaming she said something and I teared up, I'll never forget it. She was like, it's never been this windy in Miami. And like the near the coast. Yeah. Sometimes I'm like holding on to stuff. I'm like, these things might blow away. And the truth of the matter is that these weather patterns are only going to get more severe. Yeah. It's only going to get more unpredictable. And that's just the reality of it, where I even tell people, and this is super grim and I'm just going to say it. This is going to be the coldest summer for the rest of our lives.

Bryan The Botanist:

Oh no. So that means it's going to keep getting hotter. Yeah, it's

Yadira Diaz:

only, I'm a runner so I don't

Bryan The Botanist:

want to hear that. I'm sorry. Yeah, even when I'm standing, it's so hard to run in the summer, but that's again a first world problem is the uncomfortable. We train year round in Miami and people, some people can't train it year round. It's too hot. That guy, you got to go before sunrise.

Yadira Diaz:

That 35 year old at Disneyland marathon. Yeah, that

Bryan The Botanist:

was really sad. Yeah he died in the marathon. He had a heat stroke the day before. He probably shouldn't have run the marathon, but I've been there where I've probably had heat stroke and then run a race. This is like 85 degree weather. It got 90 something that day. 95. Okay. But like he, when he was running, I read the story, it was at like 6:00 AM not to minimize what happened to him. He died, but it was like 70, but wasn't 75 to 80 degrees at 6:00 AM when he ran. But he had a 30 5-year-old, he'd had a heat stroke the day before watching his stuff walking. Yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. I remember him like the video. He was a TikTok influencer. Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

And it's very sad. I actually I have a cross country team and I have. People I train with in run clubs, and we always talk about these things. We talk about electrolytes, we talk about, fueling up, we talk about our sleep scores, we talk about our stress. So we're always, but You're young and you think you're like,

Yadira Diaz:

you're untouchable, but it's, they call it heat. Hear the silent killer. And it's just killing more people, and you just don't see it, you don't hear about it, and then of course, not to mention that as sea levels continue to rise, and all the multi million dollar homes along the coast start to flood, and to What we were

Bryan The Botanist:

talking about before the podcast, flying cars, weren't we?

Yadira Diaz:

Hold on that, when those people need new homes Or boats, they're gonna need

Bryan The Botanist:

boats to get to their fancy

Yadira Diaz:

Not just that the highest ground is inland. Inland.

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure.

Yadira Diaz:

Oh, so

Bryan The Botanist:

your poor areas are going to become

Yadira Diaz:

the fancy

Bryan The Botanist:

areas.

Yadira Diaz:

I think it's Overtown or Little Haiti. They have the highest ground.

Bryan The Botanist:

Some of the poorest areas in Miami have the highest ground.

Yadira Diaz:

The problem with that is climate gentrification continues to be a problem where

Bryan The Botanist:

when

Yadira Diaz:

those people need to go more inland because the sea levels are going to continue to rise, and they will continue to rise, that those people are then bought out. They don't have the financial literacy to know that they're not getting a good deal. And now with that money, they can't be in Miami anymore. They have to go even more inland where there's less opportunity, less public transportation,

Bryan The Botanist:

hotter. There's going to be less land in general because the Everglades can't be developed. We're like a little

Yadira Diaz:

area of

Bryan The Botanist:

residential. You can see it when you fly in very well, you can see it on a map, is that South Florida is like, A sliver of land along the ocean that's developed, but then most of South Florida is actually the Everglades. And as the sea level increases. I don't know where they're going to put people down here, so I think people are going to have to move more into other parts of the U. S. to be honest.

Yadira Diaz:

Not that we're going to talk too much about the Everglades, but I just want to add that

Bryan The Botanist:

Sure, we can talk Everglades. I just

Yadira Diaz:

don't want to be too doomy and gloomy. I know there's a ton of

Bryan The Botanist:

federal aid, they're working on restoring them by you know Taking sugarcane plantations and restoring them. And now they're also like removing like ditch lines they dug and stuff and water. It's all Florida engineer, whatever department of and they basically, it no longer flows like it's supposed to. Miami beach was a marsh back in the day. It was a wetland and now it's filled in. They filled in so much of South Florida. So it's, we're a man made environment and we just have to manage it now to the best we can as environmental stewards is my take.

Yadira Diaz:

Because

Bryan The Botanist:

we're all environmental stewards of the earth. Yeah. Because we're all impacting it. So we have to be stewards. That's an important word. Like that, a steward means a caretaker.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

So every citizen should be a steward of the planet. The Everglades is so big trouble though. Our founder says we have no planet B.

Yadira Diaz:

And speaking of being a steward, I, you mentioned being an, like an imperfect environmentalist and, every small little change, I always talk about this imagine if you just did that one thing for the rest of your life, Times six, seven billion people on this earth.

Bryan The Botanist:

Recycle your shoes. Yeah. So it says one tiny action multiplier is multiplied by millions. Makes a big impact.

Yadira Diaz:

Huge. So

Bryan The Botanist:

one action could be recycling your clothing when you're done with it. Or a lot of people throw away their clothing. And their shoes.

Yadira Diaz:

87

Bryan The Botanist:

percent of Americans throw away their shoes.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah. And somebody today on LinkedIn reached out and was like, hey, I need to recycle a TV, like, how do I do that? It's so easy, the internet has, it's unlimited.

Bryan The Botanist:

Go to Google and type in e waste recycling. As soon as I did that. There's

Yadira Diaz:

sites. Best Buy does it.

Bryan The Botanist:

Best Buy does it. Best Buy

Yadira Diaz:

even will send you a box.

Bryan The Botanist:

Shout out to Best Buy, that's huge. I didn't know that.

Yadira Diaz:

You can go to Target and recycle smaller electronics. You can recycle plastic bags at Target, at Walmart. Yeah, they're probably getting some credits

Bryan The Botanist:

for it too, plastic

Yadira Diaz:

credits. Except there was this documentary that came out that put this guy decided to put trackers in.

Bryan The Botanist:

So I heard about that in Malaysia too, or in Asia, they tracked some shoes that were supposed to go into a playground. And they were actually resold. But that's actually not a bad thing to resell a shoe. But they were told they were going into a playground and they put trackers in and they went to a resale center. Yeah, greenwashing

Yadira Diaz:

really quick? Yeah, let's

Bryan The Botanist:

talk about greenwashing. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

greenwashing is a term where They track

Bryan The Botanist:

bottles too, I know. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

Greenwashing is this term where companies, of course, some of them are not The most angelic, some are evil and they'll just say things to say it and just to check off the box and then the truth comes out. But, with how you can't get away with anything anymore. They're

Bryan The Botanist:

using environmentalism for marketing? Correct. Interesting, yeah.

Yadira Diaz:

Yeah, where, just like you said, or the trackers of the plastic bags ending up in like a landfill in Indonesia somewhere but I feel like, We are all waking up as a community and people who are just tired of being sick, with everything that's in our air and our food and our water. We're waking up and being like, okay, enough is enough. And we're going to start holding these people accountable and people are getting into lawsuits and things are popping off. But it's a great, it's great for me to see these things happening because it just gives me that, that hope that, We're on the

Bryan The Botanist:

right path. I think we're on the right path. We just have a lot of work to do with tourism, especially. I think there's just so much waste. And we were talking before about, Miami, how much waste per person. It's, there's a big, that's why we're talking about this so much. Like every single podcast, we're talking about waste. We're talking about sustainability. So let's talk about the future of Gradible. Cause we have limited time. I know. We've got to wrap up soon. What do you, where do you see the next five to ten years, the future of Gradible?

Yadira Diaz:

So Gradible, I would love to have a global impact right now. I am like, I'm just really trying to instead of Cast this wide net to go really go deep. So right now I have my head down and like the people that like have given me a chance, a platform to do what I do. And just Gradible 2. 0, it's on my website. I want to be a climate tech company. And even though we technically could be considered one, we don't have our own tech right now. So what I'm thinking as far as. Streamlining the process and being a scalable company because right now we're a startup is an online client portal where you, whether you're a client or whether you are somebody who wants to have an impact because we have, I have independent contractors under me. It's a team of all women right now. Wow. And They use our platform as a resource in their packet to pocket to plug and play and so what I'm

Bryan The Botanist:

directory of Green, yeah, they use

Yadira Diaz:

everything that we offer that when they're out and about they can use to make an impact both because they make money and also because It helps the community. But Gradible 2. 0 would basically be this portal for both reps that want to be for Gradible and clients to be on there and be able to communicate, see what's new, see the data and metrics, maybe even communicate amongst each other. But

Bryan The Botanist:

okay,

Yadira Diaz:

that's it. Yeah.

Bryan The Botanist:

So anything else you want to share with us before we wrap up today? I know we're going to leave an inspiring message, but is there any other projects or things dear to your heart that you wanted to talk about while you're here today?

Yadira Diaz:

I guess going back to the ELSA really quickly, I think it's important to shout out that The way, the impact that we had in such a short period of time and how we were validated and we have these things that are pending, I took that to Highgate, their corporate office, and because of that, they were like, Oh, wow, like you actually, wow, made a difference. We want to open up doors for you and other locations. Let's start with South Florida. And so I'm hoping that then that trickles into the rest of Highgate, which is 500 properties internationally. So just a little inspiration that like when you are strategic and when you collaborate and and then I'll leave it with this is there's this African proverb that I love and that it's, if you want to go fast, Just go alone if you want to get further go together.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yes.

Yadira Diaz:

I know that one. Yeah. I can't stress enough that even if it's not about the environment, maybe it's something that you're dear to you of like hunger. Maybe you were hungry. Maybe you grew up in poverty. There's so many different environmental and social causes that you can support. There's literally thousands where just do that one thing and you'll feel good. I promise. And you'll even save money. Even going back to, not bring your own refillable bottle. You'll save money, turning off the water when you're brushing your teeth over time will save you money. Leaving the lights off will save

Bryan The Botanist:

you money. Adjusting your thermostat. I have an FPL program where they installed something on my air conditioning, and they can do it for water heaters too, and they are allowed then to change it throughout the day and save you like 10 to 20 a month. And I'm not home, so my cats don't care.

Yadira Diaz:

Donating blood. They'll give you 50 gift cards. I have that.

Bryan The Botanist:

Recycling. Everything that has

Yadira Diaz:

to do with giving back

Bryan The Botanist:

comes back

Yadira Diaz:

to you. Sure. Yeah. That's far away. So your inspiring

Bryan The Botanist:

messages start somewhere. You don't have to be perfect. There's that. Kind of me recapping. Yeah,

Yadira Diaz:

I like that.

Bryan The Botanist:

Yeah. Start, just do one thing today that we, that's a good message. I love it. Yeah. Awesome. Yadira. So how do people connect with Gradible?

Yadira Diaz:

So we have Instagram Gradible LinkedIn Gradible or website Gradible.co.

Bryan The Botanist:

And you're big on LinkedIn.

Yadira Diaz:

And I've seen, yeah, I've seen

Bryan The Botanist:

you on LinkedIn, I've also seen you do a lot of like talks where you're sharing,

Yadira Diaz:

lately, I love organizing panels and bringing people that I know that are doing these things to talk about it, bring more awareness. People love that.

Bryan The Botanist:

Let's get Sneaker Impact involved with Gradible. We want to be a big part of Gradible. With the flooring you saw today, with the materials, with the opportunity for them to also host a box, like it's free and they can get really good sustainability, value out of it. And we're all working hard, I think, together to help, make this planet a better place. So keep up the great work, Yadira. It was great having you on today. Thank you so much. We'll have you back in the future. This is the first time I'm sure you're. The first of many times we're going to share Yadira with you guys. Okay. Thank you for coming out again today. Thank you

Yadira Diaz:

guys for listening. Awesome.

Bryan The Botanist:

Okay. Bye.

People on this episode

Contributor

Bryan “The Botanist” Huberty

Host