(mid tempo music) - [Narrator] Throughout the country, people are planting the seeds of innovation, harvesting a bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet Earth.

In the second season of "My World Too," discover with our team ideas in sustainability, both new and old.

From high tech eco innovations to homegrown local solutions, we'll learn about sustainable trends in transportation, housing, energy, food production, climate change, carbon reduction, resource management, and so much more.

Join our field reporters as they explore eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help to make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to "My World Too."

Short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

You've heard of farm to table restaurants, but what about farm to table furniture?

Whitney Manny talks to an artist using this sustainable approach to make tables, chairs and more.

- [John] So this is our showroom gallery, and this is where we show all the pieces that are made in our workshop.

And we feature furniture and sculptural art.

- This is beautiful.

So when I'm looking around the showroom, is everything designed in house, then you got help?

How does that work?

- Everything is designed and made here in our studio.

It's very much part of our value system.

- [Whitney] So can you tell me a little bit more behind the philosophy of Madison Flitch?

'Cause I heard like farm to table, right?

- Right.

- And when you hear that, you think like restaurants.

I hear that all the time with restaurants.

It's truly a sustainable term, but how did you apply that to this functional art?

- Well, obviously I love the farm to table concept and the values behind it, and I thought, well, how can we apply it to anything that we do in the fine craft?

And there was a concept out there called tree to table and that's the idea of harvesting your own urban wood.

Urban wood comes from a city, someone's backyard, a city park, any wood that isn't coming from an active managed forest.

The simplest way we acquire our wood is through working directly with tree service providers.

So oft times, really big, beautiful trees that have been brought into the community to beautify it, come down for whatever reason, and they're great for furniture making or sculptural arts.

- And is there any kind of like quality control that you do?

Like as an artist, as a designer, and a maker, you're looking at the wood, is there anything you look for?

Does everything work for you that comes from these plants?

- Now, when you're working with urban wood that's one of the big problems is that there could be somebody built a fence around a tree and the tree grew around that fence, and now you have a metal in the tree.

Or trees are sometimes 200 years old and you might have really old bullets or big nails in the tree.

That's fun from a historical point of view, but it's really bad for furniture.

In one case, one of our pieces of work, we had about a 500 year old tree, a White Oak that was harvested from the Thomas Hart Benton property, who was a famous Kansas City Artist, about 200 years ago, there was a big forest fire and that tree survived and continued to grow, but in the middle of the tree you could actually see ash stains in the wood.

So in that case we sculpted pieces that would highlight the story of that tree by implementing fire and other techniques to draw out the beauty and the history.

(mid tempo music) Whitney, I'd like you to meet Megan Pace.

- [Whitney And Megan] Hi.

- So Megan is our creative director.

She started here as an artist in residence.

- [Whitney] Very nice to meet you.

What does it look like when the wood comes in?

Is there a prep process once it gets here?

- Really at the beginning of the process, after the wood has been milled, we transport it ourselves to our family farm and goes into a 50-year-old Perky Brewter Barn.

Has about 10,000 square feet of space.

It is great to season the wood in.

The wood has to dry for about two to three years.

- Wow.

- Depending on the thickness, it's a long time.

Yeah, we're playing the long game here.

And then when the wood is ready, we have to actually transport it back here to the shop and let it continue to cure to the environmental conditions of our shop before we can really work properly with it.

- [Whitney] So with this farm to table approach, how does this come into play with your decision making, when you're in the studio?

Are there like moments in the studio where you're just like, this has to happen or we cannot do this, because the resources are kind of limited in a sense?

- In the wood shop side, we'll get scraps like these coming off of our larger projects.

And sometimes I like to look at 'em and figure out how to use them to make smaller sculptures.

The last piece that I did, I was really trying to use a lot of the cherry scraps that we had around and just make sure that I used all that up.

But then like the scraps from that even is basically sawdust at that point.

- I mean, nothing wrong with that.

You using it, it has its purpose.

- We are very much a materials-focused design company.

We let it govern most of our decisions because we have to allow the wood to tell us what we can do and cannot do.

And that helps us actually create a box for us to stay within.

And our design really starts there in that box.

(mid tempo music) - [Whitney] We're also here to talk about Madison Stitch.

- It's a crazy story.

And imagining a furniture maker turn fashion designer.

So that's essentially what happened was during the pandemic, we opened our gallery about three or four months before the pandemic hit and we didn't feel established enough to just see things through.

And so we decided to pivot to making face masks and we released those masks pretty early in the crisis.

And because we were early, they really took off.

And so I thought it would be something that would just keep us afloat, keep the lights on.

Instead we had such demand that I had to hire over 60 people.

We drew mostly from the refugee, and immigrant, and designer community.

So we joked that Madison Flitch was getting rebranded as Madison Stitch.

And I thought, "Well, why don't we just make it a real thing "instead of a joke."

So we started Madison Stitch about three months after we launched our first face mask and we started making fashion handbags.

- So with Madison Stitch, do you have that farm to table kind of approach still as far as sourcing your materials?

- Yes, so one of the big discoveries we made is a major leather tannery called Herman Oak.

Is actually based out of St. Louis, Missouri.

And there's maybe 12 tanneries left in North America, so the fact that it was right there in Missouri meant that we could use that leather and still adhere to our value system of using local materials.

(gentle music) - Tell me about like those first steps of creating the mask because you are not necessarily a sewist.

What did that process look like?

Did you have to get help to kind of create the pattern?

Did you have community resources?

- So at first my assistant and I, who also did not know how to sew, sat down with the sewing machine and just tried to figure it out like good entrepreneurs.

We quickly realized we couldn't do it exactly the way it needed to be done.

So that's when we started to reach out to all the stitchers and designers for help.

That led us to a nursing innovation group that offered a face mask design that was open source and doctor approved.

- At what point were you just like, "Oh, we need an actual team."

(laughing) - We spent a week researching trying to gather the materials that we could find, and then we released it online on a Wednesday.

By that Friday we had thousands of orders.

So we knew very quickly that we needed lots of help.

And that's what led us to reaching out to anyone in the community.

So Rightfully Sewn is one of the organizations we reached out to.

They put us in contact with an Afghanistan refugee family, of about five sewists who worked out of their home and they approached us and said, "We can do 200 face masks a day."

- You can't say no to that, right?

- You can't say no.

And they came through.

So we gave 'em all the materials, they would take it back to their home, make all the face masks and then just bring them back.

Groups like Rightfully Sewn, whose mission is to train a lot of marginalized people in the business of fashion, sewing and stitching, they were immensely helpful to us, to get the face mask project going.

We still work very closely with those organizations to try to recruit, train, develop really the next set of refugees who come into the city.

We also work closely with business groups like Welcoming KC, which is responsible for trying to create a business environment in the city that's welcoming to refugees and immigrants.

A lot of our role is serving as an advocate within the business community.

Sharing our experience, sharing how our platform was built and just really how frankly easy it was to incorporate and integrate their work into our workflows, so that other businesses can do it.

- So I noticed too, when we walked into the studio photos of your stitchers.

Is it important for your audience and the public, the city to know like, this is who's helping make this happen, this is the heart of the business?

Is that important for you?

- Well, it was super important to me working with them.

'Cause what was meaningful to me was their stories and their character and who they were.

How did you develop your skills?

Because it's not just... We talk about skill as if it's in a vacuum,, but there's personality behind skill.

And how did that just happen?

So I wanted to tell their stories and their pictures holding the bags that they designed for the company, kind of became our sacred objects around the studio, because it reminded us and our clients that there's a person behind the product.

- So can you then just guide me through this choice of going from mask to leather.

That is a jump.

- [John] It's not an easy jump, right?

- [Whitney] Yeah.

- [John] We wanted to stay in fabric because that's what we were used to at the time.

So we tried to make fabric style bags as another product to sell, utilizing the stitcher workforce that we had developed, and everybody wanted to continue working.

I was, as a business person, very worried about the future.

Face masks aren't always going to be in demand.

So what do we do next?

And there weren't that many bag makers in Kansas City.

And so I thought, "Well, let's fill that space as an artisan made bag option."

After a little bit of time realizing that we had a local leather resource that fit within our value system of trying to leverage the natural resources available to us, that's what really led us to leather.

- A huge conversation with wearables and fashion in general is fast fashion.

People are wearing something for a couple of weeks, you see it at the goodwill or you see it in the trash.

I mean, I would hope nobody would ever do that with these.

Is that something you all kind of think about to where you're wanting to design something that people really understand the value, and the craftsmanship?

- Try to shoot for heirloom quality.

Like, would you hand this down, will you keep it forever?

How much you are you gonna get out of this?

Hopefully you'll have it for a lifetime.

- [John] We fit very comfortably in the slow fashion movement, where the focus is on producing things with quality, because we want things to last.

- So when the leather comes from the tannery...

I mean, I know you can make choices, you can tell 'em what you need to a certain extent.

Are there still surprises when you get the hides?

- There are surprises.

And a lot of times, well of course the skin tells the story of the animal and there are scars and scratches and burns and brands.

And yeah, each hide tells a story about the living organism that it came from.

- So working with a local based in Missouri tannery, do you feel like you're able to just have better quality?

Like you're able to have better quality control of what you're working with?

- For us, it serves as an education.

We have the resource right there to be able to pick up the phone and ask questions or visit the tannery and learn the entire process that they do from beginning to end.

So much of leather that you buy from, just say a store, people can't tell you where it came from.

They can't tell you how it was made.

For us being able to go to someone that we can trust is just like a chef who goes to the farmer and they just know that farmer knows his business.

And so they can trust their supplier much better.

(gentle music) - [Whitney] Can you talk to me a little bit more about the sustainability efforts of Madison Flitch that help fuel Madison Stitch?

Like is there crossover?

- We have recently started saving our sawdust from carving with certain woods.

They have the ability to create dyes for the leathers.

- [Whitney] Yeah, so like a natural dye kind of thing.

- [Madison] Yeah.

- Do you have like vast differences of color, depending on what type of saw dust it is?

Like, does it create different shades?

- [Madison] Yeah, the one that we've got right now that creates the most significant depth of shade is the mahogany.

- Well, John, thank you so much.

I've learned a lot about leather.

I might not do too much woodworking in the future, but I mean, what a beautiful space, the gallery is beautiful.

Love the wood shop.

This space is amazing as well.

Thank you for showing me around and just telling me more about your initiative.

(gentle music) - Hey, this is "Save The Planet," the sustainability anthem of the world.

Welcome guys to my song.

♪ Save the planet, we gone save the planet ♪ ♪ Everybody looking at me ♪ Like I'm from another planet whoa ♪ ♪ Save the planet ♪ We gone save the planet Yo, what's up?

I'm AY Young, I'm founder of The Battery Tour and one of the 17 United Nations Young Leaders of the World.

I mean what has happened?

Project 17 has launched.

I've started this path of doing one song for each of the sustainable development goals, the global goals, these 17 things that the UN put me right in front of.

One song for each goal, each song with a major artist.

You know we got the number one independent artist in the world, Tech N9ne!

You know, he's on goal one, poverty.

And you know, it's just, everything's really grown.

♪ The energy ♪ Let's store it up and power the world ♪ ♪ Recycle, we need more recycle ♪ ♪ But y'all acting like some followers ♪ ♪ On Instagram and Twitter ♪ TikTok to let the bar What is The Battery Tour?

The Battery Tour is an outlet for you to be an outlet to plugin and connect to your passion.

Okay, that what just commercial.

But nah, The Battery Tour...

I mean, yeah, the Battery Tour's exactly what it sounds like.

It's literally a tour powered by batteries.

I mean, I store energy in batteries, in these right here.

These are really crazy batteries.

And I use that to power a concert.

But I think the coolest thing about The Battery Tour though, aside from obviously being renewable energy powered and carbon neutral and all this stuff, is that is a platform, it's used to fund, to build, to promote, to develop, to deploy sustainable solutions, to people that need them.

So each concert's hopefully getting someone access to energy.

Or now with the 17 goals, access to water, or ending maybe their poverty situation, et cetera.

So, that's what it is.

It's really us coming together and music's the vehicle to, to be an outlet for change.

♪ The ocean is alive ♪ Keep the plastic out ♪ The ocean is alive So this is the Battery Tour solar trailer.

So this is what we're doing.

We're literally storing energy from the sun, with these solar panels up top.

It is going all the way down into these batteries.

These are simplified batteries, really incredible lithium ion stuff, right here.

And the trick that we have to do is convert the energy from what they call direct current to alternating currents.

That's why I have this inverter, that's just doing, that's inverting energy from DC to AC, so I can literally just take my sound system, my freaking entire setup and just plug right in.

I'm literally plugging right in turning on the speaker, and then we just do a concert.

This is totally mobile.

I mean, I can literally take this anywhere.

I mean, five, ten minutes and a concert anywhere.

Just roll it up, open the doors, turn on the inverter, plug right in, do a concert.

♪ The ocean is alive ♪ Keep I mean, come on bro, I did like freaking 900 shows with this freaking thing.

And I can only do like maybe 3, 4, 500 people or something.

It's like, bro, I need...

This could be bigger, 'cause once you start doing, it's like, "Oh my God, I'm powering a concert.

"Can we do more?

"Could we do an arena?"

Well, the beautiful thing about batteries, and why they're really...

I don't think it's a limitation when you're talking about energy storage, is because you can always connect more batteries, you can do parallel systems, you can just build more trailers and connect them all and have more power.

I'm not even sure where we could go with this to be very honest.

I mean, I did a concert with this trailer about 5,000 or so people in a football field, and I mean, we barely tapped into 5% loss of energy.

I think this trailer alone is about ten kilowatts of stored energy, so yeah, you can just keep adding, more batteries, more power.

I Think that this trailer also exemplifies what we can do.

There's so many artists out there, whether they're independent, whether they're majors, it doesn't matter.

They're humans, they care about the planet.

And they don't know what steps they can take.

You can start taking steps, even if it's just, maybe I'm gonna power a little bit of this, or the food trucks now, or like more sustainably, there's way... And I think that this trailer for me, yeah, it gives me an outlet to keep doing the Battery Tour and to do it bigger.

But also I'm here to inspire everyone to make change.

The response to what I do is great though.

I mean, come on.

For one, we're doing a concert, but it's powered by renewable energy.

So that's already tight.

Like we're storing energy in freaking batteries doing a show.

So people are always just like, "Wow, that's so cool."

I get to explain like energy to them.

Like, "Yeah guys, we store energy in the batteries, "and that's how I'm able to do a show."

When I brought Tech N9ne, and sit him down, and when I start showing him these 17 goals, it was so incredible to see what he cares about, and was like, "Wow, we really all are humans."

And we all have something we care about, whether it's climate action, gender equality, this or that, whatever you care about something.

And so to me, that's that thread.

Whether you're a company or corporation and you're like, "Oh, we want people to know that we care about this."

It's like, great, let's plug in together.

Project 17, first, you gotta know what these goals are.

It, it was so crazy, 'cause when the secretary general, he's like the president of the UN, he picked me to be a young leader.

So I'm like one of the 17 young leaders, because what I've been doing is doing like these 800 plus concerts, I use the money to send one person, one village access to energy.

Kinda like a music for impact model.

And so when I got the call from the UN, I looked at the goals, all these goals like poverty and the hunger.

And I was like, "All right, shoot, that's what we'll do.

"We'll do one song for each goal."

And then 17, what I call impact partners.

And those are people that do the work.

Like the non-profits or companies that get people food, or get people water, 'cause I call myself the Robin Hood of the music industry.

'Cause I'm literally giving it to the people.

So I'm happy to be like, okay, 75% of all the music's going to the impact.

So we can wake up tomorrow and someone has food, someone has water.

So 17, 17, 17, then of course, next year I'm gonna roll out and do 17 concerts, one song for each goal, and then each tour date makes that impact on top of the music making the impact.

So it's double, crazy.

♪ And now I can find the reasons not to give up ♪ You know, I really believe, ultimately, we're all humans, where, we all share this planet, you know what I'm saying?

And there's some things that we all could probably agree on.

Like everybody needs food, bro.

Like there should be nobody out here without water.

In America I can go down the street to McDonald's, "give me some water," but I've been in the places like Honduras and Haiti and some of these developing nations, where they're walking four or five miles to get water.

I'm where I need to be to get these younger people, Generation Z, Millennials, involved in taking an action and using their passion to have some purpose driven action, man.

It's time that we all come together.

(upbeat music) ♪ In that ignorance, that bliss is wrong ♪ I think the future of The Battery Tour, I think the future of myself, why I think what I'm trying to do, is honestly use music as a vehicle to bring everyone together, but not just bring everyone together and raise awareness, and it's like, "Oh, this is great."

It is more like it's to do something, to take the action.

I mean, there's so many young kids out here, Gen Z kids, Millennials, everywhere I go high schools, colleges, elementary, they want to do something.

And they wanna know what they can do.

And I think what's next for me is really helping everyone identify what their why is, what their passion is and how to take that passion and, and take an action.

And that's what I'm here to do, that's what I'm here to do with Project 17.

I wanna wake up tomorrow and see more people fed, more people having energy.

There shouldn't be a billion people that don't have access to energy.

We can solve that, we can come together and actually make an impact that could change the world.

And so I think that's, what's next.

I'm optimistic.

I'll tell you what, I'll say this.

I'll answer this, I'll say, three years ago or so before the pandemic people started seeing me performing doing my thing and they'd be like, "You're a sustainable artist."

You know what I'm saying?

Two, three years now later, I'm the Young Leader of the World, and I represent the youth of the United States of America.

I think that we're moving quickly, and I think it's possible that this purpose driven stand for something mentality that kind of is coming around of like, hey, if you're a company, you need to stand for something.

If you're a brand, you need to be making an impact.

Gen Z and Millennials, we wanna spend money on things we care about.

And we wanna to support things that we agree with.

And I think that this generation cares about this planet and knowing that we have to inherit it, when the older people are gone, they see the value in these things.

And so, yeah, I think anything's possible.

We'll see, right?

If we can get everyone plugged in, we'll see.

(upbeat music) ♪ We can change the world ♪ Sing it out right now ♪ We can change the world ♪ Right now, sing it out, everybody saying ♪ ♪ We can change the world ♪ We got to come together now ♪ We can change the world ♪ We got to come together now ♪ We got to come together now ♪ We got to come together now ♪ We got to come together now ♪ We got to come together ♪ Through the wind and stormy weather ♪ ♪ Oh we got to come together - [Announcer] Share your sustainability story or learn more about sustainability and earth friendly innovations at myworldtoo.com.

- So Jay I'm looking and I'm seeing a lot of different plants here.

- Yeah, this is kind of the benefit of heirlooms, is the diversity of color, of shapes, sizes.

Each one represents different cultures, different countries and different families.

- And what is the challenge here that these families face?

- So the challenging part to it is we're concerned about the contamination of the air and how that impacts your health, and that's why we're focused on environmental health because it's about the environment.

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