💚🌊 The GreenWave Podcast By Synergy International 🌊💚 Episode 50 is out and you don't want to miss this one!

Pod Episode 50 Heads to Nazare for Sustainable Big Wave History

🏄‍♂️ Big wave surfing looks like pure chaos from the cliffs above Praia do Norte, yet there is a very clear system beneath the spectacle. The Nazaré submarine canyon focuses swell into those famous walls of water, while the town’s economy now orbits winter crowds, jet skis, media crews and surf schools. In the episode we ask who really benefits from this Blue Economy story and whose voices struggle to be heard when the swell charts turn purple.

🌍 We dig into the World Surf League’s One Ocean commitments, from cutting event waste and plastics to backing kelp restoration projects along the Portuguese coast. The league has reduced operational emissions and funded plastic removal and coastal protection, and we talk frankly about where this model delivers real impact and where contest day still feels like business as usual with better branding.

🌱 Nazaré’s big wave arena sits a short drive from Ericeira, Europe’s first World Surfing Reserve. That contrast helps us explore how formal protection, local stewardship councils and strict coastal planning can anchor surf tourism in long term community benefit. We also look at how local kids, lifeguards and visitors can learn from elite safety teams there. We ask what a future Nazaré surf reserve might need to protect dunes, working fisheries, housing and cultural identity while the “gigantes” keep rolling in.

🎧 If you care about surfing, ocean health or the future of coastal tourism, this episode is for you. We connect heavy water risk management, fan travel, carbon budgets, jet ski fuel, kelp forests and dune erosion into one question: can the gnarliest contest in surfing truly claim to be sustainable, and what would it take to get there? Episode 50

No Longer Moving at a Glacial Pace Understanding Glaciers

📗 A recent study by Greene and Gardner published in science.org used more than 36 million pairs of satellite images between 2014 and 2022 to track every glacier larger than 5 square kilometres, giving us a near global ECG trace of how ice responds to seasonal warming and cooling.

❄️ The picture is blunt. Seasonal speed swings are greatest wherever peak annual surface temperatures climb above 0°C. That threshold matters. Once meltwater is routinely reaching the bed, basal hydrology starts to control how fast ice moves as well as how fast it melts. The study also finds a measurable link between these seasonal speed changes and the longer term shifts that show up over years, which means today’s short term data can act as an early signal of tomorrow’s irreversible retreat. Read more...

Fast Fashion Meets It's Match in Alphabet Soup of EPR Regulations

🥣 Prepare yourself for our alphabet soup of acronyms that have been painstakingly prepared to make fast fashion more responsible and sustainable.

🧵 New EPR rules are popping up across the EU. France has Refashion, the Netherlands has its own rules, Italy is lining up a 2026 start, and the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, lovely known as the WFD, pushes every member state toward mandatory textile EPR in the next few years. Each scheme defines scope, categories, eco modulation and reporting slightly differently, which means one collection of garments can trigger several parallel obligations. Read more...

The Latest Sustainability Developments

Check it out here.

Good news! We have the smallest ozone hole in decades. This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica ranked among the smallest since the early 1990s, reflecting steady progress from decades of global action under the Montreal Protocol. Declining chlorine levels and warmer stratospheric temperatures helped limit ozone destruction. Scientists say the layer remains on track to recover later this century. ScienceDaily

UN warns Arab region is “pushed to its limits” by extreme heat UN weather experts report the Arab region is heating at nearly twice the global average, with 2024 bringing record heat, destructive storms and worsening water scarcity that are now eroding health, food security and livelihoods across some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. (un.org)

Back-to-back cyclones and ‘extreme’ rainfall upend lives across Asia A UN multi-agency briefing highlights that back-to-back tropical storms, record rains and flooding across Southeast Asia have killed hundreds, displaced millions and exposed growing risk as warming oceans load more moisture into regional storm systems. (un.org)

Earth Summit 2025–26 (NABARD & IAMAI) – Date: December 5–6, 2025; February 2026 (exact dates TBC) Location: Mahatma Mandir, Gandhinagar; New Delhi, India (The Times of India)

World Future Energy Summit - Date: Jan 13–15, 2026, ADNEC Centre, Abu Dhabi.

Sustainability Week 2026 (Economist Impact) – Date: March 2–4, 2026 Location: Intercontinental London – The O2, London, United Kingdom (events.economist.com)

Climate Week New Orleans 2026 – Date: March 15–22, 2026 Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (Climate Week)

Climate Week Hawaii 2026 – Date: March 22–29, 2026 Location: Hawaii, United States (Climate Week)

Climate Week Atlanta 2026 – Date: March 29–April 4, 2026 Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA (Climate Week)

ChangeNOW - Date: Mar 30–Apr 1, 2026, Grand Palais, Paris.

DC Climate Week 2026 – Date: April 20–26, 2026 Location: Washington, DC, USA (DC Climate Week)

Climate Week Zurich 2026 – Date: May 4–9, 2026 Location: Zurich, Switzerland (climateweekzurich.org)

Climate Week 2026 (Climate Change & Sustainability Conference) – Date: June 18–19, 2026 Location: London, United Kingdom (climateweek.thepeopleevents.com)

2nd International Conference on Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability – Date: October 8–9, 2026 Location: ART Hotel Narita, Tokyo (Narita, Chiba), Japan (climatechange.c2pforum.com)

Greenbuild - Date: Oct 19–22, 2026, Javits Center, New York City.

UN 2026 Climate Change Conference (COP31) – Date: November 2026 (exact dates TBC) Location: Host country/city TBC (Australia–Turkey bid under discussion) (esgdive.com)