“Words That Make People Care”: Sarah Bassett on Talking About the Planet Without the Doom

Most of us have never thought about what our walls are made of. We choose a colour, we paint them, and we move on. But what if the finish on your walls is one of the leading sources of microplastic pollution in our oceans? And what if the alternative — something that actually stores carbon, improves your indoor air quality, and can be safely returned to the earth at the end of its life already exists?

Most of us feel completely powerless when it comes to climate change. We recycle, we buy better, we sign petitions - and then we watch the news and wonder if any of it matters. Eezu Tan had the same feeling. Then in April 2022, she invited four friends over to her house in Sydney and they did something old-fashioned and a little radical: they wrote letters to their politicians. That small living-room gathering became Climate Writers - a monthly community that has now sent over 400 personalised letters to policymakers, held meetings with MPs including the Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister, and helped shift the needle on real policy issues. In this episode, Lottie Dalziel sits down with Eezu to talk about why writing to your MP is one of the most underrated and effective forms of climate action available to ordinary Australians, how Climate Writers makes it feel easy and even fun, and what Eezu witnessed at COP30 in Brazil that renewed her hope - and her urgency. This is the episode for anyone who wants to do more but doesn't know where to start.

Most of us care deeply about climate change. But between the doom-scrolling, the overwhelm, and the sense that nothing we do will make a dent, it's easy to end up doing... nothing. Tegan Lerm has dedicated her career to solving exactly that problem. As co-founder and CEO of Project Planet, the not-for-profit that's become Australia's go-to guide for turning climate anxiety into real action – she's helped hundreds of thousands of Australians find their place in the solution. In this episode, Lottie sits down with Tegan to talk about why individual action still matters even when the system is broken, how to have climate conversations that actually land (without alienating the people you love), and how Build a Ballot, Project Planet's game-changing voting tool, is helping Australians connect their values to their vote. Because as Tegan will tell you, your vote isn't just a personal choice. It's a collective one.

Most Australians care about plastic pollution. But caring and acting are two very different things and the gap between them is exactly where the real problem lives. In this episode, Lottie sits down with Sophia from the Ministry of the Future to talk about why awareness alone isn't enough, and what it actually takes to make plastic action feel normal, relevant, and achievable for everyday people. Through their Plastics: Unsealed campaign, Sophia and her team are taking a refreshingly different approach: instead of leading with guilt or doom, they're connecting plastic pollution to the things Australians already care about — their health, their household budgets, and the daily choices that quietly add up. They get into the hidden costs of plastic that most of us never see, why 85% of Australians being concerned about plastic hasn't yet translated into real behaviour change, and what it looks like when the narrative around plastics actually shifts from something overwhelming to something you can genuinely do something about. This one is for every listener who cares but sometimes wonders if any of it matters. Spoiler: it does.

Kal Glanznig grew up surfing the beaches of Cronulla, and like most of us, he assumed Australia had dodged the worst of the global plastic crisis. Then he joined a clean-up in East Arnhem Land and everything changed.