How A Near-Death Experience Led To Reimagining Our Plastic & Energy Consumption with Hakan Bulgurlu

The Doctor's Farmacy with Mark Hyman, M.D.

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, Rupa Health, and Mitopure.

Near-death experiences aren’t that uncommon for the world’s most technical mountaineers. Summiting Mt. Everest is sure to leave anyone feeling truly awe-inspired. Completing the climb and getting home safely after nearly dying creates a whole different level of reflection. Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I talk to Hakan Bulgurlu about turning his near-death experience into a force for positive change in his personal life, the climate crisis, business leadership, and more.

Hakan is a global business leader and a climate activist. As the CEO of Arçelik, a home appliances manufacturer that operates in 150 countries, he is a thought leader on sustainable and purpose-driven business. In a bid to raise awareness of the climate crisis, Hakan climbed Everest in 2019. He wrote A Mountain to Climb; a retelling of his journey to Everest, accompanied by his research into the possible solutions to the climate crisis.

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Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version):

• How Hakan’s preparation for climbing Mt. Everest led to business solutions to the climate crisis (6:26 / 3:45)
• Hakan’s “aha” moment that shifted his approach to business (11:25 / 8:42)
• A profitable business solution to the issue of microplastics in the oceans (13:50 / 11:43)
• The two types of CEOs (20:09 / 17:35)
• Improving the energy efficiency of refrigerators (20:50 / 18:10)
• Hakan’s early influential life experiences (26:27 / 22:07)
• Hakan’s Mt. Everest climb, his near-death experiences, and how they affected him (29:20 / 24:55)
• Building the price of climate issues into the market cost (41:22 / 35:14)
• Humans’ relationship to nature (48:49 / 44:08)
• Responding to our depression about the state of the climate (50:55 / / 46:20)

Get your copy of Hakan’s book, A Mountain to Climb: The Climate Crisis: A Summit Beyond Everest, here.