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May 16, 2023
It’s the last episode of Season 5! Over the past six episodes, we have talked about growing the electrification workforce, how the Supreme Court shapes environmental protections, partnerships between universities and tribal nations for climate adaptation research, and much more. Before The Climate Conversation begins its summer hiatus, we are closing out the season with an exploration of the circular economy and how the private sector can incorporate circularity into their business models. The dominant economic system in the United States and around the world encourages a linear form of consumption resulting in excessive waste for the sake of an ever-higher GDP number. Dan and Alison speak with Pieter van Exter from Metabolic and Amy Aussieker from Envision Charlotte about how breaking away from the linear economy is good for business, good for people, and good for the planet. Progress being made in the Netherlands and Charlotte, North Carolina provides a framework for what policies and practices can support the transition to a circular economy.
Show notes:
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With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.
Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello, and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, President of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And today I'm joined by my colleague, Alison Davis. Hey, Alison, how's it going today?
Alison Davis: Hey, Dan, I'm doing well. But I cannot believe that we are already wrapping up Season 5 here on The Climate Conversation. After this episode, we'll be taking a break from the podcast over the summer so we can cement plans for Season 6, which will kick off in September. But before we begin our summer hiatus, we're going to leave our audience with a discussion about the circular economy and how businesses can implement circular practices to reduce waste.
Dan: Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable that we're wrapping up our fifth season, and I can't wait for Season 6. Alison, you and I know a little bit more about what we've got coming up, and I think it's gonna be pretty exciting. I hope people really like some of the people that we have planned for Season 6 podcast episodes. But today, you're right, we're going to be talking about the circular economy. Our current economic system in the United States is actually very linear as opposed to circular. And its key measures of success are metrics like Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which is defined as the total market value of the yearly production of goods and services. I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that consumerism is a big part of daily life in the United States. And in fact, the United States generates nearly 300 million tons of municipal solid waste per year, or almost one ton of waste per person, the most per capita in the world. And it's not that Americans are just naturally more wasteful. Rather, our economy was not designed to prevent all this waste from being created in the first place, and in many ways, it ends up actually encouraging waste.
Alison: The circular economy is designed to address these problems while still driving economic growth. It focuses on long-term sustainability for people and the planet by minimizing the extraction of natural resources and eliminating as much waste as possible. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a United Kingdom-based charity, the circular economy can be defined as a system solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste and pollution. It is based on three principles: first, eliminate waste and pollution; second, circulate products and materials at the highest value; and third, regenerate nature.
Dan: We are currently seeing the circular economy play out on a national scale in several European countries with strong support from the European Commission. The Netherlands, for example, is at the forefront of this movement. In 2016, the Dutch government announced a goal to be 100 percent circular by 2050, with a benchmark target of cutting raw material consumption in half by 2030. There are many organizations across the Netherlands working to help achieve this national target while also promoting the circular economy abroad. One of these groups is Metabolic. Metabolic advises governments, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations on how to shift to an economy that is regenerative and circular by design.
Alison: To learn more about what the circular economy is, and how it can help solve a lot of the environmental problems that are often made worse by linear systems, let's turn things over to Pieter van Exter. Peter is Metabolic’s Director of Product in the software division, supporting companies in their transition to a sustainable state by undertaking analysis and developing strategies based on advanced systems thinking. We spoke with Pieter to gain a better understanding of what the circular economy looks like on a national level and what progress is being made in the Netherlands.
Pieter Van Exter: It's been fascinating ever since that goal was coined by the Dutch government to become 100 percent circular by 2050, and set this intermediate goal of becoming 50 percent circular by 2030. You see a lot of people puzzling and discussing A) whether it's actually a goal we should be striving for, but then B) if so how we should actually get there. I think that circularity shouldn't be a goal in itself, but it's a vehicle, it's a strategy to get to a sustainable, carbon-neutral, nature-positive society. So I think striving for that goal in itself might not be the best thing to do. It might also not be feasible. But it did a lot of important things, I think, in the discussion here in the Netherlands. So bringing materials and resources into the picture next to our climate goals and strategies created a wider and a more deeper conversation about how we should get to circularity. And it's very relevant for the Netherlands—mini, tiny country that is dependent on its resources for all the countries all over the world—so it's really important, but you see a lot of discussions and also a lot of discrepancies, tensions. The construction sector is one of the biggest consumers of resources, but we also want to build one million houses in the next 10 years. So a clear pathway towards achieving that doesn't exist. But there are directions, strategies, there's funds invested into more circular, more carbon-neutral strategies, and I think that's a really positive thing, but I think it's been more as like a north star, as a moonshot, without actually knowing how to get there. GDP is everywhere, not just in the U.S. but also here in the Netherlands. We are blind-staring on improving and increasing our GDP and I think it's really hindering our progress towards a more circular economic model, and that is because GDP really thrives and increases whenever something gets broken It really fits in this linear economic system where we don't look at the negative effects of growth and material extractions, social and environmental issues, but only look at the good side, which is the economic growth that we're making. And you see that at the same time that there is a lot of strength, right? If everybody puts themselves behind a single metric. And you can also see how that focus for the last 70, 80 years on GDP growth has resulted in a really really high GDP number. So it is interesting to think about alternatives, other metrics that are more holistic and are actually, let's say, the 21st-century GDP alternative. And in a circular economy, you've seen these attempts at metrics—you have the Circularity Gap Report, which each year assesses how circular our economic system is, and you have all these attempts that look at the amount of resources that are used per capita. But I think they are all a bit misleading, so I'm personally not such a huge fan of using those metrics, because it really puts circular economy and circularity into a goal in itself. Well, in my mind, and at Metabolic, we see it much more as a means to an end, which is meeting our human needs within the capacity of the planet. And there's a lot of alternatives, so I would really focus on zooming out more and finding a better indicator that captures happiness, well being prosperity, but also environmental benefits, thriving nature and regenerative nature into a single indicator, and then let's all stand behind it. But you see indicators like the Happy Planet Index, or the Ease of Living Index as alternatives, but they're also criticized a lot, because people say that they also don't fully capture what we should be striving for. But I'm not sure if that's actually possible, I would argue that all these alternatives are already a much better indicator than GDP. So maybe we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Dan: Pieter gave us insight into how his personal experience in agriculture informed his support for the circular economy, and how Metabolic is helping the private sector implement circularity into a business model. He also gave us a preview of a new tool called Link that Metabolic is launching right around the same time this episode will come out.
Pieter: So I volunteered at an organic farm about 15 years ago. I was just fresh out of high school coming from the tiny Netherlands to the great California, where I worked on a farm that was kind of like the size of the whole neighborhood in Amsterdam where I grew up in. The elevation difference on that farm was greater than here in the entire Netherlands. So it was an incredible experience for me in many ways, but it was also very alarming in many ways. So I arrived there in October, and it hadn't rained for months, which is very unusual. And the owner of the land kept weather records, and from tracking those logbooks, we could clearly see how the rain season got pushed and pushed in like a very short amount of time, like in a decade or so. And it was really eye-opening to see how climate change already had such an impact in daily lives. And that was a key moment for me, where I decided to study sustainability and devote my career to it and wanted to understand the science and more importantly, what to do about it. And a few years later, that farm got burned to the ground. Reflecting on agriculture and the circular economy, they should really go hand-in-hand and they should be really intertwined to create a resilient and sustainable food system that can feed everyone on this planet. I think there's a lot of strategies that we can take from the circular economy to reduce the impact that our food systems have. And you can also look at closing the loop not just on the material cycle, but also on a nutrient cycle. And where the circular economy really talks about the what, and how can we design things differently, it's also really going to be about the where. Where are we going to have our farming systems? But what I think is that circular economy—which is really about reducing material used to provide human needs in the most effective way—combined with a strategy of where we are sourcing from, and where we are not sourcing from, is going to be the way to actually bring our consumption within planetary boundaries. So I think that's really interesting and that really all comes together in the agricultural sector. At Metabolic, we use systems thinking. So keeping this holistic perspective and looking at the interaction between systems—between entities—and developing strategies and opportunities to accelerate to this sustainable and circular future. And at Metabolic Software, we're developing this new product that we call Link. And with Link, organizations can assess their impact and risks related to nature and biodiversity. And nature and biodiversity is such an important topic, but it's often undervalued, under-reported, and under-understood, if I can frame it in that way, by companies because it's perceived as rather abstract and complex. And with Metabolic Software, we really took this challenge on to make biodiversity and nature risks and impacts tangible—as tangible as possible—and visible and actionable for companies and sustainability teams within the companies to take on. And we see that sustainability teams are under a lot of pressure and need to report internally, externally, and are often under-resourced. And with Link, we want to make the calculations and the insights part fast, efficient, and comprehensive, so that organizations can understand where they have impact, and also who they should talk to, and which aspects in their value chain or in their department they should tackle first to actually maximize the impact with the resource they have. So we're just about to launch Link in May, so that's very exciting. And we're continuing to develop Link so that companies can also together move towards a nature-positive future. What we have been doing over the last six months is talking to sustainability teams of over 100 organizations to really understand what they need, what they are looking for, so that we are building a solution that has both the scientific underpinning, but it's also usable, user- friendly and supporting the sustainability teams. Because I think that's really important, especially with such a complex topic as nature and biodiversity, we want to provide on one hand the insights and the details, but also make sure that it translates into something that you can communicate to management, to stakeholders, to the board. And the product has been really focused on finding that balance so that you can both go into the details and find exactly which material, from which supplier, in which product, has the most impact across different environmental indicators. But as you can also have a single picture and single visual that shows—Hey, this is the top five priorities for my biodiversity and nature strategy. This is how I should report on the upcoming reporting frameworks. So we're really trying to develop this Swiss Army Knife for companies to find their way to engage a positive future. What is critical for nature and biodiversity assessment is to understand where impact is taking place, because you want to understand on one hand, how much impact you have—we look at different indicators, including land use, including water use, but also different kinds of pollution—but then overlaying that with maps and geospatial information, like are you extracting this from a fragile ecosystem, or from a place where there is already a lot of water risk. So that is critical for these assessments and for truly understanding what is at stake. But what we're seeing is that a lot of organizations don't have the insights into the supply chain. So we really want to help them with improving their data. But for the time being, we don't want them to be blocked by data gaps. So we've also developed algorithms that estimate the likely locations, given the materials and given the producer and the location of the producer that they are procuring from. And from that information it puts, let's say, a placeholder on at the locations and gives feedback to the sustainability teams of where they should start asking better questions and start diving deeper into the supply chain first, because those are the hotspots, let's say, and there's most uncertainty on the supply chain.
Alison: Now that we've got a basic understanding of the circular economy and how it's playing out in the Netherlands, let's see how this might be applied to communities and businesses operating within the United States.
Dan: We're now joined by Amy Aussieker. If her name sounds familiar, that's because she was previously a panelist on a Congressional briefing back in April 2021 about rethinking policies and programs to address waste. Amy is the Executive Director of Envision Charlotte, one of the most effective sustainability nonprofits anywhere in the country and a global model of sustainability. In this role, Amy is responsible for developing strategic plans for community outreach, fundraising, and partner relationships. And among those partnerships is a collaboration with city officials to make Charlotte a national leader in the circular economy. Amy, welcome to our podcast.
Amy Aussieker: Thanks for having me!
Alison: Let's start off with a discussion about Circular Charlotte, a report that was commissioned by Envision Charlotte and the City of Charlotte, which included an in-depth waste stream analysis and strategic recommendations provided by Metabolic. When you first saw the results of this report, what was the most surprising to you? And what has been the most challenging issue to address?
Amy: Well, I think one of the most surprising parts of that report was just how little is actually being diverted from the landfill just overall, you know. Whether it's actually having a place for materials to go other than the landfill—for example, recycling, if there's a market—but also contamination keeping a lot from going to the landfill. It was just, depressingly, a low number. And then I'd say the biggest challenge—so if you look at recycling in general, what we've been recycling for 50 plus years, and we educate on what can be recycled. And I think the most challenging is people understanding how to recycle, why we recycle, why it's so challenging. And so being able to even educate that there has to be someplace for the materials to go, like somebody has to want to buy them. And people are like, “Oh, I mean, I guess I didn't really think about that.” You know that's been really challenging is explaining how recycling, the whole thing of it works. And maybe we need to stop getting to the recycle part and start upstream on reusing, designing different, designing for the end, all of that. So I think that education has been the most challenging, but also the biggest opportunity for success.
Dan: When our audience last heard from you, Envision Charlotte was preparing to open its Innovation Center—or the Innovation Barn, as it's come to be known—which is the location where your team works to upcycle waste materials for reuse. In the two years since it opened, what have you been able to accomplish with this site? And do you have plans for new ways to use it in the future?
Amy: Yeah, so over the last almost two years that we've been open, it's been really exciting. One of the things that we have noticed that I didn't anticipate was the community engagement. So while we're doing a lot of upcycling of different materials that can't currently go to our MRF— Material Recovery Facility—it’s the engagement from the public to come in and kind of help with this. For example, we started during the pandemic, upcycling or recycling number five plastic. So there was a huge increase in takeout plastic containers, not just restaurants, like people go, “Yeah, restaurants.” No, no, like, schools and retirement facilities started using all of these number five takeout plastic containers over reusing. So we have a couple of retirement facilities here who have 400 residents, they're getting two meals served every day with takeout plastic containers, like, wow, that's a lot of plastic. So we've started partnering with them, and they've been bringing it down. So we have this cute couple, Gaye and Ted, who every other week, bring all of their neighbors plastic down—washed, neatly stacked, they have numbers—and I think to date they have collected, I want to say two tons (and it might even be more than that) of plastic just from their community. So I think what's been interesting has really been the community engagement and raising awareness. We're also working on a glass project right now, actually right this second. Every community is really struggling with glass. There are not that many recyclers in the U.S., so it costs a lot to ship glass to wherever it's going. In our case, I think as of right now, we're shipping it down to Atlanta. It costs more to ship it there than it's worth. It's also heavy, it breaks—like you add the carbon footprint to that. So you know, looking at ways that we can manage that here in Charlotte. So we are now crushing glass, we have a glass crusher. Peaceful Ponds, a local entrepreneur, bought it for us as a donation, but also he can use that sand in some of his projects. Another local flooring entrepreneur is now using that as an aggregate in concrete. And so we're pouring this concrete at the barn right now. It'll be 50 percent aggregate of our crushed glass. So how do we scale that up? And then how do we write a paper and help other communities deal with their glass in their communities?
Alison: Many of us as individuals take pride in doing what we can for the environment in our daily lives, such as recycling. Can you explain to our listeners how the linear economic model in the United States makes recycling less effective than it should be at reducing waste? And how is Envision Charlotte addressing this issue?
Amy: You know, that is a very complicated question. So I think that we are such a consumer-driven industry. So it is buy, buy, buy, buy more, buy lots, buy something new, you know—fashions come out every two years, for kids every six months. So we are in a consumer-driven environment, which makes it very challenging when you have so many materials on the backside, and they're not designed to be reused or remade or whatever. They are linear. So you buy it, you use it, you throw it in the landfill. So I think one of the biggest challenges is, how do we design differently for the end? So let's talk fashion, let's talk about clothes for a second, because that is one in the United States, right? You're always buying the new outfits, especially kids, especially now that fast fashion has come out and it's cheap. And it's also you know, there's a good side to it, that there are people who can now afford to be more trendy, whereas 30 years ago, you didn't have all the opportunities of what you could buy to be more trendy, right? But clothing has a million different blends. There's cotton, there's a cotton blend, there's 60% Cotton, there's polyester, there's jeans, there's buttons, there's zippers, there's all different kinds of materials. So you can't then recycle that as easily because you've got to sort it, you’ve got to get all the different materials, and if it's a blend that makes it even more challenging. So I think that's just one example of how complicated it is. I'll give you another one. It's such a silly one. But you know the caps of tennis balls? Those are made out of two different kinds of plastic—one manufacturer uses number four plastic, one manufacturer uses number five plastic. They look exactly the same, but they are two different plastics and one is going to burn before the other melts if they get stuck together. You know, maybe there should be a regulation that every tennis cap should be either number five or number two so we could recycle it. But you can see how we could go down like a very long rabbit hole if I kept giving examples of how challenging it is. In the U.S., we just don't think about the end. We're so in-the-moment that we have to look upstream, and downstream, and reusing, I don't even know where to go, because it's just such a complex problem. So there's just a couple examples of why our society makes it very challenging to keep products or materials out of the landfill.
Dan: I started buying these tennis balls that come in paper—this isn't an advertisement, we're not sponsored—but these are Wilson Trinitis, and they're paper, so they're recyclable. I always thought [the containers] were the same plastic. And my tennis club recycles the balls—I don't know exactly where they go, but they have little ball containers—but you still always have to throw away the thing. So they're really nice. I like them. They seem to play pretty well. And they're approved by ITF and USTA for league matches and things like that, too. So anyway, glad you mentioned that example. Okay. In your work promoting and implementing Circular Charlotte, what is the typical response when you speak to people in the business community, in the private sector? Do they come at the circular economy from a different perspective? Are they eager to talk with you about public-private partnerships? Or are they doing their own things that maybe organizations like Envision Charlotte could learn from?
Amy: Yes, yes, yes, we get a very positive response from the corporate sector. And actually, I think one of the challenges we have is, since opening the Innovation Barn—and this is something I would say to any city—when you have a physical location that people can go to touch and see and gather and share ideas, it changes everything. So what's been happening is, you know, you get a group of people come in, and then they tell their neighbors, literally every day, I have a new email from somebody who wants to get involved. Sometimes it's from the corporate sector, sometimes it's, you know, just a person wanting to come in and volunteer. But it has been super interesting, the amount of people reaching out to me, where it used to be I was reaching out to them. And we have a lot of really big companies. Interestingly, with Charlotte, if you think about our corporate sector, we have one of the largest banking centers in the U.S., Bank of America, we have the largest utility, Duke Energy, you have Lowe's headquartered here. So you go down the list, and we have this really interesting, robust group of all of these corporations. Like we also have the second-largest healthcare system in the country, we have one of the largest school systems in the country. So it gives us a really good platform to look at some of these perhaps policies or metrics, and be able to bring in a broad spectrum of different company perspectives. So you've got that on the corporate side coming in saying, “How do we get together? And how do we standardize some things on that side?” Then you have small businesses, like we have a small local business who's trying to do the right thing. It's a coffee company, they compost everything on site, but they serve all of their to-go cups in compostable cups. And so we were talking to him, like, “Why are you doing that?” He's like, “Well, it's good for the earth.” I go, “Well do your customers compost? Because they're taking it away, they're not using your compost. So they're taking it home most likely, or to their office. And statistically, they probably don't compost. And it is worse to put an organic compostable cup into the landfill than a plastic one, because it's going to off gas, methane.” He's like, “Oh, my gosh, we're paying so much more thinking we were doing better.” So now he's talking to all these other businesses in his group, you know, in that retail space or that restaurant space, and now they're all reaching out to us. So it's a huge opportunity for us to bring—and we have a physical space—that we could bring all these restaurants together, and just some simple best practices that actually are going to save some money for them. So I think it's been really interesting seeing all the different levels of who gets involved. And candidly, I never come across anyone who's not interested, because I don't have time to outreach to anyone. These are all just people coming to us. So I think it's an awesome problem to have. But it also tells you, I think that we're at kind of that inflection point or tipping point where people now get it and are understanding and thinking different—not only at their business, at home. You know what we say when you leave the barn? “Now, it's your job.” And it's not just your job at home, it's your job at school, it's your job at recreational places, it's your job at work. And maybe that'll just, you know, permeate even more and put more pressure on doing the right thing.
Alison: For all these companies that are engaging with you at Envision Charlotte, how can state and local policymakers better support companies with a circular business model, especially within the larger framework of a culture and a national economy that really emphasizes those quarterly profits?
Amy: One of the interesting things with Charlotte is we don't do a lot in the policy realm because of the nature of our state. We are a non-home-rule state. So if Charlotte enacts something, Raleigh can override it. And there's a perfect example if you look back at HB2 a few years ago, where Charlotte passed the “bathroom bill” and Raleigh got upset with us and then passed HB2 and then everybody stopped coming to North Carolina and it was terrible. So what we typically try to do in Charlotte is do more with the carrot, not the stick. I would kind of love to have a little bit of both. Candidly, I think there's some opportunities, maybe even at the federal level. Even if you standardize, like we're talking about the tennis lids, there could be some simple policy changes that I don't think would add a huge burden to companies that could make it a little bit easier to deal with materials at the end. But I'll give you an example of working with the city right now. So, North Carolina passed a rule or new opportunity for cities to have social districts, basically open container laws. But the way that they're designed is when you walk out of a business, you buy a cup, and you can only use that cup when you leave. And then when you go to the next restaurant, it's another cup. So they are just completely promoting single-use plastic, right? We're suddenly gonna have all these neighborhoods with all these people walking out with all these plastic cups. So we have been working with both the city and the first district that's going to go for approval with the city to get a social district. And we have been working with them on using stainless steel cups. So they're more expensive. But the way that we're working through this is Envision would perhaps buy the beginning, like a supply of 50 cups, let's say, per company, and then they sell them for $3 apiece, that then fills their pockets to go buy more when they run out. We will also wash them. So if people don't want to keep them, we will take them back, they'll get $1 back from us, and we'll wash them and reuse them. They could be collectors cups, but that is helping the city and helping businesses come up with a solution that takes away single-use plastic cups. And you know, what we were talking about is it's going to be no cost burden to the business. But it's also going to keep the neighborhoods cleaner. Because if you have a single-use plastic cup, people don't care, they're going to throw it on the ground or miss the trash can or whatever, and you're gonna have litter everywhere. Stainless steel cup, it's perceived value, it looks more robust, it's a cooler cup, so you're not gonna see them lying around the ground. So it was win-win for businesses in figuring out how to make it kind of revenue neutral, and also not make the whole district trashy with all these single-use cups. So that's kind of one of the ways that it's not policy, per se, but we're working on the stick to help our city and our local businesses find solutions without the burden of policy or cost.
Dan: Amy, you joined us a couple years ago on our briefing panel, and it was great. And thanks for joining us today to share an update and to tell us about how things are going and all the cool innovations underway, including the glass crusher and all of that, sounds really exciting for other parts of the country. What are some obstacles that other communities might be facing that you faced? And I'm curious if you have any thoughts or advice for other cities or other municipalities or communities or counties or whatever, that are interested in pursuing circularity to overcome those obstacles to hopefully follow in your example.
Amy: There are lots of obstacles I think. For us, you know, when cities call and ask us, “What could we do to help advance our circularity goals?” I mean, building this facility, I don't care if it's, you know, 1000 square feet or—our building is 36,000 square feet—but having a place that you can bring the different entities to talk through some of those programs, I think is the way that other cities could help. You know, interestingly, in Charlotte, too, we have a divided government. So the city is responsible for collecting the trash and the county is responsible for disposal of the trash. Not the most efficient system, I would argue—although we partner with both of them. I think one of the biggest challenges for cities is that because every city is different—I mean, there's some common problems, like glass is a common problem. You know, the neighboring county just stopped taking glass. And everyone up there was like, “Wait, why are you not taking our glass?” And so they're taking it to sites in Charlotte. So I think looking at some of the materials, specific materials that MRFs—Material Recovery Facility places—are having a challenge with, we could all come together and find a solution, like the glass crushing that we're doing for concrete. But I think it's so unique to each city because you know, I laugh with my counterparts in California who, they just pass policies. They’re like, “We want composting, everyone must compost!” Okay, that works for you guys. But we can't pass a policy to make everyone compost, you know. So I think it's kind of unique in every city. So I think you start with a place that you can all gather and have the conversations, and then you should just steal, from every other city, good ideas. That's what we do. We look around, say who's doing it well? We're just gonna steal it.
Dan: You mentioned the composting. Today, we have curbside compost pickup here in Hyattsville, Maryland. It's the greatest thing in the world, they do yard waste. And I was talking to the city about an article I did about how we're moving from gas-powered leaf blowers to electric leaf blowers. And one of the things that I was thinking about is the sustainability policies. They make a difference for the environment, but they also are things that people really like. If I lost my composting, I would be bummed. You know, I have an electric leaf blower—I'm not able to take advantage of the city program—but it's so much better. It's not stinky, and it's a lot quieter. And you know, a lot of these things are examples of things that when people get used to them, you know, glass recycling, like you just said, “Hey, why aren't you taking my glass anymore? I like being able to recycle that.” And, you know, finding ways to bridge that public opinion and the convenience of curbside pickup, and things like that, with policy is really important. But like you were saying before, if there's not a demand for the glass, people aren't going to recycle the glass, right? The landfill can take glass, that's the part of it that’s too bad.
Amy: Well, I'm gonna tag on to what you just said about curbside recycling and policies. So one of the things that we're working on right now that I'm super excited about is an employee sustainability benefit package. So the way it would work is—we're still working all the kinks out—but let's say we own this system. And let's say one of the banks here decides they want to participate. There would be an open enrollment, all their employees could apply or say that they want to be involved. Once we have that list, when the month is over, we say, “All right, you have 100 employees that want to participate.” Then that company would give $30 per employee per month that they could put towards a sustainable action. We've picked three that we're going to do right now: composting, alternative transportations to a single-use car—could be a scooter, a bike, train, whatever, you put your $30 towards that—and then the third one would be energy efficiency products. The reason we picked those three is because they can be tracked. So you can track all the results over a year. So if someone picks composting as their subscription per month, we know how many pounds have been diverted every year. So if you think about how brilliant this could be, the company is going to get credit for the money that they've put in towards their employees, we’ll be able to figure out what the offsets are, it also shows your employees you care about sustainability, gives you an opportunity to also push down what your sustainability goals are for your business. And then we can aggregate that in Charlotte. And if you had every major employer doing this, aggregate those results to what the city is doing, that is just huge. And I think that's a way to get around not being able to have policies here, is to go through those major employers. And because we have that very diverse, large corporation here that could be very impactful to do it this way. So that's the only other thing I might add that we're working on. And that could be a game-changer, not just here, but that can be taken across the country.
Dan: Well, Alison, thanks for inviting Amy back to our podcast. It's great to reconnect with her and to hear about all the cool stuff that they're doing. And I think, you know, overcoming, like Amy was talking about all of the different obstacles—there are policy obstacles, there are obstacles outside of their control like the demand for the recycled products or recycled materials, there are public education obstacles, all sorts of things—but you know, I think when you talk with Amy long enough, it doesn't take actually that long to realize that she's actually a fairly optimistic person when it comes to envision Charlotte's ability to make a really positive difference, which is really great. And I'm glad that she's doing it. And I hope other people enjoyed hearing from her today. And, and maybe, who knows, maybe there'll be other great ideas popping up inspired by what she's been able to accomplish down in North Carolina.
Alison: Yeah, I loved chatting with Amy today, especially because when she joined us last time for the briefing, that was shortly before I was hired. So I had heard so many great things about her presentation and it was great to have an excuse to reach out to her to have her come back. And even though we were focusing mostly on the business sector in our discussion, I was really thinking about this in terms of what we can do as individuals, because everybody wants to do their part, right? Everybody wants to do whatever they can in their neck of the woods. And there's only so much that you can do if there's not a system or an infrastructure in place for those actions to actually have an effect. And I think the work that Amy's doing at Envision Charlotte and the work that Peter's doing at Metabolic, those are things that are going to help individuals have the impact in their behavior changes that are actually going to do what it's supposed to do. If you liked this story and want to learn more about EESI’s work related to waste reduction, head over to our website at eesi.org. Also, follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time!
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