Kevin Butt is the Regional Environmental Sustainability director of Toyota’s North American Environmental Sustainability Programs. He is responsible for the development of Environmental Sustainability Programs and Regulatory/Legislative development for all of Toyota’s North American operations.
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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so happy to have you with us today, Kevin Butt. He’s the general manager and regional environmental sustainability director of Toyota Motor North America. Welcome, Kevin, to the Impact Podcast.
Kevin Butt: Well, it’s quite a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having us and look forward to the conversation.
John: So do I and it’s a real honor. It’s our first time that we’re ever having Toyota on a show, and I have to just tell you, that we have a recycling company that I have the honor and privilege of being the CEO of, and I’m a co-founder of, and it’s about 21 years old now. But when we hired our first group of salespeople, we bought them the first generation of hybrid Priuses and put them on the road and said, “Listen, we don’t want you to sit in the office. We want you on the road.” Then the second generation of cars that we had at this company were your first generation of hybrid Camrys. I’ll tell you, both sets of cars, both sets of the Priuses and the Camrys, had over 250,000 miles on them before we ever traded them in, and they never broke down. So we have one of the greatest histories at our company and some of the fondest memories of working with Toyota. So I just want to say thank you for producing such great and sustainable automobiles.
Kevin: Well, we appreciate that and I hope we continue that story for your third set of Toyota products.
John: I think we have to, Kevin. Before we talk about all the impactful and important things that you and your colleagues are doing at Toyota in sustainability, I’d love you to share a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you got on this fantastic journey that you’re on.
Kevin: Well, I appreciate that. I grew up as a Buckeye and lived in the great state of Ohio for a long time till I went to college. I grew up there and I grew up, and my father was a United Methodist Minister. The church had some 31 acres of property, most of it woods. That’s where I spent most of my time is in the woods and enjoying that part of what was out there, and then I went off to school. When I did that, it was my last time of being a Buckeye as a resident, and I became a Kentucky. There are so many things you can say nice about Kentucky, right? The nature that’s around and the rolling hills. So I spend a lot of time in that space. I’m a backpacker. I love winter hiking. I’m an avid sportsman of all sorts. I call myself a golfer, but that’s relative to the term. From some of my early career, and I won’t give you my whole story, but I started off not my first job, but I worked for the University of Kentucky.
John: Okay.
Kevin: I was a research scientist, and I started doing research in coal liquefaction, gasification, oil shale retorting, and things of that nature. It reflects on my age, but there was a time when oil was scarce, and we were trying to make oil out of anything. It had a carbon ring in it. That was kind of my turn right there. As I did that research, I realized there are so many impacts to trying to utilize fossil fuels and generate oil from that, and the process itself had environmental impacts. I became very interested as we did that research to begin looking at the whole sustainability side of what we were doing. It became sort of a quest for me at that point because everything we do has consequences. We can choose to take the right path and develop things that have that more circular economy to it. But back then it was all about, “Let’s get this out.” So I became very frustrated with that. I wanted to get my hands dirty from there. I went to actually work for a steel Mill. I went from lab coat to working at a Steel Mill thinking that I could get into that industry. I was in charge of all the environmental sides of that. Man, it was incredible the amount of energy, and the amount of raw material used. I began the process of trying to, how do we make this more sustainable. How do we do that in such a large industry in such a consumer of energy? While there, Toyota recruited me. I’ve been at Toyota now for 31 years.
John: Wow.
Kevin: It’s been a great ride here at Toyota. Worked mostly in the environmental space at the time. But I also was on an assignment where I ran stamping, body weld, and paint operations for North America. So it was a great learning experience. It was about learning all the facets of the automobile manufacturing process, which is really incredible because it gave me a great basis.
John: Sure.
Kevin: As I came back to the environmental space, knowing more about the inner workings, it allowed me to have a greater appreciation of what I could do, how we could influence that, and how we could shift the rudder a little bit as we moved in that Toyota space, and as we matured into the sustainability world. In the middle of the process, I was brought back then into the environmental space. That’s when I realized it’s not just environmental compliance, it’s just not making sure you check all the boxes. It’s about how do we mature the organization, the understanding that there’s more to this.
John: Right.
Kevin: The term environmental sustainability before it even became cool was foremost for me. We’ve got to teach our engineering body that we have to look at all aspects as we design, as we build, and as we operate. So that’s kind of how it happened. Fortunately, at one point in time, they said, “Hey, you got to get out of engineering. You need to get this sustainability office working.” So we’ve been doing that and trying to create understanding across the board and move the organization into that space of developing a complete understanding from top to bottom of what sustainability is and what it requires.
John: Talk a little bit about the mission. I mean, obviously, when someone who’s been doing environmental practices, as long as you are an OG at this, comparatively speaking to so many of these wonderful young people who are coming out of college now with environmental science degrees and going right into these programs that didn’t exist 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago for sure. You’ve been doing this quite a long time. So when you are working with such a large and iconic brand like Toyota, where does the journey begin and how does it look today?
Kevin: Well, one thing, we’re very fortunate in the Toyota world, and from the very beginning, when you look at the Toyota production system, one of the things we look at is the reduction of Muda, which is a reduction of waste.
John: Right.
Kevin: Not just in materials, but in the amount of energy we use, the water we use. So it’s always been part of that DNA that we have to consider these things as we go about because we know the more sustainable you are, the more cost-effective you can be. We have to continue to evaluate those aspects as one. We have that DNA, but now the world has changed, as you said.
John: Right.
Kevin: The world is recognized, and if there’s any good that can come out of the COVID era, people began realizing across the world, they could see clear skies again. Because the whole dynamic changed, and we heard over and over again, that people were going, “Wow, we need to keep this as it is.” So things have escalated, and we have climate change, whether people believe in climate change or not. I don’t want to have that argument ever again.
John: Right.
Kevin: It’s non-productive.
John: Right.
Kevin: In order for us to become more sustainable, people have to know there’s an infinite amount of resources.
John: Right.
Kevin: How do we begin that process of convincing those who believe or don’t believe in climate change, but especially for those who don’t? We have a responsibility to be conservative in that and begin making the changes necessary that will allow us to continue to live in the current great world that we live in without depleting it.
John: It’s so funny what you just said, though. It’s so true what you just said about how Toyota’s DNA is in resource reduction and management with regards to energy and water, and everything that you touch, besides waste also watching your waste, because it makes the company more profitable. But isn’t it funny, Kevin, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 12 years ago, when you used to say sustainability, so we’re an organizational leadership team, they just equated that with costing them money? They created a call center around it instead of thinking about profit center and resilience when done correctly, is really the truth.
Kevin: Well, that’s a fact. I mean, it’s all about the bottom line, right? People who don’t understand the true sustainability practices and how we can move in that space.
John: Right.
Kevin: Can’t appreciate that. We’ve actually had to create a profit center in our sustainability, my group, because we’re bringing money in.
John: Wow.
Kevin: We’re not talking hundreds of thousands. I’m talking millions of dollars.
John: Right.
Kevin: Right? As you bring that money in, people begin to understand, “Oh, wow, there is something to this.” Now, let me be clear. We’re not talking about a Toyota space of money.
John: Right.
Kevin: It’s not that huge chunk.
John: Right.
Kevin: But it is money coming in that’s cost, avoiding money being spent.
John: Right.
Kevin: Which is so important. There are certain things in sustainability that are tougher to make a profit out of, if you will, but make reduce long-term risks.
John: Right.
Kevin: Let’s think about water as an example of that.
John: Sure.
Kevin: Water’s a cheap commodity. We, as a society, haven’t figured out yet that water is probably one of the most valuable things that we have. We do terrible things to our water. We don’t have to pay much for it. So we have to begin then taking some of those profits that we make and do some of those projects in the water space that we have to do. We have to conserve, we have to reuse, we have to understand those. To me, those are all very important aspects of what sustainability really is.
John: Our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Kevin Butt with us today. He’s a general manager and regional environmental sustainability director at Toyota Motor North America. You can find Kevin and his colleagues and all the important work they’re doing in sustainability at www.toyota.com/usa/sustainability. That will be also in our show notes. For those of you who want to find Kevin and his colleagues on that part of your website. Kevin, you publish every year an environmental report, and it lives there in perpetuity. Can you talk a little bit about what’s coming up in your 2023 North American environmental report how you break it down and how you like to lay it out, create quadrants of success, and show transparently, all the gains that you’re making at Toyota and sustainability?
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s very important, and we have a responsibility as a large corporation to be very transparent, as you said, in what we’re doing and what the progress is being made to the things that we say we were going to do, and how close are we getting.
John: Got it.
Kevin: This report is all about that. It’s all about updating our consumers, our customers, and anybody else that’s concerned. How is Toyota doing? Are they fulfilling their obligations? Of course, we live in a day to day where here recently, everybody, every corporation has these huge targets. We’re all going to be carbon neutral, we’re all going to do X, Y, and Z, right?
John: Yeah.
Kevin: But the proof is important. It’s not just a statement. It’s what are you actually doing and how far have you gotten towards your stated targets. We at Toyota do not want to be in that group. We said that, and we don’t want to retract that, right? There’s value in this report, and the value is that you can follow us, you can find out what we did. John, what’s really important here is, we build on what we call our five-year environmental action plans. So we have a plan that lasts for five years, that has annual targets to meet that five-year target. That five-year plan will come with the next five-year plan, right? We’re into our 7th, five-year environmental action plan.
John: Wow.
Kevin: We’re getting ready to develop the 8th. So all those, there’s a strategy behind that, that allows us to build year over year, how we’re going to make our targets and forecast what’s going to happen that next five years. to be able to achieve those. It’s important for our team members, our management, our designers, R&D, and everybody, to know and understand what those targets are. So that’s why we do it in a five-year plan. So you can plan accordingly. You can plan financially, you can plan resources, or whatever may be necessary to be able to follow that. Then at the end of that period, every year we make this report, and people can absolutely see where we’re at.
John: When is your annual environmental report published typically in the annual calendar year?
Kevin: Usually around November.
John: November. Wow.
Kevin: Yeah. No, we just issued I think it was November 15.
John: Wow.
Kevin: The 2023 report.
John: Got it.
Kevin: Yeah.
John: Got it. Kevin, you’re the general manager and regional environmental sustainability director for North America, how much cross-communication goes with your colleagues, analogous colleagues across the planet in Asia, South America, Europe, and other parts of this wonderful planet that we live on sharing information and cross communicating and trying to figure out best practices?
Kevin: Extremely good question. Toyota’s a big company. We have operations around the globe. Back in 2015, Toyota issued our Toyota Environmental Challenge. In that, there were six challenges that were issued. So as a globe, we have to each of the regions contribute to what those targets might be, and so we communicate to each of the organizations. I have a counterpart in Europe, a counterpart. So we talk with each other and we talk with the mother company, TM, Toyota Motor Corporation, to understand where the contributions need to come from and what our progress is, to be able to then achieve what we’re talking about on a global scale. So that’s a very important part of how we communicate. The communication is also about sharing best practices.
John: Right.
Kevin: Here in North America, we may have done something that really made sense.
John: Right.
Kevin: We say, “Oh, wait a minute.” Our counterparts need to know this. So we share that type of information, and they share with us, Therefore, we’re not each on our own island trying to invent everything on our own.
John: Again, the collaborative spirit continues to push us forward faster in a much more efficient way.
Kevin: Yes, absolutely. There’s room for improvement there. I’m not going to say that’s a perfect system yet, but there’s always room for improvement. But we’re doing a pretty good job at it.
John: With regards to the key areas of focus in your environmental report, can you share some of the more important key areas of focus that you’d like to highlight on an annualized basis?
Kevin: Yeah, one of the things that’s very focused by people, and they look out and they see, and that’s the transportation side of this. You’re talking about the Prius and this push for electrification, what’s that all about? So that’s one of the things that we focus on. Where are we at? Where are we making progress towards the electrification of our product? So that’s one area. Carbon neutrality is not just our vehicles, but it’s our operations. So we track where we’re at, and we’ve got a target of 2035 of being carbon neutral in all of our operations in North America. So we track both of those and combine them. We highlight that area. We also talk about water conservation, and where we’re at in that space. Also, as I said earlier, water’s one of those things that are near and dear to me that we need as a society, to really focus on. We also talk about how we convert our society to a recycling-based society. Where we are in materials? How do we begin to reuse materials as opposed to having to have virgin material every time we do something, right? John, one of the things that I like to think is that if we educate people and we educate them enough that they realize that there are two options. One is a more environmentally sound option of using material or reusing material, and the other one is just throwing it in the trash. I’d like to think at least 80% of the people would make that right choice, right? I would like to think it would be a bigger number than that, but I don’t see that very much, right? So to me, that’s another piece that people have to become more educated, and more understanding of what the impacts are of the materials they use. Another one is harmony with nature or biodiversity. It’s one of the things that’s near and dear to me. As I said, I’m an outdoorsman, right? I’ve often been asked, “Why do you deal with an auto company dealing with biodiversity? Why is that?” Well, I think we have that responsibility. We have a footprint that we have changed the landscape of the earth in which we’re making products. We have an obligation to offset that footprint by creating and improving ecosystems, not only around where we’re at but in hotspots around the world. If we see a problem, we as a company should go out and help solve those problems. I’ve often said, “I’ve got the best job ever at Toyota.” That’s why I’m still here at 31 years. We saw problems that were going on in the Galapagos Islands.
John: Wow.
Kevin: I’ve been able to go to the Galapagos and help fix some of the issues that were going on there. We’ve been along the waterways towards Mexico, trying to improve that, and improving the Monarch Butterfly Flyway zones. Another favorite of mine is the reintroduction of bison on native tribal lands for the first time in 168 years. That, to me, is how a company can help make an impact in the space that’s beyond what people would normally think is going on in a car company.
John: That’s so interesting. You mentioned a little while ago the Toyota’s environmental challenge. How does your annual environmental report tie back to your Toyota’s 2050 environmental challenge?
Kevin: Great question again, John, we actually have a diagram in that report that shows our core values here in North America, which are, again, our carbon water materials and biodiversity, and how they link to the six challenges of the Toyota Global Challenge. Then one step further, how did all of those link to the sustainable development goals of the UN? Because the UN has set out these 17 sustainable development goals. How are we tracking against that?
John: Right.
Kevin: How is the world tracking against that? We’re trying to make that link to show here’s what we’re doing. This is how they link up with these ultimately the sustainable development goals.
John: Kevin, you mentioned collaborating with your counterparts around the planet for best practices, for shared practices, and just making better decisions on a regular basis. What other partnerships or collaborations you are proud of that you can share with our listeners and viewers so they can understand that this isn’t a zero-sum game, that this sort of race to heal the environment is one that we’re all in together and we all benefit from together, or we all will suffer together because it’s truly just one world in one environment. So the partnerships and collaborations that you would like to highlight that Toyota’s benefited from over the years, I’d love to have your view on that.
Kevin: Oh, yeah, you’re right. Toyota’s just one company. We can’t fix this alone.
John: Right.
Kevin: It requires partners, it requires open collaboration, transparency. We do partner with a lot of different organizations. I’ll mention just a few.
John: Sure.
Kevin: One of them is the supplier’s partnership for the environment. That is an organization that has all of the other OEMs, not all of them, but most of all the large ones, our tier one suppliers, and some tier two suppliers. We work in collaboration with EPA to where we as an auto industry can focus and share and collaborate on what we can do as an auto industry to make change at scale. That’s what it’s all about. I’m very fortunate I get to chair that organization and I’m very happy, very proud to be a part of that because we are doing some great things. It sounds silly, but one of the things early on, I said was, we need to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing, the same definitions. It’s amazing. You’d think these things are pretty clear.
John: Right.
Kevin: We’re they’re not.
John: Right.
Kevin: We’ve published a lot of documents through that, that are guidelines that say, “This is how we as the auto industry interpret these things.” How we are going to use them as we set our strategy and our goals so that everybody knows if you’re looking at us, this is how we calculate this, and this is how we do it. To me, that’s a very important partnership. When we think about the auto industry, it’s a huge industry. If we can all collaborate in that industry, yeah, we’ll begin shifting the rudder a little bit. So I think that was a very important one. There are a number of different ones too. As we talked about biodiversity, the NEEF, which is the National Environmental Education Foundation, is a great organization that is about educating people in environmental terms, technology, what they can do, and how they can do it, and actually getting hands-in the dirt kind of thing. I also have the great privilege of working and chairing the Yellowstone Forever Foundation.
John: Wow.
Kevin: Being able to utilize that as a way to share Toyota technology with the park system, but also to preserve the most iconic and first national park in North America. So to me, that’s again, a valuable resource of just sharing the story and trying to help those folks along. World Wildlife Fund, that’s where I get to be able to work to reintroduce these bison back on the prairie. We also are doing some studies with the World Wildlife Fund to look at the impacts of the reintroduction of bison and the impacts it has on the ecosystem, and the ability to preserve prairie and allow the proper prairie grasses to regrow, and it actually become more of a carbon sink and being able to absorb carbon. We’re actually doing some good science with that and trying to make some sense of that. Gosh, I’ll tell you one other and then I’ll stop. We, in North America’s Toyota, we have 26,000 acres of property.
John: Wow.
Kevin: On that 26,000 acres, we decided that we need to offset that impact of by creating 26,000 acres at a minimum of new pollinator space. Working with the pollinator partnership, we are going to achieve that target that’s going to happen. That is a very valuable tool, as we all know our pollinators are in dire straits, and this is a way that we think we can help bring that back a little bit. I’m not saying it’s the fix of all, but it’s going to help. That’s another thing that we worked with through the supplier partnership for the environment. We implemented a plan for all the automakers to introduce new pollinator space.
John: Wow.
Kevin: You can see there’s a map on the supplier partnership for the environment website that shows where all these new sites have developed, which is a great impact.
John: That’s tremendous. Kevin, just recently a few months back the world lost Charlie Munger, and he was 34 days away from his hundredth birthday, but he was still at the top of his game. So, someone like you has a lot of energy left in the tank here, and there’s a lot more impact you’re going to make on this planet. What are you excited about in 2024 and beyond with regard to the impacts that you and your colleagues can make at Toyota in the coming year and years ahead?
Kevin: Wow, that’s a great question. First and foremost, for us to hit these targets we’ve stated to think about becoming carbon neutral, right? And doing it in the right way. Not going out and buying offsets, but doing it in a way that you’re generating new energy, new renewable energy, and doing those things. That to me, is huge, because that will make a difference, right?
John: Yeah.
Kevin: As we reduce the eGRID factor in the brown power that’s being used. Those are all important things to do. But I think even more exciting, I don’t know if it’s even more exciting, but it’s that education piece that we start to see team members and people around the community learn from what we’re doing, right? Being able to take what is being done by example, and we need more of that. But, doing that in their personal life. That’s what I’m starting to see. I get a lot more questions in that regard lately this is all great, but what does this mean to me personally? We start seeing that, that’s pretty exciting. The last thing I’ll say is I want to see more people get started asking those questions about water.
John: Oh.
Kevin: What is it that I can do to help preserve water? Not just water quality, but water volume. When we look at what’s going on in the aquifers of the Midwest, where we’re using them a lot to grow corn, to feed the world, we have to do that, right? We have to start thinking about that in a lot of different ways. So to me, those are things that we’re going to have to realize. A lot of people don’t understand the whole water situation. They don’t know about water stress regions and the effects of climate change. What is that going to do? I just saw an article that just came out and said, “2023 was the hottest one yet on record.” By the way, just for the record, Toyota has said publicly, “We believe in climate change and we believe we’re part of the problem, and that we have to do something to contribute to fix that.” So that’s a part of our baseline, right? Those are basic things that we have to understand. So to me, those are things that I look forward to. I also look forward to more collaboration. More communication with people in different organizations and structures allows us to share those best practices. We have to ramp up the speed of change in order to continue to make this progress. Again, I go back, whether you believe in climate change or not, these are all important things we have to do. It doesn’t matter. This is a matter of preserving the planet. You cannot argue about water quality. It’s a problem, right? So we have to understand that and go fix that.
John: That’s right.
Kevin: Create understanding so that we all, when we turn that tap on, are going to benefit from clean water to drink.
John: That’s a good point. Kevin, I’ve had almost 2000 guests on this show in the last 17 years or so. I have to say this, I said this to you off the air earlier. You have one of the most gorgeous backgrounds that any guest has ever brought on. Can you share a little bit about that beautiful background behind you?
Kevin: I can as I mentioned to you earlier, I get to serve as chairman of the Yellowstone Forever Board.
John: Yeah.
Kevin: I get to travel to Yellowstone on a fairly regular basis. Again, that’s why I have the best job in the world right here. That is at the upper terrace of Mammoth Hot Springs. I got up really early one morning to catch the sunrise, and I was very blessed to have the sky as it was. When that sun popped up over the mountain, it was just like, “Oh, that’s really good.” So I took a number of these pictures. Obviously, I’m very happy with that one, so I used this as my background.
John: I know you’re an outdoorsman, though, but did you study professional photography, or is this just you as an outdoorsman, but a layman photographer and just caught the perfect shot there?
Kevin: Layman photographer.
John: Okay.
Kevin: It’s amazing when you have decent equipment, what you can do.
John: Right.
Kevin: I would be lying if I didn’t say that. It didn’t go to the lightroom and I enhanced it a little bit.
John: Okay.
Kevin: but it was close. I was close to it. I played with a lot of different settings and this was the best. Yeah, I was very pleased with this.
John: That’s a gorgeous photo. I just want to say thank you again for sharing some time with us today. For our listeners and viewers who want to find Kevin and his colleagues and all the important impactful work they’re doing at Toyota, please go to www.toyota.com/usa/sustainability. Their environmental report can be found on that, and all the other successes that they’re doing in sustainability can be found in that area. We’ll give those website addresses, and the environmental report in our show notes. Kevin Butt, I just want to say thank you for your time today for being on the Impact Podcast, but more important, thank you and all your colleagues at Toyota for making the world a better place.
Kevin: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to be here. I welcome any comments when you go out and read the report. If you have questions there’s an email address. You can fire those questions off, and we’ll answer them for you. But the last thing I’ll say is, everybody, pay attention. What you do every day has an impact. It can either be a good impact or it can be a bad impact. So make the right choice and we’re in this together. Let’s fix this.
John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform, revolutionizing the talent booking industry with thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.