Cox Enterprises’ Senior Director of Recycling and Waste Reduction Meredith Lindvall has a passion for the relationship between people and their environments that has led to a commitment to careers in sustainability. An Atlanta native, she has worked in the environmental and sustainability departments at Delta Air Lines, Home Depot and, currently, at Cox Enterprises. Meredith joined Cox in 2011 and has led Cox’s aggressive goal of achieving Zero Waste to Landfill by 2024. 

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m so excited to have with us today, Meredith Lindvall. She leads the recycling and waste reduction program at Cox Enterprises. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Meredith.

Meredith Lindvall: Thanks for having me, John.

John: You know, we’re going to cover a topic that’s right over what looks to be your left shoulder on camera, but I know it’s your right shoulder with the way you’re sitting. The Zero to Hero program. Zero waste program that you have going at Cox. We’re going to cover what you and your colleagues are doing there. But before we get there, Meredith, where did you grow up and how did you get on this very inspirational and important journey that you’re on?

Meredith: Sure. So I am actually an Atlanta native. There’s more of us coming back to Atlanta and working on really important environmental and sustainability work here in the Metro Atlanta area. I grew up going to state parks and getting really involved, and just being outdoors in environmental conservation. The recycling bug started at a really early age. So, I used to go every Saturday, actually, with my family over to the DeKalb Farmers Market, which had community available recycling. So before there was curbside recycling really anywhere in the United States, some of you all may know that you had to drive to take your recycling to somewhere special. So that was our Saturday tradition as a family. It’s a great memory, right? Putting all those things [crosstalk]. I remember thinking that that was really fun to throw all of the glass and bottles and take cardboard over there. Little did I know that this passion for the environment just continued on in my education and I then went on to do an undergrad in environmental science and a master’s in environmental health. What I tell people about that is that my undergrad was the study of humans’ impact on the environment and my master’s was the environment’s impact on humans. So I have long been fascinated by what is now called sustainability but that word didn’t exist. But just sort of the intertwined nature of human health, and environmental health and figuring out how we can improve both of those things working together solving some really interesting challenges. So I’ve carried that through in a lot of different opportunities and I feel like I’ve worked a lot of different sides of the sustainability coin. On that health side, just to give folks some background on what environmental health might look like and why I think these things are so closely linked, I worked for five years actually in pediatric research studying the impacts of air quality on pediatric asthma severity. So that’s an example of sort of the [crosstalk] of where I worked in this and then had the opportunity to work in traditional environmental roles and work on several corporate goals at other companies, and had a lot of opportunity to do two sides of that. Where, one, on this carbon front there was a thing that came out called carbon accounting and so I got the opportunity to get my start in the sustainability space actually doing energy audits and carbon accounting on municipal buildings here in Atlanta while having my foot squarely in the environmental space when I worked at Delta Airlines. So we did hazardous waste and all those types of things. And I then carry that over to come to Cox, worked on carbon and really helped work on that carbon footprint at Cox and then actually went over to Home Depot. So, again, all of these really great Atlanta-based corporate sustainability program powerhouses and was on that side, working in the same arena. Then a little bit of a fast forward, Cox called and said, “You know what? We are really excited that we are adding water and waste to our really already aggressive sustainability goals. Would you be interested in coming and working on waste at Cox Enterprises?” And I jumped at the chance. Because what’s really unique about that is it’s really, really, really special for a service company to set a zero-waste goal. And so I was excited about the challenge. Leading up to that, what I can share with you, is it’s so unique to set that kind of goal and that is the reason why, as part of that, Cox Enterprises is the first US based enterprise company to achieve zero waste as a service based company recognized by the Zero Waste USA. So it’s just a unique goal and so that achievement is really unique. So if you think about what it means for a service company to manage materials, it’s really different than a manufacturer or anything like that. So I’m sure we’ll talk more about this. But I’m mentioning that now, because a key piece of that achievement is all about employee engagement. One of the things that I have carried throughout all of these roles that I just mentioned, is it’s really that human connection and about why people want to work on something like this and join us in a commitment to a more sustainable future. So our employees are our secret sauce and that’s actually what you see above my head over here, is an employee recognition campaign that we’re running right now celebrating all of the work that they’ve put in to get Cox to this huge achievement of zero waste.

John: Well, Meredith, first of all, good on Mom and Dad, that you were raised with such a culture of servant leadership and doing great in the community by recycling and things as such. The fact that you took that and took that forward and then got your BS in environmental science and your master of Public Health and Environmental health and then combined that to do your pediatric study with regards to air quality and babies-, I mean, I live here in Fresno, California and I was raised in New York City. I grew up in New York but I live in Fresno and unfortunately, the Central Valley, which is one of the prettiest parts of the United States and [inaudible] based, food-based grows most of our agriculture belts for the United States, our air quality is really bad. I just had my second grandson, my second grandchild 10 days ago or so, and I’m always worried about air quality on what it does to our next generation and babies and things. So what great work you did historically. Then you went to go work for two of our most iconic brands in the United States, if not the world, Home Depot and Delta Airlines. Both of whom have been on the Impact Podcast before with just wonderful messages and wonderful journeys in sustainability. Then now at Cox, which is also another division of your company that has been on Impact before. But this is now a topic that we’ve really covered So just to remind our listeners and viewers, Cox is a privately owned [?] company that does about $23 billion in sales and what? You have about 50,000 employees or so, right?

Meredith: Right. That’s right.

John: So when did the Zero Waste goal-, when was that codified, announced and created at Cox? When did that journey start?

Meredith: Sure. So I’ll give you a little bit of the history because I think that’s important. Cox Conserves, which is our sustainability department and initiatives, was actually started in 2007 by our chairman emeritus, Jim Kennedy. He came to the team and said, “You know what? I want my legacy to be environmental stewardship. Build me an aggressive goal.” So, in 2007, we started working on carbon initiatives and fast forward to 2012, Jim came back and said, “You know what? There’s more to this than just carbon. Build me something even better.” So that’s when we added waste and water to that carbon lens. So in 2012, we officially announced, “We are working on a zero-waste goal,” and the goal was to be zero waste to landfill by 2024. So a tenure, a little bit, we worked on it starting 2013. So a 10-year runway, very short. So we’ve done a lot of change in just ten years. To give a flavor across the board of what Cox Conserves is working on, the department has done over 500 sustainability projects and invested over $165 million in doing carbon and water and waste projects since we started working on this. So it’s really important to the company. It’s really important to the family and it’s been really exciting to work on that goal since 2013,.

John: Just for our listeners and viewers, first of all, for our listeners and viewers to find Meredith and all her colleagues and all the great work they’re doing in sustainability and waste reduction and recycling please go to www.coxenterprises.com. When people hear the word zero waste, technically what does that zero-waste mean as a goal? Does that mean absolute zero sum game in terms of 100% of all your waste has to be sent not to a landfill or is it somewhat different than that?

Meredith: That’s a great question. So we adhere to the US zero waste definition, which is a 90% diversion from landfill and does not include any incineration. So that 10% are some of the things that we’re hoping to solve for as we look forward to what our next goal looks like. So, right now, as you all know, there are just some types of materials that right now there’s not a known solution. So as we think beyond just what we tackled through zero waste, Cox is actively investing in other businesses and things like that, that would help solve for that last piece. So what we adhere to is the zero waste USA standard and that’s an international standard, as well, as we look at that 90% rate. So for us, we’ve actually exceeded that and we have a third party verification on that data and we have a 92% diversion rate that actually went with this announcement.

John: So on a macro level, you gave it a couple of years of planning then you had a 10-year run way to make this happen and you accomplished it and you actually beat it. You to the 90s.

Meredith: We did. We did.

John: You got to 92. But let’s go back and look at the mountain you had to climb back 11, 12 years ago. You know, diversion it sounds easy, not so easy. Explain how many locations, when you were thinking about diversion, were under this umbrella of Cox that you have to worry about, think about and plan for diverting their waste that was typically going to a landfill and getting it back into what is now called the circular economy.

Meredith: Absolutely. So, to give this some context of this achievement, we are managing over 350 locations in, at least, 47 States. There’s actually even more than 350 locations as we consolidate those. It is hundreds of thousands of addresses. So the scale of this achievement is truly massive. When we set this goal, I’m happy to give a peek behind the curtain on this, at the end of 2012, we set the goal with no data. When we set this goal, we said we want to be zero waste to landfill by 2024 and we didn’t even have data to know where we started. So we were really focused on gathering that data and where we turned out to be starting is, we started with a 9% diversion rate. So calling back to where we ended, we went from 9 to 92 in 10 years, covering lots of different Cox businesses. So one of the things that I want to share with your listeners is, again, about that service business that makes it really unique is, this is a lot of locations. None of our location types were excluded. So, we’re solving for, how do we be zero waste from everything from a call center to an auto auction to all different types of facilities? So it’s been a really interesting journey. What we’ve done is, once we knew that 9% rate, there was no road map, right? Because no one else was working on a goal that looked like this. So, we had to build that along the way and one of the things that we’ve learned is, it wasn’t a magic bullet. So we talked a little bit about the human engagement. What I love about waste and recycling is, it’s the gateway, in my opinion, to the rest of sustainability. Because it’s something that employees-, and your listeners, you hold items in your hand and it’s really easy to envision that where that goes matters. So that’s what I love about this work, is that you know, carbon is really important. As we think about, what does one gallon of water or one ton of carbon look like? I know sometimes those can be challenging but waste is something that everybody holds and they decide.

John: You’re right. It’s very tangible.

Meredith: Very tangible.

John: Go back to creating what-, your first understanding of where you even were, was that the same third-party verification company that came in and gave the original analysis to you and put you at 9? So when they came back 10 or 12 years later, they then came back and then when they reassessed you, you were at 92 and had 83 points swing? Or was it a different way of calculating it 11 or 12 years ago as opposed to the verification body you have now?

Meredith: Yeah. So always the same methodology. Actually, how we find out about where we start-, and I know your listeners want to know more about how this actually gets done. So we have a really robust data program. So we have all of the invoices that are happening for waste and recycling across all the Cox businesses. We have that information and that’s what we use to actually calculate that baseline. So that is done within our organization. Then what we do is we actually start to figure out what makes up the waste. Because what happens in waste and recycling is, once you throw something away, that doesn’t really tell you what the opportunity is, right? We need to actually know what was it? Paper? Is it plastic bottles? What is it? So once we started at that 9%, we actually do and we continue to this day, what is called a waste characterization. So that is where you actually have somebody-, we use a couple of really great third party options where they’re actually going through the waste and they are categorizing it and they’re telling you what the opportunities are. So you would actually get a really large data set that would say, “Hey, John, 10% of what you threw away this week was paper.” So we can then work with our boots on the ground, our leadership and our communications team to say, “Aha! Here’s a really big opportunity, Cox employees. If you can make this one small behavior change, we can move the needle x to the way towards our goals.” So what we did was back cast. So we said we’re starting at 9, we’re trying to get to 90 and then work backwards to say, what is the movement that we would need to achieve every year to meet this aggressive goal of being zero waste to landfill by 2024? What I can share with you, that I think folks are surprised about, is we manage over 75 different types of recycling. So there’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of different types of stuff and that keeps it really interesting. It means that we solve for some really unique things in this journey. So it might be helpful if I give your listeners some examples. For example, at our auto business, this looked like solving for over 200,000 windshields. Then our cable business, this looked like working in pre-competitive environments for industry working groups to try to solve for coax cable. So when you think about all of the coax cable that we would take back or our technicians take back, or when folks drop equipment back off at the retail store, that’s a really tough thing to solve for on the recycling side, if you ever look at it, which is what my team is doing. It’s made up of a bunch of different types of stuff, again, that make it hard to recycle. But problem-solving that way with others that are facing the same challenge, our cable business has recycled over 10 million pounds of coax cable in 10 years. But we’ve solved for some really unique things.

John: Well, let’s talk about that. They both sound, to the general public, as seemingly benign products. Windshields are somewhat different because not only are they glass and glass is really a form of smelted sand now. It’s not highly valuable. There’s nothing really intrinsic to extract from it. But in the middle of it, is like a plastic sheath [?].

Meredith: That’s right.

John: Which creates a new level of complexity. Now that you knew that you had these hundred thousand windshields a year to recycle, how did you find the right outlet for that and how that journey go? Where did that end up? What kind of recycling did that go to eventually?

Meredith: Sure. So we actually have six key pillars of our zero waste to landfill strategy. One of the key pillars is suppliers and partnerships. So, again, going back to this data, we’re really data-driven. So we actually had all of the numbers that you just talked about. So we were able to work with our suppliers in a partnership capacity to say, “Hey, you all, we have this challenge. We’re looking for an in-solution. We know that one doesn’t exist yet.” We have a sustainable supplier summit and threw that in. In Inaugural one, we actually had a supplier come to us and say, “You know what? We have a small pilot for windshield recycling, are you interested?” And we said, “Absolutely. Here’s the opportunity. If we can solve this together, here’s the volume of what we have.” So, we actually worked with them and worked on a pilot, and then they were able to scale that to be east of the Mississippi. Then ultimately, they were able to expand that west of the Mississippi. So now, there’s actually a nationwide windshield recycling options. So, one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about this work is, we know that if these materials are challenging to Cox, there are also challenges for our friends, families and our customers. We’ve taken a really unique approach to say, we want to solve, not just the problems within our four walls, we want to look beyond that and how can we be a part of driving meaningful change in the communities where we live, work and serve? So we’ve done that through a wide variety of partnerships, whether those are nonprofit partners, or supplier partners. But I’ve really found that part of the work really meaningful because, again, for us zero waste by 2024 is a milestone on a really long journey. So it’s been really exciting to be a part of change as we look at recycling infrastructure in the United States. Cox is really proud and I am proud to have been a part of increasing the access and moving us all towards a more circular economy.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joining us, we’ve got Meredith Lindvall with us today. She leads the waste recycling reduction program at Cox Enterprises. To find Meredith and all of her colleagues and the great and important work they’re doing in sustainability and in recycling and waste reduction please go to www.coxenterprises.com. You mentioned coax cables. They’re very rich in copper, but what makes them very difficult to recycle is the plastic or rubber coating on the outside, which is hard to remove. Did you again put out all your fillers [?] and found, again, somebody that can handle that for you as well?

Meredith: We did. We did that one through some industry working groups. Because we’re not the only people-, Cox Communications is not the only cable business with this challenge, right? Because it’s a material challenge. So we worked, again, in an industry working group, which we worked on several really exciting things with them but we come together really as an industry in that way and say, “Hey, if we all work on this together, we have scale that can help make it more appealing to look for solutions.” So we’ve got a couple of pilots going around the country to expand that. We’ve done a lot of that work on the coax cable to date. The cool thing about waste and recycling is the work is never done because the materials are always changing. So actually, as you all know, [inaudible] fiber and other things are more popular. Actually every time we solve a challenge, there’s new ones that come online. So that work is never done. On the coax side, we have solutions but there are new types of materials that are coming out in the Telecommunications business. So we continue to have pilots that we’re working within those industry working groups.

John: You know, Meredith, were now in June of 2024. You hit your goal. A massive win that your whole team together has, to go from 9% to 92%. An 83 percent swing. [Inaudible] good on you. Bravo to Cox. That’s incredible. What happens now? What kind of-? As you and I know, sustainability doesn’t have a finish line. It’s a journey. As you said, products are always evolving and changing which keeps us employed, which is wonderful. But what kind of goals do you create now that are both achievable but are going to stretch you enough so everybody feels challenged enough to be excited about all the important and great work you’re doing in waste and recycling?

Meredith: That’s a great question and a timely one. So we are in the process now of finalizing what our next really aggressive goal is going to look like. As you can tell, Cox never rests on our laurels when it comes to the sustainability space, in particular. So some of the things that are high on our radar right now, you actually mentioned, is circular economy and what can Cox do to drive forward on moving that needle on a circular economy? Especially as we have some really exciting new Cox businesses in the portfolio that are squarely in the circular economy space. So for example, again, we talked a little bit about some of the breadth of Cox Enterprises but there’s actually a goal of having an entire segment of business to be green businesses. So the goal is to have two billion dollar portfolio of green companies. So trying to figure out as we grow in that space, for example, Cox has a company called EV battery Solutions and they do EV battery recycling. So they’re squarely a part of the circular economy. So we’re trying to figure out-, we know we want to head in a circular space. That’s high on our radar, to think about what does that go look like and how can we push even farther past what everybody else is doing to keep doing something that no one has ever done before? Like we did with the zero waste to landfill achievement.

John: That’s fascinating. Meredith, when it comes to diversion and recycling, as you and I know, on the procurement, side size matters. Instead of buying 50 rolls of toilet paper, you’re buying 50,000 rolls, a procurement manager or a procurement director is going to be able to drive a better deal for the brand that he or she represents. Similarly, when it comes to diversion and recycling is the same thesis true when it comes to size matters and being able to drive best practices and the best opportunities for Cox? Does your size give you real gravitas and power to really move the needle here?

Meredith: It definitely is really helpful. We have worked really hard with a lot of our suppliers to bring them on this journey and of course, our scale helps. One of the things that I do want to call out though, we talked about, there’s 350 locations and they’re spread out all over the place. So this achievement is actually unique to the point that you mentioned. Because a lot of our materials have been spread out. So it has been really actually challenging to solve at scale. When you think about, we have 75 types of recycling but they’re spread out all over the country. So that part has been a really unique challenge actually to overcome. The way that we’ve done that is by really communicating to our waste and recycling suppliers out in that space that, “Hey, we have a commitment. Our goal is to achieve zero waste to landfill by 2024. Join us.” So on the downstream side, that’s actually been a challenge. On the flip side of that, you are correct that the approach has been similar, that when we talk to suppliers about the upstream side of the house is, “Hey, this is what we’re looking to do. We’re looking to achieve zero waste.” We’ve solved for some of this back end, right? To your point, once it reaches our location, we need to solve for it. But what decisions can we make up here to purchase different types of things? And so, that partnership supplier piece that we talked about for the filler is really important. I can give you an example on that one. Waste is what I call a largely and unmetered utility. So getting that data that we talked about that is so robust, has actually not been a journey just for us. It’s been a journey for our suppliers. So, what we heard a lot in the beginning is, “Well, you are the only folks asking us for this information.” So I feel like we’ve really been able to leverage our scale and our aggressive commitment to move the industry forward in thinking about doing this type of reporting and I can give you some examples on that one.

John: Sure.

Meredith: The fun thing about waste diversion, again, it’s a lot of different things. So an example that I can share with you on shifting reporting would be on secure document shredding actually counts on our zero waste to landfill Journey, because that is paper and it ultimately gets recycled. But that was a new lens for those suppliers to think about, right? Because the priority is data privacy, of course. Then we came and said, “Hey, you know what? We think there are co-benefits here. Can you join us on our zero waste journey? Is there a way we can work together to start translating all of the good work that is happening into diversion so that we can also capture that?” So we have, to your point about the scale, a lot of suppliers have joined us on this journey and a lot of that has been on data and thinking about reporting and thinking about what are those co-benefits? What am I doing? What am I already doing that is helpful to this journey? And then what can I do that drives it forward even more? So that scale has been really helpful there and just telling people, telling suppliers about. “Hey, you’re a part of something that’s never been done before,” has been really exciting.

John: How do you create a scorecard when you take a snapshot-? Let’s just pretend it’s an 8 by 10 piece of paper or document on where you were in 2012 and where you are in 2024. When you’re showing an 83% swing in diversion, now at 92%, is that quantified in how much carbon you’ve saved? How much water you’ve saved? How many trees you’ve saved? Is there some nice visual scorecard that is able to totally blow everybody away and get even more people excited about this amazing journey that you’re on?

Meredith: Absolutely. To give some impact to that, since you asked about the scale, as part of this journey, Cox Enterprises has diverted over 750 million pounds out of landfill. Just to give you and your listeners a flavor of what that looks like, that’s more than the weight of the Empire State Building. So it’s big numbers. But the scorecard question is a good one because we actually have an internal scorecard at our location level. I want to share a little bit about that for those that are interested in starting a recycling and waste diversion journey. One of the things that I learned early on is, if you wait to celebrate an absolute goal at the end, it’s going to be a long time. So when you work on these zero goals, it’s really important, from my perspective, to be sure that you set milestones so that you can celebrate achievements. You can keep people motivated and that’s internal and external, so that they can celebrate those milestones of success. That was a lesson I learned, right? It’s going to be a long time before we’re zero waste. So what I did was create a company-wide scorecard that publishes the diversion rate of every single Cox location that is at 50 percent or better. It actually has levels, bronze, silver, or gold etc. Then that report card goes to all of the leaders in all of the companies and then is available for all of the employees. So, one of the things that that does is, one, connects your employees and your locations to that enterprise-wide goal and then it also provides readouts on success and it gives them ownership of what other steps they can take. So, what we’ve done there is that, these are common elements of a location that has 50% diversion or better and here’s a link to the playbook to tell you how to do the other parts. So it’s allowed our locations to then set their own location level goals. So that has been really fun for them to say, “Hey, we’re at 53% this year. My general manager has set a goal for this location to be at 75% next year.” So we publish this report twice a year and I think it’s been the single largest motivator of what has made the achievement possible. Because it really recognizes that work that’s happening, boots on the ground and allows them to realize the impact of what they’re doing. So we do publish that. It’s called The Zero Waste to Landfill report and it’s much anticipated. It comes out twice a year. You’ll see around the company that folks were then using local leadership and then at every level of leadership using that to set their own goal of how they could push the needle forward to keep making annual change.

John: So it’s a form of celebration. It’s a form of keeping everybody motivated. Instead of shaming them that they’re not at the level that some of the other higher performing locations are at, there is an instructive path and journey forward that they can follow to get to where they want to be.

Meredith: Absolutely, and you’ll see them as well. If anyone create something similar, it’s been really-, to the scale point actually, I’ve seen them cross-pollinate with each other to say, “Hey, other location, what are you doing that’s different? Can we get together and share best practices?” So we’re actually always updating those playbooks that we have based on new findings that are actually being realized by employees. So it’s been a really great tool. Its 350 locations and over 50,000 employees solving this puzzle together. So it’s been a really helpful normalization factor, where it puts everybody on the same page about what success looks like.

John: Wow. What a great tool to democratize the information and keep everybody aligned on your common goals and mission. I love that. Talk a little bit about, then, your annual success. Is your annual success then encapsulated in your sustainability annual impact report that lives in perpetuity up on the coxenterprises.com website?

Meredith: It does. Absolutely. So, we published the annual diversion rate in the report and that is available on the website.

John: Meredith, what would be the number one-? When people ask me, what comes out of an electronic waste recycling facility? Well, there’s two types of waste. A, there’s the waste from the actual process of recycling, which, our number one waste product is cardboard. Because we have plenty of boxes coming in bringing us the electronics. But out of electronics themselves, when I say, take a guess of the number one commodity that comes out of shredded and destroyed electronics, people typically go for gold or silver or something like that, and it’s shredded steel. So what is the number one product out of your 75 or so recycled products? What’s your number one product in terms of gross volume that you were challenged with recycling out of your entire enterprise?

Meredith: Sure. So our single largest contributor to our zero waste achievement is actually single-stream recycling. I can give a little bit of color to that because we had three challenges that we really needed to overcome. The very first one was providing access to recycling. So in the 10 years, we have launched over 100,000 of those blue bins that you see at Cox locations across America. So our first phase was that, right? With a 9% diversion rate a lot of our locations didn’t even have recycling. So that was a big phase. So, single-stream recycling is our number one largest contributor. The second bucket that we needed to solve for was actually business processes. So how do we take everything that we’ve learned and make it business as usual? That’s where we are today. So that’s those playbooks, that’s our best practice that we always locate waste recycling and composting together so it’s equally convenient. Then that third one, that we talked a little bit about, is that material piece that we had to overcome. So right after single-stream recycling, this second largest contributor to our zero waste achievement is actually electronics recycling. I am fortunate enough that I actually have a dedicated team in my organization that they are solely dedicated to what we call investment or asset recovery, which is electronics recycling.

John: Wow. Talk a little about sustainability. Meredith, back when I started this show in ’07-, sustainability when c-suite members heard the word sustainability they said that’s going to cost them money and that’s pretty much dead money. There was going to be no return on it. Can you help turn that statement on its head? What sustainability really means is resiliency. It can be massive money savings. It can be a great attraction tool for plants and a retention tool for employees as well. Talk a little bit about your advice with regards to what sustainability means, not only for Cox, but for other brands that are looking to embark upon this very important journey that is really very important that every organization gets on in the near future.

Meredith: Sure. So I’ll say, first and foremost, that most folks either want to go green and save green. I would encourage everybody that’s dialed in to think about how can you talk to those different types of audiences and gain their buy-in to work towards your sustainability mission? I do believe that there are really great ways to combine those but just understanding that, I think everybody wants to do one of those if not both of those together. So it’s important to translate what you’re doing into that. One of the ways that I’ve been really successful in doing that is actually aligning with each of the leaders across the company to say, “What are your MBOs [?] for the year? How can what I’m doing support what you need to do for the business?” That is a great example of saying, “Hey, what are co-benefits?” It’s kind of back to that supplier example of, what are you trying to do as a business leader and how can sustainability help make that more efficient or help save dollars or, as you said, employee retention? So we are really involved actually in campus recruitment and making sure that, again, employees want to work. They want to work somewhere at a business that is committed to change like this. So we’re deeply involved in making sure that employees have access to this type of information. We actually have, I should toot the horn on this one, a company-wide zero-waste training that is available to all 50,000 employees. So that is really exciting. But I think, just coming to the perspective that, especially early in a sustainability journey like you mentioned, there might be some optimization and low-hanging fruit. So what I would encourage people to think about is, as you do that, what’s a holistic choice that you can make to pair with something that has a lot of financial savings. I can give you a waste and recycling example. All those recycling bins that we launched, what we actually did-, because, again, it was a big change. And to your point, maybe people would have said, “I don’t know. Do I have any recycling?” So what my team actually did was, that waste characterization that we talked about, we said, “Hey, you know what? 56%, and we have the data, of what you throw away could go in a blue recycling bin. So could we agree that if trash is being picked up four days a week, can you meet me in the middle and have trash picked up two days a week, which is savings, and we’ll add recycling?” So that, again, is a good example of going green and saving green but pairing those processes together to help people understand we can meet a triple bottom line. It’s just important to step back and think about giving someone the holistic view of how that’s going to drive business change and also get you towards your goal. But it is a really important element across the business that people really want to plug into. I think that folks may be surprised to find that yeah, your employees are demanding they want to work somewhere that drives change like this and they want to be a part of it. So I think giving that clarity to of initiatives that they’re working on, if you can give that feedback through their scorecard or something like that, that is really helpful on that employee retention part. Because it’s making it clear that the social capital and the changes that they’re making really do drive an impact. So giving them that feedback loop on, here’s why what you’re doing matters and here’s the impact that it’s had, that’s really helpful and makes employees feel connected to larger goals that you have.

John: If I worked at Cox, if I was one of your 50,000 employees, how do I become a Zero Hero?

Meredith: That’s a great question. So, right now, we are in the process of collecting those stories. Because, again, waste is really local. So we are collecting a video campaign, actually, where our employees are submitting stories of, “Tell us how you helped us solve this puzzle in the last 10 years.” I can share with you, John, that they have been really fascinating. We’ve gotten a poem. We got a poem from one of our locations. But the videos have been really great. One of the things that I want to share with you, that I think other folks that work in this field have probably heard, is actually what we hear from employees in this campaign as they turn in videos. We’ve asked them to tell us a process or a change that they’ve made or why they’ve come on this journey with us and it’s been really fascinating to hear, to your point about the generations, a lot of it is about future generations. We’ve gotten a lot of video submissions about my kids or my grandkids and this is my why. So that’s how you become a zero hero, is you take at least one step. It only takes at least one step to start the journey on zero waste and it’s just been really exciting to collect those stories and it’s just been fascinating. The small changes that they’ve made or that, “Hey, we made this change at work and I didn’t have recycling in my community at home. So I’ve, you know, in the last five years, joined a council member to lobby to have recycling added.” I mean, it’s just been really exciting to see the change, not just within Cox, but that Cox employees are really out there making a large difference in their communities as well.

John: Meredith, not only do you have a very important and business that you manage over at Cox, but when I was learning about you before we did this episode, I also found out you’re the president of the board of Live Thrive Atlanta, which operates a center for hard to recycle materials. Can you explain what that is and how you got involved and why you got involved?

Meredith: Sure. Absolutely. So the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, there’s a lot of stuff when you think about, at your house, where would you take a lot of the items that you’re not really sure about? You probably shouldn’t throw them away, but you’re not sure what to do with them. So CHARM, the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, is a permanent location for all of those items that you’re not sure what to do with and then traditional recycling. So, for example, paints, tires, mattresses, batteries, light bulbs. So it’s a permanent location and that work is really, really important. Because we know that we want to keep these out of landfills and waterways, but there are only, I believe three right now, there could be more, of these centers around the country. So the one here in Atlanta is the second one and it is a really important resource in the community. CHARM actually just opened their second location here in Atlanta but they have over a million visitors a year of people dropping off materials that they want to keep out of landfills. So I got plugged into that work. It goes back to actually what we were saying in the beginning, going over to DeKalb farmers market to drop off my recycling. I’ve always felt that it’s really important that we think about materials critically and that we’re keeping them out of landfills in any way possible. So, that work is really fantastic. There’s a lot of really great parts of that program that are also about early childhood education. So educating the next generation about how to manage materials, how to think differently, to your point, about circular economy. So there’s a lot of arms to that and I have really enjoyed being a part of that organization for over 8 years, I think, at this point. I’ve been excited to see them grow and I’ve been excited to see more of these types of facilities open up around the around the country. We have a lot of materials and it’s important to find the right home for those.

John: That’s so true. Meredith you’ve had a story, career, really, for a young woman. Besides the pediatric work you did with the environmental burden of poor air on young babies and then at Delta Airlines, at Home Depot and now, of course, at Cox, what inspires you? Do you look for benchmarking inside of your industry? Do you look for inspiration outside of your industry? Personally, in terms of environmental warriors and leaders, where do you get your inspiration from on a regular basis?

Meredith: Sure. So I am really, again, lucky to be in a great sustainability network here in Atlanta. It is a powerhouse of people. So I have a lot of really great relationships and there’s a brain trust of us that meet pretty quarterly to toss around, not only challenges of what can we solve together, but really, to think about what’s pushing the needle on what’s next. So, I have a great group of Atlanta sustainability experts here, and there are, again, a lot of really great sustainability programs here in Atlanta. So there are a couple of quarterly meetings. If you are in Atlanta you should check out some of those luncheons in Atlanta sustainable Roundtable to problem-solve there. As we think about what’s next, I would say there’s a lot of really Innovative companies that I look to to see what are they doing in this space that are often in the CPGs, Consumer Product Goods space, and then how can I take that a step further as a different service line and what would that mean? Because, often, it’s something that hasn’t been done in our type of industry. So good cross-pollination, of course, here with Coca-Cola and some of those other places as those types of brands set goals. But for us, that’s my starting point and then I look to push that a little bit further.

John: I love it. What’s the most exciting project you’re working on now that we have the last half of ’24 come in front of us and, of course, ’25 coming up? You’ve swung this thing from 9 to 92, which is just still an 83 percent swing and anything in this world is massive and usually impressive. What are you working on now that you’re allowed to talk about, that you’re super excited about?

Meredith: Charge [?]. So, one of the things that I’m really excited about and that we’re working on, that gets me excited about that circular future is we are starting to problem solve some of our materials with businesses that Cox actually owns. So, for example, Cox owns a company called Nexus Circular, which is a plastics paralysis company. So, we have a couple of really exciting pilots going that are taking materials from other Cox businesses, that we’ve been looking for a home for for a while, and we’ve gotten positive results that they can go to Nexus Circular to be recycled. So we are in the process of figuring out how do we do this at scale? Then, is there any opportunity for Nexus to then close the loop actually with the supplier of that material? So we are working on our first truly circular project. I’m even more excited that it’s all within the Cox family. So I’m really excited about that one. I hope that I could have a positive story and result to tell you next year about that.

John: Wow. Of course, you’re always welcome back on the Impact Podcast. As you know, this is just a journey we’re on with regards to sustainability and waste recycling reduction and there’s no finish line. So the fun part is being able to share the continued journey of great people like you representing iconic brands like Cox and the continued improvements and success that you get to have. For our listeners and viewers out there that want to find Meredith and all of her colleagues at Cox and the important and impactful work they’re doing in recycling and waste reduction, please go to coxenterprises.com. Meredith Lindvall, it’s been, not only a joy and pleasure to host you today on the Impact Podcast, but I want to say thank you so much. I’m so grateful to you and all your colleagues at Cox for making the world a better place.

Meredith: Thank you, John.

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