George Bandy, Andersen Corporation’s Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, has more than 25 years of leadership experience in the sustainability space, working across a wide variety of industries, including sustainability leadership roles at Amazon and Mohawk Industries. Most recently, he served as chief sustainability officer at Darling Fibers, a polyester chip and fiber manufacturer, where he stewarded the company’s commitment to nature-positive, carbon neutral, recycled, bio-based, and next generation biodegradable products and the circular economy.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today George Bandy. He’s the Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Andersen Corporation. Welcome, George, to the Impact Podcast.

George Bandy: Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here, John, and honored and privileged and humbled to be on your show today with your listeners.

John: Well, the feeling is mutual, George, and before we get talking about everything in sustainability and everything that you’re doing with your colleagues at Andersen Corporation, I’d love for you to just share a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up, and how did you get on this very interesting and fascinating, and impactful journey that you’re on?

George: Hey, John. Thank you so much, man. I grew up in the booming metropolis of Opelika, Alabama, which is a small town between Auburn and Tuskegee. Super excited to grow up there. Grew up as a person who watched his grandfather and grandmother till a farm and work from the land and understand the connectivity to nature. I think that’s where my humble beginnings connecting to sustainability really began. My father was the House of Representatives for the state of Alabama, who passed a few years ago. He actually filed a lawsuit against the state to create district lines to redistrict the state of Alabama back in 1994. Won that, and actually won that seat, and he passed in that seat. My mother is a seamstress. She’s still living and retired in Opelika, Alabama. Super excited about the way I grew up. I think it kind of catapulted me into understanding the importance of being connected to nature, watching my grandparents and my parents do their thing. I went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, graduate. Dr. King’s a proud graduate. Spike Lee, Samuel Jackson. I’m sure some people out there recognize Morehouse, and while I was at Morehouse, one of the faculty members suggested to me that I have a unique skill set of connecting nature with business, and suggested that I look at that as an opportunity for a career. I did so. I went to Iraq and served in Desert Storm in 1990. I was in the reserves, came back, finished up my coursework, and then took a class called “The Natural Step out in Sausalito,” California, which was a framework of thinking about sustainability. While in that class, I met some amazing men and gentlemen by the name of Brian Yeoman, John Pareto, and Reeves Taylor, who’s now an architect at Gensler. While in that particular course, understanding this connection between sustainability and life, they actually hired me to come to work as the sustainability officer at the University of Texas, Houston, which is like, there’s no way I could have picked this career. So the journey was amazing. The people who taught that class were people like Amory Lovins, Janine Benyus, Paul Hawken, [crosstalk].

John: All the OGs, all the sustainability OGs.

George: All the OGs. John Picard, the birthplace of sustainability, Ray Andersen.

John: Oh, Ray. Ray was on my show years ago. Ray was on my show. And by the way, so was Dr. King’s son. [inaudible] I’m a huge fan. Wait a second, just before we even go on, so you grew up an Alabama fan?

George: Yes, sir, [inaudible].

John: You’re roll-tied all the way.

George: Yes, sir. Roll-tied.

John: Just wanted to get that clear also.

George: Blood in, blood out, brother. You can’t grow up in that area and not be [inaudible].

John: No, [inaudible]. So you really were immersed with some of the greatest names in sustainability, who really started this whole movement.

George: Honored. It was a privilege to be around those people. Kat Gray, who was one of the founders of the Natural Step organization. There’s a list of people. I probably left off some people that are key to my growth and my movement, but just was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I feel like God doesn’t make mistakes, and He placed me on this journey in early time. I was fortunate to get the role as a sustainability. I really learned on the job at UT Houston Health Science Center and then expanded that across the university system. While I was there, I had the privilege to participate in the President’s Council for Sustainable Development under the Clinton administration. When I was there, I met Ray Andersen. Ray Andersen then recruited me to come to work for Interface back in 1999. So I worked 16 years while Ray launched his program at Interface, understanding sustainability, working on the plant floor, recognizing the reason for savings, actually pulling landfill gas to power a manufacturing facility. These were innovative things that I had the privilege to sit at the feet of leaders who gave me an opportunity to do great work. Ray passed, of course, and we inherited a new CEO. The CEO didn’t have the same kind of appetite for sustainability. In that era, if you didn’t have sustainability or some key leaders who were really interested in sustainability, it was really difficult to get a lot of meaningful work done. After working at the high level with Ray, I decided to move over to Mohawk, which was the largest flooring company for residential during that time, and work with them on the elimination of PFAS and plastic bottle recycling. So, I had a tremendous career in between the two. I also was elected at body at large as the chairman of the United States Green Building Council. I still serve as chairman of GBCI today, who oversees LEED, WELL, Living Building, and some of the other certifications as part of their process. Actually, Greenbuild’s coming up. Shout out to Greenbuild, November 4th through 7th in L.A. I took that career platform there, and I wanted to see if my expertise around sustainability could permeate beyond just built interiors and built environment materials. So, I had an opportunity to work with Kara Hurst at Amazon, became the director or the head of circular economy for Amazon for a stint in time there, and did some amazing work with them on end-of-life disposition for materials, worked on the Alexa project, did some really cool stuff, got a chance to meet some amazing people, and was able to substantiate that the principles that I understood around the natural step of sustainability catapulted to multiple different types of venues. And then I was in this hiatus of Amazon is a very high-paced, hectic, high-travel job. At that moment, I wanted to recognize some different things that were important to me in my life, and along comes a couple of opportunities. There was an opportunity with an aviation organization that wanted to recruit me to do sustainability, but I didn’t want to learn about aviation parts. And then there was this great company called Andersen, who reached out and asked me if I would consider coming and interviewing for their CSO role. I met Chris Galvin, Brandon Berg, and the leadership team over there, and it was an amazing opportunity. They had a great culture. Synergies were aligned, and I had the privilege of really stepping into a new role. It was their first time creating a Chief Sustainability Officer position. The other thing that was attractive is that they were a privately, family-owned company, which also contributed to the culture and the long-term strategic approach to looking at sustainability, rather than the quick-return, short approach to delivering on sustainability. It’s been an amazing match made in heaven. It’ll be a year coming up next week, actually, that I’ve been at Andersen, and we’ve been able to do some really cool things and have a significant impact so far. The team there is amazing, and they’ve been very welcoming and receptive to the opportunities in front of them. I’m looking forward to having some more impact as we keep moving forward.

John: Kara Hurst, by the way, is another common friend of both of ours. She’s a lovely woman, wonderful [crosstalk].

George: Amazing.

John: She’s done a great job over at Amazon.

George: [inaudible].

John: What a storied career. You’ve got some amazing brands in your rearview mirror, but now you’re at Andersen. For our listeners and viewers who are not familiar with Andersen, they can find George and his colleagues and all the important work they’re doing at andersenwindows.com. Now, Andersen has over 13,000 employees, and you’re the country’s largest window and door manufacturer, actually in North America, beyond just the country. In North America, the largest window and door manufacturer. So, you’re another leading brand.

George: [inaudible]. I’m honored, I’m privileged to be there.

John: So, you and I know, George, given all your experience, and what a fascinating background. Vice President means one thing; Chief Sustainability Officer means another. You and I know it could be read very narrowly, your mandate, or very wide. Now you’re almost there a year. What does your mandate look like, and what rolls up to you in terms of initiatives and vision to accomplish sustainability at Andersen?

George: The opportunity is very wide. Fortunately, they’re giving me a lot of rein to create the pathway for sustainability within Andersen. Right now, we’re focusing on the low-hanging fruit. I always look at the low-hanging fruit, and the most challenging work is zero waste. Anything that’s not going toward quality, product, delivering excellence, durability, or sustainability in a product is waste. When there’s wasted time, wasted product, wasted effort, wasted energy, all of those things contribute toward that. So, we’re really narrowly focused this year on getting alignment on these different pillars of success for sustainability. Zero waste has been what we’ve been focused on, and also renewable energy and energy efficiency within the organization, because if we lower those particular things, it brings essential value over the long haul for the organization. You create a pathway of success that generates more revenue and more to the bottom line, for sure. There’s a lot of savings. There’s also a lot of opportunity for you to leverage efficiencies within those things and create circular economies within the projects and products that we make. So, we’ve been really focused on that, more than half a million dollars of savings in the time that we’ve been there already. I’m super excited about some other things that are going to be coming our way. Renewable energy opportunities, working with Xcel on some collaborative partnerships to lower our energy and also reduce our carbon footprint at the same time. So, there’s a lot of great stuff that we’ve already kicked off. We had an amazing Earth Day to get ourselves familiar with all the people who are at Andersen and the excitement and pride around our sustainability efforts. I’ve been working with the leadership team on creating some strategic approaches on how we want to move forward as we get ready for our Project 2031, which is to grow our company significantly. Part of that growth is also eliminating all the waste that comes with that level of growth and creating circular economies that contribute to the bottom line in sufficient ways. I think that sustainability sometimes gets viewed as only the economic, or only the environmental, or only the social. All three of those have to work in concert in order for them to be successful. We want to show the economic value and also demonstrate the environmental value because, in business, you have to be able to demonstrate all three in order to be successful at this level.

John: So true. What’s the flip side of waste diversion? It’s the procurement side. How much have you worked with the procurement side to make sure it aligns with what you’re doing and harmonizes on the diversion side?

George: We’ve been having some conversations, we’re strategically getting on the front side of that. You know, like I know, there are things like EPR, there’s California 261 and 253. All of these things are coming down the pipe, and I think that states are going to inherit them more. I think that some of the challenge with that is that some of the products they’ve included in that process probably should be excluded because they haven’t really thought about the impact on those, because they impact the built environment in strategic and significant ways. It’s going to increase some costs to the customer if it’s not managed appropriately. We’re looking at it as an opportunity for us to improve our packaging, improve our processes, to improve things internally to be able to provide more solutions for customers. Plus, our biggest customer is Home Depot, so we want to make sure that we continue to leverage those types of relationships to be as advantageous and strategic as possible. We’re addressing some of those issues and also thinking about the broader scope of what’s to come. As you begin to create these solutions, you’ve got to start thinking outside of the box, looking around the bend to think about what could be coming. Of course, European legislations are always the ones that lead on the front side, and 5 or 6 years later, they end up landing in the U.S., as you well know. So, we’re trying to look around the corner and see some of the things that could become challenges and address them from the inside out, and at the same time addressing that zero-waste goal, those energy-efficiency goals, and renewable energy where applicable. And then also change the culture and start educating people why sustainability is important, office culture, manufacturing culture. As you begin to do those things, you begin to bubble up lots of different seeds of sustainability that sprout into plants of sustainability that grow into trees of sustainability that cast shade across the organization in different ways and bring value, as you well know.

John: I should have asked you this up front, but I’m going to circle back now. When you were hired from Amazon and you had this opportunity, you had multiple opportunities, obviously, like you said, but well deserved, and you chose Andersen. Were you their first Chief Sustainability Officer?

George: Yes, it was the first one [inaudible]. So, I feel like there’s a badge of honor, but there’s also, as my father used to tell me, “With that badge of honor comes the challenge of courage.” You have to have the courage to step out, make some decisions, and also have some impact that’s significant. One of the things I’m doing now is really sharing with the team. I think that I’ve got a lot of experience, and so part of my responsibility is building the team and the culture around the team so that they become significant contributors and individual contributors, and look for ways to innovate and create sustainability models across the organization, and then be able to share those things in high-level ways with the leadership team and the board of directors, so they can be strategically astute around some of the decisions that we make moving forward to become a better, more effective, sustainable organization. I’m not just looking to become the most sustainable organization within our industry. I’m looking to become the most sustainable organization within all business, and that requires us to do some very strategic, but also aggressive things, to make some decisions to move the organization in the right direction so we can be recognized for the work that Andersen has already done. Andersen has been committed to the environment, and their culture has been based in the environment. Their inception with Mr. Andersen was surrounded by the environment and the way that he built those companies and labored to create the way Andersen windows are built and the durability of those particular products that he suggested back in that time, and that has cascaded over and over again into where this organization is now. I’m just the person that’s grabbing the baton to try to see if we can carry it a little bit further and make sure that we have this appropriate impact that we need to.

John: That’s so interesting. I’ve been doing this show 17 years or so. Years ago, of course, I would interview people, and there was not even people named Chief Sustainability Officers back then. They were all different types of titles and all sorts of interesting things. Then I started interviewing more Chief Sustainability Officers, and they were all first-time; there was a new role at that company because they never had it before. It’s so fascinating. Legendary, you’ve learned and worked with legendary figures, like you said, Ray Andersen, now Kara Hurst, and many others. How daunting was it for you on the first day to come into that proverbial clean page, that clean whiteboard, and literally, it’s all you? It’s all you now. You weren’t inheriting someone else’s mantle or torch; this was all you. Was it scary but exciting at the same time?

George: No, John, to be quite honest, I tell people this all the time. When I came there, there was lots of incredible initiatives already going on because. I don’t think anyone in any organization says, “Hey, I want to go here and do the wrong thing for the environment,” or, “I don’t want to do the right thing.”

John: [inaudible].

George: I think it was more of acknowledging the work that was being done. There was an amazing group of people that were there, some significant leaders, and recognizing the stuff that they were doing. The Six Sigma team had done some great stuff, the leaders in the plant had done some great stuff, the small but mighty sustainability team had done some incredible stuff. It was recognizing those things, putting them on the board, and then saying, “Where’s the best value for the organization early on? How do we set the precedent for what it is that we want to do? How do we create a business imperative for the work that we’re doing and be able to demonstrate that in ways that leaders can see? And then, how do we build a culture underneath that that allows our organization to continue to grow?” Once you begin to put those things into pillars of success and start building your team out and then equipping people to be successful, it becomes contagious. Andersen has always been a leader in sustainability. It’s just now becoming one of those formalized acknowledgements, and we’re putting it in a framework where people can actually see it. So, I won’t take any credit. I feel like I’m just an assembler of greatness and also of the leaders that have come before me in this particular role, and I’m trying to put it in a format where we can be recognized for the work that we’re doing and also challenged to continue to innovate and create solutions that please our customers and also accelerate our efforts toward becoming a more efficient and innovative solution for our customers.

John: Will it be reported in your annual report, Andersen’s annual report? Will there be a section on sustainability?

George: I took a year off from our report because what I wanted to do was set a baseline and then reinvent our impact report, so it’ll be a sustainability impact report. I think it’ll be coming out probably in 2026. We wanted to get a good understanding of the data. I think one of the things that’s critically important, especially for leaders in this time and day, is how do we get our arms around the data and then accurately depict to the customers and to future customers what that looks like for them. One of the great examples, I think, of what we haven’t done is we’ve sold a lot of windows and doors. One of the things we haven’t done is measured how much our windows and doors impacted greenhouse gas reduction. How much has it impacted energy efficiency? How much has what we’ve placed out there with the efficiency of reducing energy costs to our customers by helping to seal their envelope? How much of that is attributed to our work? Those are some of the stretch goals and larger things that we want to begin to look at, how we can actually quantify that so our customers can see the significance. I think the other thing is that people haven’t recognized that durability and efficiency are also qualities of sustainability. The window that you don’t have to replace for 75 years is the best window that you can have, because now you have a window that provides you the type of efficiency and effectiveness that you need, and the durability that you need in order to be in your home for an extended period of time. It should be two generations’ worth of work. I think that’s what I like to say. They talk about the seventh generation as the way that it should be working for, so I think that we should continue to try to level up to get to the place where our windows are much more durable and where they provide those types of solutions for an extended period of time. In 125 years that Andersen has been around, they’ve done a really good job. I’ve seen some windows come out of some old homes that are still in pretty good shape, so I’m proud of the organization that we’re currently doing the type of work that’s commensurate with who we are as an organization.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got George Bandy with us today. He’s the Vice President, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Andersen Corporation. To find George and his colleagues and all the work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.andersenwindows.com. George, what’s happening with the rise of AI? Does the rise of AI help accelerate your efforts and enhance them? Does it also help operationally at Andersen? How much is AI becoming integrated into the DNA of Andersen?

George: I think we just started looking at some of those implications. I think that there are some challenges that have been recognized with AI and its stress on the community and the environment in terms of how much energy it requires to run some of the things that they’re doing. I think that the value it brings also accelerates the type of information that can catapult the types of solutions that can be brought about. I think some of our leaders in IT have begun to explore how Andersen wants to partake and participate in those types of activities. I think organizationally, some of the things that we’ve been able to do to try to think about how we put our positioning related to that type of information, how we leverage that into specific parts of the organization to advance things that we need to advance, and to get information that we need to get. I think that the jury’s still out on some of the stuff that we’re going to be able to do, but in sustainability, it’s been really good to see some accelerated conversations related to AI and its connection to sustainability. A lot of the work that’s going on with being able to answer solutions and come up with things a little bit more effectively as we move out in the future to get some type of understanding around some things and gather data relatively quickly, but if you know, like I know, when I came into this industry, it was three-ring binders, and you used them to create information, and people had the Palm Pilot and Apple IIe computers that we played Frogger on. The iPhone was like AI for me, so that whole graduation gift of being able to move into that direction. So, I think that this is just another thing that we’re having to adjust to and look at the speed and the rapidness of availability of information, and filtering through that information is going to be some of the challenge; what’s real and what’s not real based on some of that [inaudible]. So I think you can also look for some opportunities to be successful. I always like to look at the optimistic side of being able to leverage things to the value of the organization rather than to the detriment.

John: Makes sense. I never thought about the greater emissions that windows can gain the user, the buyer of those windows or doors. That’s fascinating. As part of what you’re going to do, also create internally an analysis of your great products versus your competitors and how much emissions your products save versus your competitors down the road.

George: Yeah, for me, I think it’s critically important to move the entire industry up. I think that we have an obligation and we have a commitment to move the entire industry, but what I think also is that the durability connected with our efficiency models is only as good as the envelope. We’re the only entrance and exit from the envelope, so we have to begin to think about what our envelope pedigree becomes, who we begin to be viewed as as an envelope participant, how we begin to demonstrate our value in different ways. We already demonstrated from our durability, our effectiveness, our diversity of product, our ability to be able to accommodate customers, how we leverage in terms of the builders that we currently work with on residential and multifamily types of housing. We’ve already demonstrated that. I think that we’ve got to level that up and be able to communicate the sustainability attributes, the certifications, and what they mean, the indoor air quality types of certifications; firehouse, those are types of things that [inaudible]. All of those things that we know kind of give you integrity as it relates to the movement related to sustainability in the built environment. And then sometimes you have to communicate that in ways where it’s like newspaper-ready. So sometimes we talk over people. Now, one of the biggest things I try to educate my team on is when you’re speaking to a customer, you have to leverage your relationship with the customer in language that they could understand. So, starting out talking about the different biokinetics of how things move in sustainability, in connection to biophilic design and those things, like, you glass people over. I think that helping them to understand, number one, this is going to help lower your energy bills at your particular location; number two, it’s going to reduce the type of indoor air quality issues that you may be having; number three, the product’s going to last a long time. It’s going to be a durable product that performs inside of your home. Number four, these are all sustainability attributes and sales techniques that we use. And then you can level up to, by the way, did you know that this product, a triple pane, surpasses what Energy Star ratings might actually call for, and it begins to increase and make your window more efficient as it relates to your home? By the way, did you know the connectivity between this door and this window with your Nest? If you have the window, door, and your nest, the nest can only measure how good your drafts are. How much you leave the door, you got a great nest, but you got the back door open, you’re only chilling outside. So, those are the kind of things that you begin to share with the customer in terms of value and commonplace kind of language that you actually do with those customers. And then you start looking for some of the things that we do with our products. We’ve been the Energy Star partner, we’ve got the Home Depot Eco Awards. We’ve done some amazing things with our partners. As we expand and build on those relationships, we want to continue to be leaders in this space and continue to have the type of impact that we should have while educating our customers and taking them on the sustainability journey with us.

John: See, that makes so much sense what you’re saying, George, but that comes from an OG of sustainability like you, has the wisdom because of the journey you’ve been on to understand how you have to really connect the stuff that you’re working on sustainability, and make it relatable to the man or woman on the street. Like you said, energy and emissions, and not getting into the technicalities, but making it fully relatable. What are other key trends that are shaping sustainability in housing now that we should be all aware of and get excited about?

George: Yeah, there’s a few things that are out there. There’s reducing energy consumption, both types of housing, including smart home integration and passive house design. Those are things that you’re starting to see. Renewable energy integration, solar and other renewable sources becoming more accessible, more cost-effective in terms of residential properties. Water conservation and management solutions that optimize water usage from rainwater harvesting to plumbing systems that are a little bit more dramatic. Eco-friendly materials, circular construction; you’re starting to see more and more of that. The rise of sustainable building materials, like recycled, low-carbon, biodegradable products, along with circular construction methods to reduce waste. So, you have carbon-neutral and net-zero homes that you’re starting to see become manufactured. Shift toward carbon-neutral developments. You start to see a little bit more green building certification insights that grow into green building; LEED, WELL, Energy Star, Living Building, those are all things that we’re starting to see more of or hear more of. Community and social sustainability: how neighborhoods are evolving. So some communities that are like golf cart communities, where they don’t even have vehicles, the vehicles are parked in the parking lot, and they’ve got a community where they only use golf carts in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the neighborhood. I think you’re starting to see more sustainable design in homes. It used to be just going clear-cut that neighborhood and then put this small twig out front, and then increase the amount of people in the space. Of course, that’s not sustainable because you got more people, so you got more carbon dioxide, which is what we breathe out, and you need more trees to handle that carbon dioxide to turn it back into something that we can use with the process of photosynthesis. We’re starting to navigate and build communities within the landscape of the way nature provides rather than against it. So, I think that there’s a lot of great things that are beginning to happen, and I think that people are becoming more efficient in a way that they’re designing homes to be better incubators. One of the things that I really do love about Andersen Windows and Doors is I like the big windows, the sliding glass windows, the windows that open up doors that connect you with nature. One of the things that I feel like we’re losing in this particular environment is people are inside and they don’t have a connectivity to nature. My grandmother used to sit on her porch, and she could tell you almost five hours before it was going to rain. I sat and I listened to her one day, and if you’re very careful and you really pay attention, the only people that don’t recognize when a storm is coming is us, humans. Every other creature stops. The birds are no longer out. The squirrels, you can’t see them. You don’t see hummingbirds and bees. You never see them in a storm. I always tell people, when you look at tornadoes, hurricanes, you know what you never see? Animals caught up in the storm because they got enough sense to go hide. We’ve lost our connectivity to nature.

John: [inaudible].

George: There’s a great book that I read called “The Last Child in the Woods” that really speaks to the fact that by us incubating ourselves inside and not getting outside and understanding how winds change, how temperature changes, how climate drops before it rains, and how you can look at nature and see some of the things that you need to see in order to be able to predict that. I think that having these bigger windows gives people the opportunity to have that connectivity to nature and have that connectivity to biophilic design. The new corner windows that we’ve designed to open up spaces for people to be able to see out, I think that adds value to people in different ways that we don’t understand. My grandma, one of her favorite sayings, was, “The best idea was never created, son, behind a desk in a cubicle. The best ideas are always created with somebody out in nature, or someone doing something connected to nature. That’s where innovation happens.”

John: She’s right. That wisdom is good for time immemorial. That’s true. That was true in her generation. It’s true in our generation. That’s really great advice. George, I have the unique opportunity, because of this platform of Impact, to interview wonderful and wise people like you. One of the key trends I’m hearing of recent times, what’s being left behind is this alphabet soup of what have become controversial or over-politicized terminologies, such as ESG, DEI, and so many others. People are focusing on just circularity, net zero, or net neutral, sustainability as a whole. Those are the terms that have now, again, risen back to the top and seem to be getting the most energy. Another word or term that I’m hearing over the last six months that folks are focused on is materiality. What does materiality mean for you and your great colleagues at Andersen with regards to sustainability and the materiality of sustainability to the core business of what you do?

George: I think that materiality and circularity are connected, for sure. I think that one of the things that we’re beginning to look at is how much of our material actually is recycled within the process to create a circular economy that demonstrates circularity, so you maximize the material waste. In nature, waste becomes food. All we’re trying to do is mimic what nature does really well. Learning from that, there are things like wood that we regrind up that becomes sawdust that goes back into other products. There’s plastic polymers that we recycle and regrind to put back into other products to make our fabrics products. There’s other things that we do to try to keep these things inside of a technical loop. Even when we can’t keep up in our technical loop, we look for solutions that extend the life of the product so we don’t have to send it to the landfill. Landfill diversion and avoidance is capital gain, because what happens is it’s money that you’re not paying to destroy stuff in the landfill, and you’re not penalizing Mother Nature. One of the things that I always like to use is: it’s not okay to privatize the wealth and then socialize the risk. Privatizing the wealth, making products, and then socializing the risk, leaving materials in the landfill for other generations to have to deal with, is something that we have to begin to get a better balance on.

John: You’re right.

George: Take, make, waste was the old industrial format. I think take, make, and reintroduce, or create circular economy, or generate wealth, or find solutions. There are a lot of recycling systems that are out there that are beginning to use these products in different ways, where they don’t have to go into the landfill, and those tipping fees are going up, and the more we can avoid them, the better off we’ll be. I think, in the same note, the more we start to look at the products that we select and how we can keep them in a technical loop, or how we can keep them in a natural loop to feed our systems, the better equipped we’ll be to be a long-term solution and get another 125 years out of Andersen.

John: I love it. When I started my sustainability journey and running the company that I run in the technology space, about 80 OEMs that we work with didn’t have a design for sustainability division. Now, they all do. Now, they come into our facilities to do time studies and do all sorts of studies on how they can make their products more recyclable, more circular. Is that something that goes on now at Andersen? Is there a design for sustainability, or some analogous type of division at Andersen that’s looking, like you said, how to take your end products and recycle them back circularly into our economy?

George: Andersen’s been doing that for a while. I’m starting to get my arms around some of the pillars that they’ve been working on. I think Brandon Berg, Bob Wolf, and the team there have been doing a really good job on the RD&I side to begin to look at some of these things. We’re already trying to look at some of the future of some of these products, but they’ve done some really good things. I think that one of the things we’re beginning to do now is: how do we quantify that, the work that’s been done, and be able to measure it in systems that people can communicate about, so people really understand the leverage of what we’ve been able to do. That’s been the work so far: getting the data right, understanding how many times this gets reground. Does this become post-consumer after round two? Does it become after three? What else do we use? What other products can we use? What other outlets do we have? Can we continue to put these in other built environment products? Can we provide a solution for another customer so we can generate some revenue on that material? These are things that we’re beginning to look at and become more equipped at as we move forward. In a year’s time, we’ve done a pretty good job. We’re also looking at, of course, the industrial symbiosis and material exchange, and expanding material reuse and recycling initiatives. Andersen sites are finding new ways to recycle wood, vinyl, fibrates, and other materials that we would typically put in the waste or in the landfill. I think the company is also utilizing returnable packaging and material reuse in certain particular aspects. A lot of these things are coming from suggestions from the plant floor. We’re engaging people on the plant floor because they’re closest to the materials that give us some different things. I’ll give you one example of that. We were there. I may have been there maybe five months. The team was working on a project on one of the lines to try to eliminate waste and reduce the amount of waste that we had on that particular line. They went to another discovery area that we were exploring. There was a gentleman that was there, I can’t remember his name, but he had been collecting this metal for years, I think. Come to find out, he had collected enough cobalt to give us $50000 that we could sell to a metal recycler. Those are the types of sustainability stories that build. They get lost in the shuffle because people look at it, “Oh, it’s only $50000,” but the diligence that this gentleman had to not want to dispose of this waste is the culture and the altogether spirit at Andersen. This is what Andersen has been built on. I’m just trying to harness and capture that and put it in language for the world to see. The work that’s being done with each individual has been incredible. The other story I’ll tell is: there was a young lady who wasn’t working for me at that time, but she is now. When I came to visit Andersen, I went to visit another company, then I flew up, and I was with Chris Galvin and Brandon Berg, and we were walking through the plant. There was a board over here with lots of products on it; pieces of material that go into Andersen products. It said: “Sustainable Recycling.” I asked, “Hey,” this young lady just walked by, “Hey, can you tell me what this is about?” She explained what they were doing, how we were trying to look at these materials differently. Now, she, of course, is working for me. Lindsay did an amazing job. I tell people this all the time. She was one of the biggest contributors to me going to Andersen, because I left there thinking, “Man, this is amazing to have somebody who’s disconnected. I hope everybody else is.” We just keep being contagious and keep educating people.

John: You said at the top of the show, George, you’re trying to plant the seeds that become little sproutlings that become trees, that create shade, that just benefit everyone. Really, one of your passions, it seems like, with your great personality and open thinking and history, is taking the 13000-plus employees at Andersen and turning them into sustainability evangelists and ambassadors. Now, you’ve got something. You’ve multiplied the opportunity in so many ways. How many people are like that gentleman who’s on the floor that think, “Well, in what I’m doing, I can do this, and we can save this much. We can make this much of a difference.” You start having that all throughout the organization, and you’ve got some compelling stories then, and real evidence that sustainability is not a net negative cost. It’s a real asset to the company.

George: Even beyond that, just imagine if they take it home. They go home, and they expand that. People who weren’t recycling at home now see a value in recycling. People who weren’t doing tree planting at home, start planting trees at home. You become a multiplier. Our customers begin to think about it differently. Sometimes we never see the end result because it’s not right in front of us, but the impact that we could have, we should not consider it just our own. One person plants a seed, another person waters it, and somebody else fertilizes, and God adds the increase. So, I just want to be one of those people that just does my part, and hopefully we can see the manifestation, because it’s far too late and far too bad for us to be moving slow. We should be aggressively pursuing the opportunities if we just look around and see some of the challenges that we face in the environment.

John: Amen. Talk a little bit about, you’re there almost a year now, and another week it’s a year. So, a year, you’ve been baptized. You know what’s going on now, George. You’re getting out of bed now in the morning. What initiatives, or what two or three initiatives, have you the most excited for the next year ahead?

George: Our challenge and our strategy around energy efficiency and renewable energy. I think the other one that excites me is the effort that we’re going to look at with the California emissions opportunity: to look at our logistics team and try to figure out some new, innovative, strategic ways to address both arms of our business, both the Renewal and the Andersen division business, and then asking our suppliers to begin to partner with us. So, which trucking companies might consider moving toward some electric vehicles or some different types of vehicles to reduce our footprint, as we begin to look at our Scope 3 emissions across the organization based on this particular opportunity. I think that also looking at diving deeper into our zero-waste opportunity is going to be critical. I think that the final thing for me is brand awareness. So people begin to recognize us for the leadership that we’re exemplifying, but also beginning to educate and have conversations with our sustainability marketing and leadership teams around how to communicate this to our customers more effectively. How do we share this more vividly with our customers so it’s not coming across as if we’re trying to talk about sustainability; it’s just embedded as a part of who we are, because it’s already being communicated that way. It’s just the way that we share things with our different customers at different levels because if you’re talking to an architect from Gensler or Perkins&Will, if you’re talking to a builder from Pulte, if you’re talking to a multifamily builder from another group, that conversation is different. It’s much more technical. What certifications will I meet? What types of certifications do you have? What’s the importance of this? How do we capture this? How does this impact my footprint? What’s the cost implication? That’s a different conversation. When you’re talking to a mom and dad across the table, where you’re trying to renovate a home, they want to understand, like, “Hey, we’re going to try to recycle this glass. We’re going to try to take these windows that were taken out of your home and use them back in a technical loop.” We’re starting now to pilot a glass recycling program, where the glasses we take out on the renewal side, we’re going to try to see if we can create a recycling system to bring all of those back. Imagine if we can cascade that across North America, what the impact of that would be, taking that glass out of the landfill, knowing how long glass stays in a landfill. I think that those are opportunities for us to begin to catapult the industry, but also show our leadership as it relates to Andersen, kind of beginning to make an impact within the customers that we serve and love, and show our relationships with.

John: Well, George, as you and I both know, we’ve both learned: sustainability has no finish line. It’s just [inaudible].

George: [inaudible].

John: It’s a journey. So I just want to say this to you: thank you today for your time. You’re always welcome back on. I want you to come back on to continue to share the ongoing journey in sustainability that they understand, because that kind of narrative is really important for our listeners and viewers to understand that there’s always more to do. It’s always more to do. So, for our listeners and viewers to find George and his colleagues and all the impactful work they’re doing in sustainability and beyond, please go to www.andersenwindows.com. George Bandy, your time, the generosity of your time, your wisdom, I’m so grateful. Even more than that, I’m just grateful for you, to you, for making the world a better place.

George: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

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