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John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good and we are absolutely so honored to have with us Erika Dickey-Nelson. She is the President and Founder of GoGreen Conferences. Welcome to Green Is Good. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Thanks for having me. John Shegerian: We are so honored to be here, so thank you again personally. The show is just wonderful to be able to be broadcast from here in downtown Seattle. The guests that you have here are just spectacular. One of the greatest conferences in sustainability we’ve ever been at. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Great. Thank you. John Shegerian: So thank you. For our audience members that haven’t had a chance to get to know you ever before, Erika, share a little bit, how did you even come to found this great organization and get excited about sustainability? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So my company, Social Enterprises, has always been doing large social cause events. John Shegerian: Yeah. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: We work with non-profits. But there was a real need for sustainability education way back in 2008. So we worked with the City of Portland. We met with them and they asked us, “What do you need from us to make this happen?” And so it was really truly a meeting of the minds between the public and private sectors. John Shegerian: And you started this in 2008? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: In 2008, in Portland. John Shegerian: Wow. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: It’s our eighth year in Portland. Our sixth year in Seattle. And we have been in Austin, Phoenix, New York. John Shegerian: And, in 2015, how many cities are you coming to this year? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: This year, we are focused on two, and that is primarily because of our client events such as Green Sports, Green Electronics Council. John Shegerian: Right. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: There are so many other events that we are doing that it has actually booked our schedule full so we haven’t been able to do any more GoGreens, but we are working on adding some new ones for next year. John Shegerian: Next year. For 2016. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. San Diego. John Shegerian: San Diego next year? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. John Shegerian: Still going back to Portland and Seattle again? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. Always in Portland and Seattle. John Shegerian: And for our audience members out there that want to go or attend one of Ericka’s amazing conferences, you can go to www.GoGreenConference.net. So now you’ve started it. Talk a little bit about your journey the last seven years since 2008 and sustainability. And how have your conferences grown and evolved, and what is your own take on sustainability over the last seven years? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Great question. So I think the main thing that we’ve seen – we’ve always had interest from the private sector. Businesses want to know about best practices around sustainability, so there’s always been an interest there. But what I think we’ve added – and it’s much more a 50/50 split now – is public sector leadership. The mayors, the city council members, the people that are actually leading our government come together with the businesses and we make sure that we have public sector representation on every session sitting with the business community so that we can see how they can work together to drive these initiatives forward. That is our main goal in life. We have to create action. John Shegerian: And I know the mayor is coming in a little while. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yeah, 30 minutes. John Shegerian: Right. So you put together these conferences. That’s a great point. For our audience members out there that get inspired and want to come to one of your conferences next, some of them – the speakers and the thought leaders there, big business, government, small businesses and other thought leaders, authors and other types of thought leaders. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yeah. Anyone who can address best practices around sustainability for business and the public sector. John Shegerian: So it’s really just a great conglomeration of people that are solution providers. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Exactly. John Shegerian: Working together to make the world a better place. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: And it is regionally focused so you’ll notice that all the companies here today are based in Washington State. John Shegerian: Wow. That’s a great point. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So that anybody from any of the other states can come and learn what Washington State is doing. John Shegerian: That’s right. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So each state we are in it is regionally focused. New York is focused on the Tri-State area. Oregon in Portland. So it’s a regional focus. John Shegerian: How has it evolved in terms of size in seven years? You are an entrepreneur really. You are an ecopreneur. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. John Shegerian: This is your ecopreneur gift to the world. How has it evolved in size and scope? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So it has actually held pretty steady, because it is a decision-maker audience, so literally CEOs from these small and medium businesses attend and then people who head up departments at larger organizations, so right around 500-600 since 2008. John Shegerian: Wow. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: It stays steady every time we do it. So really it’s truly just the right mix of people to actually create action around this. John Shegerian: That is so nice. And how many thought leaders come and are speakers? How many speakers do you have typically at each event? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Fifty to 60 for the day. John Shegerian: Fifty to 60. That’s a lot to curate though. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. And we usually interview 200 to get to the 50. John Shegerian: Wow. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So we make sure that their story really stands out. Because everyone here is a leader, so we have to make sure their story stands out as a case study before we put them on stage. John Shegerian: But even if you’re not a CEO of a company, you could come to one of your conferences. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Absolutely. John Shegerian: So, again, they can go to www.GoGreenConference.net and buy a ticket to come to the Portland conference. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. John Shegerian: Got you. Talk a little bit about issues that you like to focus on. How do you curate your issues and come up and keep it interesting and fresh for the world that is constantly evolving and the sustainability issues that we have that constantly need addressing? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So the number one thing is that we have a local expert advisory team. John Shegerian: Wow. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So, literally, King County is our big partner here, so we have 20 people from King County that really advise on topics that they are covering in their departments. In addition to private sector leaders. So we are getting a true mix from all the different industries, getting their expert opinion on what their issues are, that’s what we end up covering is based on the feedback from them. So we actually create an outline with that advisory team and then send a call-out to our huge business audience here in the States based on those ideas, and then, that’s how we craft such an amazing program. John Shegerian: So even though you are covering so many global issues of importance, you are keeping it very local with your advisory team and also with the thought leaders from the local community. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Exactly. John Shegerian: Wow. We’ve never been to a conference like this that is curated the way you’ve done this. Do you have competition in other regions across the United States? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Definitely. I mean there are a lot of global sustainability events like Green Biz. John Shegerian: OK. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So it covers a lot of the same topics we do. John Shegerian: OK. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: But they have speakers from all over the place, whereas we focus on the region that we’re in. John Shegerian: The region. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So when you are in New York you will see only speakers from New York, which of course those are global companies so it ends up being a global conference but a local audience. John Shegerian: How are you going to take it to the next level? Besides geography and next year hopefully adding San Diego and maybe other cities, how are you going to take it to another level in terms of, what’s your vision for GoGreen in the years ahead when you start thinking about a three- and a five-year plan? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: I think getting more cities on board, so really spreading it to the places that need it most. John Shegerian: Right. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Portland and Seattle are the choir. John Shegerian: Right. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: And there is a lot of action around greenness, so they don’t need it as much as, say, Phoenix. John Shegerian: That’s true. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Or other places that don’t have as much going on. John Shegerian: Great point. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So I think if we can spread our message a little farther to different cities that really need it. Maybe smaller cities would be a good thing. And I think too, for us, is as a company – Social Enterprises – industry-specific conferences around the higher education source industry like Green Sports Alliance and really supporting other conferences in this arena to focus on industries. John Shegerian: So your organization, Social Enterprises, is being hired by other organizations to run great events like this because you have got now the reputation in sustainability. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Exactly. Yeah. It’s essentially what we’re doing here at GoGreen but industry-specific. John Shegerian: Wow. And how many other events are you doing this year outside of the GoGreen? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So we are doing a total of about 12. John Shegerian: Whoa! Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Of this size. John Shegerian: One a month keeps you very, very, very busy. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. John Shegerian: Across the country. As we know, the sports one is in Chicago. And when is the Portland event coming up? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Coming up in October. John Shegerian: October? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So October 6. John Shegerian: October 6. So if you want to buy tickets to the October GoGreen Conference, that is www.GoGreenConference.net. And can you give a little sneak preview on some of the issues you are going to be tackling there? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yeah. So the number one thing in Portland – and this is really based on government and private sector in part – social equity and diversity will be our theme for the third year running. John Shegerian: Social equity and diversity. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: So we will have at least one track of topics dedicated to social equity and diversity. Just like the session we had here. It’s fascinating. It’s a little bit of a complex topic area to cover so we’re really relying on the experts in those arenas to help us come up with the topics we should cover, but we will definitely have a focus and probably at least three to five sessions on those topics. John Shegerian: Got you. Any final thoughts for our audience members before we say goodbye and get you with the mayor? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: I would say we rely on input from our communities. So anyone watching this if you have ideas for things that we can cover, that’s what we want to know. What are we missing? New things that we did. Think out of the box to make incidents interesting and innovative so that people actually take action. John Shegerian: And for our city leaders that get to watch us, or city council members that get to watch us across the United States, are you taking also invitations to come to their city as well? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. We want to come to your city. John Shegerian: Big or small? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Big or small. John Shegerian: How about international? Do you have international aspirations? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. We would love that. John Shegerian: Really? Which way do you want to go first across the Atlantic or across the Pacific? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: I’m thinking Atlantic. John Shegerian: Atlantic? Ericka Dickey-Nelson: I think that’s probably the way to go. John Shegerian: Really? That is so interesting. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: There are some cities that I think would be really interested if we had the right contracts and commitment from the government, so it just depends on how willing they would be to support our efforts. John Shegerian: That’s so exciting. So October 6 in Portland. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: October 6. Yes. John Shegerian: We are going to be there with you. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Yes. Great. John Shegerian: We want you to be there with us, too, so you can go on www.GoGreenConference.net and you can be there as well. Ericka Dickey-Nelson, you are a sustainability and green superstar and truly living proof that Green Is Good. Thank you so much for inviting us here today. We are so excited to share the journey with you. Ericka Dickey-Nelson: Same. Thank you very much. John Shegerian: Thank you.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good, and we are so excited to have with us today Mark Rossolo. He is the Director of Public Affairs of UL Environment. Welcome to Green Is Good, Mark. Mark Rossolo: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here. John Shegerian: You know, Mark, we are in beautiful downtown Seattle today at the GoGreen Conference. Talk a little bit about why you are here and why this is important to showcase what you are doing at UL Environment. Mark Rossolo: Sure. Well, we are here because we support green activities in general. We operate globally, so we have got offices in China, we have got offices in Europe and then clearly we have got offices in North America. And we really support the use and application of green building practices, green purchasing, green electronics. We have got some hybrid vehicles here. All of these things, UL works behind the scenes to help test, certify and really provide the trust that these products, these activities are delivering on the green promises that they make. And that’s really what our role is. Is to ensure that when somebody says that this green purchasing practice, this green building, this green product will get you an environmental benefit, we are there to try to make sure that actually happens. John Shegerian: You are the Public Affairs Director there. Before we get talking about all the great work you do there, share your journey a little bit. Where did you get interested in green along the way and how did you get to this position to start with? Mark Rossolo: Sure. Well, I have got a little bit of a unique background from most of the people who are involved in sustainability. Mine comes from the policy side. So one of my first kind of “real” jobs was working for the Oregon State Legislature just as a legislative aid. John Shegerian: Ah. Mark Rossolo: And in that job working in the Oregon State Legislature, you can’t but get involved in green issues. Oregon is a very green state, and there are a lot of sustainability related things that come up throughout the legislative cycle. One of our big issues, for example, is urban growth boundary, which is a very political and a very policy-related issues but at its core it’s designed to ensure there are plenty of green spaces, plenty of parks – that sort of thing – and that our growth is being responsibly managed. So from there I really started to get into sustainability. I moved on and eventually started working for a very small public affairs firm, which also did some nonprofit management, and in that role, I helped run a green building nonprofit, where we tried to drive green building practices in the U.S. and we did that quite successfully. Then, from there, I moved on to a couple of other positions and eventually ended up with UL. John Shegerian: And where did you grow up? Mark Rossolo: I grew up in Elko, Nevada. A little mining town in northeastern Nevada. John Shegerian: Were your parents or was your family atmosphere or community green at all? Talk a little bit about that. Mark Rossolo: Yeah. I’m not sure I would call Elko the greenest place. I don’t even think we have recycling still. But we try. My parents are school teachers. My dad teaches high school and my mom teaches elementary school, so we were always as engaged as we possibly could be in a rural Nevada town. Now things are getting better, and there are people there that are trying hard, but there is still a long ways to go there and here and really everywhere. But it wasn’t a tent pole for me growing up. Gold mining was our big thing. John Shegerian: UL is out or Georgia, but you live yourself now in Portland, which is a very green and sustainable community. Mark Rossolo: It is. Actually, so UL itself is out of Chicago, Illinois. John Shegerian: Oh. OK. Mark Rossolo: And then our UL Environment, which is the business I work for, is out of Georgia. John Shegerian: Got you. Mark Rossolo: Then, yeah, I live in Portland, which we like to think we are one of the greenest cities, if not the greenest, in the world. We’ve got a lot of things, like our unique mix of public transportation is pretty revolutionary. We’ve got everything from light rail to buses to trains. We’ve got incredible bike paths and entire bike boulevards now. We are a very walkable city. When you move into a Portland city apartment or home, you get a compost unit to help you compost, taking care of your food scraps and your waste. So yeah, Portland has done a lot and I’m really proud to be from there because they have done a lot of great things. John Shegerian: Now we are going to talk a little bit about UL Environment. Can you share what UL Environment exactly does and then interrelate it with some of manufacturers that you work with? Mark Rossolo: Yeah. Absolutely. So as a step back, UL as a company was founded over a century ago to provide safety and protect human health. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: At the time, it was really founded when electricity was just coming into usage, and it came around about the time when people were starting to get nervous about this newfangled technology, and “Oh boy, if I am sitting in a room with the light bulb on, is it going to burn the room down?” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: So our company got started by helping develop test procedures that would in fact ensure safety within those buildings so that insurance companies could actually develop policies. John Shegerian: Ah. Mark Rossolo: Fast-forward a century now. We no longer worry when we are sitting in the room that these lights that are here, our cell phones when we plug in, we don’t worry that all of a sudden a fire is going to break out. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: And a lot of that is because of the testing and the protocols and the standards that we have put in place to ensure that we are identifying products that could potentially malfunction and we are getting the products that perform into the marketplace. Now we have got a new generation of safety and that new generation of safety is looking at things like volatile organic compounds that are in the air. Chemicals. What kinds of chemicals are going into a product? What kinds of chemicals could my baby potentially be exposed to if they put something in their mouth? Is my water safe to drink? Where does my food come from? When I put on this jacket where did it come from? Did the factory that it was built in – did the workers have adequate working conditions? Are they taken care of in a way? These are now the expanded definitions of safety, and so when UL as a company looked at kind of where the market of safety was moving, one of the big areas you identify is sustainability and is green. Now people are saying, “It’s not just enough for this to be safe from a fire perspective, but this product truly has to be safe from a ‘OK, are the chemicals in it not harming the indoor air of the building?’” For example, if I am sitting in here. am I going to be exposed to potentially asthma-inducing conditions? If I am eating something, I am potentially putting something bad in my body besides just the fat and cholesterol? John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: So UL what we do is we do a lot of certifications. We developed standards. And what the goal is – as I kind of mentioned in the beginning – we are trying to ensure that if somebody says, “OK, this product is certified for low chemical emissions” that it has actually been tested and it actually has low chemical emissions. If somebody is going in and saying “this cell phone is green, this is a sustainable cell phone” that there is actually a standard behind that, we’ve certified to it so people can say “it’s green because of X, Y and Z.” John Shegerian: Ah. Mark Rossolo: And so what we are trying to do is reduce the clutter around what is and what isn’t green and give people really the confidence of knowing that if I am taking this for this green attribute, it is what it says it is. It is going to perform like it says it’s going to perform. John Shegerian: So it’s not linear anymore. UL has basically become an ecosystem of certifications around all sorts of different products and services. Mark Rossolo: Absolutely. Yeah. We think of ourselves as the mark of trust, so that is really what UL seeks to provide is trust and credibility that if there is that mark on there, then whatever that mark represents you can make trust that that product is going to have that performance metric. So whether that is fire safe and it’s been tested for fire safety or whether that product has had a VOC emissions testing – for example – or a more multi-attribute green certification. And a lot of things in between. We do a lot of things around life cycle assessment, which is kind of looking at the cradle-to-grave aspect of a product so everything from raw material extraction to disposal. John Shegerian: Got it. So what are some of the challenges? If you are a manufacturer that is approaching you for certification around the issues of sustainability that you just mentioned, which are much broader now than they were 100 years ago, when the company was founded, which was much more lineal – “Let’s create a product and get it certified so it doesn’t burn the place down” – how, now, challenging is it for a manufacturer to have something certified in the sustainability arena? Mark Rossolo: Well, “challenging” is an interesting kind of way to phrase it, because there are a number of different things that can make it a challenge. John Shegerian: Yeah. Mark Rossolo: So one thing that could make it challenging is that if a manufacturer comes and says “we think our product is green because of these attributes.” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: And then if we go through a rigorous testing process, sometimes we will say, “Actually, it’s not.” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: “We need to change these things.” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: So then oftentimes the challenge is you have to go into your either manufacturing process and oftentimes into your supply chain and fix something in your supply chain to actually make it perform like you want it to perform. So that can be one incredible challenge. John Shegerian: Sure. Mark Rossolo: It’s figuring out where your issues may be and how to fix them. And we see this with a lot of companies where they genuinely want to do the right thing. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: They really do. They come to you and they say, “Look, we realize that this is the future.” You mentioned the Millennials flocking. We know Millennials are making purchasing decisions based on sustainability and green. And just wait until they’ve moved into later in life when they actually have buying power. Now that is going to be a big shift that companies see and so they want to do the right thing, but when you find something and you have to get into your complex supply chain, that can be really difficult. So that is one challenge. Another challenge is focusing on what the environmental attribute is that is most important to you and your key constituent or your consumers. John Shegerian: Great point. Mark Rossolo: And that is another area where it’s not “challenging,” but it can be confusing because what is important for, say, young mothers from sustainability or green-related is not the same as a Millennial. If you asked a young mother, “What is the most important attribute that a product must have,” she is going to say “safety.” “It keeps my baby safe. I don’t have to worry about if he or she accidentally puts that toy in their mouth that something harmful is going to come off. Or if the little bunny sleeping in the bed with them at night, there are not these chemical emitting.” So we’re talking about San Francisco. If you asked a young person in San Francisco “What is the biggest challenge in sustainability?” “Water.” They will say “water” all day long, because they are in the midst of a huge drought. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: The Governor of California just came out with a 25 percent water restriction. John Shegerian: That’s right. Mark Rossolo: So you are going to have a big water thing. Now if you go to somebody a little bit older, they may say “energy” because energy is forever. Then you’ve got climate change and all of these other factors. John Shegerian: So it’s knowing your client that you are marketing the product to in terms of finding their hotspot and what matters to them. Mark Rossolo: Absolutely. John Shegerian: Wow. Mark Rossolo: Understanding what is important. And really this gets to the other challenge, which is making this economically feasible and that’s one of the key challenges we see. In the past, we’ve almost seen this fight between environmental groups and business groups or corporations. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: This almost natural “you’re going to say one thing and I’m going to say another.” And we have got to get to a point where we are all working together as one. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: And we can’t treat a company saying, “Well, this has to be profitable for me” as a bad thing. It has to be profitable. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: If long term a company is doing all the right things but losing money, well, they are going to go out of business, and at the end of the day, we have done nothing to fix the problem. So we have to focus on, OK, targeting your constituents, what is most important? Eventually, do we want to do everything? Absolutely, we do. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: But we know from experience that that is not the best way. John Shegerian: Realistic. Mark Rossolo: That’s not realistic right now. So knowing what you are trying to do, marketing and being very specific about what it is you’ve done, having that credible mark behind it so that you can point to it and say, “Look, you are a young mother, chemical emissions are important to you. This was UL Greenguard-certified for low emissions,” drawing those lines. And then, hopefully, so you can see an increase in sales, so that your bottom line is lifted up, so that then you can go to your Board or CEO or whoever and say, “Hey. Look, when we got this certification this happened, let’s go do a water footprint now.” John Shegerian: “Let’s continue.” Mark Rossolo: “Let’s continue. Let’s work on waste” or something like that. John Shegerian: And for our audience that has just joined us, we have got Mark Rossolo. He is the Public Affairs Director for UL Environment. To find all of the great work that UL Environment is doing, please go to www.ul.com. Mark, so first of all as you described it so well, it’s an integrated relationship between you and the manufacturers that you work with. It’s a give and take. You are constantly giving them feedback. They are constantly trying to come back and – in theory – improve their products so they can meet your certification standards. Then, once they hit certain standards and certifications, then they want to continue the journey because they see the economic benefit for being green and being sustainable and go into other certifying opportunities that you offer. Mark Rossolo: Absolutely. Absolutely. It has to be a partnership. This whole thing has to be a partnership. Another thing that we do in addition to just the certifications is we actually help with the messaging in the marketplace. So we offer training. We go out and do a lot of education for architects and designers to help them understand, “OK, what do these certifications mean? How can they help me if I’m building a building?” We do a lot of work with purchasers. For example, I am on the Board of Directors for the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, which is a group that was formed – it has got a very long name, but SPLC was formed to increase green purchasing practices among institutional buyers. When you think about the huge footprint that an institutional buyer – so somebody who buys, let’s say, for a college. Somebody who buys for a city, a county, a state. Somebody who buys for the federal government. Somebody who buys for a large corporation. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: Just thinking about the millions of dollars at their fingertips of consumable good that they buy every day whether it’s chairs, paper, carpeting, vehicles, gas. John Shegerian: Unbelievable. Mark Rossolo: Yeah. John Shegerian: They are the people one the front end of this change. Mark Rossolo: They are the frontlines. John Shegerian: Wow. Mark Rossolo: And they are the ones with the [inaudible]. John Shegerian: So you give training for them on sourcing. Mark Rossolo: We do. Absolutely. John Shegerian: Wow. Mark Rossolo: And we try to be a partner of them, so with our customer who are the manufactures who come in, it’s “Let’s work together to get you a product certified. We have got standards and we have got a very rigorous certification process, and you’ll have to go through that.” But ideally once we get that, then “Let’s help you take your message to the marketplace.” John Shegerian: So someone can get certified, they can earn a certificate from you as being certified as a certified UL buyer or something of that nature? Mark Rossolo: No. So we don’t certify buyers. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: We don’t certify buyers. What we do is we go to the buyers and we just say, “Hey. Look you’ve got a purchasing policy that says this.” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: “If you add this language in, it will help you buy better products. It will help you ensure that.” John Shegerian: You just offer the training but you are not actually offering them some sort of certification. Mark Rossolo: Exactly. We don’t do buyer level certification. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: What we are trying to do is get them to understand the differences in a certified product with a certified green claim based on a credible standard or assessment process or whatever to just somebody who is coming in and saying, “Hey. This is green, because I say it’s green.” And that is a problem we’ve seen now. Since I’ve been involved in the sustainability movement, it’s been one of the biggest problems we’ve seen is unsubstantiated claims. People just saying, “This green because I say it’s green” or “We do this internal process so that makes it green,” but in reality we find that oftentimes that’s not the case. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: Whether they are intentionally misleading or not is one thing, but getting purchasers to understand that difference is a key tenant of what we try to do. John Shegerian: But once something is certified, do they have to keep coming back to you to have it recertified or is there a decertification process if someone changes their practices and you find out along the way? Mark Rossolo: Sure. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: Yes. There are certainly recertification processes. It’s going to depend on the standard that the certification is built on. Typical recertifications are going to be anywhere from one to three years, so you would have to get your product recertified, let’s say, every year. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: For some standards. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: Now if you fundamentally change your product – so let’s say there is a three-year recertification process, but you do a fundamental shift. That automatically triggers a new certification process. John Shegerian: Wow. Mark Rossolo: If you change your product, you have to get recertified because if you think about it – so one of our major certifications I mentioned earlier is called “UL Greenguard.” John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: Which simply is a VOC emissions certification program. So we can take everything from a full table and chairs to a small piece of rug or carpet, paint, anything that would inherently emit VOCs, we put them in a chamber and we test the chemicals that come off of it. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: So that certification takes a year to get a Greenguard certification. Now if you get your certification and then four months later you come up with a new innovative way to design your product but you have to change, let’s say, the adhesives that go into your piece of furniture well then you would have to come in and get that product retested because when you change a product’s substance like that it could change its profile of the VOCs that emit. So now you could be in a scenario where somebody could be saying “Hey, this is certified for low emissions,” but in reality it might be pretty high emissions, because they’ve changed something along the way. But all of that is going to be defined. The parameters are all defined in the standard that the certification is based off of. John Shegerian: And then when someone gets certified UL, then your logo is what they get to put on it right? Mark Rossolo: That’s right. John Shegerian: So this UL logo, which we all grew up with. Mark Rossolo: That’s right. John Shegerian: And this is what it means. Mark Rossolo: That’s right. Most people are very familiar with our logo but don’t actually know it. John Shegerian: That’s right. Mark Rossolo: The average U.S. household, I believe, the last study I saw that we did had about 80 to 85 UL-certified products in the house today. John Shegerian: Wow. Mark Rossolo: So everybody watching this or listening to this, you are inherently familiar with us. Just some people don’t know. John Shegerian: That’s right. Mark Rossolo: Unless you are in the building industry or the architect and design industry or the manufacturing industries, you don’t tend to know. But you do realize, “Oh yeah. I’ve seen that little U in the circle.” You just didn’t know what it meant. John Shegerian: And on our electronic products, most of them have ULs on them also? Mark Rossolo: From a traditional business of UL, absolutely. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: Pretty much all of them in the U.S. do because they have gone through some sort of fire, electrical shock testing and certification program. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: So for clarity’s sake, when you do see a logo on a product, that is indicating more of the traditional fire/shock safety test. John Shegerian: OK. Mark Rossolo: The UL logo, you would not see a UL Environment logo for sustainability on a product. You would see it on the packaging or the marketing materials, and it would be very clearly marked that it is an environment label. It will say “UL Environment” with the standard that it’s based off of. John Shegerian: Got you. Mark Rossolo: Because we have to be careful that people don’t get confused about what this UL certification means versus what this UL certification means, so there is no confusion in the marketplace. We are trying to make things more simple not more confusing. John Shegerian: Great. And, Mark, your job is to continue to message us and get the word out on what you do? Mark Rossolo: That’s right. John Shegerian: And that’s why you’re here speaking today at the GoGreen Conference here in Seattle? Mark Rossolo: That’s right. Yup. Speaking a little bit later today on best practices and sustainable purchasing. John Shegerian: Are you alone or do you have a panel today? Mark Rossolo: I am actually moderating a panel with a woman from King County, which is going to be fantastic and then a gentleman from the waste recycling group here. John Shegerian: Got you. And so we have about a minute and a half or so left. What does the future hold for UL? What are some of the goals that you are looking at accomplishing in the future? Mark Rossolo: Sure. Well, our goals are quite ambitious. What we ultimately want to do is become for the sustainability movement what we were and are and continue to be for the fire, shock and casualty testing. John Shegerian: Got you. Mark Rossolo: So when you think of UL today, most people think of “Oh yeah, I get that tested so that it’s safe and it gets a UL stamp so that people know that it’s not going to burn up” or something along those lines. John Shegerian: Right. Mark Rossolo: They now have that trust because UL is behind the scenes doing the work from a sustainability perspective. We have that same ambition. We are hoping in 100 years from now when people see “Oh, this chair has a UL Environment certification to it,” they’ll say “Oh good, it’s low chemical emitting, maybe it has gone through a multi-attribute certification process” like level. There are a lot of different things that it could mean. But that really is the big ambition and getting into the supply chain is really what we are hoping. John Shegerian: So to become the good housekeeping seal in the sustainability world? The seal of approval in sustainability. Mark Rossolo: Somewhat. Yeah. Somewhat. Essentially, what we are trying to do is provide the credibility and trust that makes it easier for people to purchase green products. That’s the simplest way to put it. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. Well, we hope so and we hope you come back and share more of the journey with us. Mark Rossolo: Absolutely. Happy to. John Shegerian: As you continue to evolve your brand. For our audience members out there, to learn more about what Mark is doing with his colleagues at UL Environment, go to www.ul.com. Mark, you are an inspiring sustainability superstar and truly living proof that Green Is Good. Thank you for being with us today. Mark Rossolo: Thanks John. Thanks for having me. John Shegerian: Thank you.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good. We are here in beautiful downtown Seattle, and we are so honored to have with us today A-P Hurd. She is the President and Chief Development Officer and author of Touchstone and we are just so happy to have you here today. We are going to talk about Touchstone, we are going to talk about A-P Hurd and we’re going to talk about your book. A-P Hurd: Excellent. John Shegerian: Before we get on this journey together today, A-P, talk a little bit about your story and how you got interested in sustainability and being green and how did you even get to this place and where you are today in your life. A-P Hurd: I think I was always somewhat interested in sustainability but maybe didn’t always understand the role that business could play in supporting sustainability goals. When I left grad school. I had the good fortune to work for a very innovative company in the Northwest called “McKinstry,” which is a big mechanical contractor and energy services retrofit provider. John Shegerian: OK. A-P Hurd: And very charismatic innovative CEO called Dean Allen, who I worked for and started up a couple different business units in the company and really realized that there was tremendous power in the private sector if you could harness that power – both make money and drive environmental change -and that there was a really strong leverage point there. John Shegerian: Did you grow up in the Seattle area? A-P Hurd: No, I grew up in Ottawa. In Canada. John Shegerian: In Ottawa? A-P Hurd: Yeah. John Shegerian: Was your family into green when you were growing up or is Canada mostly green anyway, so you got some of that as a kid? A-P Hurd: We have a lot of nature compared to the number of people. I would say Canadians maybe are generally maybe a little bit more environmentally focused in some ways, though, you can’t really generalize because there are lots of different groups in both Canada and the U.S. I would say maybe one of the major differences on the environmental front is that Americans feel it’s really their government’s duty to build as many roads as they can possibly use and Canadians – while Americans often regard us as socialists – we have that sentiment to a much lesser extent. John Shegerian: Got you. That’s a great way of putting it. So when in this journey did you start Touchstone? A-P Hurd: I moved to Touchstone about nine years ago now. John Shegerian: OK. A-P Hurd: And I really liked working at McKinstry. It’s a great company doing some really innovative things. But one of the things that I realized is the higher up you move in the supply chain, the more you can impact change. It’s always easier to impact your suppliers than to impact your customers, and if you are closer to the top end of the supply chain, you’ve got more people that you can shift. So in terms of buildings, when I was working as a mechanical contractor, a lot of times we’re trying to use the mechanical systems of buildings to fix other problems like the building wasn’t oriented the right was or it didn’t have an energy-efficient skin on it or it wasn’t even in a place that somebody should have built a building in the first place. So you’re limited by the box of what you can solve. Whereas when you move upstream to being a developer, you get to pick a good place to put the building, you get to orient it the right way and then you get to put the right mechanical system in. John Shegerian: Oh, that is so interesting. So Touchstone is a redevelopment company? A-P Hurd: We are a development company. So we do mostly ground-up development, and we really focus on office and hotel and a little bit of residential, and we really do projects in urban transit-oriented areas. Always near transit. A lot of our sites are also – it happens – brownfield sites, so they are sites that were contaminated in the 1940s or 1950s or 1960s before environmental regulations were really in place the way they are today. So a lot of times not only are we building a sustainable building in a sustainable location, but we also cleaning up the ground under the building in the process. John Shegerian: That is so interesting. And for our listeners and our viewers out there that want to learn more about AP Hurd’s company Touchstone. go to www.touchstonenw.com. How many years have you been there now? A-P Hurd: Just about 10 years. John Shegerian: And you are the President and Chief Development Officer. A-P Hurd: Yes. John Shegerian: How is that going, and do you feel now you’ve gone upstream are you able to make a bigger impact on the communities where you are making your real estate developments? A-P Hurd: It’s obviously going well now, because we are at a really good point in the real estate cycle nationally. John Shegerian: OK. A-P Hurd: I would say five years ago it was really challenging because after the kind of downturn the sort of new building construction really came to a standstill and it’s always hard for companies in cyclical industries to pull through. We’re building about a million-and-a-half square feet of office and hotel in Seattle right now. So quite a lot of development. About six or seven projects. John Shegerian: Wow. A-P Hurd: And it’s nice to see that vision that you have to put in place for years kind of come to fruition. I would say in terms of how much we are able to impact the industry, Seattle is a very sustainability focused city. The general contractors and the supply chains we work with do a lot to divert materials from landfills. The architects we work with are really tuned in to how to design sustainable buildings. There are a lot of things we could do in Seattle that don’t have a cost premium associated with them because everybody is doing it. And I will give you an example. John Shegerian: Yeah. A-P Hurd: So in the early 1990s, if you wanted to have a low-flush toilet in your building, you had to order the low-flush toilets from Germany. So you had to find someone who spoke German and you had to call them on the phone in German and then you had to have the toilets delivered in a container and maybe they got there and maybe one of them was broken. It’s very complicated. High barriers to getting a low-flush toilet. But nowadays everything in Seattle is a low-flush toilet. You can’t buy a toilet that uses a lot of water anymore. So there are some really nice things about working in this area because everyone is oriented to doing things in a more sustainable way. I think maybe one of the biggest challenges is it’s harder to shift your customers because really they are always right. And also we have some challenges in Seattle because land use is a very important component of sustainable buildings, and we have had a lot of growth in the city over the last few years. So there is a sort of tension in the city around wanting to put growth in transit-connected close-in areas, which is obviously good for the environment, but also some people feeling like their neighborhoods are changing too quickly. So one of the biggest sustainability challenges we have as a region is kind of embracing growth and realizing that it presents an opportunity to do more of the right thing rather than sort of giving in to the discomfort that change always causes and sort of saying, “Oh no, we don’t want any more of this,” when really we are riding a very good thing in Seattle right now. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about Seattle. Are you only doing developments – Touchstone – in Seattle right now? A-P Hurd: Yeah. So we are a local company. We are a 30-year-old company. And we have really focused on Seattle because one of the things that is common to places like Seattle and San Francisco and L.A. and Boston and New York is that there is a lot of regulation involved in doing development. John Shegerian: Yeah. A-P Hurd: Both around land use and buildings and environmental regulations at the state level and the more you understand that and the more you can kind of negotiate with people to make projects happen and use relationships to figure out how to get things done that is really a big competitive advantage of ours. I think the converse of that, which is really exciting, is we are really committed to place. We have been here 30 years, we are going to be around for a heck of a long time more hopefully and we are really thoughtful about how to make the region work economically and environmentally for the next 30 to 60 years or maybe even the next 100 years. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. A-P Hurd: So we really engage in policy a lot. Not in the way you might imagine the private sector would engage of just like “no, don’t regulate us” but more kind of engaging and realizing that the city’s goals and the region’s goals are also our goals and we just have to figure out how to get there in a way that meets the goals and also works for the private sector and helps leverage the power of the private sector to get there even faster. John Shegerian: A-P, do the buildings that you build – if I lived in one of your Touchstone buildings, are they all LEED certified? Platinum certified or Gold certified? A-P Hurd: We primarily do office buildings, so we don’t have a lot of residential. John Shegerian: OK. A-P Hurd: But the LEED program has a lot of different types of designations for different types of buildings. So, as an example, in our office buildings, we typically do LEED Silver but often LEED Gold – core and shell, and we actually worked with the U.S. Green Building Council about 15 years ago to develop the pilot shell and core designation. John Shegerian: Wow. A-P Hurd: So that is another place where the way that LEED was being structured around the building and the tenant improvements. That wasn’t how we delivered our buildings in the city, and so instead of just saying, “No, this doesn’t work for us” we actually partnered with the U.S. Green Building Council and tried to figure out “How do we do a path so all the other people who do business like we do can also have a way to participate in this effort and really build scale?” John Shegerian: Wow. For our listeners and our audience members that just joined us we have got A-P Hurd. She is the President and Chief Development Officer of Touchstone. You can learn more about Touchstone at www.touchstonenw.com. She is also an author. A-P, why did you come to GoGreen today? This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good. Talk a little bit about your involvement with GoGreen and why you feel it’s important to be here today. A-P Hurd: Well, I was on the panel this morning that was looking at businesses that really support the Climate Declaration, which is related to improving regulation but also putting a price on carbon and a price on carbon pollution specifically. John Shegerian: OK. A-P Hurd: So there were four businesses that participated in that panel that have been really supportive of creating thresholds for carbon emissions and really creating a price so that we can push more people in the economy to think about these negative challenges that we have and drive the economic forces that address them. John Shegerian: That is a perfect lead-in for our discussion about your book. You wrote a book called “The Carbon Efficient City.” When did you write that book? A-P Hurd: I wrote that book about five years ago, and it was published about three years ago. John Shegerian: What inspired you to write that? I mean running any company, being the President of any company is a full-time job as we both know. Why did you write this book? And why was that important for you to get this out there, and what has happened since them? A-P Hurd: Well, full disclosure I wasn’t the President at the time. John Shegerian: OK. Well, still. A-P Hurd: But I guess I would say I think there are so many people that are working so hard to improve the environmental quality and specifically reduce climate change and reduce carbon emissions, but a lot of the efforts are very fragmented, so one person will do something over here and another person will do something over there, but people don’t always understand how their efforts fit in to the bigger picture. Because I’ve been so involved on the policy front, I was working with local government and state government and trying to work on these different policy levels, but it was almost like because carbon pollution is a newer problem these institutions didn’t have a tradition of how to work together to solve it and what was the appropriate level of agency for each of them to be operating at. They also often weren’t sure how to best tap into the innovation and investment of the private sector to really create new ideas and innovations. So when I was in grad school – I went to grad school at MIT, and there is a lot of work that has been done at MIT around something called “systems theory,” which is the idea that things don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen in ways that influence other things. So systems theory is about how do a whole bunch of institutions or a whole bunch of cells in the human body work together to produce a result. I think carbon pollution and climate change is a systems problem. We didn’t get to global warming by accident. We got there because we are a society that has extracted a lot of fossil fuels and burnt them and created a lot of economic momentum around that and we have never wrestled with the negative consequences of that and asked people to consider it as part of their economic decisions. We just haven’t. We just said, like, “You burn it, you’re done.” John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: So what I was hoping to do with the book was create a middle ground that was not politicized about the right or the left but that really provided a thoughtful role for all of our institutions to play whether they are federal government or state government or local government or the private sector. John Shegerian: All the stakeholders. A-P Hurd: Or academic institutions or nonprofits, that all of them are always going to act in their own self-interest, but there are also ways that we can shift the rules of the game a little bit to get a different outcome. John Shegerian: That’s so great. A-P Hurd: So sort of like this idea again. We didn’t get here because there is no other way to play the game. There is just a way that we all can support slightly different rules and get to a really different outcome and no organization has to compromise what their mission is to get there. John Shegerian: How has your book been received and what doors had it opened for you because you are now an author? A-P Hurd: That’s a really good question. I think one of the challenges about writing policy books instead of, say, cookbooks is that people don’t give them away for Christmas. People give cookbooks for Christmas. They don’t give away policy books for Christmas. So it’s really hard to write a policy best-seller. John Shegerian: Can people buy it on Amazon? A-P Hurd: They can buy it on www.Amazon.com. Yeah. John Shegerian: It’s called “The Carbon Efficient City.” A-P Hurd “The Carbon Efficient City” on www.Amazon.com. You heard it here at Green Is Good. A-P, talk a little bit about the evolution. You wrote it five years ago. Since you’ve wrote this book, we’ve seen Tesla come out. A-P Hurd: Yeah. John Shegerian: Driverless cars start being the beginning of a socialization of driverless cars and the technology is there. What does this mean for the carbon efficient city in the future and the years ahead of us? A-P Hurd: I would say that there has been some great technological innovation. I think your point about cars sort of underscores that really improvements in battery life have driven tremendous potential around how we use and share energy. The interesting thing is that those improvements around battery life were actually driven economically by the desire of people to have longer-lived portable devices. So I think it’s a great illustrative example of the fact that customer delight and private sector innovation can really drive research and innovation that ultimately benefits the environment, right? John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: So I think there have been some really big wins in that respect. I would say that maybe one of the disappointments of the last few years has been a big vulcanization of the politics around implementing meaningful carbon pricing policy at the state or federal level and that has been a big disappointment particularly as we watch the problem getting more acute with extreme weather events or wildfires or things like that, certainly in the Northwest. Our water supply is our snow pack, and we don’t have it. We are really going to have a very dry summer. So I’m hopeful that maybe what the next five years can hold is enough people understanding – and I think the polling is starting to show this across the U.S. – both that climate change and carbon pricing is a priority, and that it does not need to come at the expense of economic growth. I think we have moved in the first direction, but I think there are a lot of people that feel like, “Oh, it’s a tradeoff between jobs and the environment.” John Shegerian: That’s right. A-P Hurd: And I think now we are starting to move to people thinking that is no longer the case and if we can get people there and we can vote for carbon pricing then we will absolutely unleash a huge wave of innovation where tech investors, particularly VCs, are able to really seed companies and see a much clearer path towards ROI and profitability on the products that they are investing in. John Shegerian: And also we’ve moved, even just in the last five years, we’ve started the major paradigm shift from liner economy to a shared economy, therefore the rise of Uber and Lyft and others also hopefully reduce the carbon footprints in cities and things of that such. A-P Hurd: One of the things that I think a lot of people haven’t talked about with Uber and Lyft that I find fascinating is we have a lot of cities in the U.S. that have a very dispersed land use pattern because the bulk of the building was done in a period of high automobile growth and reliance. John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: And as we try to shift those cities onto more transit networks it’s really tough because the city is so spread out it makes it hard to have good high frequency, high capacity transit. John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: So what you wind up with in a lot of cities – and Seattle is like that – is you have some corridors or nodes that really build up density to support the transit, but the transit often doesn’t get you everywhere in the city, so it’s not a total solution – it’s like a 60 percent solution or an 80 percent solution. I all the time hear people say, “Oh yeah, I drive to work because what if I need to pick up my kid and they’re sick at school in the middle of the day?” or “What if a meeting gets called at the last minute?” and to me the beauty of some of these solutions like Uber or Car2Go is that they fill the gap in the transit system and allow people who wouldn’t otherwise be transit riders to shift into being transit riders because now they have a really good solution for when the transit doesn’t meet their needs. John Shegerian: That is so interesting. Talk a little bit about density though. You just brought up the word density. I had an urban planner on the show a year ago and he had a theory on sustainability and density and the re-urbanization of our cities. He was in my age group, in his 50s. He said, “Our generation, John, grew up watching The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. The families had a little success, they moved way out into the suburbs with their big cars and they’d buy big homes and fill them with stuff and kept filling them up with more and more stuff.” He says, “Our children have grown up with Friends and Seinfeld. They see the right way to live is in cities and walk around and city living is something that they want to aspire to.” Are you seeing that as a real estate developer here in Seattle? The youth of America flocking back to urban centers? And is that good for your premise of building and making our cities more carbon efficient? A-P Hurd: Yeah. So first of all, I do see the phenomenon that you are describing. There are some folks that have cast some doubt on whether the Xers and the Millennials will really want to stay urban as they have kids, but I think the Xers are starting to prove out that people will stay urban. I think it’s absolutely a good thing in terms of our development thesis as a company. Downtown Seattle, it’s really interesting. We have about a 65 percent non-SOV commute rate. What that means is for people who are commuting to jobs in downtown Seattle, 65 percent of them are not coming in a single occupancy vehicle. John Shegerian: Wow. A-P Hurd: So they are coming by bus or by foot or by bike or in a carpool, and that is almost 20 percentage points higher than it was 15 years ago. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. A-P Hurd: And so that is really exciting to see, but it’s also a function of we have a radially oriented transit system where the center of it is downtown and that is absolutely not true in terms of interconnecting neighborhoods and things like that. So if you were to look at some of our suburbs, they are not as connected by transit and that makes it a real challenge. In land use, you always have a chicken-and-egg problem. It’s hard to put the transit in and make it pay for itself until you have got a lot of people moving there, but if a lot of people move there and you don’t put transit, then the roads get all jammed up and you have traffic problems. So it’s almost like an iterate of process to change your land use pattern and trying to accelerate that in a world where building buildings is swole. John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: It’s something that we absolutely have to continue to work on. John Shegerian: I live in Manhattan now, and we have just recently seen the advent of the bike program. Mayor Bloomberg brought the bike program to New York and Mayor de Blasio has continued to polish it and expand it. Is that same kind of bike program going on in Seattle here? A-P Hurd: Do you mean like a bike share? John Shegerian: Yeah. A-P Hurd: Yeah we do have a bike share program called “Pronto” that just started a few months ago. It debuted in October, which is sort of the start of our rainy season here. John Shegerian: Yeah. A-P Hurd: So it has been hard to sort of measure how much it is taking off. John Shegerian: Right. A-P Hurd: A lot of times I think those things work very well particularly in tourist areas, whereas most people who are regular bike commuters – at least in a place like Seattle – seem to ride their own bikes. One of the other incidentals in Seattle is we have a lot of hills, and so if you ride your own bike, you are going to ride like a light bike that is easy to get up and down the hills and a lot of times those bikes that are part of a bike share program are a little more sturdy. One other interesting thing about bike share is there is a very high correlation between the success of bike share and the non-requirement for helmets in a city because people don’t really like to share grubby helmets. John Shegerian: Good point. A-P Hurd: So there is this very sort of paradoxical tradeoff between the safety regulations versus the amount that the bike share program gets kind of latched on to by the population. So I think there are always – when we’re trying to innovate, we find these sort of quirky tradeoffs of like “Well, which is more important, wearing helmets or having a successful bike share program?” and obviously people are trying to innovate and figure out how to do both, but it is an interesting example of different regulations can conflict with different goals. John Shegerian: We have a lot of young people in our audience in the United States and around the world that want to now finish up their education and go become the next A-P Hurd and change the world from the top down. What advice can you give to our audience members that are still in the beginning part of their journey either prior to college or now coming out of college or grad school that are looking to find their first landing point to climb the mountain so to speak? A-P Hurd: That’s a great question. I think one of the things that seems really important to me is to not just go just for sustainability. Sustainability is a byproduct of other economic and social activity. John Shegerian: Good point. A-P Hurd: So I think it’s really important that people pick something that they’re really excited about whether it’s a type of industry or a type of work environment they want to be in or a type of technology that they’re excited about and that they really get a basis in that. Then, once you’re sort of driving a P&L – you are driving profit in your industry – then you can really think about how do we shift the way that we do that to be more sustainable. The other thing I would say is it seems like there has been a lot of focus on the last few years on people getting STEM degrees – Science, Technology, Math and Engineering. John Shegerian: Yeah. A-P Hurd: And there is certainly a lot of employment in those areas, but I would encourage people – and I am someone who has two engineering degrees, but I also have an English Literature degree and I find that the ability to think in terms of humanities and to think critically and to think analogue is equally important to sort of our humanness and our ability to look at problems, and we can’t believe that we are a world that is just about abstract technical solutions. We have to realize we are a world where at the end of the day it’s about people. So people who can get an education that allows them to feel really, really comfortable in the soup of technology whatever their technology is but also to bring the humanness and not forget that and bring that to bear on solving problems, I think that’s a really magical combination. John Shegerian: And we’re going to leave it there today. People ask me about this show all the time and the show is only good because we have amazing people like you on the show, A-P, and you are just really, truly inspiring. For our listeners out there again to find AP and her great company Touchstone go to www.touchstonenw.com or buy her book “The Carbon Efficient City” on www.amazon.com. A-P Hurd, you are an inspiring thought leader and truly living proof that Green Is Good. Thank you very much. A-P Hurd: Thank you.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good here in downtown Seattle. We are so honored to have with us today Jacqueline Drumheller. She is the Sustainability Manager for Alaska Airlines. Welcome to Green Is Good, Jacqueline. Jacqueline Drumheller: Thank you so much, John. This is a great conference. I’m having a lot of fun already. John Shegerian: Well, we are so happy you came with us. After 1,000 guests, you are our first airline to come on Green Is Good. Jacqueline Drumheller: That is awesome. I am so happy about that. John Shegerian: We’re so happy. We’re so honored. And before we get talking about your great airline that you work with, can you share a little bit about your background? How did you get interested in sustainability and eventually join Alaska Airlines and have now this great title and important role of Sustainability Manager? Jacqueline Drumheller: Well, that is sort of a long sordid tale, but I pretty much didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was in college. I think I’m the only person who took seven-and-a-half years to get a Bachelor’s Degree because I changed my major from Art to Business to Biology. I was going to be a veterinarian of all things, but, alas, I didn’t have the parental support or the grades or the money to go to vet school. So I got my degree and I sat down with the L.A. Times back when they printed “help wanted” ads on paper and put them in the news and started going down the list going “Oh, let’s see, biologist. Oh, shoot nobody is hiring biologists this week. Let’s keep going down. Alphabetical order. Oh look, E, environmental. That sounds cool. I’ll be saving whales and stuff. Awesome.” So I went in and interviewed with this guy, and we just talked about our favorite restaurants for two hours. I went home and there was a message on my machine saying, “You’re hired – show up for work Monday morning.” I had no idea what they did. I got there. They were a hazardous waste disposal contract handling all the military hazardous waste in Southern California. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: So I slugged away for the next three years and eventually moved up. I actually met my husband at a hazardous waste disposal facility. It’s better than a bar. John Shegerian: Yes. Better than a bar. Not many people can say that probably. Jacqueline Drumheller: The people that I hang out with, quite a few of them can say it, which is kind of funny. John Shegerian: That’s funny. So you met your husband there. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yes. John Shegerian: And how long did you work in that industry? Jacqueline Drumheller: About three years. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: And I moved up here to be closer to him because this is where I met him. John Shegerian: So you moved to Seattle. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yes. It was like 20 years ago. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And I worked in consulting and engineering for a while. Typical stuff. Removing tanks and conducting soil investigations and things like that. And I saw the opening for a job at Alaska Airlines and I thought, “Cool, flight benefits,” right? And my whole family is in Southern California. “This is where I want to work. I want to work for this airline.” And I went in there and it was an environmental compliance job and I was tank-girl. We had an environmental regulatory deadline way back in 1998 that every single underground storage tank had to be upgraded or removed by December 22, so for the next two years I went around the state of Alaska removing underground storage tanks. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And, eventually, over the last 17 years – I have been employed there since I was 12 – over the last 17 years I started seeing the value of creating a sustainability program there. I was really frustrated. It was just a compliance job at the time, handling environmental rules and regulations, but there were enough like-minded people there that we started sort of getting together and forming a voluntary green team. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we kicked off some projects. We got the CEO’s approval. I think I knocked him down in the hallway and stood on his chest and pointed at him and yelled at him for a while and I didn’t get fired, and he actually got a twinkle in his eye at some point – and it wasn’t for lack of oxygen – and said, “That sounds very interesting.” And I used that line. I said, “Bill, Air is very interested in this project.” “Oh yeah. OK.” John Shegerian: Got everybody motivated after that. Jacqueline Drumheller: Got everybody motivated. So one of our first projects was our in-flight recycling on the aircraft. John Shegerian: And how many years ago was that? Jacqueline Drumheller: That was about 2008. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: So it’s taken a while to get to the point where it was and my job slowly transitioned from being 100 percent environmental compliance to 100 percent sustainability. Every year 10 percent more sustainability and less compliance. John Shegerian: But that is part of what sustainability is anyway isn’t it, Jacqueline? It’s a journey anyway. Jacqueline Drumheller: Oh definitely. John Shegerian: So you have to start somewhere. Talk a little bit about 2008. You said recycling on the flights? Jacqueline Drumheller: On the flights. I think at that time we were the 13th largest carrier and now we are the sixth largest carrier. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we have jumped over nobody. I think we are the sixth right now depending on who has merged or who has gone out of business. John Shegerian: Still, it’s nice to be number six instead of 13. That’s great. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yeah. But it’s so frustrating to see how all this waste on the aircraft doesn’t have any opportunity for recycling. John Shegerian: Right. Great thinking. Jacqueline Drumheller: In our homes, we recycle our bottles and our cans and our paper. Our passengers live in Seattle. In the Pacific Northwest. They are doing it at home. Our employees are all based in Seattle and Portland and around the Pacific Northwest for the most part, and they are recycling. Why can’t we do it on the planes? There were a lot of good reasons we couldn’t, but gosh darn, it we were going to try and find a solution for that. And sort of a ragtag group of green team people started learning more about it and trying some things and it eventually evolved to where it is today. It is now a service standard as far as what is expected of the flight attendants. We have a goal around reducing our landfill waste by 70 percent over the next five years. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we are getting about a little over 80 percent of all the bottles, paper, cups, cans, all the recyclables comingled at every single place where we have a flight kitchen. So any place we are taking waste off the plane, it is going to a recycling collection area. John Shegerian: So talk a little bit about this is a very instructive because sometimes we have guests that come on that say they took over a green program or sustainable. You created this at Alaska Airlines from scratch. How do you besides saying “Bill said this is very interesting?” Jacqueline Drumheller: That’s a great line. Yeah. John Shegerian: How did you bring the team together and how big is the team today? Jacqueline Drumheller: It’s hard to say. I mean it wasn’t just me. John Shegerian: Yeah. Jacqueline Drumheller: It was our core team, and there are still some of the original members there, who are just as passionate. Like our catering manager, who is just as passionate about recycling and making improvements. So I think just having those people, being able to collude with them and get together with them and all be focused on the same thing even though it’s not our day job has its own energy. John Shegerian: Right. Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we were fortunate to have people on our team who never call it quits and have a lot of determination and are willing to take some risks. So much of this stuff was just like you do it. John Shegerian: In 2008, for sure. Jacqueline Drumheller: Beg forgiveness later, right? John Shegerian: That’s right. Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yeah. I mean whatever underhanded tactic that we could get to push the envelope and move the ball forward is what we had to take. It had to be quick, down, dirty and easy. So that’s why a lot of the “Oh, Bill Air is interested in this project” kind of stuff came on like “Oh really?” I think at some point – it’s embarrassing – we even changed the company’s value statement without asking permission. Just added the words “the environment” in there kind of thinking, “Oh well, I guess somebody important must have wanted it done that way.” John Shegerian: That’s awesome. So for our audience members that just joined us, we’ve got Jacqueline Drumheller. She is the Sustainability Manager for Alaska Airlines. To learn more about Alaska Airlines, go to www.AlaskaAir.com. It’s also the airlines of Electronic Recyclers International when we fly from Fresno to Seattle, Washington. It’s a great airline. Jacqueline, talk a little bit now about the journey. 2008 to today. How did you evolve this, and were you doing this from the ground up or did you have other airlines or other paradigms that you were borrowing from? Jacqueline Drumheller: It was essentially from the ground up. Some things like our fuel conservation strategies. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: That’s always been part of us. We looked at it as a money saving strategy. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: Because fuel is one of our highest costs traditionally. So we have a lot of incentive to not use fuel. We don’t want to use fuel. We try and limit. Anything we can do to not use fuel is a good thing for us. John Shegerian: So let’s pause right there. So being green, being sustainable could be very good for the bottom line such as in fuel conservation. Jacqueline Drumheller: Definitely. Definitely. And then the other thing is like the in-flight recycling and some of our energy conservation and our electric vehicle fleet initiatives. As far as the journey is concerned we started off with the green team. We had those first seven projects or so and we were just relying on getting visibility, getting things done quickly and getting some attention around them. We knew that our sister carrier, Horizon Air, had been recycling for a long time. I think they started recycling in the late 1980s as part of some campaign to save aluminum can money for a sick flight attendant, like a cancer patient or something. John Shegerian: Got it. Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we always knew they did a great job and it sort of “Well, wait a minute – how can we talk about this great job if we don’t measure what we’re doing?” So we thought “Yeah, let’s.” We had some college intern help us out and show us how to weigh and measure our garbage that was coming off of our flights and they were like “Holy cow, Horizon is recycling two-thirds of all of their garbage.” I mean we always knew they did a great job but this is – we have numbers now – this is a kickass – sorry can I say that? Kickass job. John Shegerian: Yeah, of course. Absolutely. This is great. Jacqueline Drumheller: So this is amazing. And I was telling a friend about it and she said, “You should apply for some sort of an award,” and I’m like, “OK.” So I filled out some paperwork and sent it in. That year we won – 2010, I believe – Washington State Recycling Association Recycler of the Year for a Big Business. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And it was such a feel-good event, and it really gave that kind of buzz to everybody. They needed that incentive. That pat on the back. John Shegerian: Yeah. Jacqueline Drumheller: That external recognition. John Shegerian: “We did it. We did it.” Jacqueline Drumheller: And having some numbers to prove something. Right. So we were so proud of the award. We were displaying it everywhere and sharing it with everybody and tooting our horn internally about it and then the President of Alaska – the other carrier that I work for – is kind of like, “Oh, Horizon got an award for recycling? How come we don’t have an award for recycling?” “Well Brad it’s because we are behind our sister carrier. How do I say this? I think we should be recycling 100 percent.” They’re like “Oh, that’s a stretch goal, OK.” So it’s those little things where you keep getting recognition, you keep communicating about it, you get people excited about it, you start integrating it into the culture, the way we think of ourselves, you know? John Shegerian: Yup. Jacqueline Drumheller: And it’s not an easy thing to do. It has taken a long time to get to where we are now and we’ve had a lot of hiccups along the way. But with certain programs like what I was saying about our in-flight recycling program. John Shegerian: Sure. Jacqueline Drumheller: We had so much pushback issues and things that came up, but we got to the point where now everybody is like, “OK, this is part of what Alaska Airlines does. This is what our customers expect of us. This is what differentiates us. I’m not going to fight anymore – we’re doing it” kind of thing. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yeah. So it takes a while and it’s hard to describe that pathway there, but I think the persistence and the patience really pays off in those examples. John Shegerian: We’re going to come back to Alaska in a little while, but we are here today at the GoGreen Conference. Why is it important for you to be here today? What are you doing here today and how are you highlighting Alaska Air’s great sustainability program right now at this conference? Jacqueline Drumheller: Well, my boss, Joe Sprig, the Senior Vice President of External Relations and Corporate Communications, was a keynote speaker just a few minutes ago. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we are sponsoring the event which means we have a raffle later on – oh, I have my raffle ticket. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: They gave me a raffle ticket. I hope I win. For a pair of tickets which is really cool, because today we just announced that we are going to be flying to Costa Rica. We just made the announcement. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. Jacqueline Drumheller: And I’m really psyched about that. John Shegerian: Costa Rica directly from where? Jacqueline Drumheller: L.A. John Shegerian: L.A.? Jacqueline Drumheller: L.A. to Costa Rica. Yup. John Shegerian: Wonderful. You heard it here first today on Green Is Good. Alaska Air to Costa Rica. Jacqueline Drumheller: That’s right. John Shegerian: www.AlaskaAir.com. Go there and book your tickets now. Jacqueline Drumheller: Right. I can’t wait. Yeah, so we are trying to communicate more, and it’s one of those things we never really tooted our horn that much in the past and we’re kind of getting up to that point where we do need to toot our horn. People do need to be engaged. Our passengers need to know that not all airlines are the same, that we share their values. John Shegerian: That’s right. Jacqueline Drumheller: That they can help us too by packing light and not putting their napkin in their cup and things like that. John Shegerian: I want to go back to that because we are a solutions-based program. We want to give solutions to our audience. Talk a little bit about turning over – and that’s why we want people like you and brands like you to come on this show and share that with our audience. We have done that for seven years. What are you most proud of in this journey of sustainability at Alaska Air? What one or two programs can you point to to say, “Wow. We got that done and that looked like the biggest mountain, highest mountain to climb?” Jacqueline Drumheller: One of them I have already talked about and that is our in-flight recycling program. John Shegerian: Yeah. Jacqueline Drumheller: And I am proud of that because it was a grassroots effort in impassioned employees. John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: And we had the ability and flexibility and the culture in the company to do that without nobody putting us down. John Shegerian: Yeah. Jacqueline Drumheller: “OK, do you want to invite recycle? Give it a go,” you know? John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: But then the other thing I’m really proud of is everything we have done in fuel conservation with our aircraft. John Shegerian: That’s great. Jacqueline Drumheller: You don’t always realize this. When you are booking a flight on Expedia or whatever, and you find the cheapest airline that pops up, despite the fact that it’s two hours in Cleveland or something like that. John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: I know people make purchasing decisions for a lot of products and services based on a social or environmental reputation of the organization. John Shegerian: That’s right. Jacqueline Drumheller: But maybe they don’t take environmental considerations with airiness, because they think they’re all the same. They don’t realize that they are different. So there is a study that comes out every year by the International Council on Clean Transportation. They are a nonprofit organization. They rank airlines according to fuel efficiency, and I am really proud to say we have come out number one for four years in a row. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: We tied for third place this last year, though, but we are going to pull out alone next year. I know we are. But it’s because of all the improvements that we’ve made, and you look at the list and you see that there is a huge range of fuel efficiency on all these airlines and the bottom of the list – I won’t say their name – every single passenger mile they fly uses 33 percent more fuel than one of our passenger miles. Why? Because they have a different approach. I mean, every airline has pretty razor thin margins and has a hard time staying afloat. That’s why we are the sixth largest carrier instead of the 13th largest carrier. John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: But some airlines invest in a less expensive fleet. So they will buy used MD80s or something like that for pennies on the dollar instead of investing in brand new fuel efficient aircrafts instead. John Shegerian: Ah. Jacqueline Drumheller: So their capital costs are way down but their operating costs are way up. For us, it has always been about what is the most fuel-efficient airplane we can have? How do we fly it more efficiently? We developed some technology in the 1990s as a way of flying in and out of the great state of Alaska called “required navigation performance.” It allows us to shave miles off every route because we can use satellite based navigation to get there and not have to fly sort of convoluted routes around mountains or take off in a different direction because there is a navigation shadow sometimes. John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: Something like that. We are actually starting to use it as of last summer to fly more strategic approaches into Sea-Tac Airport here called the “greener skies program.” So instead of doing this kind of – the worst part of any flight is when? John Shegerian: The landing. Jacqueline Drumheller: Well, and then the time you are stuck in the airplane waiting to get off the bloody plane. John Shegerian: Oh. Oh. Yeah. And you can’t even get to the gate. Jacqueline Drumheller: So I’m sitting in the plane and I am looking out the window and I am like, “Oh, there is Seattle. There is my home. Wait a minute. We’ve got to fly to Canada first and turn around and then land,” right? I mean, it’s not really Canada, but it seems that way. John Shegerian: Right. I understand. Jacqueline Drumheller: Right. That is the worst moment when you fly by your house because you just want to get off the plane. John Shegerian: That’s right. Jacqueline Drumheller: And so what we do instead with the navigation is we can fly a more direct route. John Shegerian: Got it. Jacqueline Drumheller: We don’t have to fly to Bellingham and turn back. We can wide into the airport instead of just doing this power-up, power-down thing, and by doing that, it probably saves us 60 gallons of fuel every time we approach the airport for every single flight. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: And if all the carriers that had this navigation technology used it it’s probably about 2.1 million gallons of fuel a year just saved on these approaches coming in to Sea-Tac. John Shegerian: So not only have you invested in the navigation technology, which makes you more fuel efficient, you have also on the Cap-X invested in better equipment, so you are more fuel efficient. So you are number one now in fuel efficiency? Jacqueline Drumheller: Yes, we are. John Shegerian: Number one. Alaska Air. If you want to be the greenest and fly the greenest, number one, Alaska Air. Talk a little bit about sustainability. Is there any outside organization yet that compared airlines on other sustainable behavior besides fuel efficiency or we haven’t gotten to that point in the sustainability evolution revolution yet? Jacqueline Drumheller: There are a lot of different organizations that rank airlines on their greenness and they all use different. John Shegerian: Metrics. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yeah. And it’s subjective. This one by the ICCT – I like them, because they have some science behind it. John Shegerian: Got it. We want to leave our listeners with a couple other tips from you. Jacqueline Drumheller: OK. John Shegerian: How can they be more green on any airline that they’re flying? How can their behavior be better to make to the flight and the whole process of travelling by air greener? Jacqueline Drumheller: That is an excellent question. So I think – and I try and be mindful of this when I’m getting ready to go on a flight – if you pack light, for example, I think we calculated that if every single one of our passengers packed just two pounds less in their suitcase, maybe that extra set of boots or something like that. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: We’d save something like – I’m not sure I’ve got the right number but – it’s about around 10 million gallons of fuel a year. John Shegerian: Whoa. Jacqueline Drumheller: And thinking about using a reusable water bottle and filling it up at the airport. Post-security of course. John Shegerian: Right. Jacqueline Drumheller: So you don’t have to get the water bottles or cups on the plane. And then I always make people take the pledge when they say they fly Alaska, I make them say – go ahead, you’re going to pledge. John Shegerian: OK. Jacqueline Drumheller: I promise. John Shegerian: I promise. Jacqueline Drumheller: Never to shove the pretzel package or the napkin into my Coke can. John Shegerian: I promise never to shove the pretzel package or napkin into this glass. Jacqueline Drumheller: Right. That way, the flight attendant can put it in the recycle container. John Shegerian: Wow. Jacqueline Drumheller: Keep them separate so we can get that can or that cup or that bottle off to a recycling facility instead of just taking it to a landfill. John Shegerian: So going back to keeping the streams to be recycled clean and therefore more recyclable. Jacqueline Drumheller: Right. John Shegerian: That’s a great pledge. That’s a great pledge. For our students out there, we have tons of entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world that are audience at Green Is Good. How do they become the next Jacqueline Drumheller? Jacqueline Drumheller: Oh boy. John Shegerian: In terms of their education, in terms of how to maybe – give them a little bit of some of your pearls of wisdom on the journey now. Jacqueline Drumheller: I don’t know that I’d want them to be the next Jacqueline Drumheller. John Shegerian: Oh come on, you’re being humble. Jacqueline Drumheller: I want them to be better than that. John Shegerian: Oh. Jacqueline Drumheller: I’m really excited. I get a lot of college students asking me that all the time. John Shegerian: Yeah. Jacqueline Drumheller: It’s really exciting to see. John Shegerian: Yeah it is. Jacqueline Drumheller: The younger generation and how articulate and impassioned and professional they are. I don’t remember being all that professional and savvy when I was that age. I think about me and how I fit in this position well, and I don’t know that it’s necessarily that I have a lot of technical skills. I don’t think that was it. I certainly can’t name any technical skills that I have. But I think Bob Landru, the former Director of CSR at McDonald’s, said that it’s the three P’s: It’s the persistence, passion and patience. And I think that’s really true. John Shegerian: So interesting. Jacqueline Drumheller: It’s having sort of broad skills. Good communication skills. Broad skills and a systems-thinking approach where you can pull in a whole bunch of information from a lot of places and plan strategically and methodically and make the case. So yeah. The three P’s. And I think too a lot of people want my job. Do you want my job? I think you want a job where you can start something perhaps. Those entrepreneurs out there, create it yourself. John Shegerian: You started this. Good for you. Jacqueline Drumheller: Yeah. You don’t want to step into my job. You want to go out there and find who isn’t doing it yet and get it going over there. John Shegerian: That’s great advice. Any final thoughts for our audience before we sign off today? Jacqueline Drumheller: No. Thank you for having me. John Shegerian: Oh, we are so honored to have you. For our listeners out there, Alaska Airlines is the number one fuel efficient airline out there, so you can go to their site and book your tickets now at www.AlaskaAir.com and from L.A. now flying to Costa Rica. Jacqueline Drumheller, you are an inspiring leader and a sustainability superstar and truly living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the GoGreen edition of Green Is Good. We’re here in Seattle, Washington – beautiful, downtown Seattle – and our first guest today is Leonard Garfield. He is the Executive Director of the Museum of History and Industry. Welcome to Green Is Good, Leonard. Garfield: Thank you, John. It’s great to have you guys in Seattle. John Shegerian: Oh, we’re happy to be here. This is such a beautiful city. Before we get talking about your wonderful Museum of History and Industry, can you share a little bit about Leonard Garfield – how you even came to be interested in sustainability and got working at the museum? Leonard Garfield: Well, that’s a good question. Seattle is a place that loves its natural environment. We love our mountains. We love our water. So I spend a lot of time out there. But I’m also passionate about history and have spent a lot of time thinking about the history of this region, the history of the United States and noticed, John, that there really is an interesting balance between preserving the world that we all inherit and making progress as we try become a better community. So I have spent a lot of my life trying to understand lessons from our past that we can apply to address some of the challenges we face today. John Shegerian: Got it. And for our listeners and viewers out there to learn more about the Museum of History and Industry, you can go to www.mohai.org. So tell us a little bit about the start of your museum and how it came to be and where you are today. Leonard Garfield: Well, we’ve been around for a long time as a museum. We’ve actually been around for almost 100 years. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: But we are in a brand new building in Seattle – we did a LEED-certified project, Platinum, we are in the very few museums in the United States to achieve that status – in a building that was a Naval Reserve Armory, and now it’s been completely reborn as an amazing history museum with all kinds of great stories and experiences right on the shores of South Lake Union here in downtown Seattle. John Shegerian: So you recycled the building? Leonard Garfield: We recycled the building. We followed every environmental standard, because this is a community that believes in sustaining the environment. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: And we wanted to make sure that we were holding true to that policy. John Shegerian: That is wonderful. How many years in advance did you make that decision, and how long did it take for you to evolve the project, build it and also then layer the LEED certification on top of it? Leonard Garfield: It was about 10 years. Maybe even a little bit longer. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: Like any great project, it takes a lot of planning, a lot of thought and then a lot of doing to actually get it done. We opened in late 2012, so we have been at the new museum for about two years now. John Shegerian: So what inspired you and other leadership of your colleagues to not only do that kind of project but more importantly to then make it a LEED building because, as you said, there are very few museums right now that are LEED certified. Leonard Garfield: Yeah. John Shegerian: What was your paradigm that you wanted to follow, and what was the blueprint? Leonard Garfield: We had a commitment to this community. John Shegerian: Right. Leonard Garfield: And we tell the story of this community. We safeguard its history. This is a community that has been built on a belief in the power and the richness of a natural environment. We felt we had to do our part to be sustainable in any way we could, so we set for ourselves a very, very high standard and we achieved LEED Platinum certification. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: And really everything we do, John, not just in building the museum or exhibits or restoring the structure, but even in our programs and the way we serve our guests and the way we treat ourselves, we try to follow the best environmental practices because really that is not only about our history. That’s really about our future. John Shegerian: Leonard, if I was to come over – and I am going to come over next time I am back in Seattle – if I was coming over today, share with our listeners and our viewers – what are some of the unique elements of some of the LEED certification and the greening of your museum that they wouldn’t see necessarily at other places? Leonard Garfield: Well, the first thing you are going to see is an amazing historic building. The building has been around for half a century. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: It’s beautiful. It’s art deco design. It was built during the Great Depression. It opened up at the very start of World War II. So there is a lot of history there, and that’s probably one of the most fun things about the museum. But when you walk inside, you’re going to see this incredibly soaring open space with all natural materials all restored from their original construction 60 years ago. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: And then some amazing exhibitry, all of which is built to be compatible with the historic character of the building and to follow the highest environmental standards. And you’re not just going to learn about history, John, you’re going to learn about where we are today as a community. In fact, one element of the museum is called Bezos Center for Innovation where we actually share the story of the history of innovation in this community including things that are happening right now. John Shegerian: Wow. And this is a very, very innovative community with lots of great entrepreneurs and great brands that have come out of here, so that must be one of the highlights for any visitor. Leonard Garfield: It really is. This is the community that gave birth to the world of flight, commercial aviation, with Boeing. We are the home of home of Amazon. We are the home of Costco. Maybe some of your listeners know Nordstrom. A lot of great brands are based right here in Seattle. John Shegerian: Including Starbucks. Leonard Garfield: Oh. How could I forget Starbucks? We love our Starbucks. In fact, you can’t go too far in Seattle without finding a Starbucks shop but also getting a great drink from Starbucks because they are pioneers in environmental sustainability as well. A lot of our local businesses have really adopted green ethics and green standards as standard operating procedure in Seattle, and we share that story at the museum as well. John Shegerian: That’s so wonderful. For our listeners who have just joined us, we are here today at the GoGreen Conference with Leonard Garfield. He is the Executive Director of the Museum of History and Industry. So, Leonard, share a little bit why you are here today and how you are interacting with the GoGreen Conference. Leonard Garfield: Well, I was contacted by the conference to shed a little bit of light on the history of Seattle in terms of its environmental innovations, its history of transportation. We’ve really done some amazing things in this community over the last many years to really try to understand how to live in harmony with nature to build a healthy economy but not to do it at the risk of preserving our environment. So there are a lot of lessons from our history that we can apply to some of today’s challenges and that’s what I’ve been talking about at the conference. John Shegerian: Got you. And you are presenting today? Leonard Garfield: Right. I presented at the keynote session, which actually, John, we just had. John Shegerian: Oh wonderful. Leonard Garfield: And it was fun, because I got to talk a little bit about Seattle 100 years ago, and you know what? We were facing the same challenges. How do we get around in a way that is environmentally sustainable? How do we build a community that has a healthy quality of life but also a robust economy? All the issues that every city in America is addressing, there are lessons from our past that we actually can learn from, and that’s what I was sharing with the conference. John Shegerian: In terms of the museum, every day we turn on the news and we’re hearing about climate change. Leonard Garfield: Right. John Shegerian: We’re hearing about water drought and shortages that are imperiling so many parts not only of the United States but the world. What are the bigger challenges that you have taken on to highlight at the museum to showcase? Leonard Garfield: Well, we start the story actually thousands of years ago because the Native American community, which was resident here in the Seattle area for millennium, actually were very, very smart about how to live in a sustainable way, and there were lessons there that they passed on to the American community, but they are lessons that really we try to shed light on now because they are important how to understand the most efficient use of materials, how to recycle materials. All of those things which seem so new to us actually have a long tradition. And then as we look at our own industry over the last several hundred years, it has been very interesting to see whether it’s in aviation, whether it’s in the timber industry or whether it’s in global retail like a Starbucks – how have companies adapted to the threat of climate change, the need for higher standards of recycling? All of those issues as they have played out over the decades we provide insight into those stories. John Shegerian: Since reopening LEED Platinum certified in 2012, have other museums from around the United States and the world come and met with you and studied your museum and how they can now try to aspire and achieve that type of status as well? Leonard Garfield: Well, the museum community around the world is really connected. We all learn from each other and lots of people have come to our museum in the last few years. We get a lot of very positive feedback. But you know, John, we are also learning from others because the one thing about sustainability is there is no real end point. It’s always learning more. It’s always being better. John Shegerian: It’s a journey Leonard Garfield: It is a journey. So just as we’ve been able to share our success with museums around the country and around the world, we are learning from others as well because there is always some way to even be better. We are all facing such a major change in the decades to come with climate change and dealing with just the population increase, and that has to play out in every institution at every level and even a museum has to learn to adapt to that so we are keeping our eyes open for best practices. John Shegerian: In your travels specifically, Leonard, when you get to go and travel and visit other museums what other museums have impressed you with their standards? And what they are also putting in place or trying to message to their client base, and what are you going to bring back to Seattle that you’ve seen recently in the last couple years? Leonard Garfield: Wow. Fantastic question because there are so many great museums. Miami is a place where some of the most amazing new museums, science centers and aquarium are being built. I encourage people to go to Miami and check out the full museum scene. They are looking at some extremely advanced ways of using sustainable architecture to really understand how that can be part of the cultural experience. There are so many great museums. There is a new natural history museum in Salt Lake City, which I encourage again your viewers to check out if they are ever in the Rocky Mountain area. So many good museums around the country. And, of course, I know you’re from New York. John Shegerian: Yeah. Leonard Garfield: We can’t forget the brand new museum of modern art, which is so phenomenal, and the Guggenheim Museum is going to be getting a giant expansion, which is going to be really, really exciting, so I would keep my eyes open for that one. John Shegerian: With regards to the sustainability revolution coming to the United States, Leonard, we seem to be late adopters compared to Europe. But China and Asia seem to be wanting to quickly catch up and get with it in terms of sustainability. When you travel abroad what do you see? Is the same trend similar with regards to museums and how they’re curated and run and built and operated as well in Europe and China and other parts of Asia? Leonard Garfield: Well, here’s a factoid. John Shegerian: Yeah. Leonard Garfield: Every year 3,000 new museums are opening in China. John Shegerian: Whoa! Leonard Garfield: Now, that may not be a factor that we’ll go to the bank with, but that is a statistic that was recently shared with me just yesterday by some museum professionals. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: And even if that number is not exactly accurate, we know that museums are opening almost every day in China and they know that they’ve got – and not just in the museum industry but in every aspect of their built environmental – they are facing a country that is seriously plagued by high levels of pollution, great stress but growing increasingly urbanized population. And they really are looking to Europe and to the United States for best practices. It would be interesting to see how you can accomplish rapid growth and do it in a sustainable way, because one of the things about sustainability that we have learned – and other folks in Seattle have learned as well – is that sustainability begins with thoughtfulness. It begins with planning. It really begins by thinking 100 years, even 1000 years, out before you take step one. John Shegerian: Wow. Leonard Garfield: So sometimes racing to the finish line is not always the recipe for the most sustainable solution. But we’ll see. Growing economies are exciting places. The United States in recent decades with a growing economy, they grew at the risk of protecting our environment. John Shegerian: So let’s go back to the Museum of History and Industry. What are you excited about that is coming in the coming months or years in terms of things that you are planning to do and show to the great public that wants to come and enjoy your wonderful museum? Leonard Garfield: Well, we have lots of things on the schedule but one of the things that I am most excited about is that we have begun to focus on innovation including sustainability as a real topic to explore, to create experiences for young people to learn more about it. And we’ve begun to do that. You’re going to be seeing more of that at our museum – the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle – so I would encourage everybody to just keep their eyes open. All museums are always changing, and we always try to keep something new and fresh out there. But our focus on innovation, I think, is going to be our most interesting focus over the next few years because we don’t often think of a history museum as a place to learn about what is happening now, but we understand that history really is being made by people today and we want to share that story with everybody. John Shegerian: So in other words for our audience out there, if they are interested in innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurship, history…. Leonard Garfield: Right. John Shegerian: Your museum is a place for them. Leonard Garfield: The Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, we love it when people come. We are open every single day of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving. So if you are in Seattle come visit us. John Shegerian: Wonderful. And thank you. I’m going to come visit you and I’m going to come visit your museum next time I’m in Seattle. For our audience out there, again, it’s the Museum of History and Industry – www.mohai.org. Leonard Garfield, you are very inspiring, you’re a sustainability superstar and truly living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good and we are in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We are honored to have with us today Rick Doyle. Rick, you are the CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council? Rick Doyle: That’s correct. John Shegerian: It’s an honor to have you on today. For our listeners and our viewers out there that have never heard you before or seen you before, before we get talking about the Synthetic Turf Council, share the Rick Doyle journey leading up to becoming the CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council. Rick Doyle: I’m happy to do it. I and my wife moved to Atlanta in 2006. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: I had run a large industry trade association prior to that from our home in Philadelphia. But our daughters moved to Clemson, University of Georgia. John Shegerian: Nice. Rick Doyle: So we followed them down. I wanted to stay in this industry. John Shegerian: Good dad. Rick Doyle: I reached out and Synthetic Turf Council asked me to become their first CEO. John Shegerian: Great. And for our listeners out there and viewers, to learn more about Rick’s organization you can go to www.syntheticturfcouncil.org. What is the Synthetic Turf Council? Rick Doyle: We were founded at the end of 2003 to be the voice of the industry and to advocate, to market and to educate our members in North America. Since then, we have grown to become an international organization. We still represent just the North American market, but we have members from Europe, from Mexico and from Canada. John Shegerian: You know, Rick, when we were growing up, it became a big deal when football stadiums, baseball stadiums got what was then called “artificial turf.” Is synthetic turf and artificial turf the same thing or am I mixing and matching words the wrong way? Rick Doyle: It has evolved significantly over the years. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: From what you’re talking about. John Shegerian: Right. Rick Doyle: Today there is an infield iteration of synthetic turf. So between the grass blades, there is an infield. Typically it’s crumb rubber – recycled car and truck tires. John Shegerian: Right. Rick Doyle: And it provides resilience, durability, and it helps protect the grass blades. John Shegerian: Got you. So it has evolved tremendously, and that’s why the term of art is now “synthetic turf.” No longer are the old terms used anymore. Rick Doyle: Well, some of the terms are still brands that are being sold today. John Shegerian: OK. I got you. How large is this industry? Rick Doyle: We estimate it’s about a billion-dollar industry here in North America. John Shegerian: A billion a year? Rick Doyle: A billion a year, yes. John Shegerian: Got you. And what is the fastest-growing segment of the Synthetic Turf Council industry? Rick Doyle: There are many applications. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: But the fastest-growing, I believe, is still the landscape and recreation market. The reason is because it saves water, eliminates the use of pesticides and fertilizers and requires very little maintenance. John Shegerian: So as the water drought continues in California and many other parts, it’s really a great driver of your industry because more people should just take out their lawns, get rid of all this wasteful watering really and put in synthetic turf, which is still very aesthetically pretty but takes a lot less effort. Rick Doyle: Well, it’s one of the “hardscapes” – and I’m using a term – that California wants its residents to replace grass with. There are a number of water districts or counties that are providing financial incentives to residents to do just that. John Shegerian: You are speaking tomorrow here at the ISRI annual convention. What are you speaking about tomorrow specifically here? Rick Doyle: I am speaking about synthetic turf and the use of recycled materials in the industry. John Shegerian: So the direct relationship between synthetic turf and the recycling industry is a very close nexus. Rick Doyle: Our industry uses 30 million recycled auto and truck tires every year out of the 300 million tires that are retired every year. John Shegerian: So 10 percent is being recycled through your industry? Rick Doyle: Correct. John Shegerian: How much is that growing every year? Is that growing by what percentage approximately? Rick Doyle: Ten to 15 percent conservatively. John Shegerian: Wow. So that is a great reuse of the rubber instead of throwing that into landfills or burning it or ending up in oceans or rivers. The fact that it’s going back into your products is great for the environment, great for the world at large. Rick Doyle: Well, eventually something has to be done with the crumb rubber and the synthetic turf when it reaches the end of its useful life. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: So that is one of the challenges. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: Because it’s costly to develop alternatives for recycling so a lot of the turf is reused rather than recycled right now because it’s not economically feasible for the owners to recycle. They would much rather spend less money and send the material, if it hasn’t been reused, to the landfill, which is a shame and something our industry is working hard to solve. John Shegerian: What are the professional applications? Are many football, baseball and other sports facilities using your products more than ever now now that there’s a rubber component that also protects there multimillion-dollar players? Rick Doyle: On the sports field side. John Shegerian: Yeah. Rick Doyle: Since synthetic turf can be used 24/7, which isn’t possible with a grass field, it’s a great option. So a lot of colleges and schools are switching to synthetic turf. About 13 NFL stadiums are synthetic. Each team has a practice field that is synthetic turf. On the landscape and recreations side, I’ve mentioned the benefits, but as a result, it provides an accessible surface for playgrounds so kids who have never been able to navigate a grass playground or some other kind of playground have this opportunity because of synthetic turf. John Shegerian: Wow. Rick Doyle: And rooftops and even landfills are now being closed with synthetic turf. John Shegerian: Over them? Rick Doyle: Over them. John Shegerian: Wow. So what’s the science show in terms of if you or I were football owners and we were at the annual NFL meeting and we were doing a comparison of our stadiums – I have natural grass in mine, you have synthetic turf in yours, maybe one of our colleagues has some other type of field in his – which is the safest? Who has the least amount of injuries? What does the science and the numbers show? Rick Doyle: It’s been carefully studied by the world organization for soccer – FIFA. John Shegerian: Yeah. Rick Doyle: And they have determined that there is no difference in terms of injury rates. John Shegerian: No kidding. Rick Doyle: But I sit on an NFL committee, the purpose of which is to make sure that every synthetic turf field and every grass field plays similarly. John Shegerian: So it evens the playing field, so they all play similarly in terms of speed and efficiency and playability? Rick Doyle: Let me just restate: So the NFL wants all the synthetic turf fields to play the same. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: And they want all the grass fields to play the same. John Shegerian: Oh, that makes sense. OK. Are there any other fields that are possible besides those two? It’s either your state-of-the-art or it is grass? There’s nothing in between. Rick Doyle: Actually, there is a hybrid. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: Which is grass and synthetic, and that surface is used in very cold climates where it’s impossible to grow grass during the football season. John Shegerian: OK. Then, how does that work? Is that working well? Rick Doyle: Yeah. It’s working. John Shegerian: The hybrid works well? Rick Doyle: Yeah. John Shegerian: It works fine. What are some of the new technologies that are cutting edge that you can speak to our audience in your industry that you are excited about that you go out and advocate and evangelize about that that’s what you do as the CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council? Rick Doyle: One of the big innovations that has been introduced recently significantly cools the synthetic turfs. Synthetic turf is made out of plastic, so in direct sunlight it gets very hot, so you need to manage the play of your players just as you would if they were playing on grass. They’ve been able to introduce a new technology that brings the temperature down so it’s very playable. John Shegerian: Got you. Got you. What are some of the marketing and educational programs that your council works on on a regular basis, and do you have an annual conference? Rick Doyle: We have two conferences a year. They’re basically educational conferences. We host webinars that educate buyers and end users on quality and performance and maintenance of their synthetic turf sports fields. We have on-site educational sessions for buyers and end users and our website is full of technical guidance that is all free to those who come to our website. John Shegerian: Got you. And speaking of websites, Rick Doyle’s website, as the CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, is www.syntheticturfcouncil.org. I’m John Shegerian and I have got Rick Doyle with me. As I said he is the CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, and we are here at the ISRI edition of Green Is Good in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. In terms of the Council how many member companies do you have? Rick Doyle: We are in our 12th year and we currently have about 220 members. John Shegerian: And what are the benefits of being a member? Rick Doyle: Well, let me just explain first our members come from all segments of the industry. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: So not just installers, not just manufacturers but also architect and engineers, testing labs, maintenance companies. John Shegerian: Everybody in the value stream. Rick Doyle: Everyone. Yes. John Shegerian: Got you. Rick Doyle: Yes. And the benefits are – I mean, what most people join an organization for is the networking. John Shegerian: Right. Rick Doyle: The opportunity to meet the leaders in the industry and to share in some education that they would get nowhere else. John Shegerian: Got you. Is that a growing industry in terms of your membership is growing every year and more companies are cropping up every year to produce these products? Rick Doyle: There is a certain amount of consolidation in any industry and our industry is the same. But yes, our council is a reflection of the industry, and so as the industry grows, so does the council. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about ROI. If I was looking to either put this synthetic turf in my backyard to save water at my house in California, or if I was the owner of a sports team, is there a good ROI for putting this in and saving the water and maintenance costs or is it the same as regular grass? Rick Doyle: Well, no. It depends on what. John Shegerian: Application? Rick Doyle: Well, it depends on there are many different qualities of synthetic turf. John Shegerian: Got you. Rick Doyle: So depending on which you choose, depending on what sort of base work needs to be done, the return could be four or five years. It depends on the cost of water in your particular area. John Shegerian: I got you. So the ROI really is tied to the two factors of cost of water versus the application you choose to put in for the specific use. Rick Doyle: At home, I spend $400 a month on water in the summertime. John Shegerian: Wow. Rick Doyle: So that’s significant. John Shegerian: So if I put one in my backyard and I just pick a medium grade, how long can I expect it to last? What is the durability like? Rick Doyle: Well, the durability of landscape synthetic grass is significant because you are not using it like you would a sports field, so it could last. Sports fields are warrantied for eight to 10 years. John Shegerian: Wow. And they get a lot of wear and tear. Rick Doyle: So landscape grass could last 20 or more years. John Shegerian: What final thoughts do you have for our audience about making the switch? If they’re thinking about it, or they’re looking at lots of options, what can you share with them – dos and don’ts – about assessing synthetic turf and maybe using it as an option at their school if they’re making decisions at some university or some high school level or a professional team or for just the general homeowners across the United States and around the world? Rick Doyle: I would first come to our website. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: Because it is full of information, including guidance on how to select, buy and maintain synthetic turf in all its many applications. John Shegerian: OK. Rick Doyle: But perhaps the most important thing is to consult references, to talk to those people who have synthetic turf on their field or at their home. Go look at it. Go make sure that what you’re buying is from a quality company. Perhaps a company that is Synthetic Turf Council-certified and those are identified on our website. But as in every industry, there are many different types, many different qualities, and you want to make sure that what you’re expecting meets your expectations. John Shegerian: So you have got to do your homework first. Rick Doyle: Do your homework. John Shegerian: But a great place to do the homework is at www.syntheticturfcouncil.org. Rick Doyle, it’s been an honor having you on today. Rick Doyle: Thank you, John. John Shegerian: I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you are very busy here at the ISRI convention and you’re going to be speaking tomorrow obviously. You’ve educated us and you’ve inspired us that you’re so tied to the recycling industry, especially with keeping the tires out of the landfills – 30 million-plus tires – that it’s such a great thing to have you here because you are making the world a better place and that’s why we do this show. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for your time today for watching Rick Doyle and myself here on Green Is Good. We are looking forward to having you back for our next episode. Thanks again and have a great day.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Vancouver Convention Centre, and we’re so excited to have back on Green Is Good Scott Horne. He is the Vice President of Government Affairs. Welcome back to Green Is Good, Scott. Scott Horne: Thank you, John. It’s a pleasure to be here. John Shegerian: We’re happy to have you on. And for our audience that has never met you before or heard you on Green Is Good or seen you speak, can you share a little bit of what you do at ISRI and what did you do before leading up to your joining ISRI? Scott Horne: Well, sure. I’ve spent the last 20 years at ISRI. I originally was the Director of State and Local Programs, and 30 years later, I became General Counsel and Vice President of Government Affairs, which means that I head up both departments. The legal department, we have four lawyers in-house and we have several lobbyists. We all work together. Prior to that, I was actually in the industry for 18 years. I spent 15 years running scrap processing facilities and three years I had a small consulting and legal firm that was dedicated to the industry. John Shegerian: So you’ve been in the industry pretty much your entire professional career? Scott Horne: Close to it. John Shegerian: Got you. And with ISRI for 20 years? Scott Horne: Yes, sir. John Shegerian: Wow. You know, I was reading about you and reading about some of the things you’re directing at ISRI and how you like to message, and I came across one of your biggest messaging and mantras and I love this. I’m going to share this with our audience, but I want you to just talk about it. Scrap is Not Waste and Recycling is Not Disposal. What does that mean to you and why is that such an important mantra at ISRI? Scott Horne: Well, it’s interesting because those nine little words hold the future of the industry in their collective hands, if you can. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: The confusion between scrap and waste has caused a host of legal regulatory licensing problems, and it’s a misnomer. It’s a carry-over from the days of the junkman and Sanford and Sons. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: Most people don’t realize that today’s scrap processing facility, whether it be a great electronics one like ERI or it be a big ferrous yard, these are professional industrial manufacturing operations where they are making commodities and specification great commodities. They have value. Waste doesn’t have value. And that is the big key. If people recognize that there is an intrinsic value in the scrap material, whether it be for the component, metals or whatever. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: Or whether it be savings and landfill costs. Or especially the environmental savings that are typically the result of using recycled materials in lieu or virgin or raw ores. John Shegerian: Right. Energy savings, resource retention, it’s just massive across the board. So recycling is not landfilling. Recycling is not incineration. Scott Horne: For sure. Absolutely not. John Shegerian: Absolutely not. So when we talk about scrap and recycling, are those words really now almost interchangeable? Scrap and recyclables? Scott Horne: Yes. To me, yes. I think the general public understands recyclables more so than scrap. Scrap is a word that’s been around for a long time, but I think one of the big keys here is that whether you call it scrap or whether you call it recyclables, this all didn’t start in 1988. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: In the U.S., it actually goes back to the days of Paul Revere. John Shegerian: Wow. Scott Horne: He used to collect scrap copper to make his new products. John Shegerian: Wow. Scott Horne: And recycling goes way back beyond that. Thousands of years actually. John Shegerian: So at this ISRI edition of Green Is Good, we’ve had so many great leaders from ISRI but also from your industry and some crossover people – like Doug Kramer who is your current Chairman but also in the industry – come on and what we’re hearing over and over again is that the industry is wreaked in legacy and history, and it’s really, though, a futuristic industry. Everyone gets all the headlines of Tesla and of Solar City. Wonderful companies. But truly the members of ISRI make up an industry that is as cool as Tesla and as cool as Solar City, because really they are doing the whole new green collar economy themselves. Scott Horne: Absolutely. It’s an incredible experience when we have the opportunity to take somebody through a scrap recycling facility. We often have a member of Congress or their staff visit and they have a preconceived notion typically, and when they get there, it’s the “wow” factor. I hate to say it, but the equipment that we use tends to be big and tough and the term “boy toy” comes to mind. These guys are like, “Whoa.” John Shegerian: Impressive stuff. Scott Horne: Absolutely. You look at a shredder and the fact that it can take an automobile and rip it apart in less than a minute into fist-sized pieces of steel, of copper, aluminum, of plastics, of circuit boards, that’s amazing. John Shegerian: Got you. Yeah, it makes sense. Talk a little bit about – for our audience out there, it’s such a fascinating nine words: Scrap is Not Waste and Recycling is Not Disposal. If we’re talking about disposal explain the differential, scrap from waste, just so our audience gets this theory and gets this reality so they can hopefully work in concert with the great members of ISRI to recycle more material. Scott Horne: Well, it starts with the person who has whatever it is. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: If it’s something that has a value as a potential raw material for making a new basic material – say you have an old aluminum chair or an old computer. An old computer. Let’s use that as the example. John Shegerian: OK. Scott Horne: The case is often steel. The frame inside may be steel. It may be aluminum in some instances. You’ve got some plastic in there. You’ve got those valuable circuit boards. Now most people, I think, have finally figured out that that has value and you can recycle it. But there are still people that don’t realize that and would otherwise dispose of it at a landfill. Now that’s a waste. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: It’s a waste in the true sense of the word and it’s a waste in the fact that, you know, why are you doing that when you could be helping the Earth, the environment and our kids’ future? John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: So while I talk about value, it can be significant value. I don’t know what circuit boards are these days, but they’re pretty expensive. John Shegerian: Right. Of course. Yeah. Scott Horne: Or it could be of a nominal value to the person selling it, the homeowner or whatever that takes out an old dishwasher. But it still has value. And although it may be nominal to them, by the time we process it and make it into a new material, it often has significant value that approaches that of something you would otherwise mine, or if it’s paper, it would approach the value of the trees you’re taking down. John Shegerian: So on a scale basis – such as some of your great members like Doug Kramer, like George Adams or Texas Recycling, so on – paper and in metals the more you scale them, the more people who act and stop throwing things away that have value and getting it to the recyclers, their local recyclers, and they’re able to aggregate and then process this stuff better for the environment, better for making the entire world a better place, less resources are depleted, more resource retention, less energy is used, everything you talked about. Scott Horne: Absolutely. John Shegerian: Everybody in the chain wins. Why would the EPA and other officials in this country who are – we want to believe – of right mind allow incineration to even be an option in this country now, which has its own negative environmental impacts and nonetheless burns waste? Scott Horne: I will say that we at least acknowledge that burning for energy recovery is a beneficial use. John Shegerian: OK. Scott Horne: The problem is that when you burn that material is lost forever. You get the BTU value, but if it’s plastic, you’re losing that basic oil-based polymer. John Shegerian: OK. Scott Horne: It’s gone. John Shegerian: Gone. Scott Horne: If it’s paper, it’s gone. John Shegerian: Gone. Scott Horne: That is a problem in and of itself. It’s interesting, because we are seeing a small movement back to the pre-1988 days, where localities are talking about putting everything, recyclables and waste, back in the same container and then taking it to what they call a “material recovery facility.” Quite frankly, I call it a “dirty MRF,” because that’s what it is. Can you imagine when somebody puts the baby diapers in there and they put the soda bottle that hasn’t been fully emptied and that gets onto the paper and it gets onto the plastic bottles? Our consumer members, consuming industries, they’re making food-grade paper board to hold your cereal. Do you want something – it’s ridiculous. John Shegerian: Contamination is beyond repair, and we’re going to backslide if this one-bin phenomenon continues to grow. Scott Horne: Exactly. The problem is that these are often being co-located or very close to waste to energy facilities. John Shegerian: Oh boy. Scott Horne: So that while they say they can recover it, if it doesn’t meet specification then “Oh gee, we’ll just burn it for energy.” John Shegerian: Wow. For our viewers and audience that just joined, we’ve got Scott Horne. He is the Vice President of Government Affairs at ISRI. This is the special ISRI Green Is Good edition here in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We are in the west pavilion, which is the newer pavilion. It’s gorgeous. We talked about it earlier today with Dan Lee. He is the director of this whole center here, which is the first Platinum LEED convention center in the world. You know, Scott, thank you for being with us. We’re talking about this one-bin system now that is potentially – as you said – taking us four steps backward, pre-1988. What do you see? You have been in the business long enough to have a lot of history. How are we going to push back against that and actually do more separation and have less contamination and get the recyclables so they are more liberated and stay cleaner, so they are more recyclable by the great members of ISRI? Scott Horne: I think it’s going to take an effort not only on the part of the industry, but I think that the general population, all Americans, need to realize that the benefits of recycling far exceed burning, and that to take, as you said, four steps back is absolutely ridiculous. We are just now making some headway in getting recycling bins at stadiums, at airports, at gasoline stations. They weren’t there as little as two or three years ago. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: And here we are now looking at a concept, because some cities say to themselves, “Oh, I can save some collection money.” They don’t look at the whole picture. We can cite examples of municipalities or counties that are still today doing dual-stream collection and large percentages of recovery and are making money on it. John Shegerian: Wow. Wow. I’m going to change topics now. You’re a lawyer by profession. Scott Horne: OK. John Shegerian: And it doesn’t come up a lot, but let’s talk a little bit about the Constitution with regards to the recycling industry. You’re the Vice President of Government Affairs, so you are dealing with both national, state, city, municipalities and communities across the United States. The issue of different governmental entities now claiming – as you just pointed out – that, hey, maybe they want to save some money and dump it into this dirty MRF. Aren’t they claiming what is really our recyclables, which have value as theirs, and then directing on how they’re going to be handled and then disposed of by fiat almost? Is this constitutional or does this run up against the Constitution? What’s going on with these governmental entities? Scott Horne: Well, it’s interesting, John, because you have hit upon a point. Some of these municipalities are not forcing you to put it in that bin, but they’re not giving you an alternative other than to possibly drive 10 or 15 miles to somewhere where you can recycle it. John Shegerian: So it’s a de facto forcing. Scott Horne: In essence. John Shegerian: OK. Scott Horne: But there are also programs that we refer to as flow control, where in fact, by fiat, the governmental entity says, “All recyclables collected within our jurisdiction must be delivered to facility A.” And whether it is generated by a householder or by a retail store like Wal-Mart or whomever or by an industrial manufacturer, now yes, you are talking about a takings clause problem, because most people who do recycle are getting some sort of value out of that and when that government takes it away from you that’s a takings problem under the Constitution. John Shegerian: So if I’m a business in that area or if I’m Wal-Mart or an industrial manufacturer and I want to hire one of the recyclers that are here at the ISRI convention and one of your members to do on a net basis a share program on the value of the metals in what I am disposing of, you’re saying the governmental entity is actually intermediating my free market process and maybe breaching the Constitution in the process of that. Scott Horne: Well, yeah. Not to mince words. They’re not disposing of it; they’re recycling it. John Shegerian: Right. Recycling it. Scott Horne: That’s the whole thing with disposal when we confuse that. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: But yeah, the governmental entity is in fact taking away your property. And we have seen a number of ordinances written that would do just this, and fortunately, ISRI, wherever it has been made aware of this, has been able to push back and thus far we are not aware or any jurisdiction that has been able to – say – take Wal-Mart’s corrugated. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: I use them as an example, because their corrugated is a profit center for them now. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: It’s not a cost center. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: And in fact, there was a case that hit the California Supreme Court back in the ‘90s and that one upheld the whole concept that you can’t take a homeowners property by fiat. John Shegerian: So really, you wear many hats. One of the hats you wear is really to push back and protect your ISRI members and the industry as a whole from the government getting in the way of responsible and good recycling between the recyclers and their client base. Scott Horne: Absolutely. And you just made a point that’s important. We often will get involved. We would love for every recycler to be a member, but we have actually gotten involved where a non-member was facing a similar situation, because we don’t want to see any kind of precedent set that would disrupt the flow of recyclables. John Shegerian: Right. So you work on a macro level. Even for a non-member, you’re protecting them because that would be an erosion of the rights of your members, which is the great majority of recyclers out there are members of ISRI. Scott Horne: Exactly. John Shegerian: So if a scrap recycler is not a waste company, how do you refer to them? Scott Horne: Scrap recycler or a manufacturer. John Shegerian: OK. Scott Horne: Our point is that scrap processors, scrap recyclers are manufacturing a specification-grade commodity. John Shegerian: Right. Scott Horne: And we should be regulated as any other manufacturer is. John Shegerian: Got you. I want you to have the final words. Scrap is Not Waste and Recycling Is Not Disposal, how is that more important today than almost 20 years ago, when you joined ISRI, and where is the industry going in the future? You’re young enough to see a great future and have great visibility, Scott, but you’re old enough to have that great history behind you. Where are we going now? Scott Horne: We are making progress, John. Four years ago, the EPA promulgated a proposed definition of solid waste regulation under their hazardous waste rules. Quite frankly, they captured all the metals that the industry handles. We were able to make the cogent arguments that we should not be regulated in that manner, that our finished products should be excluded from the definition and the inbound products should be exempt from hazardous waste regulation but yet be regulated as a manufacturer’s raw materials. John Shegerian: Wow. Scott Horne: We’re seeing today movement. That was a big one when EPA acknowledged that. I think we’ve made a lot of headway, and I think they see the light now and we hope that the rest of the country will. John Shegerian: Scott, just make me one promise that you come back on Green Is Good. You’re always inspiring when you come on. You’re obviously a recycling rockstar, but in the process you’re always making the world a better place for all of us. Thank you so much for joining us today. You are so much appreciated. This has been Scott Horne and John Shegerian from the ISRI edition of Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. We’re at the Vancouver Convention Centre and we’re so excited to have back with us on Green Is Good Joe Pickard. He is the Director of Commodities of ISRI. Welcome back to Green Is Good, Joe. Joe Pickard: Thanks for having me, John. Pleasure to be here. John Shegerian: You know, Joe, I loved it when you first came on Green Is Good. I learned a lot about commodities. We’re going to be talking about commodities today. And almost everybody is talking about commodities now. It has become one of the hottest topics in the entire world. You turn on Bloomberg or CNBC or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal commodities is the hottest topic. Joe Pickard: For better or worse, yes. John Shegerian: That’s great. So before we get to talking about the story of commodities and ISRI and the whole recycling industry as a whole with regards to commodities, for our audience that hasn’t met you before or heard you speak before, can you share a little bit about your background leading up to joining ISRI and your love and understanding of commodities and what you do. Joe Pickard: Sure. I’m an economist by training. So I am ISRI’s Chief Economist and Director of Commodities. Prior to serving at ISRI, I was the economist at the International Copper Study Group in Lisbon, Portugal. So the Copper Study Group looks not only at supply and demand dynamics for copper but also copper recycling rates, copper scrap usage, and that was one of the first exposures for me to sort of scrap and recycling statistic professionally. But I’ve had a long standing interest in recycling and economics going back to graduate school so the opportunity to work at ISRI to combine the interest in economics and commodities recycling was a perfect fit for me. John Shegerian: What year did you join ISRI? Joe Pickard: I joined ISRI in 2010. John Shegerian: 2010. So has commodities always been at the forefront of the recycling industry? Or when things are good people aren’t as concerned, but when things take a dip like what we seem to be in right now it becomes a much harder topic and the predictability becomes even more difficult? Joe Pickard: Well, it’s always a commodities business. Right? John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: So our members have to go through the commodities cycle that other industries have to go through as well, and our industry has certainly seen the ups and downs not just in the current cycle, but over the last decades, we’ve gone through a number of these cycles and it’s the smart companies that are forward looking that really are great at weathering these kinds of storms. But I think with the slowdown in China today, the decrease of commodity prices that we’re seeing basically across the spectrum, we’re seeing an increased attention to commodities as you’ve seen, and that’s had a disproportionate effect on the scrap industry, because recycling is a commodities based business. John Shegerian: Let’s talk about it as an industry. How big is the recycling industry with regards to commodities? How big the commodities industry as a whole? Joe Pickard: So our industry annually recycles between 130 and 140 million metric tons per year across all commodities. The biggest by volume tends to be ferrous iron and steel scrap, where we are recycling over 70 million metric tons per year. On recovered paper and fiber, we are doing 40 to 50 million tons per year. And then we’re doing a lot on electronics. On related metals, like nonferrous and precious metals as well. But, all totaled, in the neighborhood of 135 million tons annually. John Shegerian: As a term of art, “commodity” means what? What is a commodity as a term of art, and what is not a commodity? Joe Pickard: A commodity is anything that can be traded interchangeably. So a ton of copper that you get out of the mine in Chile is going to be the same as a ton of copper, in theory, that a consumer in China would use. So if you can exchange money for a similar good that is interchangeable, basically you are looking at a commodity. John Shegerian: You know, Joe, last August, oil was somewhere trading in the $101-102 area, and I think this morning when we woke up, it had literally spiked a little bit up to 57 dollars. How does the price of oil and this whole new trend of fracking, maybe the Iran deal taking effect after June first, how do all these international economic trends – some a headlines, some are trend lines for the future – how are they affecting the price of oil and therefore then affecting the price of all the commodities as a whole? Joe Pickard: Right. And it’s a valid point because the price of oil is highly correlated to other commodities especially within the scrap industry. John Shegerian: Yeah. Joe Pickard: And the impact of these changing energy prices is sort of multifaceted on the recycling industry. So on the one hand, the recycling industry is a consumer of energy, right? So it takes energy to process scrap and recycled commodities. John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: So when those input prices come down that is a positive in terms of making it more inexpensive to process those materials. On the other hand, we are seeing the reasons for the drop-off. We’ve seen a little bit of a resurgence in the oil price but the drop-off – like you noted – since the second half of last year, because we are seeing really a glut of crude oil production and demand not really keeping up with that. So we’re seeing that as a recurring story not just in crude oil but also in iron ore, where a lot of these major producers are continuing to pump out larger and larger quantities of the materials, even though prices are slumping, in an effect to capture market share. And that has a depressing effect across the commodities, which we see not just in oil and iron but also in steel and nonferrous metals and other commodities as well. John Shegerian: I just saw a BBC special on that two nights ago that said just like the Saudis – taking a page from the Saudis’ oil playbook, Rio Tinto is doing exactly what you said and it’s having the same effect as you just pointed out. Joe Pickard: That’s right. It’s the major miners. Not just Rio Tinto but BHP Billiton too. In the first quarter, they produced about 59 million tons of iron ore, which is a 20 percent increase year on year. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: Even though prices are slumping. So you are seeing the major miners in Australia but also Brazil increasing their iron ore mine output. And now China has announced that it’s going to create some incentives to increase iron ore production within China too, which is going to further exacerbate an already supplied glut. John Shegerian: Do you believe in the thesis that has come out recently in the last week or so that iron ore prices will continue at the low rate that they are today through ’18? Is that right now the state of the art? Joe Pickard: I don’t do price forecasting per se. John Shegerian: I know. Right. Joe Pickard: But I think if you continue to see these miners pump out excess production and you see slowly improving demand but not enough to catch up with that capacity, you are going to have continued downward pressure on pricing. John Shegerian: Let’s go back to oil for a second and energy. What is going on now? Is it a major chess match between Russia, the Saudis, the frackers in America? And who is coming out ahead? And where is this whole fascinating reshifting of the paradigms going to leave us in six months or a year? What do you foresee? Joe Pickard: Well, I think on the demand side on the oil, it’s not that bad of a picture. The economy globally is actually growing, so that is a relatively positive indicator. The problem is there is this sort of race to capture market share and so the OPEC countries in particular have been very clear in their intention that they’re going to continue to increase output in an effort to sort of knock out some of the higher cost producers, including some of the producers here in North America, and I think we’ve seen that have an impact on the amount of drilling that we’re going to see here in the U.S. John Shegerian: Isn’t it true that North America now is producing more oil than the Saudis? Joe Pickard: It is. But if the Saudis and the other OPEC countries continue to provide excess supplies, that is going to make it more difficult for us to increase our production, especially higher up on the production cost code. John Shegerian: Being an economist – and you look at both forward trends and backward history to try and give better understanding to laymen like myself and our audience members – is it true or not true that our storage right now of our energy reserves is somewhere at an 80-year high or something like that? Joe Pickard: Yup. So inventories are very closely watched, and I think some of the increasing in the inventory levels has been part of the reason why we saw the selloff in crude oil prices from the second half of 2014 into early 2015. Like you noted, we’ve seen a little bit of a resurgence, but I think part of that is due to the expectation that OPEC’s efforts to squeeze out some of these higher cost producers might actually begin to start bearing fruit, and if that happens, you might see a little bit more of a rebalancing between supply and demand. John Shegerian: Oil at 100 in a couple years? Joe Pickard: I hope so. John Shegerian: Yeah. OK. Fair enough. Switching to another topic with regards to commodities, Joe, if you and I were sitting here five or six years ago, the talk of the town back then was all about brick, and you and I would be talking about the brick nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China. Is brick still alive? Or is the brick consortium and the importance of brick starting to fade and the world opening up even to bigger and better possibilities when it comes to trading commodities? Joe Pickard: I think on the commodities spectrum and especially with scrap, we’re seeing it open up. Historically, we’ve been very dependent on China as an overseas market, because we have seen such rapid Chinese growth and voracious appetite for commodities. John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: So scrap exporters from the U.S. became very dependent on China for some of the commodities – like copper and aluminum were exporting upwards of 70 percent of those commodities just to China. Just to mainland China. Not even including Hong Kong. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: So I think as Chinese economic growth has started to wane, we really need to find other markets internationally. And I think there are some real opportunities overseas outside of China. John Shegerian: Is India going to start taking on the role that China had? Is that in the near future or is that a more distant future? Joe Pickard: Well, I think the growth that we saw in China was kind of a once-in-a-generation kind of growth story. John Shegerian: OK. Joe Pickard: I think it’s ongoing it’s just moderating the rate of growth. I think India has tremendous potential as well. I don’t know that we’re going to see the same kind of explosive growth in India – for a number of reasons – that we’re seeing in China. But today, at least, Indian economic growth is probably as good or better than in China. John Shegerian: China, are we just taking a pause and then we will come back again or is this leveling off here to stay for the foreseeable future? Joe Pickard: I’d say we’re going to see more moderate growth in China than what we saw in the last decade for the next probably short term at the very least. John Shegerian: GDP a minimum of 6.5 percent? Joe Pickard: I’d say this year the expectation is 7 percent. GDP is always a little bit of a tricky story in China, because it seems like Chinese growth tends to meet the exact target that Beijing sets frequently. John Shegerian: It just happens. Joe Pickard: Which is great. John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: But I think over the next couple of years the expectations are below 7 percent growth – probably 2015, ‘16, ‘17. John Shegerian: No kidding. For our audience out there that just joined us, we’ve got back on Green Is Good Joe Pickard. He is the Director of Commodities for ISRI. To learn more about what Joe does and his colleagues do at ISRI, please go to www.ISRI.org. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good coming from the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Joe, ISRI just commissioned a report on the economic impact of the recycling industry. Can you give our audience a little preview of what is in this report? And how can they get access to this important report? Joe Pickard: Sure. So the report will be available on our website. We are in the process of updating it now, so give us till the beginning of next week maybe. John Shegerian: OK. Joe Pickard: So that would be April 27th or 28th it should be available? John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: Just a sneak preview of the sort of big numbers that came out of the report. John Shegerian: Yeah. Joe Pickard: Total economic impact of the recycling industry in the United States. One-hundred-and-five billion dollars this year is the expectation. John Shegerian: Annualized. Joe Pickard: Correct. Yeah. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: The industry directly employs about 150,000 people, but if you include the jobs that are supported by the industry, whether it’s our equipment suppliers or others who are supported by scrap recycling, that number expands to about 470,000 jobs. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: Yeah. John Shegerian: How does our industry, the recycling industry, compare to other industries in the United States? Joe Pickard: It’s comparable-sized to a lot of major manufacturing sectors. It’s bigger than, I think, all professional sports leagues combined. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: It makes a huge impact on our economy for sure. John Shegerian: Right. Right. And you said 150,000 jobs. What kinds of jobs are these typically? Joe Pickard: Typically, extremely well-paying jobs. We see the scrap recycling industry is sort of the first stage in the manufacturing sector. We’re really the backbone of manufacturing, because we supply such high-quality but necessary raw material goods to manufacturing. So these are really manufacturing jobs that make a positive contribution, not just to the local economies and to state coffers, but to the nation as a whole. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit more about the local economies. What kind of impact does the recycling industry have? Is it more national or is it more local with regards to cities and states and local municipalities? Joe Pickard: Well, we’ve got scrap recycling facilities in every state in the country and ISRI members alone have over 3,000 processing facilities from coast-to-coast, and so we are basically everywhere, making huge impacts in local communities as well. John Shegerian: Speak to the issue of recycling as, again, an international opportunity and how it helps balance our trade issues here in the United States. Joe Pickard: Sure. So in the U.S. we are blessed with having a really large supply of scrap on hand. We have enough scrap not only to meet the needs of our domestic industry, but we can also export to countries around the world so exports have become an increasingly important share of our industry’s revenues. If you look back at the year 2000, exports were about 18 percent of our industry’s revenues. By 2010, that number had increased to about 38 percent. So while most of the scrap that gets processed in the U.S. is still consumed here, the export has been an increasingly important share. Today, we’re exporting all around the world and exports are typically in the neighborhood of about 40 million metric tons. Last year, we were valued at over $20 billion. John Shegerian: Wow. Joe Pickard: That’s just the export piece alone. John Shegerian: Let’s go back to the topic of commodities, Joe. We talked about oil a little bit. We talked a little bit about steel. Talk a little bit about the precious metals, gold, silver and then also a little bit on copper. Joe Pickard: Sure. John Shegerian: Again, not asking you to take out a perfect crystal ball, but where do you start seeing the trends there? Do things look as dour for gold and silver as they do a little bit for steel or where do you see those precious metals going? Joe Pickard: Well, precious metals and gold in particular are a little bit different from the ferrous and the nonferrous. John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: In that they’re a reflection not just of supply and demand but of global risk factors. So when risk aversion tends to go up, so does the price of gold, because people want safe haven assets to flock to like treasury bonds and gold as well. So we’ve seen a little bit of a weakness in precious metal prices over the last year. I think gold is probably trading around $1,200 a troy ounce today, which is still a pretty healthy level, historically speaking. But gold is such a high per-unit value item that the recycling of gold and precious metals really adds a lot to the recycling industry revenues on a dollar basis. Not necessarily on a volume basis, but on a dollar basis precious metals are extremely important. And I think the outlook – given the number of risk factors in the world today, whether it’s slower Chinese growth, whether it’s concerns about the European Union, whether it’s concerns about what’s going on in the Middle East – those risk factors all tend to be supportive of safe haven assets like gold. So that’s a positive, I think, for gold going forward. John Shegerian: It’s positive. Joe Pickard: If you look at some of the nonferrous metals, you mentioned copper. John Shegerian: Copper. Joe Pickard: I think the expectation is that China is such an important part of copper consumption. About 40 percent of global copper use is just China. The slowdown in Chinese growth has a disproportionate effect on copper prices, which is why you’ve seen copper trading at or below $6,000 a ton recently versus its heights at the height of the commodity boom above $10,000 a ton. John Shegerian: Besides China does copper also tie to the price of energy? Joe Pickard: There is a relationship certainly historically between oil prices and copper. A lot of the nonferrous metals, copper in particular but aluminum probably even more so, are energy intensive in terms of getting copper out of the ground getting aluminum out of the ground and process – boxed out, I should say – so there is a close correlation between oil and some of these nonferrous metals. John Shegerian: This report that is coming out in the next couple of days and getting published within a week or so, how often does ISRI publish this report? Joe Pickard: So this has been connected for us by an independent consulting firm in New York called John Dunham and Associates. John Shegerian: OK. Joe Pickard: This is the third version of this report that they have done. They had done previous versions in 2013 and 2011. John Shegerian: So every two years. Joe Pickard: Every two years. Yup. John Shegerian: Every two years. Got you. So we’re coming to the end of the show, Joe. What is your feeling on the future of the recycling industry? Are we just in a little lull period now and it’s going to come storming back in the future? Do you feel bullish? Where are we today? Joe Pickard: All right. So I’d say short term, we certainly had some problems – like we talked about – on the commodities front with prices coming down. John Shegerian: Right. Joe Pickard: But this is an extremely resilient industry. I think the long term prospects for the scrap and recycling industry are extremely bullish, extremely positively. For one thing, you’ve got this confluence of concerns about sustainable development, about the need for commodities. John Shegerian: Sure. Joe Pickard: And about continuing urbanization in a lot of these developing countries, which have a lot of room to grow. Not just China but also Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. I think when you combine all those elements recycling is going to be even more important going into the future and it’s even brighter prospects for the scrap recyclers. John Shegerian: That is so great. And that is a great message of hope that we’ll end today’s show on. Joe, we thank you for all the great work you do at ISRI. Joe Pickard: It’s my pleasure. John Shegerian: And for coming on the show on a regular basis and sharing with our audience your thoughts, very important thoughts. This issue of commodities is so important for this whole industry, for our economy, for these 150,000 jobs and we’re just really appreciative. You’re a sustainability superstar and obviously truly living proof that Green Is Good. This has been John Shegerian and Joe Pickard from the ISRI Green Is Good special edition here in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Thank you for joining us. To learn more about ISRI, please go to www.ISRI.org and see us at greenisgoodradio.fm. See you on our next episode. Thank you again.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good and we are so honored to have with us today Doug Kramer. He is the president of Kramer Metals. Welcome to Green Is Good, Doug. Doug Kramer: Pleasure. John Shegerian: Before we get talking about Kramer Metals – your company – can you talk a little bit about Doug Kramer, the journey leading up to Kramer Metals and how you got involved etc. Doug Kramer: Sure. My family’s company was started in 1937 by my grandfather. John Shegerian: Wow. Doug Kramer: And it was always something that I loved and I enjoyed. It was a necessity, I think, more for my dad and my uncle to support the family. Growing up, I just loved it. I think I loved being with my dad more than I loved the business necessarily. John Shegerian: Yeah. Doug Kramer: So any excuse to be with my dad. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. So your grandpa started it? Doug Kramer: Yup. John Shegerian: Your dad and your uncle ran it. Doug Kramer: Right. John Shegerian: Now your generation – who is in the business now in your generation? Doug Kramer: Now it is my brother and I and my dad. John Shegerian: And your dad is still there. Doug Kramer: He is there every day. John Shegerian: And you still love being with him. Doug Kramer: Every day. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. We’re going to talk a little but about Kramer Metals. And for our listeners and viewers out there, to learn more about Doug’s company you can go to www.kramermetals.com. Talk a little bit about the business of owning and running a scrapyard. Our generation grew up thinking of scrapyards more like Sanford and Son. It’s not Sanford and Son obviously. Give a modern day version of what a scrapyard and a recycling scrapyard looks like. Doug Kramer: Well, it is not substantially different in terms of people bringing in obsolete goods into your facility for recycling. Modern day scrapyards also obviously purchase prompt scrap, which is industrial scrap that is coming from manufacturers. It is material that is coming from machine shops and aerospace and defense and all different manners of production. The difference today is that in addition to being a highly regulated industry, we are extremely careful about what we allow in, the types of materials, the hazardous constituents of which we absolutely will not let into our facilities. Safety, health, all the things that go into running a modern scrap facility. And, obviously, having a very strict inbound materials guideline so that you’re not bringing in materials that are going to be a problem. John Shegerian: It’s a lot different than when your grandfather started it. Let’s just say that. Doug Kramer: A lot different. John Shegerian: What state does Kramer Metals operate in? Doug Kramer: We operate in California. John Shegerian: You’re in California. So your scrapyards, what kind of materials do you bring in given the regulations and the laws and the rules that we have to adhere to in California? Doug Kramer: Right. So we have two yards. One of them is a ferrous operation, so it is buying all grades of iron, steel, cast iron scrap. And our other yard is our nonferrous facility where we buy all grades of aluminum, brass, copper, stainless steel and high temperature alloys. John Shegerian: Got you. And do you put them in shredders? Do you just sort them? How do you handle them once they’re on your property? Doug Kramer: We have a variety of different mechanical operations that we have. We do shred. We shear. We bale. We briquette. We torch. We plasma cut. The only two things that we don’t do to metal to prepare them for their final destination are surface conditioning or shot blasting. John Shegerian: Got you. Doug Kramer: So other than that, we do it all. John Shegerian: Given that you grew up in the business and your grandfather started it, it’s a different world economy now from the time your grandfather ran the business with your dad, now that you and your brother and your dad are there how does the world economic platform affect what’s going on at Kramer Metals now given the price of oil, steel, gold, silver and all the commodities, which are trading at unprecedented times here in April 2015? What kind of outlook does that give you, and how do you then encourage new products or get into new lines of business to hedge against economic factors that we have all never seen before? Doug Kramer: That’s a good question. I don’t know that I necessarily have a good answer for you. It’s something that we struggle with every day. My brother and I have recently gotten more into plastics. John Shegerian: Okay. Doug Kramer: Some of our customers have demanded kind of single-stream recycling efforts, and they don’t want to go to two or three different companies, so we have taken on plastics in that regard. So that is one way or dealing with that. There are factors that are beyond our control, and so we don’t try to control things we can’t control. We work very hard to have an efficient operation. We work very hard at the relationship that we have with our employees and making sure that our employees buy into our vision of how we want the business to run and the efficiencies. We do the best that we can do. John Shegerian: That’s in your control. Doug Kramer: That is within our control. Right. John Shegerian: Got you. At Kramer Metals, what kind of customers are coming in? Is it industrial customers? Is it the man or woman off the street? What does your customer mix look like? Doug Kramer: We do have some public business, the man-and-woman-off-the-street type of thing, but we are primarily an industrial company. We primarily service industry. John Shegerian: Got you. And what does a day in the life of your employees look like? How many employees do you have and what does their work schedule look like? Doug Kramer: We are about 30 employees now. We are down considerably from where we were. Generally, our drivers will get in any time between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning. The trucks are out the door by 7:00 on their stops. The facility employees are in by 8:00. They have an 8:00-4:30 day. The trucks are 7:00-3:30, 4:00, maybe 4:30 depending on how busy we are. John Shegerian: Six days a week? Seven days a week? Doug Kramer: We were doing six days a week. With the conditions that prevail right now, we cut out Saturdays unless we need to be there. John Shegerian: Got you. Doug Kramer: Otherwise, Saturday was actually our large public day. That was the day we were really open primarily for the public. John Shegerian: Got you. Technology can be both a friend and a foe. How is technology a friend to Kramer Metals in terms of how does it allow you to reduce labor costs and actually be more efficient in terms of how you process your materials? Doug Kramer: Certainly, what you are seeing on this floor today is a good example of what the efficiencies are of good technology. This equipment is incredibly efficient. It’s efficient not only in terms of the speed with which it processes scrap but also in terms of the energy that it consumes. Obviously, by using mechanical means of preparing material and the more mechanical processing we can do the faster and more efficiently we can handle and process our scrap. But it takes people to do what we do. So to think that we can’t do it without having good employees who can manage that flow and understand what they are putting in to those machines who can identify upgrades and downgrades, that’s kidding yourself. So on the machinery side we rely upon technology in terms of information management. Obviously the more information we can get the better. The more of the right information we can get the better, I should really say, because there is more information that you can handle anyways. John Shegerian: Speaking of right information. We talked a little bit about – a couple minutes ago, we mentioned the headwinds that come from the globalization of the industry and things that are out of your control and your colleagues control and the industry’s control in terms of the prices of oil, the price of energy and steel right now. How is that – the globalization – a friend of Kramer Metals in terms of giving you more opportunity to sell? And since these emerging economies in China and India, and even though maybe they’re taking a little dip and rest right now they are sure to come back at some point, how is that a friend to Kramer Metals for the long term? Doug Kramer: Well, certainly, we’re located on the Pacific Coast. John Shegerian: Right. Doug Kramer: So being on the coast and being proximal to the ports in Los Angeles is a natural in terms of taking advantage of the Asian markets. John Shegerian: Right. Doug Kramer: Our business and our philosophy, however, is heavily weighted toward supporting U.S. industry. So we export and do a lot of exporting, but we export what we have to. John Shegerian: Got you. Doug Kramer: We don’t export things that we can otherwise sell into the domestic market. John Shegerian: Domestic. That’s so interesting. Doug Kramer: I think it’s extremely important to protect and to support U.S. domestic producers of metal. And the only way that I can really do that is to practice what I preach. If we can’t move the metal into those markets, then we will take advantage of whatever market is available. But given the option my preference is to serve the U.S. industry. John Shegerian: Got you. For our audience that just joined us, we have got Doug Kramer with us today. He is the President of Kramer Metals. You can learn more about Doug’s company and his family at www.kramermetals.com. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and to learn more about ISRI, please go to www.ISRI.org. Doug, you are in a family business – as you shared. Your grandfather started it. It is so fascinating as I get to know more and more people of ISRI over the last 10 years, people of our generation, great people like you and your family. It seems like the recycling industry, the scrap industry is so steeped in family legacy. Can you share a little bit more about your grandfather, where he came from – starting the company and the evolution of Kramer Metals with our audience? Doug Kramer: Sure. My grandfather was an immigrant from Latvia. He came here in the early 1900s. Actually, my grandfather when he was a young man was a bootlegger. He was a mobster. John Shegerian: Wow. Doug Kramer: And after he had some kids and thought the better of being in that life and not being around for his children, he packed up and he moved west and got into house moving and collection of scrap and things like that and eventually morphed himself into being a scrapman, a junkman. John Shegerian: And where was his first location? Doug Kramer: My grandfather didn’t actually have a location. John Shegerian: OK. Doug Kramer: My grandfather actually started the business out of the backseat of the family car. In those days my family lived in east Lost Angeles. John Shegerian: OK. Doug Kramer: He rented garages from a lot of the widows that lived in east L.A. They didn’t drive. John Shegerian: Like in the Boyle Heights area? Doug Kramer: In the Boyle Heights area is where my family grew up. John Shegerian: Wow. Doug Kramer: And they rented garages and he would keep his brass and his copper and all of his prepared ready-to-go goods in their garages and he paid them rent every month. My dad and my uncle actually got our first yard, which was about the size of this booth here, in probably the early-to-mid ‘50s and then slowly and methodically began growing the company through the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s to where we currently operate our two locations now. John Shegerian: And which cities are they in? Doug Kramer: We are in Los Angeles. We are located in Los Angeles. John Shegerian: In Los Angeles. So you are really a homeboy of Los Angeles. Born and bred. Doug Kramer: I am. Born and bred. John Shegerian: Wow. Doug Kramer: You bet. John Shegerian: And do you ever still go back to Boyle Heights of where your grandpa was and your dad was? Doug Kramer: You know, actually, very recently I was with my older son and we were talking about where grandpa grew up. It was on a Sunday, so we were actually driving home. And I said, “Why don’t we go up there and let me show you?” And I drove him by his grandfather’s old home and showed him where they lived. He could not believe that. I drove him around that east L.A. neighborhood, which is now substantially different than it was when I was a kid. John Shegerian: Right. Doug Kramer: And showed him where he comes from. John Shegerian: Where he comes from. His real roots. Doug Kramer: It’s a lot different than where he lives. John Shegerian: Right. Doug Kramer: Yeah. John Shegerian: And how is it working you and your brother together? Is that something that really works well? Doug Kramer: It’s the greatest. Who do you trust more than your blood, you know? John Shegerian: Nobody. Doug Kramer: So my brother recently joined us. My brother had a company that he sold and he came to work for us after he sold his business. He had been there for a short time before and then came back to it. Having my brother there allows me to do what I do with ISRI. John Shegerian: Got you. Doug Kramer: And it’s allowing my dad to take some time to be with my mom and his grandchildren. So it’s pretty great. John Shegerian: Speaking of grandchildren, is there talk or do you feel that some members of the next generation will one day join Kramer Metals? Doug Kramer: I guess my feeling about that is really the same as my dad’s. John Shegerian: OK. Doug Kramer: I would never push it on them, and I’m not interested in pushing it on them. John Shegerian: Got you. Doug Kramer: They love to come down. They love to be around it. They are comfortable and familiar and they are right at home in the scrapyards. They’ve grown up there like I did, for sure. My feeling is that I will work really hard and my brother will work hard to build it for them. And at the point at which they don’t want it, there is no ego attached to it. We’ll do whatever we have to do, but it’s their choice. John Shegerian: It’s their choice. That’s right. Doug Kramer: If they love it and they want it, it’s theirs. John Shegerian: You said just a couple minutes ago that your brother’s involvement allows you more latitude to be involved with ISRI. And we are here at the annual ISRI Convention here in Vancouver. The first time it has ever been in Vancouver, British Columbia. On your lapel, you are wearing a beautiful button. Our audience probably can’t see it, but it says “Charter Member.” Can you explain what membership you have with ISRI and what your leadership position is at ISRI and why ISRI is important to you and Kramer Metals and other great companies like Kramer Metals? Doug Kramer: Sure. I am currently the National Chairman of ISRI. John Shegerian: Wow. Doug Kramer: I am finishing my first year as Chairman. I will have one more year to go. We are charter members of an initiative that we launched under Jerry Simms, which has – fortunately for me, I get to launch what Jerry started. John Shegerian: Right. Doug Kramer: Which is the circle of safety excellence, and it is a group that has decided that safety is the number one core value of their business and that their employees, customers and the public that surround their yards, that their safety is the most important thing every single day every hour that they operate. John Shegerian: That is great. Doug Kramer: We have agreed to share information about incidences, injuries, occurrences, safe practices, best management techniques for the purpose of benchmarking ourselves against not only the other ISRI members but against the entire industry. It is my goal, it is our goal as ISRI, to be one of the safest industries in the United States and we are going to get there. John Shegerian: And it’s all about safety first. Doug Kramer: Safety first. John Shegerian: You’re halfway through your term and I know you’re busy and we’ve got to get you out of here in a second or so, Doug. What do you foresee for the second half of your term? And give us a little visibility on the next 10 years for ISRI. Doug Kramer: Well, the next year of my term, there is a lot to do still. There is a lot left to do. I am extremely fortunate. Mark Llewyn, who is next in line, he is the Chair-Elect now. Fortunately, Mark and I are good friends and have been for a long time and Mark shares a lot of my vision and a lot of the feelings that I have about a lot of different topics when it comes to ISRI and the direction ISRI should go. We are working hard to strategically plan and to embark on some real strategic planning going forward for the association. My plan is to get to where I want to be as far as members participating in safety, for ISRI to continue to be the voice of the recycling industry in this country and globally and to position this trade association – to leave it better than how I found it really. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. Doug Kramer: As far as the future for ISRI is concerned, the future for ISRI, I think, is very bright. ISRI is not just a domestic leader. ISRI is really now a global leader in the recycling industry, and with the partnerships and friendships and alliances that we’ve formed with our neighbors here in Canada, with our international federations and associations, we are definitely a force to be reckoned with and I want to make sure we stay that way. John Shegerian: Under your leadership, it is going to stay that way. Doug Kramer: That’s the plan. John Shegerian: And we really appreciate your time today, Doug. Doug Kramer: Thank you. John Shegerian: You are very inspiring. You are very humble. For our audience out there, this has been the ISRI special edition of Green Is Good. We have got Doug Kramer. He is not only the President of Kramer Metals. And to learn more about Kramer Metals, you can go to www.kramermetals.com. He is also the National Chairman of ISRI. And this is the special edition of ISRI. Doug, you are definitely leaving this organization better than you found it, and you are making the world a better place, and for that, we say thank you and you are truly living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and we’re here in beautiful downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We are in the West Wing of the Vancouver Convention Centre, and we are so excited to have with us today Feliks Bezati. He is the Environmental Responsibility Manager for Tarkett North America. Welcome to Green Is Good, Feliks. Feliks Bezati: Thank you. Thank you so much. John Shegerian: Before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing at Tarkett, please share with our audience a little bit about the Feliks Bezati story. How did you get inspired to be green and sustainable and be so thinking about these important issues of today? Feliks Bezati: Yes, of course. So I will start with my personal story. I’m a European. I consider myself as a European guy. I have lived in so many countries in Europe and I have studied chemical engineering and then I have done a PhD on the recycling of plastics. The first time that I was caring about the plastics – you have a lot of environmental concerns about plastics. And then I just joined Tarkett, who had a vision about the future and how we have to deal with our products, and this was what makes me so passionate today about what I’m doing and working for at Tarkett. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. And Feliks, I have to be honest with you. I have never heard of Tarkett, so can you please share with our audience a little bit who Tarkett is and what they do. What is their core business? Feliks Bezati: Of course. Tarkett is a flooring manufacturer, which is based in France originally. But our sites are very balanced, so we have one-third of our sales in North America, one-third in Europe and one-third in what we call the ex-Soviet Bloc – so Russia, Serbia, Kazakhstan and countries like this. So we are mainly producing, as I said before, flooring products. All kinds of flooring products from vinyl, wood, parquet, laminate. And also we are very well known for sport products like Field Turf, which is also a Canadian brand, so it is artificial turf products. John Shegerian: Artificial turf products. So basically flooring industries. Things on the floor. Feliks Bezati: Exactly. Yes. John Shegerian: And you are with the North America division. Feliks Bezati: Yes. So I had started with Tarkett five years before in our research innovation center, which is based in Europe, and I have just joined the American team since last summer, and my objective here is to help the team here to implement our sustainability strategy. John Shegerian: Wonderful. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about Tarkett North America, please go to www.tarkettna.com. So let’s talk a little bit about your product line and how do they fit into the sustainability revolution? Why are they helping us improve the health and wellness of the people who use them? Feliks Bezati: Very good question. Thank you. So at Tarkett we have started, since 2010, to consider our products in a sustainable way. John Shegerian: OK. Feliks Bezati: Today we are living on what we call a “linear system” or “linear economic system” so we just extract the materials, we use them and we just throw them away. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: So this is what we call the linear model. Since 2010, we have tried at Tarkett to just think about products in a different way. We have found that the cradle-to-cradle solution, the cradle-to-cradle philosophy, is a way to consider our products in a different way. So in cradle-to-cradle, or what we call largely the “circular economy,” we just don’t consider anymore our products with the end of life but with an end of use. So we consider from the designing of our products, how we are going to recycle them? John Shegerian: I love it. So explain what goes into the designing of your products and how your products are greener than other flooring products. Feliks Bezati: Even though I don’t like so much the word “greener” or “green.” John Shegerian: OK. More sustainable. Feliks Bezati: More sustainable. I think that our objective today is more thinking about the future, thinking about the long term. John Shegerian: OK. Feliks Bezati: When we say “greener” sometimes, it’s just thinking about nature, so what it means to the planet. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: But it’s not only about the natural; it’s not only about the environment; it’s also thinking about the people living and using our products but also thinking about the long term profitability of the company. So our objective today is to design our products in a way that they can be our raw materials of tomorrow. So in doing this we can be less dependent on virgin materials and this also can be profitable for the company in the long term. John Shegerian: Got it. So less virgin materials. Your products then at the end of their life are more recyclable, while they’re being used. Though, are they considered a good product themselves in terms of – you know people now are so concerned with VOCs and that other stuff? How does your product compare to other flooring products in terms of during their lifespan are they considered more sustainable for the people using them? Feliks Bezati: When we started in 2010 to think about this cradle-to-cradle concept of our product, the first question that we ask is “What is the impact of our product in the indoors?” Because we have indoor products, “What is their impact in the indoor air quality?” John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: So how we can design our products in way that instead of being less bad for people can be beneficial for people. So what we have done during these last five years is we have worked a lot in reducing our VOC emissions of our products, and today we have products that have almost no VOC emissions. John Shegerian: Wow. Feliks Bezati: So this is important, because we are spending 90 percent of our time in indoor areas, so it is very important to have products that do not contribute to having a bad indoor air quality. The second point that we are also doing about our products is that we have some products today that are asthma- and allergy-friendly certified. So you know there are a lot of people that are suffering from asthma and allergies so we are trying to consider also this in the design of our products by the chemicals that we are going to use. John Shegerian: Got you. So for our listeners out there, this is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and to learn more about ISRI, please go to www.ISRI.org. We are here in beautiful downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We are in the West Wing. We are with Feliks Bezati. He is the Environmental Responsibility Manager of Tarkett North America and we are talking about the circular economy – people, planet and profits. People, planet and profits. So, in other words, your job is to help make Tarkett more profitable, the environment and the planet more sustainable by making products both out of more recycled material but making them more recyclable, but along the way the people benefit because, not only are they living on a more sustainable planet, but from using your products to have a better quality of life because of less VOCs, less asthma and less other air pollutants that come from typical flooring products. Am I understanding this pretty good? Feliks Bezati: Yes. Exactly. So this is what is important about the circular economy and cradle-to-cradle. So from the designing, we have to consider the quality of the raw materials. Because we want our product in the future to be recyclable, so we need the quality today to get the product tomorrow. So this automatically is beneficial for people, because we are going to use quality raw materials to make a good product so that we can use it again and again. John Shegerian: Again and again. So talk a little bit about how recyclers can contribute to the collection of products that can help the circular economy and help feed Tarkett. Feliks Bezati: Exactly. In order to achieve all these factors that we were talking about before, we definitely need to work together. We need networking. And the recyclers can be part of this networking by helping us first of all to collect the materials to help us in the reverse logistics so that we can take back our products and recycle them in our facilities and also can help us to have quality recycled material at the end of the use of our products by collecting them, defining what are the raw materials, the recycled materials being the raw materials for us. John Shegerian: Got you. So the circular economy. I know you studied a lot about the circular economy and the cradle-to-cradle philosophy. Can you share with our audience how the circular economy and cradle-to-cradle can be applied not only to the flooring industry and all the great work you’re doing at Tarkett North America but to almost any industry? We can make a better planet in terms of people, profit and planet. The triple bottom line can be applied to almost any industry if we so choose to do. Feliks Bezati: Yes. So the circular economy is very important. As I was saying before, there are three important parameters. First of all is that since we are considering our products to be in cycles, definitely we are going to use automatically good raw materials, safe raw materials, in order to close the cycle. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: The second point is that we have to consider today that we are 7 billion people in this planet. By 2050, we are going to be 9 billion. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: And in the same time, we have a lot of people in underdeveloped countries that are going to ask for more and more resources, because they want to have our way of life. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: So we are also considering that there will be 3 billion additional people in what we call the “middle class” and they are going to consume more and more. So the idea here is that automatically we know the limits of our planet. We know how much land we have. We know how much metals we have. We know how much plastics we have. So we are going to have a problem of resources. This is why it’s important, the circular economy, because it is considering this problem or resource scarcity by considering our products today to be our raw materials of tomorrow, we can keep them in cycles and be less dependent on virgin materials that everybody is going to ask for. The third point that I like about circular economy is that it’s helping companies and also countries to keep materials locally. Once we are having our flooring products produced today in the U.S., when we are going to consider recycling we are going to keep it in the U.S. again. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: So the resources are not shipped to different continents. They are staying locally and this can also help the local economy form new jobs, reduce unemployment rates, etc. and create also more business in the recycling sector. John Shegerian: And doesn’t expand the carbon footprint by shipping all these things around the world and the planet. Feliks Bezati: Exactly, yes. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about – help our audience understand a little bit, Feliks, the similarities and differences between the cradle-to-cradle approach to sustainability and the circular economy. Are they the same or do they have some slight subtle differences that you can share with us? Feliks Bezati: There is no difference between cradle-to-cradle and circular economy. I mean, let’s say that the circular economy is more about the economics. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: The profitability of the company in the long term. And cradle-to-cradle is more product orientated. But, definitely, there is a difference between what we call the cradle-to-grave approach or what a lot of companies consider today to reduce their impact. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: So the cradle-to-cradle is not about reducing. If we just reduce our impact, we are just postponing the problem. We are not solving the problem. Cradle-to-cradle is more about quality. It’s more about optimizing our products and more thinking in a beneficial way instead of just being less bad. John Shegerian: Got it. You were talking a little bit at the top of the show, Feliks, about your upbringing. You had a lot of exposure to other parts of the world before you came here to North America. Why are the recycling rates not as high here in the United States and in Canada as they are in Europe, potentially, or in Japan or Seoul or other parts of the world? Why are we struggling so much when this is a paramount concern for all of us to move towards a circular economy – and the faster the better – why do we still have low recycling rates and high either incinerator or landfill rates? Feliks Bezati: I mean, it’s just a personal opinion, but I believe that, especially the U.S. and even Canada, they are very big countries with a lot of land, so people today probably don’t care about landfilling. And we are still in this, what I was explaining before, the linear economic model. John Shegerian: Yeah. Feliks Bezati: So we were not thinking about designing our products to be in a circular way. We just think to throw them away. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: It’s easier for us. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: Even though Europe may have some concerns because it’s not, let’s say, autonomous; it doesn’t have all the resources that you can have here in the U.S. John Shegerian: Ah. Feliks Bezati: So we are struggling more with resources, so probably this can be one of the explanations. Even, though, Europe – I mean, there are still improvements to be done in recycling. John Shegerian: Got you. And, obviously, you have a very important position at Tarkett, and for our listeners out there, we have got Feliks Bezati with us. He is the Environmental Responsibility Manager at Tarkett North America. You can learn more about Tarkett North America at www.tarkettna.com. There is a lot of our audience from around the world that listen and watch this show that are young people and they want to learn how to be the next Feliks Bezati. What kind of advice can you give to the next generation that’s really the sustainability, I want to call them “natives,” whereas I’m part of the sustainably immigrant generation. Your generation are truly the natives. What advice can you give the young people out there that are still in school on how to work their way up the ladder to have an important position like you have, where you can really have an effect and make the world a better place? Feliks Bezati: I consider myself very lucky today to have this position at Tarkett. Working on sustainability, it is having a global approach on products. So I was lucky, because when I started working at Tarkett just after finishing my PhD, the company had decided to go through this way. So I know that there are some companies that want to go into sustainability, and I hate, also, companies just talking about “greenwashing.” So they have to pay attention which companies really believe in sustainability, and sometimes it’s just a question of chance. It’s all about thinking in the long term. So I will just ask them to think about the long term. And even in the positions that they have today, think about the long term and think about the future. John Shegerian: You talked about the linear economy and moving. We are in a period of change now. A paradigm shift from the linear economy to the circular economy. What is your opinion on how long this shift is going to take? Is it going to be fast now? Or is this going to be a slow process into 2020 and beyond? Feliks Bezati: Good question. I am seeing already the change in our company, Tarkett, so we are definitely not the same company as when we started in 2010. John Shegerian: Right. Feliks Bezati: And I can tell that we have done a lot of work. Even though it has been five years today that we have started, we have still a lot of things to do. So it takes time. Now, is five, 10 or 20 years a long period or a short period? It’s relative. So it will take time. It will take time. But definitely what makes me happy is to see more and more companies involved in it. And again thinking about the long term, this is what is important today. John Shegerian: Well, that is wonderful. We are so honored to have you. Again, this is the Green Is Good ISRI special from downtown Vancouver. We are so honored to have with us today, Feliks Bezati. He is the Environmental Responsibility Manager for Tarkett North America. Again, to learn more about Tarkett go to www.tarkettna.com. Feliks, thank you for your inspiring thoughts today. You are truly a sustainability superstar and really living proof that Green Is Good. Join us for another edition of Green Is Good. We’ll see you soon.