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John Shegerian: Welcome back to 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. And speaking of the beautiful Vancouver Convention Centre we are so excited to have with us today Dan Lee. He is the Director of Facilities Management of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Welcome to Green Is Good, Dan. Dan Lee: Thanks, John. We are really excited to have you guys and ISRI here in our beautiful city. I think you’re going to have a wonderful time here. John Shegerian: Well, we are. The place is just gorgeous. This is one of the most beautiful facilities we’ve ever been and broadcasted from or I have ever been in my whole life. And for our listeners our there, to learn more about the Vancouver Convention Centre, you can go to www.vancouverconventioncentre.com, and of course, to learn more about ISRI, you can go to www.ISRI.org. Dan, before we get talking about this beautiful facility we’re sitting in that you are the Facilities Manager of, can you tell us a little bit about Dan Lee? Talk a little bit about your story and your life leading up to this very important position you have here in downtown Vancouver. Dan Lee: John, that’s a great question. I’ve always been involved in sustainability and energy management in my entire career. I’m a father of two. They’re always recycling. And Vancouver has always been a leader in that field in terms of sustainability. There is the Vancouver 2020 Greenest City initiative as well. For me, sustainability is really important for our future generations, and it’s something I’m really happy to be a part of at the Vancouver Convention Centre, because we can play a very influential role in that. John Shegerian: Did you grow up in a very green household? Did you grow up here in Vancouver? Dan Lee: Yeah, I grew up in Vancouver. John Shegerian: So was it you were inspired by the city, by your mom and dad or something happened in your education process to get you so into sustainability and green management? Dan Lee: Yeah, my parents have always been my role models, and they’ve always taught me about recycling. And my wife and kids, they’re always reminding me about that. The city separates everything in terms of recycling. And sustainability is something that everywhere you go in the streets of Vancouver you hear about “the green city, the green city.” It’s just a movement that is just becoming bigger than what we expected it to be. John Shegerian: It’s not only a green city – I’ve got to tell you something, Dan – it’s truly one of the cleanest, most gorgeous cities in the world. It’s world class. Dan Lee: Yeah. It’s very world class. There is that balance of work and having a good life here. We take that very seriously in terms of we want this to be a world-class city, and we want to do that by leading and showing the world that it can be done. John Shegerian: We’re sitting here in the Vancouver Convention Centre, the West Wing so to speak. Talk a little bit about this beautiful West Wing that we’re sitting in. When did it open up? And when did this expansion happen? Dan Lee: Well, John, this opened up in April, 2009, right before the Vancouver 2012 Winter Olympics, and we hosted the International Broadcast Centre from here. With the opening of our west building, it basically tripled our capacity. John Shegerian: Wow. Dan Lee: To host conventions and events. And with the Olympics here at our doorstep, it really put us on the map in terms of what this city can do to host some of the world’s best events, and we are very proud of that. John Shegerian: By having more capacity as the Director of Facilities Management here does that open up then the possibilities to almost host any type of convention? You no longer are precluded from conventions due to size issues? Dan Lee: Yeah. We had our convention centre in the east building over there and it was a very great part of our history. That’s where we started with the Expo ’86 – if any of our listeners remember around that time. John Shegerian: Right. Dan Lee: But we felt there was the need to expand, because we were losing convention dollars in terms of the economy. Our mandate is to generate economic activity, and we just weren’t getting a lot of that. We weren’t in that segment. But with the opening of the west building, it really tripled our capacity and we can host the world as you’ve seen with the Winter Olympics, with ISRI here, and we’re ready to take on anything. John Shegerian: Well, you’re the Director of Facilities Management. What does that really mean? How wide is your umbrella in terms of your role? Dan Lee: Well, in terms of some of the primary responsibilities I’m responsible for, some of them are facilities operations, facilities planning and sustainability. Operations – we make sure that we operate the building so that everyone who comes here enjoys a great experience. Planning – this is such an iconic facility for everyone, for our community, for our industry that we have to make sure that it remains that way and inspires. So there is a lot of planning that goes on behind the scenes as well. And sustainability is something that I am really proud of. It’s just something we have to do. And I’m a numbers guy. When numbers start adding up, it makes sense. John Shegerian: You know one of the things when I was reading about this beautiful facility, I think the terminology I read was “the Vancouver Convention Centre is LEEDing the way.” Can you share little bit with our listeners and our audience out there what LEED means and what that means not only on a macro level, on a micro level here at the Vancouver Convention Centre, what it means to you and what you have done here? Dan Lee: Yeah. LEED is the highest certification you can get from the Green Building Council. We’re certified LEED Platinum, and what that is is it’s specifically to the building. For us, it’s not just about the building. LEED, being at the highest level possible, it’s a philosophy that we have embraced in our organization. Not just what the building can do but what our staff can do with the events that happen here in terms of working with the planners. We take that to the next step in terms of opening it up for dialogue and inspiring. That’s what LEED is about for us. It’s about, yes, there is a technology behind it, but it is how people embrace that and how they take that sustainability movement and make it something bigger for future generations. John Shegerian: So you’re Platinum Level. The highest level. Dan Lee: Yes. We are the first convention centre in the world to have that LEED Platinum designation. John Shegerian: The first. Dan Lee: Yes. John Shegerian: So you truly are LEEDing the way. Dan Lee: We are LEEDing the way. John Shegerian: I love it. Dan Lee: In every way. John Shegerian: What year did you start working for the Convention Centre as a whole? Dan Lee: I started here about two years ago. John Shegerian: So you started two years ago. Talk a little bit about the planning in terms of the design and planning to be a LEED Platinum just doesn’t happen. How did you have to go about the facility design and planning and then building process to attain that Platinum status? Dan Lee: Well, there are many considerations to get LEED Platinum. It’s not that easy. You have to look at things such as recycled materials, renewable processes, the recycling programs. There are so many things involved in it. The construction – your construction materials have to be selected carefully. It’s a very rigorous process and it’s not something that is easily achievable. You need to be audited. You need to do so many things to prove. But you know what? When it happened, we were thrilled. The community was thrilled. As an organization, we’re just happy that we can lead the way. John Shegerian: To be the first LEED facility in terms of a convention centre in the world, I mean, that is amazing. Do other directors now come here and try to learn from you how to attain that kind of status or how to at least get LEED certified? Dan Lee: Well, the convention and event business is a very close group. We do have dialogue with other convention centres and we help each other out where possible. John Shegerian: Got you. Dan Lee: There are great things that we do, but then there are many great things that other convention centres do. And that’s what it’s all about is sharing. John Shegerian: So you’re sharing best practices all the time. Dan Lee: Yeah. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about sustainability. If you and I ran into each other at an elevator today and I asked you what you did and I said “give me your elevator pitch on sustainability at the Convention Centre,” what are the top-of-mind issues that you are most excited about with regards to sustainability here at the beautiful Vancouver Convention Centre? Dan Lee: Well, you know some of the issues that we see here in terms of sustainability are just – sustainability is a way to inspire people. Inspiring and setting it up for the next generation. As a father of two, I want to make sure that when I do anything that I take my kids into consideration, that we give them a world we can be proud of not a world where they say “Oh, my parents did this.” And you know, it’s great to see in the educational systems now, that’s one thing I love to see, is education is taking a lead in terms of sustainability early on in the early stages where kids nowadays growing up, sustainability is going to be a norm for this current and next generation. It’s fantastic to see because it is the normal thing to do. If you are not doing or pitching sustainability nowadays, it’s “Oh, are we doing something wrong?” And it’s a great thing to see. John Shegerian: That’s true. For our listeners and our audience out that just joined us, we are so honored to have with us today, Dan Lee. He is the Director of Facilities Management here at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We’re sitting in the West Wing, and as far as my eye can see, that’s how big this gorgeous facility is and it is meticulously maintained. It’s so gorgeous. We are so honored to be here. To learn more about the Vancouver Convention Centre – and it is LEEDing the way; it is the first Platinum LEED-certified convention center in the world – go to www.vancouverconventioncentre.com. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and to learn more about ISRI – the great Institute of Scrap and Recycling – go to www.ISRI.org. Let’s go back to sustainability. I read about your six-acre living roof. Not living room, living roof. What is a six-acre living roof? Dan Lee: Well, it’s one of our best examples of our commitment to the environment, John. As you said, it’s a six-acre living roof. We have four beehives up there that can house up to 60,000 European bees. John Shegerian: Wow. Dan Lee: And it creates a habitat for the birds, for the insects and for other mammals. And if you think of it, this environment is in downtown Vancouver, so this building is not your typical boxed convention center. You go to other ones where you see windows and walls, but this one, you’re surrounded by glass and the roof just really complements it and shows what we can do with the environment. John Shegerian: So wait a second. You have beehives. Dan Lee: Yes. John Shegerian: What else is up there? Dan Lee: We have beehives. We have 400,000 indigenous plants as well. John Shegerian: Wow. Dan Lee: Yeah. It’s an ecosystem up there. John Shegerian: Do people go tour it or is it just to help the ecosystem or do schools come and tour the area as well? Dan Lee: We do tours. That’s one the things we are most proud of is our tours. We do lots and lots of tours here for the community, for professional associations. And we get lots of inquiries from international organizations asking about our living roof, our programs. And we do tours where possible. We do quite a few tours. John Shegerian: The bees are honeybees or not honeybees? Dan Lee: They are honeybees and the honey that is extracted from that goes into our scratch kitchen. That is another thing that we have here. We have a scratch kitchen which makes everything fresh from local products, and the honey is used to go into our exclusive pastries that we serve to our guests. John Shegerian: Wow. Dan Lee: Yup. John Shegerian: So the honey is actually being used in the food production here at the Convention Centre? Dan Lee: Yeah. Food production – like I said we use local products close by. We reduce the emissions in terms of transportation. We try to use as much local product as possible. John Shegerian: Truly driving the circular economy here at the Vancouver Convention Centre. It’s amazing. Talk a little bit about you black water treatment facility. What does black water treatment mean even? I don’t even know and I’d love our audience to hear from you what is a black water treatment facility. Dan Lee: Well our black water treatment facility, the best way of putting it is every time we flush a toilet that water goes somewhere. John Shegerian: Ah. Dan Lee: And we have a system here where the water is recycled. As cities become bigger and bigger there is pressure on infrastructures in terms of population growth. This is a way of inspiring communities and cities in terms of, yes, we have a system here where we flush it and it goes into a plant and is recycled. The water is rendered again for reuse and it goes back into the system. And that water is actually used to irrigate our living roof as well. So there are multiple uses for it and it’s such a fascinating plant and it’s a question that we get asked all the time about during our tours. John Shegerian: But, Dan, the technology exists now – well, I saw Bill Gates recently on the Jimmy Fallon Show. Dan Lee: Yup. Yes, I saw that too. John Shegerian: And he was drinking what he called “poop water.” Dan Lee: Yep. John Shegerian: So that technology exists. So you have taken that technology and you’ve taken black water and made it into irrigation water. Dan Lee: Yeah. John Shegerian: That is amazing. So truly recycling. Dan Lee: Yeah, truly. John Shegerian: So speaking of recycling, what other recycling programs do you have here on premise here at the Vancouver Convention Centre? Dan Lee: Well, John, we try to recycle absolutely everything. That is the best way of putting it. From plastic bottles to metals to wood pallets – you name it – we do our best to recycle it. If there is something that we have a question about, there is no harm in asking the cities and our business partners, “How can we recycle it?” We’re always looking for new ideas in terms of sustainability. But also with our event managers, who are fantastic. They work with a lot of planners in terms of how can we make the events more greener recycling? In terms of the carpet that comes in here. In terms of the products that they order. We don’t want to order too much, so our great event managers work with a lot of the planners to make sure that recycling program is just part of the culture. John Shegerian: So it’s part of the DNA and the culture for everyone you hire here. Dan Lee: Yeah. John Shegerian: That’s how it works. How many employees do you have here by the way? Dan Lee: We have quite a few employees here. There is the combination of official suppliers and Vancouver Convention Centre staff. I believe it’s somewhere around 600 people. John Shegerian: Six-hundred people. Dan Lee: Yeah. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about the future. You’ve done so much already and you are one of the world’s leading, if not the world’s leader, in sustainability and green facilities. Definitely LEEDing the way being Platinum LEED. What is the future? When you sit down with your colleagues and other leadership members how do you then draw out the next two to five and beyond years here at the Vancouver Convention Centre? Dan Lee: Well, one of my roles is we have to map out what’s going to be happening in the next five to 10 years. John Shegerian: Well, tell us what’s going to be happening. Dan Lee: Well, in terms of what’s going to be happening, one of the things that we do want to remain relevant in in leading the way is to inspire the rest of the industry and our communities in terms of what can be done. We have a black water treatment plant here. Not every building can have it but it’s an idea that can inspire many people in terms of municipalities, in terms of other organizations, what can we do to – because the pressure on the municipal infrastructures are going to increase with population growth. We want to be in a position where we can inspire the next generation, and that’s what one of our purpose as a Vancouver Convention Centre is we want to lead the way in terms of inspiring the next generation. John Shegerian: When you talk about the black water treatment facility and you’re talking to other convention center managers or other people that want to understand it better, is the ROI just compelling in terms of the cost you have to expend to put it in and then what you make back in terms of return on investment and in terms of water and energy and other types of savings? Dan Lee: Well, the ROI can be returned in many ways. John Shegerian: Right. Dan Lee: There are people always focused on the financial. John Shegerian: Right. Dan Lee: But there are other things that need to be measured in terms of – we have a lot of attendees here. A lot of the attendees from ISRI they are the current thinkers and future business leaders in terms of – ROI is always good to look at, but there are other ways of measuring inspiration. John Shegerian: Got you. So it’s important from a messaging and a cultural point-of-view to have that here, to be able to message that and inspire others to follow suit because as you know, and as you said earlier, we have a water problem in California and all across the world right now. Water being one of the biggest issues besides climate change that we are facing. The black water treatment facility is one of the great answers. Dan Lee: It’s a great example. It’s a way to inspire people. There are many solutions to many of the world’s problems, but as long as we continue the dialogue and continue to inspire, I think that’s what’s really going to drive the future growth. John Shegerian: Dan, how old are your children? You talked about legacy earlier and that is such an important thing for our audience to hear that when you make decisions and when you carry on your own professional life you are always thinking about legacy issues and the next generation, which is wonderful and really great to think of. How old are your children? Dan Lee: My kids are eight and 10, Ray and Ricky. They’ve grown up in a world where sustainability is the norm, and in their schools, they are taught about recycling, sustainability, all these things that when I was a kid was an afterthought. John Shegerian: Right. Dan Lee: But now I would think that when they think of their dad, “He tried to make a difference, and he tried his best.” John Shegerian: I think you’re doing more than trying your best. You are doing a heck of a job, Dan, and I’ll tell you what you inspired me and our audience today, so I thank you for coming on Green Is Good. And believe me your kids don’t think you’re trying your best; they think you’re the cool dad. Dan Lee: That’s nice, John. John Shegerian: I’m sure they think you’re the cool dad. Again, thank you for joining us today. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and we’re so honored to be invited by ISRI to be here, and to learn more about ISRI, go to www.ISRI.org. We’re here at the Vancouver Convention Centre in the West Wing. We’re going to be filming and taping and broadcasting live from the Vancouver Convention Centre all day today. And I’ll tell you, it is one of the greatest venues we’ve ever been to around the world, and we are so happy and excited and honored to be here. And the guy leading the charge, the Director of Facilities Management, Dan Lee, has been with us. He has been our special guest, and Dan, you inspired all of us. You’ve inspired me. You are living proof that Green Is Good. Thank you for joining us, and we’ll see you at our next show.

John Shegerian: Welcome to Green is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green is Good and we are here in beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, in the Vancouver Convention Centre. Today our first guest is Patrick Shea. He is the Executive Vice President of JASON Learning, and we’ve got two wonderful young ladies with us, Georgina Cahill and Elizabeth Korn. Welcome to Green is Good, ladies. Patrick, before we get talking about JASON Learning, can you tell us a little bit about the Patrick Shea story and your journey leading up to joining JASON Learning? Patrick Shea: Sure. My journey with JASON started a long time ago now. I actually started with JASON as my first job out of college. I was hired as the Webmaster, but then because we were a smaller organization, I got involved in a lot of different things. Most of my time at JASON I have been a digital media producer, so I’ve gone out in the field and have worked with our scientists and engineers and have helped to share their stories through JASON’s curriculum and videos and website and digital games. John Shegerian: Got you. And can you give the premise of what is JASON Learning and then talk a little bit about why you are here today and the very important partnership between JASON Learning and ISRI. Patrick Shea: Sure. The mission of JASON is to educate kids in science and technology. We’re unique in that we do so in a very current way. We connect them with real scientists, real engineers. We expose them to current research. Really all cutting-edge stuff. And it’s different from a typical textbook in that textbooks – you start writing that textbook and 10 years later it actually hits the students’ desks. And by that point, especially in science where things move fast, it’s out of date. So JASON really wants to get kids excited and inspired by science and technology by connecting them with what is happening now. And that is part of the reason why we are partnered with ISRI. We look to government, we look to academia and we look to industry to tell those really interesting compelling stories about science to kids. ISRI has got a great story to tell in the recycling industry, so we work really closely with them on a number of different things. We have developed a recycling curriculum. John Shegerian: In conjunction with ISRI? Patrick Shea: In conjunction with ISRI. Exactly. John Shegerian: Right. Patrick Shea: And we’re working with ISRI’s members to roll that out in various cities across the country, and we really see a great opportunity there to educate kids about the amazing work that you do in the recycling industry. John Shegerian: And JASON goes under the premise of STEM. Can you explain to our audience again what STEM stands for and why that is so important in today’s day and age? Patrick Shea: Sure. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It’s all these things that relate together that make science possible. And it’s important because so much of what we take for granted in day-to-day life is driven by science and technology now and that is only going to increase in the future. In order to be a good citizen, an informed citizen, the students today need to learn science. They need to understand it really well, better than we ever have in the past as a population. John Shegerian: Right. So you had an automobile recycling contest and that is why these fine young ladies are here today. Can you describe what the automobile recycling contest was and how the judging happened> Patrick Shea: Sure. So every year for the last couple of years we have worked with ISRI to develop a contest, and this is a poster or video contest, and each year we have picked a different commodity to talk about that can be recycled. John Shegerian: Such as? Patrick Shea: Last year’s focus was on cell phones and the different ways we could recycle cell phones, and this year we focused on automobiles. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. And so how does it work? Who can enter the contest and how do you judge the contest? Patrick Shea: So any student from kindergarten to grade 12 in the United States can enter the contest. We had hundreds of submissions. These two immediately stood out to us as being excellent. JASON’s staff kind of took a first pass at narrowing down from the hundreds to a select group of finalists that we then worked with ISRI staff and ISRI members to score those and come up with our winners. John Shegerian: And approximately how many entrants did you have? Patrick Shea: We had a couple hundred. John Shegerian: A couple hundred. Patrick Shea: Yeah. John Shegerian: And these are the two winners we have here today? Do you want to explain who they are and how they won and everything else? Patrick Shea: Sure thing. So Elizabeth was our video winner in the Grade 5 through 8 category. And Georgina was our video winner in the Kindergarten to Grade 12 category. She was also one of our Grand Prize winners. John Shegerian: Wow. So alright young ladies, now this is your time to shine. So explain a little bit what inspired you to enter the contest and what division did you enter again and what did you actually do? Georgina Cahill: Well, my school has a really big push towards economic and ecology issues, and this really branched from it and – sorry, what was the question? John Shegerian: And you’re Georgina, and you are in what grade? Georgina Cahill: I am in 11th Grade. John Shegerian: At what school? Georgina Cahill: At Convent of the Sacred Heart. John Shegerian: So what inspired you to enter this contest? How did you hear about it and what portion of the contest did you enter in? I see here it says you’re the video category. So how did you enter it and how did you create this video? Georgina Cahill: Well, I have a film program at my school, which I am lucky enough to be in and this was part of that. I was able to work with my film in that program and enter it into this contest and I entered in the video contest for Kindergarten through Grade 12 and was able to be here today. John Shegerian: Wonderful. And you, young lady, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Korn: Yes. John Shegerian: Welcome to Green Is Good. Elizabeth Korn: Thank you. John Shegerian: What portion of the contest did you enter and how did you learn about it? Elizabeth Korn: At my school in my class where I have a smaller class in a program called Project Challenge, and we all entered since we were working with JASON project. We went on the website and used the word “books” – because we were learning about climate change. John Shegerian: What school are you in and what grade are you in? Elizabeth Korn: I’m in seventh grade at Mattlin Middle School. John Shegerian: Where is that located? Elizabeth Korn: Plainview, New York. John Shegerian: Plainview, New York. So you learned about it at your school and you entered the contest. When did you enter? Elizabeth Korn: In January. John Shegerian: Of this year? Elizabeth Korn: This year, yeah. John Shegerian: And when did you find out that you were the Middle School winner in the video category? Elizabeth Korn: I think in March. John Shegerian: Were you pretty excited that day? Elizabeth Korn: Yeah. John Shegerian: Yeah. What did you both learn – and I will let you both answer this – by entering this contest and participating and creating what you created to win? I’ll start with you. Elizabeth Korn: I never knew recycling was that big of a thing. That there were real organizations and industries that specialized in just recycling. John Shegerian: And now you know. Elizabeth Korn: Yeah. John Shegerian: And how about you, Georgina? Georgina Cahill: I really learned that there are so many opportunities for us to help in this issue. There are so many little things that everyone can do to really progress in this area. John Shegerian: What did your fellow students and other people think? What does your generation think about – this is Green Is Good, the name of this show – what do you guys think about sustainability and being green and recycling now? Has this changed your perspective? Obviously you said you learned a lot about it but what are your fellow students – are they into sustainability and green? What do you feel is going on in your own schools and in your own classes? Elizabeth Korn: I think that we know what it is important, but I think we should try harder to do everything that we can. John Shegerian: I like that. Try harder. Georgina Cahill: Well, my school always encourages us to help the environment and we have lots of organizations and clubs at my school that are working towards that, and I think that really inspired me in this project, too. John Shegerian: That’s great. Patrick, obviously, these two young ladies are standouts. But this is what JASON really is, the best representation of what JASON is all about. What is going on with JASON next? Where are your going to take JASON next? What other kind of projects are you working on with ISRI and with other organizations? Patrick Shea: Sure. We’re going to continue the contest approach with ISRI. Pretty much immediately after this conference we are going to get together with our colleagues over at ISRI and work on the design of the next contest which will roll out at the beginning of next school year. We are really excited about that. And in general, JASON, our mission is to get our materials into all of the schools across the country because we really believe in our model and we really believe in the quality of our science, technology, engineering and math curriculum. We talked before about it’s so important that kids have a great fundamental understanding of science. And even in a contest situation like this, I mean, how much did you guys learn about the science and technology that goes into the recycling industry that you didn’t know before? Georgina Cahill: A ton of stuff after researching about this project. John Shegerian: And your students – hundreds of entrants were from all across the country. For our listeners out there, first of all to learn more about all the great work ISRI does you can go to www.ISRI.org and to learn more about JASON you can go to www.JASON.org. Patrick, for next year’s entrants, for listeners out there, parents and also young people, how do they enter? How easy is it to enter next year’s contest and have you decide yet with ISRI what commodity you are going to focus on next year? Patrick Shea: We have not decided on the commodity yet or the contest design, but odds are it will be pretty similar to the approach that we’ve done this year. We like to combine art and science, and we feel like that is a really creative way to get these good positive messages out. John Shegerian: Got you. Young ladies, at your home – what are you doing in your home? What are your parents doing? And is it coming from your generation? Are you telling mom and dad to get solar or to recycle more, or are they doing it already or are they driving a hybrid car? What is going on in your homes? Georgina Cahill: Well, we always try to recycle plastic bottles and paper and everything, and also, for my projects like this one, I always try to use recycled objects in my projects and incorporate them. John Shegerian: Cool. Elizabeth Korn: Yeah, we recycle at home. John Shegerian: You recycle. Is there solar yet on your homes? Is mom or dad driving a hybrid car? Or is that coming next? Georgina Cahill: Hopefully, soon, I think. John Shegerian: OK. With regards to your goals, what do you young ladies foresee yourself – I know you are very young and I know there is a long way to go yet – what do you see yourselves doing? Is there anything in particular you are dreaming of becoming when you get a little older? Elizabeth Korn: I want to be an author when I grow up. John Shegerian: An author. That’s awesome. That’s really great. Are you a good writer now? Elizabeth Korn: I hope so. John Shegerian: You probably are. And how about you? Georgina Cahill: I would really like to go into the film industry one day and, hopefully, make films that incorporate both live action and animation like this project. John Shegerian: Well, your resume is going to shine now as the Grand Prize winner in the video category. Patrick, I’m going to ask you for some last words here. Any last thoughts in terms of JASON and how people who are watching this video or our audience out there who are listening to us on a radio can get involved, who hear about all the great work you are doing? Patrick Shea: Sure. So what I would say is JASON isn’t in and of itself a conservation organization. John Shegerian: OK. Patrick Shea: We are a science education organization. John Shegerian: Right. Patrick Shea: And we feel like the better you understand the science behind all of this the more passionate people get, because they have the facts and they understand the research and they understand the background, and we feel like that knowledge brings the power to want to conserve and to want to be green. So for those of you listening, if you have a school in your area or your district that you feel like you want to get them involved in this, in JASON in general, in the contest, go to the website. We have free trials to get online and access all of our digital curriculum, and you can learn more about who we are and what our approach is. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. And again congratulations to you young ladies. This is really a great thing for both of you. Thank you both for joining us today. Elizabeth Korn: Thank you for having us. John Shegerian: And congratulations again. Georgina Cahill: Thank you so much for having us. John Shegerian: We are honored to have both of you with us today. Again, this is John Shegerian and we are at the ISRI edition of Green is Good in beautiful downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre. We thank Patrick Shea today and these beautiful young ladies, the winners of the JASON Learning project – the one in the automobile recycling contest – and we ask our listeners and our viewers out there and our audience if you want to learn more about JASON, please go to www.JASON.org. And if you want to learn more about, of course, the wonderful organization called ISRI, which we are at their annual convention this year broadcasting live, you can go to www.ISRI.org. Thank you again and listen to Green is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. We’re here in downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center. We are at the West Pavilion and we are so honored to have with us today Neil LeBlanc. He is the Commercial Manager for Caterpillar. Welcome to Green Is Good, Neil. Neil LeBlanc: Very good. Thank you for having me. John Shegerian: Thanks for being here today, and we’re going to be talking about all the great work you do at Caterpillar and all of Caterpillar’s involvement with recycling. But before we get to that I want you just to share with our audience a little bit about your history leading up to joining Caterpillar and why you are so green. Neil LeBlanc: I’ve been working in the recycling industry for about 35 years. John Shegerian: Wow. Neil LeBlanc: And for a number of years ahead of my time with Caterpillar, we manufactured attachments for recycling equipment. So I got to work in the industry. I understood it fairly well over time and really appreciated what we were doing, how our equipment was utilized and how it was helping to make the planet a little bit greener. And I was offered a position at Caterpillar, now about 17 years ago, to kind of do the same thing with a world-class company with a global reach. So our opportunities to manufacture equipment that helps create a sustainable environment is really great. So it’s exciting. John Shegerian: And, you know, I was reading about you before we taped today’s episode of Green Is Good and I love the theme that you came up with that we are going to be discussing today. You and I grew up in an era where Kermit always said, “It’s not easy being green.” But we’re going to turn that back in this conversation. We’re going to maybe share with our audience why you think that maybe it is easy to be green. Neil LeBlanc: Well, it really is – you have to develop a culture around being a recycler, being green and appreciating the sustainability requirements of our planet. And at Caterpillar – I’ll share with you – it starts from the highest level of the company down to my level. We publish an annual sustainability report and we are awful proud of the work that we do to help conserve the environment and, frankly, the equipment that we provide to our customers that do the same things. John Shegerian: That’s so nice. And for our listeners out there that want to learn more about Neil’s great company, Caterpillar, you can go to www.cat.com. Let’s talk about caterpillar and being green and recycling. What is Caterpillar’s – you say it comes from the top down and it’s a cultural DNA issue. How does that play out, though, on a macro level at Caterpillar in terms of your sustainability and recycling programs? Neil LeBlanc: Very good. First of all, we’ve got a very large global footprint, so one of the requirements that we have in the development of new buildings and new manufacturing facilities is working around the LEEDs environment, even if it’s outside of the United States or outside of North America. So we look for, again, sustainability measures. We look for local generation of power. We try to conserve the water that we use either in manufacturing processes or through the office space. Even something as simple as some of the plantings that we use around the office environment or outside of our buildings where they’re common to the local environment and frankly are types of plants that consume the least amounts of fluids or waters as part of the irrigation systems. So it’s at a high level back up to the top at our company down to whether we have a certain type of plant outside the building. It means a lot to us. John Shegerian: Talk a little bit about the manufacturing that you do and industrial manufacturing and how that interrelates to the recycling industry and why you are here at this great ISRI convention. Neil LeBlanc: Right. One of the key things that we do is we remanufacture a lot of components that are used in our machines. John Shegerian: Wow. Neil LeBlanc: So, for example, if you have a component fail on a Caterpillar machine that you have, you can take the old part off, you can return it to the local Caterpillar dealer and they will return it to Caterpillar and, in turn, will replace it with a remanufactured component. So the customer returns to us a core and the core is eventually remanned – so it’s the failed component – and they get from us a remanufactured component that has a new component warranty, and they get it for about a 40 percent savings. We actually have been doing that for about 35 or 40 years to a point where we have remanned, if we talked about pieces it would be an incredible number, but by weight it’s well over a million tons of materials that we’ve remanned over the course of our remanufacturing program. John Shegerian: And when we say “reman,” for our audience out there, can you define what remanufacturing means? Neil LeBlanc: Reman for us is we’ll start with a failed component, but it has a life. It’s been technically considered to be sound. John Shegerian: Right. Neil LeBlanc: And if it has got machine surfaces, we will machine all the surfaces over again. We’ll clean it. We’ll then put the assemblies back together – whether it’s valves or seals or fittings – and put it back together as its original new state. And what we have done is we’ve reused or salvaged a majority of the components but namely the iron components. They may be castings. It could be something very small that you can hold in your hands to pieces that are as big as the table if not larger. John Shegerian: So really “reman” is the Caterpillar term of art for really recycling? Neil LeBlanc: That’s exactly right. John Shegerian: So, over a million tons you said? Neil LeBlanc: Over a million tons over the duration of this program that we have recycled. It basically would be iron coming back to us, remanned and then resold back as a replacement component. John Shegerian: So it’s not only part of your process. In the chain of what you’re doing at Caterpillar, where else does sustainability and recycling come into play? Neil LeBlanc: Exactly. Very good. Thanks. We actually are one of the world’s largest consumers of plate steel. So a lot of the manufactured components, whether it’s structures for a variety of different machines that we have, the plate steel itself comes directly from the steel mills into our manufacturing facilities. We cut the plate with laser cutting systems to whatever size/shapes that we need. Then, all of the scrap materials we condense and basically drive back into the recycling stream. And more often than not, it is a customer that buys Caterpillar equipment likely has an opportunity to get the scrap that we generate and they recycle it and it eventually makes it back into the steel mills, melted down again for new steel and the system goes on. John Shegerian: Typically, when someone like myself sees a Caterpillar piece of equipment, I don’t think of green or I don’t think of recycling, but the truth is it seems like, as a circular economy goes, you’re in the middle of all this stuff. Neil LeBlanc: We really are, and frankly, we’re pretty proud of it. For us – and certainly there are a couple of benefits to us because we certainly push the sustainability message – we’re big supporters of it. It’s inherent in our DNA now within our company. Our customers, at least in my portion of the business at Caterpillar, are recyclers, and they were cool and they were green before it was really cool to be green. So they are consuming our equipment. They are utilizing our equipment and the recycling value stream. And, frankly, we put a lot of thought into the components that we use and the recyclability of the components – whether it’s electronic components or even the materials that make up the seats in our tractors. John Shegerian: So everything, on a cradle-to-cradle basis, you’re looking at everything you’re doing that touches the people, the process, the planet and eventually the profits of Caterpillar. Neil LeBlanc: Exactly right. John Shegerian: For our audience out there that just joined, we are so honored to have with us today, Neil LeBlanc. He is the Commercial Manager of Caterpillar. You can learn more about Caterpillar at www.cat.com. This is the special Green Is Good ISRI edition from Vancouver, British Columbia. Neil, all your clients – the recycling industry as a whole is now having to do more with less under the new normal of where energy is trading today, iron is trading today, gold, silver and all the other commodities. How does doing more with less fit in to the culture and the mission of Caterpillar? Neil LeBlanc: Very good. Thank you. We really have to focus on the productivity of the equipment that we produce. John Shegerian: Right. Neil LeBlanc: So in speaking about the equipment that we bring to market, the customer’s expectations are entirely different today than what they were 10 and 15 and 20 years ago. John Shegerian: Good point. Neil LeBlanc: The industry itself is very competitive. There is, at this point in time anyway, excess supply of recycling capabilities at least in the United States. And I will speak specifically to iron and steel recycling. So for the customers to really have a competitive advantage, they have to do something different and they have to gain a real edge on the competitor down the street. So, with us, we focus on the productivity of our equipment. A lot of it has to do with the customer’s metrics. Cost-per-ton is their metric, so if they recycle so many tons in a given day or week or fixed period of time, they have to understand what their costs are. John Shegerian: Ah. Neil LeBlanc: And we work very closely with them in advance of purchasing our equipment or the utilization of existing equipment. John Shegerian: Right. Neil LeBlanc: And we also utilize telematics, which are inherent in the machine. I’d liken it to the OnStar products in a GM car. John Shegerian: Right. Neil LeBlanc: We have the same type of telematics in our machines where we can count loads, we can weigh the material, we can tabulate it and we can push it out in the customer’s business software so they know what their productivity was each day around the utilization of our equipment. John Shegerian: You said at Caterpillar, from the top down, it is a culture and DNA issue – sustainability, being green. Obviously, your passion comes shining through. With such a large corporation, how do you get so many of your employees engaged? How do you get them both engaged, honor them, recognize them and how does that look like not only here across America but across the globe where Caterpillar does business? Neil LeBlanc: We’re very fortunate. Again, part of the DNA is driven by the annual sustainability report that the company produces. We deliver that at the same time with our annual earnings report, so it means a lot to us to be able to bring that forward. And in addition to that we actually have some internal challenges. Our chairman sponsors a Sustainability Award. Actually, there are several of them and they are grouped in a variety of different categories, because we have some pretty diverse businesses that we work in. The Sustainability Award is to encourage additional sustainability measures that we may not have taken in previous years. John Shegerian: Ah. Neil LeBlanc: And so it drives a lot of creative thinking in product development back to the efficiency gains especially on fuel efficiency. We are fortunate that fuel prices are low right now, but more and more new product is being developed and the efficiency would be to move more tons of material and do it with less fuel consumption or at a lesser cost. So there is an opportunity for each business unit – my business unit included – to potentially win a sustainability award that is sponsored by the chairman of our company. John Shegerian: No kidding. So the chairman picks different voids that you have. Not where you’re already excelling and doing well. Neil LeBlanc: That’s exactly right. John Shegerian: And he then puts out the challenge for all of the employees to put their heads together and to innovate new ideas that can help fill the void. Neil LeBlanc: That is absolutely correct. John Shegerian: Wow. That’s awesome. And is it country-by-country? Is it region-by-region? How does that work? Neil LeBlanc: It’s generally around the operation of a specific business unit. We’re a very large company. We’ve got 125,000 employees and we’ve got about 30 different divisions. And in the division that I’m in, we manufacture a variety of products, most of which are in the recycling space. But we also do manufacture compaction equipment for even landfills, so it’s solid waste management. And also even soil compaction, which would be involved in roadway building for example. John Shegerian: Besides you, who we know you are the platinum ambassador for green at Caterpillar, can you share with our audience another example of an employee practicing sustainability or green or those kinds of great practices? Neil LeBlanc: Yeah, it’s pretty interesting because we have internal news lines and I saw this one come through just recently that we’ve got a manufacturing facility in Jacksonville, Florida, and there were two employees that were working together and there was a piece of equipment that they use, some tooling that they use to produce a product, that was deemed obsolete and, in essence, it was going to make it out into a bin and it would have made it to a recycling center somewhere. It would have been cut up for scrap. And actually the employees had a creative idea of how they could use it in even production and utilize it with a new piece of equipment, and they made some modifications that had approval from the supervisory group there. The net result was they actually utilized it to eliminate about six manufacturing steps in a 16-step process. John Shegerian: Wow. Neil LeBlanc: To drive a higher level of efficiency. But the creative part of it was they took something that was due to be cut up for scrap and actually gave it a second life and, in doing it, drove a higher level of efficiency in our factory. John Shegerian: Wow. So when something like that is innovated like that, then do you take that and share those practices across all your platforms in the world wherever it would apply? Neil LeBlanc: We actually do. And as I mentioned leading into that story, we had the opportunity to see it – I saw it on a news line. It basically gets pushed through the enterprise, and we’ve got pretty sophisticated email systems and news lines and news feeds and Internet sites. There is one that gets featured with a variety of different stories, and it was there so…. As I read it, there was a high opportunity that a good portion of our 100,000+ other employees around the world saw an example of that as well. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. I’ve read that Caterpillar has a foundation and the foundation, specifically, does a lot of work to make the world a better place with regards to green and sustainability. Can you share a little bit about what the Caterpillar foundation’s mission is and how it works with regards to sustainability? Neil LeBlanc: I’d love to. Every year the enterprise itself funds the Caterpillar Foundation. It is operated as a nonprofit. It is not a subsidiary of Caterpillar. I believe, in 2014, if I’m not mistaken, we donated about 46 million dollars to a variety of different causes. It could be anything like the American Red Cross. We help disaster relief. We also have got a soft spot certainly for the environment. A lot of us are there are we work in it the way our customers do on a daily basis. So we understand on a global basis whether it’s deforestation – we’re concerned about that – and developing countries around the world and certainly it’s clean water as well. There is no reason in the world why all the inhabitants of this planet don’t have the opportunity to get clean water, and we’re going to do our best to fund activities and at least try to clean up a good portion of an area where we have employees or in areas that really need some attention. So, as far as the Caterpillar Foundation goes, we just think it’s phenomenal and the amount of funding that the enterprise puts into that is just mind-blowing. With 46 million dollars in one particular year, that is kind of an average year for us. John Shegerian: That is a lot of money to put towards making the world a better place. Neil LeBlanc: Yes, sir. John Shegerian: Where is your office itself? Where do you sit on a day-to-day basis? Neil LeBlanc: I physically reside in Peoria, Illinois, and Peoria is the birthplace of Caterpillar. John Shegerian: Wow. Neil LeBlanc: So I work in the worldwide center in the headquarters for Caterpillar. John Shegerian: That’s great. So let’s talk about with over 100,000 employees, as you pointed out, you have a lot of offices across the planet. How does Caterpillar make those enterprises and where your employees work and really spend a lot of their adult life more sustainable, nicer environments, greener environments to work in? Neil LeBlanc: We actually just announced the development of a plan to change our global footprint. But, specifically, it’s starting with a new worldwide headquarters in Peoria, Illinois. So this was public knowledge. This was pushed out just a few weeks ago and there are plans now – and it will take a few years for this to develop, but we are going to revitalize the downtown area of Peoria, Illinois, and the key areas where the Caterpillar facilities are located and announcing what is assumed to be about a billion-dollar investment back into the local community. So that will be developed over the next five-to-10-year period of time where it will be LEEDs Gold Standard. John Shegerian: Wow, Neil LeBlanc: It will be self-generating in some of the power, most of the power that the facility will consume. It will be the water processing systems onsite. It will be temperature controlled buildings that have automatic shades and systems to be able to keep the light out or keep the light in depending on how we want it. But it will be world-class headquarters, state-of-the-art and it will rival anything in Silicon Valley when we get done. John Shegerian: Wow. We’re down to the last minute or so. We started the show with Kermit saying that, “It’s not easy being green,” and obviously Caterpillar and everything you shared with our audience today proves that it’s not that hard to be green if you really care and you really put your efforts into it. Any final thoughts you want to share with the audience in terms of Caterpillar, sustainability or any thoughts for the next generation coming behind us? Neil LeBlanc: Well, to me, I’m really excited to be a part of a company that has such a great concern for the environment long-term. And, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, it is really embedded in our DNA. The company gives us the tools to be successful in support of these initiatives and frankly takes great pride and, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, even rewards us individually through some competitions to really try to focus on driving a higher level of sustainability. Recycling programs in-house are just phenomenal. The support for this just really doesn’t go away, and I encourage and, frankly, put a challenge out to all companies. Not everyone is like Caterpillar, but there is an opportunity to really push that through as part of the culture within your business to adopt sustainable measures and drive a higher level of recycling and all work together. And it’s just an exciting time for us, and I think if more companies did it, we’d be a heck of a better place. John Shegerian: Well, Neil, I just want to say thank you from Green Is Good for coming on the show today. Also, you have proven your inspiration and Caterpillar’s inspiration that you can really work together and make the world a better place. You are a sustainability superstar and truly living proof that Green Is Good. Thank you for your time. Neil LeBlanc: Thank you very much. John Shegerian: Really, thank you for your time. For our audience out there, this has been the ISRI edition of Green Is Good and we’ve had Neil LeBlanc on with us. He is the Commercial Manager of Caterpillar. You can learn all about Caterpillar at www.cat.com. You can learn all about ISRI at www.ISRI.org. Thank you for being here today. We look forward to our next episode of Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. The ISRI edition of Green Is Good here in downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center. We are so honored to have with us today David Wagger. He is the Director of Environmental Management at ISRI. Welcome to Green Is Good, David. David Wagger: Thank you very much, John. I’m happy to be here. John Shegerian: Well, to learn more about your great organization, our audience can go to www.ISRI.org, and we’re going to talk about ISRI and what you do there. More specifically, we are going to talk about one-bin recycling today. But before we get into that, share a little bit about your story, David. How you got to ISRI, and what was everything leading up to your interest in sustainability and recycling and things of that such? David Wagger: I’m happy to do that. Well, I grew up in California. I wasn’t born there. I grew up in California in the San Francisco Bay Area. John Shegerian: Okay. David Wagger: And things like recycling and things that were green – but we didn’t call them “green” – were quite common, and so I kind of had that for my upbringing. So it seemed perfectly natural to recycle, conserve energy, be energy efficient and those types of things. So I pretty much carried that with me my entire life growing up from the age of five. I always had some environmental bend. I studied Chemical Engineering in college and in graduate school, and I always had sort of a focus on trying to make operations better environmentally. I ended up in Washington D.C. after graduate school. I was at a fellowship with the Agency of International Development, working on energy and environment in developing countries. So it was kind of bringing that same sense of environmental conservation but helping people too who needed help and development. So I’ve always had that germ, that seed of sustainability and green, even before we called it that. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: I was in environmental consulting for a while. And how I got to ISRI is somewhat by accident. I would say that my career, so to speak, was not planned. It was more serendipitous. John Shegerian: Okay. David Wagger: It just so happened that I ran into Robin Wiener, the President of ISRI. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know who ISRI was. We had a conversation and we both have kids about the same age and we discovered we have kind of similar backgrounds. She explained what ISRI was and I said, “Oh that’s very interesting, it sounds like an interesting organization.” So literally a week later I read an ad for the position of Director of Environmental Management, which is the position I have now. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So she gave me her card, and I emailed her and said, “Well, what do you think?” and she said, “Well, send me a resume and we’ll see if it’s a good fit.” So it took a process, a couple interviews and basically three months later I was working for ISRI. John Shegerian: As the Director of Environmental Management, what are your duties at ISRI, specifically speaking? David Wagger: I would say the big concept is member service. John Shegerian: OK. David Wagger: So we’re a trade association, and it’s basically – to oversimplify it – a club of like-companies in the same industry. We have recyclers. We have companies that provide services and equipment to recyclers. John Shegerian: Sure. David Wagger: But my first priority is to address their environmental needs – whether it’s understanding a regulation, if they have a compliance issue, if they need training, say, in storm water management or how to manage things like dust control and other type of things, I help them with that. I will also operate or work on their behalf when there is a regulation, say, that perhaps could be better crafted for our industry. I will write comments. I’ll discuss regulation with regulators both at state level and national level. So I have opportunities to advocate and teach at conventions like the one we are having in Vancouver. I just moderated a workshop on Design for Recycling, which is a very important policy principle for ISRI. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: Trying to get things that are manufactured to be manufactured with recycling in mind so that when they’re at their end of life they can be safely manufactured or, in some cases, reused if it’s, say, electronics or other types of devices. It’s good for our industry. It’s good for our members. It’s good for the environment. It’s a win-win-win. John Shegerian: Got you. David Wagger: So that’s really kind of what my goals are and my outward responsibilities are. John Shegerian: So today we’re going to talk about one of the elements of recycling: one-bin recycling. I’d love for you to start with the macro principal of what one-bin recycling is. Then, we’ll take a deeper dive into all the different other types of bins that are being used and how one-bin compares against everything else. David Wagger: One-bin recycling is a very specific term. Just a little bit of background, ISRI represents private sector recyclers. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So it’s typically business-to-business. There will be a manufacturer that has excess scrap, metal, paper, what have you and our members recycle it. The one-bin recycling is really down to municipal level, but the connect is typically commodities in common between what is collected on a municipal level and what our members collect and recycle in the private sector. There is a connection there through the commodities. Paper and plastic, I think, are the ones that are sort of the key ones at least at this intersection between what we do and one-bin. Now, one-bin recycling or one-bin collection is a short hand way of saying in communities where they don’t have specific recycling collection, they do have garbage collection, it turns out that everyone puts all of their garbage and things that are recyclable into one bin. So you get things like food residues or detergent residues that are contacting recyclable materials that if they were not comingled with this material would be quite clean and quite good high quality for recycling. What happens is one-bin causes the comingling, which causes a quality degradation of recyclable commodities and that’s bad, I think, for everybody. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: And that’s really kind of what is at stake. Paper is especially vulnerable, because paper really needs to be clean. So if you get food residue on it, it reduces the quality and it makes it less likely that it is going to be a recyclable commodity that a paper mill wants to have. So it could either end up in a landfill or because it has energy value – food residue, for instance, doesn’t really affect the energy value – it could end up going to energy recovery, which really isn’t recycling. So it could end up taking a lot of things that would end up being recycled into new paper or new plastic and send them along to be combusted for energy recovery and then you don’t have those materials anymore. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: You may have the internal energy contained in them but there is no longer an opportunity to recycle them again and again and again. John Shegerian: So for audience members and for myself, because I’m a little confused, how is one-bin different than single-stream recycling? David Wagger: Right. And before I came to ISRI, I didn’t really understand the different lingo there. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So one-bin is the comingling of, basically, garbage and recyclables. Single-stream is the separate collection of all recyclables in one container. So, in a single-stream collection recycling scheme, you’ve got separate collection of garbage by itself and then you have separate collection of glass, metal, paper and plastic in one container itself. What happens is that one container recyclables then need to go to a facility typically called a MRF or a materials recovery facility to separate the glass from the paper from the plastics from the metal. John Shegerian: So one-bin is really one bin. Only single-stream really means a bifurcation of waste and recyclables. David Wagger: Correct. John Shegerian: But when you put the recyclables in one recyclable bin is the possibility, even though there is allegedly no waste in it, is it still contamination and degradation possible in that one bin? David Wagger: I think, yes, it’s possible. It tends to be more feasible to separate in an economic fashion. There are even higher levels of recycling called dual-stream, and we have dual-stream where I live. John Shegerian: OK. David Wagger: Where it’s we’ve got separate garbage collection. We have a large container for all paper products. Magazines, cereal, boxes, cardboard, wrapping paper, newspaper – that goes in one bin. The other bin has plastics and glass and metal. So that’s dual-stream. San Francisco, I think, has three streams. They have organic separately. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: That’s separate from the garbage itself so you could, in theory, have as many streams as you wanted if you thought that you could do it economically and with good fidelity that the sorting is actually very good at the residential level or commercial level. John Shegerian: Got you. And then so explain, now, where is the battleground right now across America right now with regards to various cities and municipalities? Or what has become state-of-the-art? Is it one-bin? Is it single-stream? Is it dual-stream? What’s going on and what’s at stake here? David Wagger: My sense of it is the following. There is a large push – not unreasonably – for states to improve their recycling rates. Often what that means is they give targets to their municipalities and localities that “you need to be recycling.” In many states that have low recycling rates, they really want to raise them and that’s good. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: However, what that also tends to mean is that there are many communities that have no recycling program at all, and it could be those communities also say they don’t have infinite resources to create a recycling program. So one-bin collection is happening by default. If they have no separate recycling collection, everything goes into one bin. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So the simplest thing to do is to put a material recycling facility on the backend of that so all of the one-bin materials go into a materials recycling facility – often called a ‘dirty MRF’ because the materials that are going into it are comingled and cross-contaminated. John Shegerian: Compared to a pure MRF, which you just referenced a couple minutes ago. David Wagger: Which would have, say, a single-stream input or even a dual-stream input. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So what happens is… John Shegerian: Now you’re at dirty MRF. What do we do? David Wagger: Well, the thing is that there is a lot of economic pressure on the one hand to minimize costs. On the other hand, there is a lot of pressure to increase recycling rates. The simplest thing to do doesn’t require new trucks, more employees to drive, let’s say, two sets of trucks one for recycling and one for garbage. The simplest thing to do to avoid all that expense is to have a MRF put on the backend of it so that you can send all of this and hopefully get recyclables out of it of a good enough quality that they will hit the recycling stream and end up being new plastic, new paper, metal and so forth, with the things that are not recyclable quality either being landfilled or going to energy recovery. There is even value proposition on the energy recovery side. From our perspective, from ISRI’s perspective, energy recovery isn’t recycling. And to the extent that it takes paper and directs it not to recycling but in that direction because of contamination, we think that’s bad for everybody. John Shegerian: For our listeners and our viewers and our audience that just joined us, we are honored to have with us David Wagger. He is the Director of Environmental Management of ISRI. www.ISRI.org. This is the ISRI Green Is Good edition from downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center. David, so incineration is not recycling. Is that towards the waste-to-energy model? And that means incineration and that we’re not considering recycling right now for ISRI’s purposes? David Wagger: I would say even the EPA agrees that energy recovery or incineration – well, energy recovery means that you are taking a material as a fuel. You are combusting it and the energy that comes out of the combustion process generates steam or electricity. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: That is energy recovery. Incineration is simple burning it to get rid of it so it doesn’t go in a landfill. So there is no product that comes out of it, whether it’s a material or whether it’s energy. Although some would say that if there is any metal contained in the material, it will drop out of the bottom and that has some value. But from our perspective, and the EPA would agree, that in the hierarchy of materials management that is not considered recycling. John Shegerian: Got you. So talk then a little bit about the advantages and disadvantages of one-bin, and where do you fall, and ISRI fall, philosophically on the one-bin movement? David Wagger: The advantages and disadvantages actually apply to different stakeholders in this whole thing. So the an advantage to the municipality that needs to have a recycling program but can’t afford, let’s say, the extra collection and bins and so forth is to implement that as a way to get some recycling out of what they currently do. John Shegerian: Got you. David Wagger: It minimizes the cost. It produces recyclables of some quality. So I think from their perspective it meets their need to raise their recycling rate. On the other hand it has the high probability of taking commodities that could be recycled easily if they were separately collected and making them less recyclable. Some of it, say the paper and the plastic that has energy value, might end up going toward the energy recovery side and fewer and lower quality material will get to the recycling side. John Shegerian: If we were to poll the great members of ISRI here at this convention, where do most members today fall on this whole one-bin phenomena? David Wagger: Well, I think they are fully behind ISRI’s policy, and I’ll try to summarize it. John Shegerian: Yeah. David Wagger: Basically, ISRI supports separation of materials from each other that are distinct commodities and the maximum collection so you can get the maximum amount of recyclables out of this. They support pre-sorting. They are against comingling of materials, because it lowers the quality of recyclables that end up being, let’s say, separated from that stream of materials. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: I think that – I can’t think of any member that would be against that policy. We’re about recycling. We want high quality commodities, because quite frankly it’s better for us; it’s better for our customers; it’s better for our society to have recycling that has greater economic value and lower environmental impact, because it takes a lot of effort to actually clean materials that are cleanable. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So it sort of lowers the value environmental protection proposition. John Shegerian: For all the stakeholders. David Wagger: Correct. John Shegerian: So therefore one-bin is really not – even though as you say philosophically and in practice it would help a municipality, city or community that is desperate to raise their recycling rates and managing a very tight budget. But overall the contamination that carries along with this really degrades the value of the recyclables and therefore isn’t good for anybody in the recycling chain. David Wagger: I would say that is a fair characterization. I think the challenge is to go to municipalities and give them the value proposition of actual single-stream or dual-stream recycling. I think there is a value proposition in there, but because of their own priorities and the way that they manage their own budgets and operations, I think that’s a conversation that we need to have and really try to understand each other and where we’re coming from. John Shegerian: Is part of ISRI’s role then, David, in the education of communities and community leaders, city leaders, municipality leaders across America to find a better way? David Wagger: I certainly think that is true. Another disadvantage that I didn’t raise about one-bin is to the extent that people think, “Oh, I don’t have to do anything to recycle, all I have to do is throw it into that with the garbage and it’s done, it’s out of sight, out of mind,” that kind of is almost de-educating people, desensitizing them that recycling, well, takes some amount of intentionality. It’s helpful to think about it because what happens is if they go away from home or they’re somewhere else, they may just instinctively throw it in the garbage can because that’s what they do at home. It’s sort of a reflex. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: So I think that it also is sort of a reversal of all the education efforts going back to Earth Day originally back in the 1970s. It could sort of de-educate people, desensitize it, even make recycling sort of lose the value proposition. It remains unclear how it will unfold in terms of people’s behavior. But we think it’s probably going to be a negative behavioral impact with respect to recycling overall. John Shegerian: And against the recycling movement that we’ve seen action and activity in. And especially even in the last 10 years, the sustainability revolution and movement has seemed to go into full steam finally here in the United States. David Wagger: Right. And certainly I think there are many subcultures that would agree that sustainability includes if you create a material you want to keep it sort of in commerce, in use, at all phases of its lifecycle before eventually it will become so difficult to use again that eventually it will have to be disposed of. That happens. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: Through degradation, through oxidation, all sorts of processes. John Shegerian: Right. David Wagger: But it’s really keeping the materials that we took all the effort to make in the first place in play. John Shegerian: Our company is a proud member of ISRI and we are so proud of all the efforts that ISRI does. What we love to give here on Green Is Good are solutions and things that our audience can do. Now knowing and learning myself today – and I’m sure you’ve done a great job also educating our audience members – that one-bin really is not great for recycling purposes and not great for our country and our environment overall, what can our listeners and our audience members do to help their community improve their recycling practices? What can they do? Because this is something that can be not only a top-down effort from ISRI on down, but it could be a ground-up effort also. David Wagger: I think that as citizens of where they live, certainly, they have the opportunity to work with their elected officials to raise their awareness about the importance of recycling and collecting recyclables and doing it well where it provides the most value to the society as well as to the municipality. Again, that is a conversation that we need to have and certainly from the grassroots that can move a lot of people to perhaps make different decisions than perhaps other forces might want them to do without the input from the citizenry. John Shegerian: We’re down to the last couple minutes, David. What is your feeling in terms of the future of one-bin recycling and the future of better separation and less contamination of recycling in the years to come? This is 2015. Is there going to be a leveling off? An increasing of one-bin? Or now we’re going to start seeing it move in the other direction? David Wagger: Well, I think that’s very hard to predict. John Shegerian: Okay. David Wagger: Again, it depends on where a municipality is coming from. John Shegerian: Yeah. David Wagger: So for municipalities or localities that don’t have a recycling program in some sense one-bin recycling with a Dirty MRF on the backend is a step-up. What we fear is municipalities that have single or dual-stream to say, “You know what? I see what they’re doing and maybe I can reduce our costs, and if they’re telling me that this MRF that can take one-bin comingled materials and can do just as good of a job as presorted materials,” maybe they will actually go backwards and backslide into this other behavior, this other one-bin scheme, which I think would be extremely bad. So we have to see sort of which segments of localities are going in which direction. For some, it might be a step-up. For some, it might be a step-down. I’d be concerned about the step-down more than about the step-up. I think, certainly, at some point, you can approach the ones that have put the MRF on the backend and say, “Well, I think it’s a relatively inexpensive matter to do single-stream with the system that you have,” and you can migrate them to single-stream or dual-stream. I think going from single and dual back to one-bin would be unhelpful. John Shegerian: Unhelpful. Any last thoughts for our audience before we sign off today? David Wagger: No. I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with you and reach out to your audience and our audience and certainly anyone should feel free to contact ISRI or contact me if they have questions or wanted to share their thoughts. And I just want to thank you for the opportunity. John Shegerian: Oh, thank you, David. David Wagger, the Director of Environmental Management at ISRI. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good and, of course, you can find David and all of his colleagues at www.ISRI.org. Thank you, David, for joining us. David Wagger: Thank you, John. John Shegerian: Your thoughts and your comments today were very inspirational and also very educational, and you are 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’re so honored to have with us today Tom Knippel. He is the Vice President of Commercial Recycling for SA Recycling. Welcome to Green Is Good, Tom. Tom Knippel: Good morning. Pleasure to be here. John Shegerian: Great to have you today. Before we get talking about SA Recycling can you please share with the audience a little bit your own journey, your own story leading up to joining SA Recycling and your history in the recycling business and with ISRI. Tom Knippel: Recycling started for me in college when I took an Environmental Studies course. John Shegerian: Where did you go to college? Tom Knippel: This was many years ago. Wisconsin. John Shegerian: Oh there you go. Tom Knippel: University of Wisconsin. Go Badgers. John Shegerian: Go Badgers. Tom Knippel: I have to put a plug. NCAA Champions. But anyway I always had an interest in conversation and the environment and the outdoors always fascinated me. I saw some of the things that were going on so I took an interest. But that’s not how I got in the industry. I actually worked – Time Warner was my first career. I worked in cable television for six or seven years in Wisconsin and traveled the country for them. The travel was getting a little excessive, so I decided what can I do that’s going to keep me local with my kids? And it was a serendipitous find for me. I found a scrap company that was regional in the Wisconsin area. They liked me and I liked them. And what they’ll tell you in the scrap industry is you either love it or hate it, and if you love, it you’ll never leave it. And that was over 25 years ago and I’ve been there ever since. John Shegerian: That’s great. And then our common friend, George Adams, recruited you to come out to SA Recycling at some point? Tom Knippel: He did. I’ve known George for quite a while. We both serve on the ISRI board of directors and we have a common interest in this business. Over the years, George is a leader in this industry and I admired him greatly. And when he presented the offer for me to come out to work for him – I had been with the same company for 22 years, but I reached a point where I just couldn’t say “no.” John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: He is that type of person. And it’s been a great adventure for me. Just a wonderful adventure. John Shegerian: That’s great. And for our listeners to learn more and our audience to learn about SA Recycling and Tom’s great company, you can go to www.SArecycling.com. Tom Knippel: Absolutely. John Shegerian: I have been to one of your facilities and I’ve seen the massive amount of machinery down there. We’re going to be talking about that today. We’re going to be talking about, more specifically, car recycling. What happens when people are done driving their car and a car comes to its regular end of life? Where does it go? We all have these cartoonish pictures in our mind of cars being put into like a rectangle cube or something like that. But there is a really different story to what real recycling looks like in the car shredding industry. Can you share with our listeners? Tee up a little bit about what happens at a car’s end of life. Tom Knippel: And thank you, Hollywood, for that misinformation on cubing parts. There were old movies and it was always great when they put these cars in this compressor and made it into a bale. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: But what has really replaced that technology is today’s shredder. John Shegerian: OK. Tom Knippel: Which is a phenomenal engineering wonder. A huge machinery that separates the car. But prior to getting to the shredder cars need to go through several processes. There is an intermediary process when a car comes to the end of its useful life driving. There is a second life for it, and that is that it goes to the boneyard and its parts are then resold. Because when your car gets broken or dented, as opposed to buying a brand new fender, what you should do is go to a junkyard, an auto salvage yard, to get a fender, a hood, a doorknob. So the cars are cannibalized for their parts in the auto recycling industry prior to them coming to us. John Shegerian: Got you. Tom Knippel: And in most cases automobiles today are also de-polluted before coming. There are several processes in the shredding process that have to be done prior to a car being shredded. John Shegerian: Such as what does “de-polluting” mean in the car shredding industry? Tom Knippel: In everything that we manufacture, there are elements of concerns. Items of concern. For an automobile to function and give us the type of luxury that we like today, there are many components. I guess the most common one that people will recognize, and this goes back a few years, is when you popped your trunk and the light came on. Well, that light came on because there was a switch in it that had mercury in it. And when it went up, the mercury fell down and made the connection, and when it went down, it went the other way and disconnected to turn the light on and off. So the mercury has to be removed. The mercury switches. That’s just one element. And they stopped using mercury in cars today but we’re still seeing the old cars come in. John Shegerian: Got you. Tom Knippel: So we remove mercury switches. Batteries which are made of lead have to be removed. Fluids. You have all sorts of fluids in a vehicle. There is oil in the engine. There is transmission fluid. There is brake fluid. There is antifreeze. So all of these elements of concern have to be removed prior to the shredding process. John Shegerian: So all the hazardous materials, hazardous to the environment materials, are taken out first. Tom Knippel: Correct. John Shegerian: Prior to them being put through one of your processors. Now we’re going to talk a little bit about what the process looks like. What I saw was a big shredder. Can you explain how shredding, as you pointed out a couple of minutes ago, revolutionized from the big block image of a car being recycled? How shredding revolutionized it? What do one of these shredders look like? How are they manufactured and how much do they cost? Tom Knippel: Sure. A lot. It’s a lot of machinery. But I’ll give you just a quick history of the recycling of automobiles. John Shegerian: Yeah. I’d love for our audience to hear that. Tom Knippel: Years ago, prior to shredders, literally, men – and it was men that did it – took axes to a car and chopped it up, and before they did that, they actually set them on fire, which if you can imagine how environmentally friendly that would be, burning plastic and foam and so on. And that’s how they removed the non-metallic parts from it. And then taking it apart with axes to cut it in pieces small enough to send back into the mill. So it was a very labor intensive process. A very environmentally unfriendly process to do. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: So at some point they would get these cars cleaned up and then they would cube them because when you melt in a steel mill you need a certain density for efficiency. And that’s what shredding does too. Part of the shredding process is making density. But this evolution, when shredders were first invented in the ‘50s, was revolutionary in that you were able to process a larger volume of cars, break them down by their components and separate them into the components so that they could be reused. So it was a revolutionary introduction to the industry. John Shegerian: Got you. And so where is it now? How have the shredders evolved and what do you build now on one of your facilities? Tom Knippel: A shredder today can take up a city block. And larger in some cases. They can be three to five stories tall when you have all the components put together. But it basically consists of an in-feed conveyor that’s bringing them up to the shredder itself. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: The shredder, which is a hammer-mill, and then after it comes out of the shredder, it goes on various conveyors, air systems and separation of the components that come out of the shredder. John Shegerian: Got you. And the air systems on the backend and the conveyors on the backend are to separate the different commodities of it coming out of the car? Tom Knippel: Correct. The shredding process itself – and some people when they hear the word “shredding,” they think of paper shredding, and it’s really nothing like it. The end product is to break to down in smaller pieces. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: Which is the same. But a shedder is also called a “hammer-mill.” And there is a very large shaft in the middle that can lay 50,000 pounds that rotates at about 500 revolutions per minutes. And attached to that are approximately 30 hammers and each hammer can weigh 250 to 1,250 pounds. John Shegerian: Wow. Tom Knippel: And this is spinning at 500 revolutions per minute inside a closed chamber. And as material is fed in, these hammers come around and they actually tear the car apart. So there is a large clamp at the opening of the shredder that holds the car in place so it doesn’t get pulled in too fast. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: But it’s continually ripping apart that car inside the shredder. The top is solid and the bottom of the shredder looks almost like a sewer grate. So shredding is really two processes. It breaks all the components apart because in a car you have steel, you have aluminum, you have stainless steel, copper, foam, plastic, glass, and all these components have to be separated. That’s what the first part of shredding does. The second part is as it forces this broken up material through this grate in the bottom, it forces it into fist-sized balls. John Shegerian: OK. Tom Knippel: Which densifies the steel product. John Shegerian: OK. Tom Knippel: And then you have all this material coming out on the backend. The first separation that occurs is the easiest. Magnetic separation. Steel is ferrous, so it’s magnetic. Everything else is non-magnetic. So the first system are these large drums on conveyors that will pick up the steel and take it one way. John Shegerian: Got it. Tom Knippel: So that is our steel product process. John Shegerian: Steel is taken out first. Tom Knippel: Absolutely. But there are some components in there – every car is equipped with a starter to start your car. This starter is like an electric motor. There is copper inside but it’s wrapped around steel so the magnet picks that up too. So even in the mechanized systems today, there is some level of hand separation as the material is coming out. John Shegerian: Got it. Tom Knippel: The rest of the material goes on to a conveyor system of separation because we want to get the aluminum separated from the copper separated from the stainless steel separated from the plastic, glass and foam. And we do that through a series of technology that uses rare earth magnets that expel the metals at different rates. And we set up dividers so that the aluminum gets thrown the longest. The copper that is heavier based on density gets thrown the least. So actually in the industry there is a term for aluminum that comes out of shredders called “long throw aluminum” because it’s thrown the furthest. But the technology is so good today that we can separate all these components and get maximum recovery of the car. John Shegerian: Higher value. Tom Knippel: Higher value and more elements coming back into use as opposed to being landfill. John Shegerian: So besides value and, you just mentioned, less landfill, what are the other benefits? Is it just an environmentally better system than crushing the cars? Tom Knippel: It’s an environmentally better system, but it also increases the melt capacity at a steel mill. Their efficiency is improved by a densified pure, homogenous product. A cleaner product. So there are efficiencies all the way along the line. But what we’d like to look at as probably the biggest, though, are the environmental savings. When you produce any material from a recycled component versus mining raw materials you’re saving virgin materials, you’re saving natural resources. John Shegerian: Lots of energy. Tom Knippel: Lots of energy. On an average car you’ll save over 500 gallons in energy savings on one vehicle and 8,000 pounds of CO2 emissions. John Shegerian: Wow. So if you take a car going in to one of your facilities, it, like you said, has to be decontaminated first. After decontamination, after the parts have been harvested from it prior to it coming to your facility, what percentage of the car actually is getting shred and going back into resource reassignment and reallocation? Tom Knippel: And the goal obviously for cost benefit is to maximize that. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: So just like with everything else we want to get everything out of the hog including the squeal. SA Recycling – our owner George Adams is by far the expert in that category and systems. But we’ll maximize recovery. An average car is 70-plus percent steel and 3-4 percent nonferrous metals, being aluminum, copper and stainless. The rest is the residuals. What we call the “automobile shredder residue,” which may contain plastic, foam, glass and those components. There is technology being worked on right now, and this was only recently approved by working with the EPA to start harvesting more so we could get up to close to 90 percent recovery on the vehicles. John Shegerian: Really? Tom Knippel: Yeah. John Shegerian: I want to come back to the issue of steel in a second. For our listeners in our audience who have just joined us, we’ve got Tom Knippel. He is the Vice President of Commercial Recycling for SA Recycling. You can find SA Recycling at www.SArecycling.com. We’re doing the ISRI Green Is Good special here in downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center and we’re talking about car and automobile recycling with Tom. You mentioned historically how much you can recycle out of a car nowadays and what it is made out of in terms of steel and other items. Is there a change, a sea change, coming now with all these cars becoming much more sustainable and hybrids and the CAFE standards that we have? Is there less steel and more aluminum and other products and carbon products going into the making of cars? And how is that affecting how you create and build and design your shredders? Tom Knippel: And the answer is yes. And the challenge is how do you recover the maximum amount of materials both economically and efficiently. John Shegerian: Yeah. Tom Knippel: And just to give you some ground work on the amount of materials that are recycled annually in the U.S. John Shegerian: Yeah. Tom Knippel: One-hundred-and-thirty-eight million tons. Seventy million tons of steel. The United States produces about 100 million tons per year of steel. Seventy percent of that comes from recycled steel. John Shegerian: Wow. Tom Knippel: So we’re talking some phenomenal numbers in terms of the amount of materials. But it is reducing. Aluminum is replacing steel in cars for fuel efficiency – the CAFE standards – and we want cars to get more miles per gallon. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: Batteries are being used instead of gas-powered engines. So the recycling process changes, and one of the things that ISRI took the forefront on years ago and actually trademarked the term Design for Recycling is working with auto manufacturer, working with engineers, working with manufacturers of all products to design their products to maximize recycling. And that includes removing. Hazardous materials. If there is no mercury to begin with, it’s much easier to recycle. And if something is put together with two bolts instead of 32, you can dismantle it manually to recover something prior to being shredded. But the shredding process is still for many years going to be there as the base component for recycling automobiles, appliances and other light gauge steels. John Shegerian: Do the tires get recycled? Tom Knippel: The tires are removed prior to, in most cases, being recycled so that they don’t fall into a waste stream. Because there are many beneficial uses today for tires, and they are recyclable, and that’s a big part of ISRI’s component. John Shegerian: So they get recycled from a different recycling? Tom Knippel: From a different recycling. Foam/rubber. John Shegerian: Wow. So, really, as our audience sees these scrap yards and they drive by them, the old Sanford and Son model, the car shredding that’s being done there is truly almost a new economy type of business. A very sustainable and very green industry in that you’re taking all this amount of huge tonnages you point out of cars and you’re turning it into new resources that go back to smelters and are made into the next generation of planes and infrastructure in India and China and in the United States. Tom Knippel: And it’s an international market. It’s funny that you mention Sanford and Son, because growing up that was my only perception of a scrap dealer. John Shegerian: Mine too. Tom Knippel: And it’s so far from what the truth is, and it’s simply because this industry hasn’t had a public presence in the past. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: It’s been there for 100 years in the U.S. and metals have been recycled for thousands of years because of their value. So it’s just that we don’t see it in our every day. So if you have the opportunity ever to go online and see how some of these processes are done, it’s a highly advanced technological process that employs a lot of machinery. It’s labor intensive still. But it’s an industry that employs 138,000 people in the United States. John Shegerian: On SA Recycling’s website can we actually view the shredding of a car? Tom Knippel: We won’t be there, but on the ISRI website I’ll direct you to…. John Shegerian: Got you. Tom Knippel: www.ISRI.org. You’ll be able to find shedder videos, videos of recycling ferrous/nonferrous plastics, tires and so on. John Shegerian: Everything is right there. Tom Knippel: Everything is right there. John Shegerian: That’s wonderful. And so, as you say, what was a legacy in this industry is really a futuristic industry now in that it’s as green and sustainable as ever before, but it’s now getting visibility and it’s really doing so much good for the environment and for the planet, that all these car shredding facilities that SA Recycling owns and other of your colleagues and competitors own are really part of the new green economy now. Tom Knippel: Absolutely. We have to move to a society of sustainability. Natural resources – the earth is limited. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: We can’t produce more of what’s here. So as we start to run down on certain commodities, recycling just becomes that much more important. John Shegerian: So those 138,000 jobs that you just mentioned – they are really, as would be called under new terminology, “green collared” jobs. They’re really part of the new green economy, even though they’re a legacy industry. Tom Knippel: Absolutely. And I love that term. I’m going to be using that too now, so thank you. John Shegerian: You talk about the international markets, Tom. At SA Recycling when you recycle these cars, are you selling to domestic buyers? Are you selling to overseas buyers? Or both? Tom Knippel: Everywhere. We’re located in four states. Over 60 locations in California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas. The marketplace is international today and it’s hard to be in this business without having an international presence. We own and operate two dock loading facilities so we can load bulk vessels with 40,000-45,000 tons of scrap steel at one time. We load containers of scrap steel for oversea shipments. We utilize rail for domestic shipments to the steel mills and service all the major steel mills in the U.S. and abroad. So it’s a very diverse marketplace on the steel side. On the nonferrous side – aluminums, stainless steel, coppers and brasses – that is dependent on the market that’s the most predominant consumer. China consumes 40 percent of the world’s copper, so they’re a natural buyer of copper products. John Shegerian: Got it. Tom Knippel: Aluminum, a lot of it is smelted domestically. Because the U.S. is still the largest economy in the world. I have to take that back, because I think China surpass us in dollars just recently. John Shegerian: Right. But we’re right there. One or two. Tom Knippel: We are at the top of the heap, so we still consume a lot of materials for the products that we consume here in the United States. John Shegerian: We’re sitting here at the ISRI Convention, Tom. It’s the third week of April, 2015. Last summer, last August or so, oil was at $100 a barrel. We’ve seen a slide, almost a pro rata slide, in every commodity platform whether it’s iron, oil, copper, silver, gold. What’s the future of responsible recycling, like what you do at SA Recycling, what other responsible recyclers do, or members of ISRI and the greater ISRI organization? How is this going to affect the economics of recycling, and what is going to be the new normal? What is the visibility that you and George and other leaders in the industry see right now? Tom Knippel: The difference is that we’re subject to a world market. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: We’ve looked to the world as a marketplace and now we have to live within that realm. And one of the interesting things that has occurred over the last 20 years has been the growth of China. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: I’ll just take steel as an example. China is producing about 800 million tons per year of steel. They’re consuming about 700 million tons internally. John Shegerian: Wow. Tom Knippel: And they have to get rid of the other 100 million tons by selling it to other countries. The United States produces 100 million tons of steel and consumes about 100 million tons. So we’re living in a world economy today that we can’t just manage ourselves locally. We have to look at what is going on in the rest of the world. China has been slowing so demand has decreased. Europe has been in a recession for some time and it’s just starting to come back. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: But when we look at the production – and I’ll start with oil. With fracking, all of a sudden we put out a lot of capacity and oversupplied a market that was actually decreasing in demand so prices go down. Economics is very simple. It’s supply/demand and fear/greed, as I tell people, and those elements are always what are at play. So in the commodities market, in the metals market, our consumers know our worldwide as opposed to 50 years ago when most of it was bought and sold within the United States as far as steels go. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: So we have to watch what those markets do. There’s always going to be demand for steel. There’s always going to be demand for copper and aluminum. So you just have to read just your business plan to accommodate what those worldwide markets are doing. And they’re always cyclical. They go up. They go down. But today’s paradigm has changed just a little bit with steel because of China’s great production capacity, which is unprecedented so it has changed the game plan a little bit for some people. John Shegerian: But what goes down eventually goes back up again. Tom Knippel: Correct. John Shegerian: Do you feel positive about the future in terms of whether it’s a year from now or three years from now that we’re at a low right now in most of these commodities – not just steel obviously, oil as well and others – that eventually we’ll start seeing the demand go up and the rise of these commodities again? Tom Knippel: Always. When there’s too much supply, it gets cut back. When there is not enough, it gets produced. Again, it’s all cyclical. And for those of us that have been in the business for years, we know their cycles and we don’t panic when the market drops. John Shegerian: Got it. Tom Knippel: Unfortunately, this last one was rather large. And everybody remembers the start of the great recession in 2008, and most recently, in February, we saw a drop in the steel markets here that on a percentage basis was actually larger than the drop that we saw in 2008. John Shegerian: Wow. Tom Knippel: So it requires a lot of adjusting. And we know some companies won’t make it. There will be some consolidation. But at the end of the day healthy companies will survive. Companies that are doing the right thing will survive. Doing it the right way will survive. John Shegerian: Right. Tom Knippel: Because there is a need and demand for recycled commodities as we run shorter and short on raw materials. And the percentage that we can get out of, say, a copper mine that used to produce at 3 percent and is now producing at 1 percent or less becomes very expensive and difficult to extract. John Shegerian: So the future of car recycling and SA Recycling is very bright, very hopeful. Tom Knippel: Absolutely. John Shegerian: And the future of ISRI of course is evergreen. So we’re in a good position right now. Tom Knippel: I’m always accused of being the eternal optimist, but my optimism has always paid off. John Shegerian: I love it. That’s what we need more of. We need more eternal optimists like you in this world that make the world a better place. Tom, we thank you today for joining us on Green Is Good. The world needs more people like you that make the world a better place. You are truly living proof that Green Is Good. So, thank you for your time today. Tom Knippel: And thank you for helping us to get the message out. It’s very important John Shegerian: I’m happy to do it. Again, this is John Shegerian and Tom Knippel here at the ISRI Convention in downtown Vancouver. Thank you for joining us at Green Is Good. We’ll see you in our next episode.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. We’re here in downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center. And we’re so honored to have with us today John Taylor. He is the VP of Public Affairs for LG – Life’s Good – and you can see more about LG at www.LGE.com. Welcome to Green Is Good, John. John Taylor: Thank you. John Shegerian: Hey, you know, John, before we get talking about the great company and the iconic brand that you work for, LG, share a little bit about the John Taylor story and how you came to become this VP of Public Affairs and how you joined LG. John Taylor: Well, I’m a recovering journalist actually. I started at a company called Zenith within the United States, which was later acquired by LG. So I’ve actually been an LG guy for 20 years now. John Shegerian: Wow. John Taylor: And have seen this amazing brand, LG, grow exponentially in the United States. Both as a brand that consumers love generally and one that’s very proud of our role in environmentalism and really driving sustainability. John Shegerian: And LG now is the second largest OEM in the entire world. John Taylor: I think if you look at the landscape of various products – and the cool thing about LG is we have everything from mobile phones and tablets to refrigerators and washing machines to the latest cutting edge television sets. It’s a very interesting company, and we’re a top tier player around the world in all those categories. John Shegerian: Wow. And today we’re going to talk about all the efforts you’re making in environmental sustainability. And especially we’re going to talk about the Design for Recycling. Can you share with our audience, just frame that up, what does “Design for Recycling” really mean? John Taylor: Design for Recycling, simply put, is when we design a product, we look at the entire lifecycle from cradle-to-grave. In particular, when you are looking ahead to the end of life of the product, reducing the number of components, reducing the hazardous materials, making it simple to disassemble. And reducing the amount of packaging. There is a whole range of things that can be done at the design phase – at the cradle phase, before you get to the grave phase – to make sure that it is very much easier to recycle and more likely to keep it out of the landfill. John Shegerian: Different OEMs of course have different cultures and DNAs. How important is Design for Recycling at LGE? John Taylor: Well if you look at our commitment to sustainability overall and from the standpoint of designing our products we look at three main areas. Human area, energy and resources. And they all fit together. Starting with the human factor, of course our products need to be easy to use, they have to be attractive to consumers, but also that’s where things like making a washing machine that is quiet, reducing the amount of hazardous materials in those products to make it really focused on the human factor. Moving on to energy that cuts across everything we do as well. We are very proud in the United States to be an Energy Star Partner of the Year for the fourth year in a row. John Shegerian: Wow. John Taylor: We focus a lot on the energy efficiency of the product when it’s used but also reducing the amount of energy and water it takes during the production processes. And finally when you get to the resources area – and that involves, again, a cradle-to-grave, a full lifecycle look at the product, starting with the resources that it takes to build the product and more importantly what happens to those resources. Can they be reused? How do they get recycled after the product is done being used? John Shegerian: Compared to 20 years ago when you were just joining with LG, the brand that has grown and grown many times since, are the products now made out of more sustainable, more recycled materials than ever before? John Taylor: Absolutely. In fact, if you just look at the entire industry, it has been transformed during those 20 years and things have moved at Internet speed. Particularly in the area of sustainability there has been an increasing emphasis throughout the industry in making our products easier to recycle and more energy efficient across the board. John Shegerian: Got you. And this is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. Why is this so important in terms of – what is ISRI’s relationship with LGE and why has LGE been so honored by ISRI in recent times for your design and recycling initiatives? John Taylor: Well, LG Electronics is very proud to be named the 2015 Design for Recycling Award winner. It’s a tremendous honor. It’s the highest honor bestowed by ISRI. We’re joining a blue chip group of former honorees like Dell and Coca-Cola Bottling Company and other big companies. I think it speaks volumes about the commitment of our company in this area but also the recognition by ISRI and its members of the importance of Design for Recycling. John Shegerian: You are a global brand. LG is a global brand. You mentioned that at the top of the show. Talk a little bit about your sustainability and recycling initiatives around the world. When we were off the air, before we went on, you started mentioning to me about e-Stewards. Share a little bit about how you were a leader on the e-Stewards movement in terms of recycling. John Taylor: For your listeners who are not familiar with e-Stewards, there is a group called the Basel Action Network that really created the gold standard for recycling and the principles that recyclers should adhere to. I don’t remember all of them off the top of my head. John Shegerian: Sure. John Taylor: But they are to make sure that products are handled in a very responsible way throughout the entire chain of recycling. LG was very proud to be the first global e-Stewards enterprise partner. I’m a U.S. guy, and I can tell you what we do in the United States. We work with hundreds of e-Stewards recyclers across the country through a very robust electronics recycling program that takes back many, many tons of electronics every year. John Shegerian: Right. To offset all the sales that you make as one of the leading brands in the world. So talk a little bit about your other sustainability and recycling programs outside of the U.S. or Canada and how you’re a leader with regards to sustainability globally speaking. John Taylor: Again, I am the U.S. guy, but I know that same principles of e-Stewards are applied across the globe. John Shegerian: I got you. I got you. So you take the best practices here and then you’ve got to apply it everywhere. John Taylor: Absolutely. John Shegerian: I got you. Talk a little bit about winning this award from ISRI in terms of Design for Recycling and inspiring other manufacturers to follow suit. To really make their products more sustainable, as you say, from a human perspective, an energy perspective and from a resource perspective. John Taylor: Well, we made a commitment to ISRI to be the poster child for Design for Recycling. We’re so proud of what we do. If you look at the two products that were really examined through this whole process, these are cutting edge new products. The new LG OLED TV – Organic Light Emitting Diode Television – and our new 4K Ultra HD TV. These are the two fastest growing categories in the United States and around the world, and they really epitomize what Design for Recycling is all about. When you first see these products, they’re absolutely stunning, but the first thing you notice is they’re all screen. So we have eliminated so much plastic and metal, as we have made the products thinner and smaller and lighter. We’ve significantly reduced the number of parts. All of course important to the future of recycling. But when you look at everything we’ve done, including creating disassembly reports for recyclers so they know exactly what to look for, what tools they need to disassemble them. John Shegerian: Wow. John Taylor: That’s something that is part of all of our products. But using these two, I think, are really great examples that with resonate with the recycling community. John Shegerian: Can you explain to our audience – those two products you just mentioned, I’m not familiar with. I’ve heard of them but I don’t fully understand them. Can you explain what the OLED is and the 4K means to our audience, so they can get a little bit more understanding behind it. John Taylor: So separate from all the sustainability. John Shegerian: Yeah. John Taylor: Just speaking as a consumer. John Shegerian: Yeah. John Taylor: OLED is the next generation of technology for home viewing. It has been hailed by industry pundits as “the best TV picture ever,” because you get perfect blacks, amazing color. It is in a form factor that is less than four millimeters thick. It is just an amazing screen. They’re just rolling out now here in the United States and around the world. and only LG is bringing those to market. John Shegerian: No kidding. And then what is the 4K? John Taylor: So 4K is kind of the next generation. After high-definition TV, it’s called Ultra HD. So today’s HD TV is incredible with two million pixels on the screen. Ultra HD gives you four times that. You will have eight million pixels on the screen to give you that really incredible detail that you have never seen before on television. John Shegerian: So the quality that LG has in the pipeline and hitting the consumers here in the United States and around the world is just incredible with these two new lines of televisions. John Taylor: It’s really exciting. And there are, certainly, other greener elements of these in addition to the Design for Recycling. For instance, LG was the first to be certified by UL Environment for a new certification they call Greenguard. They look at the emissions from plastics and other components in your home. This is a home air quality standard. John Shegerian: Wow. John Taylor: And these are the first TVs in the world to reach that. LG’s OLEDs were the first to achieve Energy Star. The first OLED TVs to achieve the EPA’s standards for energy efficiency as well. John Shegerian: So talk a little bit about energy. So really you’re not only just a leader when it comes to recycling, as you mentioned, with regards to e-Stewards and in terms of resources and the materials that you’re using. Your televisions and your other electronic products are Energy Star, which means they use less energy. They’re more energy efficient. John Taylor: That’s correct. In fact, if you look at a variety of LG products, there is the highest level called Energy Star Most Efficient. And you’ll find that label on some of our washing machines and LED TVs for those consumers who are really looking for the very best in energy efficiency. And since I mentioned washing machines… John Shegerian: Yeah. John Taylor: I think that it’s important to know, for your listeners, that there is a new category of Energy Star this year for dryers for the first time. This is kind of the new frontier of energy efficiency in the home. It’s the last major appliance that did not have the Energy Star rating. John Shegerian: Really? John Taylor: And LG is leading the charge there too with an amazing new product that we call the Eco-Hybrid Dryer. John Shegerian: What does that mean? John Taylor: It incorporates heat pump technology with a conventional dryer that is more than 50 percent more energy efficient than a conventional electric dryer. John Shegerian: Wow. And our audience members can buy that at any great store in the United States right now? Or is it coming out this year? John Taylor: It’s rolling out this summer nationwide. John Shegerian: This summer nationwide. Talk a little bit about, John – and for our listeners just joining us, we’ve got John Taylor with us. He is the VP of Public Affairs at LGE. Life’s good at LG. You can look them up at www.LGE.com. This is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. We’re here in beautiful downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Center. You know, John, we’ve talked about Energy Star and your new ultra energy efficient dryer. Talk a little bit about the resources. How much virgin material has LG conserved and saved because of your efforts in terms of maintaining and managing better the resources that you’re putting into your new products. John Taylor: Well, I don’t have all the numbers at the top of my head. John Shegerian: Sure. John Taylor: But there are hundreds of millions of dollars of resources conserved every year. John Shegerian: Right. John Taylor: And at the same time, we make major investments in this area. One number I do know off the top of my head is six hundred million dollars of research devoted specifically to green products and to greener products and recyclable products. John Shegerian: Wow. Talk a little bit then, John, about packaging. Packaging is important. A lot of companies and a lot of brands are focusing on reducing their packaging to be a greener product. Has LG done that? And what kind of success have you met in terms of trying to reduce your packaging if you’ve done that? John Taylor: It’s been a big focus for us, John, over the last several years. In fact just in the last two years we’ve reduced our packaging by 27 percent. The amount of packaging. And at the same time focused on 50 percent to 80 percent of using recycled paper and corrugated in all of our packaging. John Shegerian: Got it. Any last thoughts or any last words of wisdom for both our listeners and our consumers who want to buy greener products? How do they go and do that? How do you see between a product that is more energy efficient, made out of more recycled materials, or where the resources are being managed, how can you do a compare and contrast when you’re going through a Costco or Staples or Best Buy? Any words of wisdom and solutions for our audience members? John Taylor: Well, it is complicated out there. If you look at a lot of the packaging there it starts to look like NASCAR because you have not just the Energy Star label, which is so well recognized, but many other labels like this Greenguard certification and other things I mentioned. So I guess our advice to consumers is to find a brand that you trust. Hopefully, like LG. We do a lot of consumer research, and for years and years environmental considerations were a top consideration when you were shopping for an appliance but not so much in TVs. It’s been growing. Particularly energy efficiency and the importance of green living is impacting consumers around the world, and we’re seeing more and more interest in this. So, you’ve asked the right question. We urge consumers to do their research. Understand the impact of the environment not just on this product but think of the resources that went in to producing it and what it’s going to take to recycle it in the end. John Shegerian: Got it. And again we congratulate you and we congratulate LGE on winning the Design for Recycling Award from ISRI for 2015. That’s a big award. And we hope you continue to lead the way and, as you said earlier, continue to be a poster child for Design for Recycling for all the other manufacturers to follow suit. We thank you for your time today, John. Again, reporting from the ISRI Convention here in downtown Vancouver. This has been the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. We’ve got John Taylor, the VP of Public Affairs of LG. You can find out more about LG and their great products at www.LGE.com. Find out more about ISRI at www.ISRI.org. Thank you for being with us. Thank you, John Taylor. You are truly living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to another edition of Green Is Good. We’re here in beautiful downtown Vancouver at the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. And when I say the ISRI edition, this is ISRI’s annual conference – here in Vancouver this year for the first time ever, and Green Is Good is broadcasting from the beautiful downtown convention center in Vancouver. We’re so excited and honored to have with us today Joel Litman. He is the president and CEO of Texas Recycling. And to learn more about Texas Recycling, go to www.texasrecycling.com. Welcome to Green Is Good, Joel. Joel Litman: Thank you John. Glad to be here. John Shegerian: You know Joel, you have a family business. I want you to share a little bit with our audience the Joel Litman story and how you got to be running as President and CEO of Texas Recycling. Then, we’re going to go more into exactly what you do over there. Joel Litman: Sure. Well it’s interesting because folks think a family business is ‘I’ve been in it since birth.’ And actually my father and my brother and myself, who have been in the business, got in late in life. We all had different career paths. John Shegerian: Wow. Joel Litman: My background, I was in journalism. I was a sports writer. I worked in public relations for a family business. But it was just getting to be – it was time to move on. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: And my father bought a scrap business when he was in his early 50s and he asked if I would join him. So I spent a week’s vacation down there and turned in my coat and tie for a pair of work boots and jeans and just said, “This is the opportunity for me,” and I joined him and have been in it for 30 years now. John Shegerian: Thirty years. And a week’s vacation became a career. Joel Litman: It did. John Shegerian: A new career. Joel Litman: It really did. And I haven’t missed a coat and tie since. John Shegerian: Wow. I was reading all about you before today, before having you on the show, and I loved reading about your thesis on recycling. On, especially, the new generation of recycling. How responsible recycling isn’t free anymore. Can you explain what you mean by that concept? Your thesis on responsible recycling is not free. Joel Litman: Right. Well, recycling, if you look past, John, over the years, it has always been incentive based. To get the material, we have to pay you to bring it to us otherwise you’ll put it in the trash. Well, with costs and so forth and all the low-hanging fruit gone, it costs us now to go get it. And especially now as there is more – you’re diving deeper into the waste-stream and handling more products that are hard to recycle, it costs to do that. So we’ll get folks and they’ll want us to pick up their material. And depending on the volume we’ll do it, but we may have to charge you for it. “Well, I’m not going to do that.” “Well, then put it in a landfill.” “Well, I don’t want to do that.” “Well, then you’re going to have to pay us to come out and pick it up and send it to whomever to get it made into another product and recycle.” John Shegerian: So, in essence, really recycling is another service just like a doctor or lawyer or accountant. Responsible recycling with the right infrastructure that you have run the right way is another service industry. Joel Litman: It is. Now we do work with a lot of our commercial B2B businesses where we do rebate them for the material. John Shegerian: Got you. Joel Litman: But for the folks that have 100 pounds of this or 50 pounds of that or they want to recycle something that is very hard to process, there is a charge for that. And a lot of companies, especially the bigger companies, are realizing that. That it is another line item expense. And to be responsible they realize that there is a cost, but they’re keeping it out of a landfill and it’s being made into another project. John Shegerian: So, Texas Recycling. Let’s talk about Texas Recycling. Where are you located actually in Texas? Joel Litman: We’re in Dallas. John Shegerian: You’re in Dallas. Joel Litman: Right. John Shegerian: And what core products does Texas Recycling recycle? Joel Litman: We’re a large boutique in the industry and we primarily focus right on what they call “high grades” or “deinked” grades of paper. This is a material that would come from commercial printers, offices, newspapers that folks bring into us so kind of more of a high-end. We also handle corrugated, chipboard, paper that is made by packaging industries. John Shegerian: So, walk us through a day in the life of…. Joel Litman: We’re open five-and-a-half days a week. Our day starts at six in the morning. Our trucks will go out, pick up material from folks that have either generated the scrap from the night before or they’re running 24-hour operations, commercial printers. We’ll pick up the material and bring it back to us. We dump it, and we’ll sort out the different grades of paper, then we’ll bale it up and ship it to paper mills. John Shegerian: Approximately how many grades would that separation be in a given day? Joel Litman: We’ll handle, John, paper-wise, we’ll handle about seven to 10 different grades of paper, which is down from 20 we handled years ago. John Shegerian: Really. Joel Litman: But because of the change in technology and process we’re able to combine some of those grades and the paper mills can handle a little more variety. John Shegerian: Share a little bit about volumes. Approximately how big is the volume that you would bring in at any given day at Texas Recycling? Joel Litman: In a given day we could handle 200 tons a day. That may not sound like a lot. John Shegerian: It’s a lot. Joel Litman: But it’s a lot of paper. John Shegerian: And how is the marketplace now for recycled paper? Is it growing? Is it receding? Is it flat? Joel Litman: It depends on where it’s going. We sell to tissue mills that make what they call “away from home tissue.” So when you’re at the convention center and you have a cocktail napkin, this is what our paper is made into. When you’re on an airline or a hotel and use the tissue products from them, that’s what our product is made into. John Shegerian: You’re kidding. Joel Litman: We sell the corrugated, manufactured and make boxes. So if manufacturing is strong, then there is product to put in boxes so they’ll make more boxes. We’ve worked in the past with newspapers and newsprint. Of course, newspapers are kind of a dying industry. But a lot of folks are using newspaper now as insulation for their homes. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: When you buy an egg carton it may be a grey, molded carton. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: That’s made from newsprint. So there is demand for it. It’s very cyclical though. John Shegerian: Help me in a couple of ways here understand. Help our audience understand. Is all paper in our paper products recyclable? Joel Litman: Yes, but… John Shegerian: OK. Let me hear the ‘but’. Joel Litman: In other words, it depends. It depends. John Shegerian: OK. Joel Litman: For instance, at home, people have a pizza box. John Shegerian: The famous pizza box recycling story. Joel Litman: That’s right. Yeah, the pizza box can be recycled. But you’ve got to take the pizza out. Because the paper mills, they want paper. They don’t want food. They don’t want grease. They don’t want anything that can damage their equipment. Because they’re running the scrap paper through very sophisticated machines and they’re not designed to handle food. John Shegerian: So just like other commodities, the more liberated your commodity is the more valuable potentially it is. Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: So no junk in it. Joel Litman: No contaminants. John Shegerian: No contaminants. Joel Litman: No contaminants. John Shegerian: So with pizza, it’s the pizza that wrecks the recyclability of the box. It’s not the box itself. Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: It’s very recyclable. But no pizza in it. Joel Litman: Right. No pizza. No grease. If you get, for instance, a menu and maybe the menu is laminated on both sides. John Shegerian: Yeah. Joel Litman: Well, it’s paper inside, but the mills don’t have a way to get that plastic off the paper. John Shegerian: Got you. Joel Litman: So that is the challenge. John Shegerian: So what other misconceptions are out there around the paper recycling industry that you can share with our audience and open up our minds and awareness a little bit more to things that we think that we know, but we really don’t know? Joel Litman: Again, to the first one, you said where everything can be recycled. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: Everything can be collected. Because what we really do is we’re collectors. We don’t do the recycling actually. We sell to paper mills. They do the actual recycling. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: So people say, “Well, I have something to recycle,” do we take it? Well, we don’t because we don’t have a place to sell it to. And because if we sell to someone, they have to make a product out of it. So it really comes into economics. If there is no product to be made from it, then there is no use to collect it for recycling. So that is a big misconception. John Shegerian: What’s the cost benefit, though, of making products such as this tablet here out of virgin versus recycled materials? Joel Litman: The cost benefits are, for something like this or this for instance. This has a really short life. It’s one use. You use it as a napkin, there is water on it, you throw it away. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: So the mills don’t want to go through a lot of expense to cut down trees to pulp to make something like this. Something like your notepad, you may keep that piece of paper and put it in your file. It may stay for a long time so they’re going to use better quality material to make the paper out of it. Or a package. But it’s got to be strong. Cosmetic. We work a lot with cosmetic packaging manufacturers. You want that cosmetic box to look very nice and sophisticated so they’ll buy your $90 bottle of cologne or something. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: And you don’t want something cheap to do that. John Shegerian: Sure, sure. Joel Litman: So there are a lot of dynamics that go into it. John Shegerian: Is making this tablet out of recycled paper cheaper for me as a manufacturer than virgin? Or where does that price break come? Joel Litman: In past times, it was cheaper to buy from virgin fiber, because you didn’t have the technology or you didn’t have to go through all the processes of cleaning the fiber. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: Now, though, since the push is on to buy more recycled the price points are close. John Shegerian: How about that napkin you have in front of you. Quality difference if it’s made from recycled or virgin. Is there a huge quality differential? Joel Litman: It’s subtle, but it’s important. A lot of manufacturers won’t use recycled product to put on the shelves. Because if you’re a consumer of paper towels, you have a white paper towel, well you see a little black speck in it. That black speck might be a contaminant. Well, Mrs. Homeowner is not going to use that because it’s got a black speck. It doesn’t affect the integrity of the product but its perception. Well, you have a black speck or brown speck here at the convention. It doesn’t make a difference. John Shegerian: It doesn’t make a difference. Joel Litman: But it’s just a lot of perception. John Shegerian: Got you. For our audience who just joined us we’ve got Joel Litman. He is the President and CEO of Texas Recycling. He’s our special guest today here on the ISRI edition of Green Is Good. To learn more about Texas Recycling, go to www.texasrecycling.com. To learn more about ISRI, go to www.isri.org. Little bit about Texas Recycling now. Does the family spirit still exist there? How many family members work there and how many employees do you have? Joel Litman: We have approximately 60 employees. And my brother Craig and I, we’re the co-owners of it. My daughter Hillary, who is 33, she joined us about four years ago. So we still have the family spirit there. John Shegerian: It’s a family affair. Joel Litman: And we’re very much a family business. Meaning we’ve have, over the years, uncles and brothers and other family relatives from our employees join us. So you can have three brothers in it and so forth. So it’s still a family atmosphere. John Shegerian: As paper recycling goes, are you one of the larger paper recyclers in Texas? Medium size? The tonnage that you’re talking about sounds impressive. Where is that and where do you fit in to the ecosystem of paper recyclers in North America? Joel Litman: As far as volume-wise, really we’re a large boutique. There are certainly folks that collect a lot more tonnage than we do. We do really focus on quality and service and that is where we get our edge. Is that the customers that we deal with, especially the B-to-B and the printing business or distribution manufacturing, if they need something now we’ll get it to them now. And so that’s really been our strength. And we provide a quality product to our mills. You think paper mills may not need quality. They want – especially with what they’re making – they need consistent quality products. If they’re ordering white paper, they don’t want brown paper. They don’t want a pallet in it. They don’t want nails in it. They want paper. John Shegerian: You know, Joel, you and I grew up in a generation where paper was ubiquitous for our lifestyle. Hillary’s generation and my kids’ generation, they’re all emailing and texting each other. How does that whole email and Internet phenomena affect the paper recycling industry? Joel Litman: Well, you’re seeing less and less paper being produced. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: Especially in the printing and writing paper and newsprint. On the other side of the coin, John, they’re ordering a lot from Amazon and online. John Shegerian: UPS boxes, Amazon, FedEx boxes. Joel Litman: They have to put it in a box. And in that box they’ll put literature. They’ll put brochures. So in that regard the packaging part of the business is expanding. John Shegerian: Interesting. And is your paper going into a UPS or FedEx box? Joel Litman: Yes. John Shegerian: So, typically, those are made out of recycled paper. Joel Litman: Correct. The corrugated is made – if you look at the middle what they call the ‘medium’ of the corrugated box or the ‘facing’ of it, that is made from recycled fiber as well. John Shegerian: Got you. You know, we love on this show to share with our audience solutions. Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: What are some do’s and don’ts for our very sustainably minded audience members out there in the United States and around the world? What can you share as a paper recycling expert? Do’s and don’ts to get more people helping out in this new circular economy of paper recycling. Joel Litman: Well, if you’re sorting your paper at home you want to try and keep it sorted if you can. I know a lot of communities have a one-bin system where you put your paper and glass and metal and plastic into it. That’s OK. Not to disparage our friends in the glass industry. John Shegerian: Sure. Joel Litman: But glass recycling really damages the equipment once you get it mixed. So if you want to keep the glass out, that’s best. John Shegerian: That’s best – to keep it as liberated and as clean as possible, Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: How about wetness? Does that affect [it]? Joel Litman: Yeah it does. Because what the mills do when they buy paper from you is they pay on weight. Well, if paper gets wet, it’s going to weigh more, so they don’t want to buy paper that’s wet because they are paying for moisture and for the dampness of the paper. John Shegerian: And that doesn’t help. Joel Litman: That doesn’t help. John Shegerian: So talk a little bit about the 30 years since you took a vacation and then made a career with your pops. What’s really happening? Is recycling awareness going up with your children – Hillary’s -generation? My children’s generation? And are they increasing recycling? Or is it staying flat? What do you feel the prospects are and what is it like the Dallas and Texas community? Joel Litman: I think that recycling certainly has increased. The awareness has increased from when I got into it back in the 80s. Recycling was – you were an environmentalist, a hippie. John Shegerian: Right. Hippie. Treehugger. Joel Litman: Right. But today everywhere you go, whether it be here at the convention, at the hotel, on the streets of Vancouver there are recycling bins and so forth that give people the opportunity to recycle. It has made it much more available to them. The challenge is, though, the quality is decreasing because folks are putting in there with their paper recycling they’re putting in their soda cans or their coke can or whatever. So it takes more work and expense to separate that material. John Shegerian: So, if you were meeting with city leaders in Dallas or other cities and they’re asking you how to promote better recycling – in every category but of course paper as well – your idea is separate bins, mark the bins well so that way each of the different recyclables get less contaminated. Joel Litman: That’s the goal. However, a lot of cities today they want convenience. It’s a lot of education. And cities today are just saying, “We want to put in one bin because it’s easier and more efficient to do it that way.” That doesn’t mean it’s better. It’s just easier to move the material out. But what happens is then the cities have all this material that’s mixed together and it costs more to do it. And we’re a supply/demand business. When the demand goes down and prices go down, it’s going to cost more to do it and they can’t move their material to markets cities wonder, “Well, why is this happening?” Because you don’t have the quality that the mills need to move your material. John Shegerian: How has the rise of China and other emerging economics helped or hurt your industry? Is there more demand because they want to buy your recycled paper? Or are you selling mostly domestically? Or is it just a wash? Joel Litman: No. China has been a big impact on the recycling industry. They are big consumers over there. They have the largest corrugated mills in the world over there. They produce packaging. There are a lot of manufacturers over there so they are making boxes. But again as the world economy changes, their manufacturing is going down so they don’t need as much. The U.S. has the best corrugated in the world so the Chinese, when they’re running well, they want all that U.S. corrugated. As much as they can get. John Shegerian: Right. Joel Litman: Meanwhile, the corrugated mills here don’t want to lose that corrugated to a competitor in China so they want to hang on to it as well. So that’s where you kind of get into – John Shegerian: Do you sell both ways? Domestic and foreign? Joel Litman: Strategically we have – in our market there are six corrugated mills within 200 miles of Dallas. John Shegerian: Wow. Joel Litman: And we don’t have a lot of space to hold that material. So when it comes in, we’ve got to move it out. John Shegerian: Got you. Joel Litman: Other folks on the West Coast, East Coast, they’ll take advantage of the ports being nearby and ship a lot more overseas to Asia. John Shegerian: Got you. Got you. Talk a little bit about – in our last couple minutes – the future trends of paper recycling and the future of Texas Recycling as a whole. What do you feel like? Do you feel hopeful about where we’re going as a paper recycling industry as a whole? And talk a little bit about Hillary and the next generation at Texas Recycling. Joel Litman: I think paper recycling overall is strong. It’s changing because, as I said before, the quality of the material coming in is decreasing, because all the low-hanging fruit is gone. Now it’s costing more to get the high-hanging fruit but also the quality is decreasing. So a lot of the paper mills are developing new technology to clean that fiber. As far as the history of Texas Recycling and the future of it we’re looking to get into other commodities. We have done paper for many years. We do post-industrial plastic. We dabble a little bit in electronics. And we were looking to get into metals as well. So being kind of more of a one-stop-shop for our customers. John Shegerian: For recycling. Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: In all different types of commodities. Joel Litman: Correct. John Shegerian: Wow. That’s wonderful. Joel Litman: Yeah. It is. John Shegerian: So for the audience out there, this has been Joel Litman, President and CEO of Texas Recycling. To learn more about Texas Recycling, please go to www.texasrecycling.com. Of course this is the ISRI edition of Green Is Good, and to learn more about ISRI, please go to www.ISRI.org. We’re here in Vancouver at the beautiful downtown Vancouver convention center. Joel Litman, you have been very inspiring today. You are obviously a sustainability superstar. Thank you. You are truly living proof that Green Is Good. Joel Litman: And two more things real quick. One, buy recycled products. And two, always use a paper towel because the more paper towels you use – like this – the more demand there is for recycled fiber. John Shegerian: You heard it from Joel Litman. Until our next edition of Green Is Good. Thank you for being with us today.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. This is the Green Festival’s edition of Green Is Good, and we’re so excited to have with us today, Sarah Kaeck. Welcome to Green Is Good. Sarah Kaeck: Thank you. John Shegerian: You’re going to be talking about a topic that we’ve never discussed before. What’s the buzz about Bee’s Wrap? Sarah Kaeck: Well, Bee’s Wrap is an alternative to plastic wrap for food storage. John Shegerian: Tell us a little but about the Sarah Keck story, though, first – where you grew up, how you got involved with thinking about green sustainability and then the founding of your great company Bee’s Wrap? Sarah Kaeck: I grew up in Pennsylvania, and traveled after college and ended up in Vermont with my family. And there I was a stay-at-home mom for about 10 years. We grew all of our own vegetables, raised animals … John Shegerian: Was that something you were used to growing up? Or you decided you were going to raise your family sustainably? Sarah Kaeck: We decided that. I did not grow up that way. I grew up in the city, but I just really like the idea of the whole cycle of raising our own food and getting our food locally and doing things as naturally as possible. John Shegerian: And that’s how you guys were living? Sarah Kaeck: Yes, that’s how we were living. John Shegerian: And then where was the big epiphany for this beautiful, ingenious product? Sarah Kaeck: Well, we really needed a solution for storing our food without the use of plastic, particularly plastic wrap and plastic bags. We were aware of the use of cotton or fabric and wax – and wax has been used for a very long time for food storage – and so I started experimenting and playing with different ingredients and different ways of applying wax and found something that worked and went with it. John Shegerian: Unbelievable. So for our listeners out there, to learn more about Sarah’s great company Bee’s Wrap, you can go to www.beeswrap.com. So let’s talk about it, the idea. Who dreamed this up and how do you – you go from trying to think of alternatives to – who even came up with this? It’s okay that we can do this? Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. Well, they’re all-natural ingredients. John Shegerian: Yeah. Sarah Kaeck: Which makes it safe for food storage. It’s organic cotton fabric, beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin. John Shegerian: But who invented it? Where did the invention come from? Sarah Kaeck: Well, there were a couple of different products on the market that had beeswax and cotton fabric that were being used for storage, and so we kind of took those ideas and made up our own formula and our own technique for applying the wax. And it really worked. It worked so well in our home, and we had such a great reception from friends and family, that we decided to turn it into a business. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. So when did you come up with this? What year did you really start working on the science behind and beta testing different recipes? Sarah Kaeck: We launched our product about two-and-a-half years ago, and then we started developing it a year before that. It took us about a year to get our technique down and our branding finalized so we could put it on the market. John Shegerian: And how is it exactly made? Sarah Kaeck: We started by painting the wax on by hand individually. John Shegerian: Wow. Sarah Kaeck: And now, we grew fairly quickly. We started a workshop on our property, and then realized that we needed a larger facility. We moved to the nearby town of Bristol, Vermont, and workshopped there where we developed a piece of equipment that waxes whole rolls of fabric. John Shegerian: Wow. And you launched it on your website first? Sarah Kaeck: Yes. Our website first. John Shegerian: And then, now, are you starting to spread to retailing stores? Sarah Kaeck: We are, all over the U.S. and beyond. John Shegerian: Really? Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. John Shegerian: So our listeners can find this at retailers or on your website, and they buy it like this? Sarah Kaeck: Yes. So we have a list of all of our stock, it’s on our website and we sell it in a variety of different sizes and packages. There’s a small, medium and large three-pack, which is the most popular. It gives you a variety. John Shegerian: And what are the key ingredients? I’m holding it and it feels like … it feels like amazing. It feels really good in my hand. Sarah Kaeck: It does. John Shegerian: What is in this? Sarah Kaeck: So it’s organic cotton fabric infused with a beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin mixture. The jojoba oil and the tree resin help to keep the beeswax from cracking, so it keeps it nice and supple, making it easily reused again and again. John Shegerian: So this feels like a sandwich. Sarah Kaeck: That is a sandwich, and that is our sandwich wrap. I can show you how it works. John Shegerian: Please. Yes. Sarah Kaeck: So you just – it has a little hemp twine and a wooden bee button. It makes a great placemat, so when you take your sandwich to work or to school and set it on the table. And then when you take it home at night, you can just wipe it off with a cloth and reuse it the next day. John Shegerian: And I can reuse it the next day. How many times can I reuse something like that? Sarah Kaeck: We say it lasts for about a year, using three to four times a week. It will get nice and soft and supple, and then at the end of its life you’ll know when you need a new one. John Shegerian: And how do you clean it when you want to clean it. Sarah Kaeck: You wash it in cool water, with a little dish soap if you need it, and then hang to dry. The important piece of that is cool water. You don’t want to melt the wax, so it does need to stay away from heat. John Shegerian: I see another use for it here, so what are the other uses besides sandwiches? Sarah Kaeck: The warmth of your hand softens the wax just enough that you can create a seal on the top of a bowl. It’s great for wrapping cheese. It’s also great for things like half of a cucumber, half of a lemon, avocado, a cabbage. John Shegerian: Everything we used to use plastic for. Sarah Kaeck: Exactly, yeah. John Shegerian: Wow. Sarah Kaeck: So we also have an extra-large bread wrap, which is great for a good sized loaf of bread. It’s also great for wrapping greens like chard and kale or herbs like cilantro, it keeps them really nice and fresh. John Shegerian: Wow. So what happens after – it’s the end of the year and it’s come to its end of life: Are these recyclable? Sarah Kaeck: They are biodegradable, compostable. You can cut it up and put it in your compost. John Shegerian: Perfect. So they go right back into the ecosystem then? Sarah Kaeck: They do, yes. John Shegerian: No harm, no plastic into the ocean or into a landfill or anything like that. Sarah Kaeck: Exactly. John Shegerian: How is it going, and is this all out of your husband’s and family’s money? Or have you raised money for this and are you going to raise money to continue to grow the brand? What is in store in the months and years ahead now? Sarah Kaeck: We grew very organically. We have a couple of new fabric designs coming out in May, which is pretty exciting. John Shegerian: That’s exciting. Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. We’ve got a clover and a geometric design. We’ve got lots of ideas. It’s limitless. John Shegerian: And when you were putting this together, how did you know – who is the scientist or engineer who helped you come up with the chemistry for this? Sarah Kaeck: I did this myself. John Shegerian: Yourself? Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. We played around with it and just kind of figured out what would work the best together. Moving into the equipment and creating this piece of equipment to produce the wraps was a big project for us. John Shegerian: Who designed that? How did you figure out the equipment to do it on a mass and commercialized basis? Sarah Kaeck: So I worked some with my father, who is an entrepreneur, and he has helped me immensely in this project. John Shegerian: Wow. Sarah Kaeck: And then when it was time, we brought in an engineer to finalize our design and make it into a reality. John Shegerian: Besides your online business, which I assume has grown a lot, when you meet with retailers, how is it being received by the buyers at retail places? Sarah Kaeck: It’s been great. We’ve had a really, really great reception. We sell to all different types of stores: gift stores, coops, health food stores, kitchen stores, bee product stores. It does a lot better in a smaller, more specialty store, because it is such a new product. But we’ve also done great in a few of the chain stores, like Mom’s Markets and The Mid-Atlantic does great with our product. John Shegerian: Really? Sarah Kaeck: So it’s a large cross section. John Shegerian: And coming to the Green Festival you were looking to spread the word to both your customers – potentially – and also retailers to carry it? Sarah Kaeck: Yes, exactly. John Shegerian: And how have the last three days been? Has it turned out to be what you wanted? Sarah Kaeck: Oh, it’s been beyond what we expected. We’ve had a great reception to our product. It’s been very busy. We actually sold out today which was great. John Shegerian: Wow. Sarah Kaeck: It’s been really, really fun. John Shegerian: That is awesome. And where do you source the cotton and the beeswax and the jojoba oil? How did you figure out where to sustainably acquire all your feedstock? Sarah Kaeck: Our fabric comes from India. It’s GOT certified. Our beeswax comes from the U.S. – we get most of it from the high desert, which is one of the cleanest places to sources beeswax in the U.S., from sustainably kept hives, which is very important to us. We use organic jojoba oil, and then the tree resin. John Shegerian: So all of your products going in are all sustainable and organic products. Sarah Kaeck: Yes. John Shegerian: And then this is fully compostable at its end of life. Sarah Kaeck: That’s right. It also makes great fire starter. John Shegerian: Wow. That is awesome. So talk a little bit about, Sarah, the future of Bee’s Wrap. Sarah Kaeck: Well, we would love to see Bee’s Wrap become commonplace in the kitchen. It’s such a practical, easy solution to eliminating plastic wrap for food storage. John Shegerian: Why should we ever use plastic again, Sarah? Come on. Sarah Kaeck: Yeah, really. John Shegerian: I mean, really Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. It’s great. And seeing the reception that we had today, that doesn’t seem so unrealistic. John Shegerian: Right. Sarah Kaeck: So we would like to be able to offer it in varieties of sizes to meet every need, and all different types of solutions from little bags to pie covers to all different types of things, so we’re constantly working on developing new products that will fit every need in the kitchen. John Shegerian: You know, the world is democratized now in getting the word out. Do you do traditional advertising or do you leverage social media to help get the word out? Sarah Kaeck: We use a lot of social media, a lot of blogs’ reviews, that’s really how we got our product out there. Social media has been huge for us. John Shegerian: Got it. And for our listeners out there, to learn more about your product – will they also, on your website, be able to find where the retailers are selling it? Sarah Kaeck: Yes. John Shegerian: So they go to www.beeswrap.com. Sarah Kaeck: That’s right. John Shegerian: So they can either buy it directly from the website… Sarah Kaeck: That’s right. John Shegerian: Or they can type in a zip code locator or something and find a retailer. Sarah Kaeck: They can, exactly. John Shegerian: Wow, that’s wonderful. Sarah Kaeck: Yeah. John Shegerian: Final words from you for our audience. What would you like to share, before we say goodbye, on your experience and your journey as an ecopreneur? Sarah Kaeck: Wow, it’s been an amazing experience. I’ve been loving every minute of it, even the most intense moments as an entrepreneur, which there are a few. But it’s just great having a product that fits a niche that people are really enthusiastic about. I am thrilled with the public’s interest in having more environmentally sustainable habits. It’s been really great. John Shegerian: So when we see these large stories on CNN or other great news channel outlets talking about these massive plastic islands in the ocean, now we’ve got to think about Bee’s Wrap. Sarah Kaeck: You’ve got it. John Shegerian: Bee’s Wrap, Bee’s Wrap, no more plastic. Sarah Kaeck: You’ve got it. John Shegerian: Got it. Well, for our listeners out there, again, this was the Green Festival’s Edition of Green Is Good. This has been Sarah Keck with John Shegerian, talking about her great company, Bee’s Wrap. To learn more about Bee’s Wrap and where to buy it, go to www.beeswrap.com. You are an inspiring ecopreneur and truly living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green Is Good. We’re at the Green Festival’s edition of Green Is Good here in New York City, New York. And we’re honored to have with us today Renaud Renvoye. He’s a French transplant, so thank you for putting up with my pronunciation of your name. Renaud Renvoye: That was perfect. John Shegerian: Renaud is with Blue Orange Games, and we’re going to be talking about the Blue Orange Games today that you see here in front of us. But before we get talking about Blue Orange, I want to talk a little bit about Renaud. Renaud, you’re a young guy and you’re doing fun things for a great, green and sustainable company. Share a little bit about your story. How did you come to America and join Blue Orange Games? Renaud Renvoye: Well, first of all, during my studies I did study in the U.S. I love this country. I love the lifestyle. I love people. Technically, everything about it. And being a child – to put that on the side – being a child I loved playing games with my siblings and everything. So I said why not combine the two of them? America and working with toys. So I found this opportunity and I said, well, let’s apply. And then I joined Blue Orange Games which is a great company. John Shegerian: Which part of France did you grow up in? Renaud Renvoye: I grew up in Burgundy. The wine part. John Shegerian: Burgundy. Wow. Wow. I don’t think I’ve met many people from Burgundy, France, before. But share a little bit about that. In the household and in the community, sustainable living, my impression, but I want to hear yours, sustainability has been more part of the culture and DNA in Europe before it has come to America. Is that what you felt like your childhood ad growing up? Renaud Renvoye: Yeah. People are really concerned about sustainability. I grew up in a village where around my place, my parents’ place, it’s really green. I don’t live in a big city. I’m close to vineyards and stuff. It’s like small hills. Green everywhere. A lot of people are concerned about recycling. A lot of people are using solar panels in their roof to produce energy, which my parents do. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: So it’s really like, and we actually educate people a lot, even in school, to be conscious. John Shegerian: Live a more sustainable [life]. Renaud Renvoye: Yeah exactly. John Shegerian: Be conscious about the environment. Renaud Renvoye: Recycling is really part of- John Shegerian: And you said Mom and Dad even had solar on your roof there? Renaud Renvoye: Yes, we do. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: Yeah, for years now. John Shegerian: So you grew up, this was part of your culture, part of your DNA. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Yes. John Shegerian: Got you. Renaud Renvoye: I love that. I’m trying to be as green as I can. John Shegerian: When you went to university, was that part of your studies too? Renaud Renvoye: Because I studied it in Belgium. John Shegerian: Okay. Renaud Renvoye: I did actually. It was sustainable management. We were educated to manage a company, but being sustainable. So yes, it was. John Shegerian: Got you. So then how long ago did you find this opportunity and did you move to America? Renaud Renvoye: I moved to the U.S. in June 2013. So it’s going to be two years in June. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: Which, yeah, I mean I’ve loved it so far. John Shegerian: Which part did you move to when you first came over? Renaud Renvoye: So when I came over, I was in San Francisco doing the training. John Shegerian: Okay. Renaud Renvoye: Then I was on the road for the company. I traveled the U.S. in the Southwest and Southeast. Now, I’m based in Boston to kind of develop the new office of the company there. John Shegerian: Got you. Renaud Renvoye: But traveling a lot, I love it. John Shegerian: Wonderful. And you found Blue Orange. How did you even find them to come work with them here in the U.S.? Renaud Renvoye: To give you a little bit of story about the company. John Shegerian: Sure. Renaud Renvoye: So the two co-founders that created the company back in 2000, are French. Today, we kind of want to keep the French culture inside the company. So you would be surprised, but anybody you will talk to in the sales team is French. John Shegerian: Really? Renaud Renvoye: Yeah. So we are all kind of like French colleagues in the sales team and that’s part of the culture of the company. I found the opportunity in my school. An offer, opportunity, like website? John Shegerian: Right. Renaud Renvoye: Where I just decided to apply. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. Renaud Renvoye: Yeah, it’s great. John Shegerian: And you are the Northeast Region Sales Manager? Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Since a few months, I’ve moved to Boston to be closer to the client there. More about partnership with them. Anything they need I can be there for them. John Shegerian: And you’ve opened up a Boston office now too so you have San Francisco and a Boston office. Renaud Renvoye: Yeah. We kind of want to do remote offices to be closer to the client. John Shegerian: It makes sense. Renaud Renvoye: Duplicate what we’re doing in the Bay Area, in the San Francisco area. John Shegerian: Right. Renaud Renvoye: Somewhere in the country. Everywhere in the country. John Shegerian: And for our listeners and our viewers out there, to find more about Renaud’s company Blue Orange Games, go to www.blueorangesgames.com. Talk a little bit about your game. Talk a little bit about sustainability and Blue Orange Games and why is this considered a sustainable toy company. Renaud Renvoye: It’s really in the concern of everybody in the company, starting with the CEO, it’s kind of ‘educate, don’t play’ and hiring to that. So here I just brought Pengoloo, which is a wooden game. It’s all wooden made. John Shegerian: All wooden. Renaud Renvoye: The thing is, how can we be sustainable around it? Like the tree we use to produce this game, for example, we plant two trees for [each] tree we use. John Shegerian: Wow. So two for one. Every tree that you use to make your games, you are planting two trees. Renaud Renvoye: Exactly. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: So this is one side of the green company. But as well, in Peru, we have an association, which is called Pur Project. So, as I said, we have sales reps that are on the road that drive. And for the carbon print, well this is not [inaudible]. So what we try to do in Peru, as I said, we have this association that helps out the re-forestry, which kind of decreases the carbon print we have. John Shegerian: Got you. Renaud Renvoye: So we do a calculation on how many tons of carbon dioxide we are emitting. We do the calculation and then we plant trees to balance. John Shegerian: Offset. Renaud Renvoye: Yes, exactly. John Shegerian: It makes sense. Renaud Renvoye: So, that’s another side of the company. Every plastic thing you can see in games, it’s actually not plastic. It’s a natural resin called urea that we use to produce all the plastic things. John Shegerian: So, the wrapping? Renaud Renvoye: As well the wrapping. It’s sustainable material. John Shegerian: It’s not the plastic that everyone is complaining about that is polluting the environment. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Exactly. John Shegerian: So, even that’s made out of sustainable [material]. How about the packaging itself? Renaud Renvoye: It’s actually a recyclable material as well. John Shegerian: Like a recyclable cardboard material. Renaud Renvoye: Exactly. John Shegerian: Wow. So everything that you touch that is Blue Orange Games is really sustainably driven. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. We try to. John Shegerian: In terms of how you source them and how you present them. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Exactly. Today people know we are green and that is part of the business and they want to embrace that aspect. That’s why they really like the company. We are cool, friendly and ecologic. John Shegerian: So this company was started in 2000. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: Two guys. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: One lives in America now. One lives still in? Renaud Renvoye: In France. John Shegerian: In France. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: So you still have French roots but American roots as well. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: But a lot of the sales people that have joined on are actually French. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: So how many sales people now are part of the team? Renaud Renvoye: We are about seven or eight people in the sales team. John Shegerian: Here in the U.S.? Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: How many different sustainable toys are on that site? Renaud Renvoye: Well we have a selection of 70 different products. John Shegerian: 7-0. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Correct. John Shegerian: Seventy. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: So we have mostly wooden games for an early age. But then the Spot It collection, which is one of our bestsellers, if not the bestseller. There are 38 different variations of this game. I just brought the Spot It Camping. It’s perfect for that season. John Shegerian: Got it. What are we looking at here? Which game are we looking at here? Renaud Renvoye: So the Pengoloo. John Shegerian: Pengoloo? Renaud Renvoye: Yeah. This is a memory game for ages four and up. So underneath each penguin, you have the color of the egg. Each player gets an iceberg, and what you want to do in order to win the game is you want to collect six penguins. So you have two dice and each side has a color. You roll the dice and get two colors and you have to find the color corresponding to the die. If it’s not a color that is on the die, then you have to cover it back [up]. But you want to remember “this is blue” in case you roll a blue later on. John Shegerian: Got you. And I want to come back to that in a second. We are with Renaud. He is the Northeast Sales Manager for Blue Oranges Games. We are here at the Green Festival edition of Green Is Good in New York City, New York. To find more about Blue Orange Games go to www.blueorangegames.com. We’re just talking about, here, the Pengaloo. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: One of 70 games that you can find on www.blueorangegames.com. Talk a little bit about, now this is made out of, like you said earlier at the top of the show, this is all wood. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. It’s all wooden made. It’s water-based paint as well. John Shegerian: Water-based paint. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Exactly. John Shegerian: So if your kids chew on this or something like that. Renaud Renvoye: No chemicals. John Shegerian: Nothing bad is going to happen. No chemicals whatsoever. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: So when they started this company in 2000, how many sustainable toy companies were there then approximately? Was that even a business then? Was that even an industry? Renaud Renvoye: I think it was probably too early. John Shegerian: Too early. Renaud Renvoye: As you said earlier, I think Europe was kind of early on the green side. John Shegerian: So they started this company in France and then brought it over to the U.S.A.? Renaud Renvoye: Actually, they started it here in the U.S.A. John Shegerian: They started it here? Renaud Renvoye: Yes. And to give you how it started, they had 1,000 copies of only one game, went across the country kind of opening accounts – that way selling units – and on their way they sold out. So that’s how the company started. It’s a great story. John Shegerian: Wow. Renaud Renvoye: Sleeping in their van. John Shegerian: They really did it like two entrepreneurs. The real way. Renaud Renvoye: Oh yeah. They are really entrepreneurs. John Shegerian: How much sustainable toy competition are you facing now? Has it now become a big industry? Renaud Renvoye: I think it’s becoming bigger. Actually, you have a company that is called Green Toys and they only do green stuff. John Shegerian: Right. Renaud Renvoye: So they are green. But I think more and more companies in the industry get more into sustainability, green stuff. They feel more concerned about it. But I think it’s mostly like, because we are a company that uses a lot of different materials to produce the product. John Shegerian: Sure. Renaud Renvoye: So I think today they have to be concerned about it just for their entire health, you know? John Shegerian: But are they excited? Are the retailers now in America, are you finding them excited to sell your products? Renaud Renvoye: Yeah. Oh yeah, they are. Because they are fun, but they like the green side. That’s a big part. John Shegerian: How about the mommies and daddies and parents here in the United States? Are they responding well to your green products? And how are you reaching them? What is your sales approach to reaching them? Renaud Renvoye: Mostly when you tell them that it’s all wooden made and water-based paint, that aspect. But on top of it when you explain the trees program, the Pur Project, so that’s the entire speech that you tell them. That way they really like this aspect of our games and the company itself. And that’s embracing the entire company then. They say, “Blue Orange? Oh, these guys are really concerned about the environment,” and they want to go in this space as well. That’s how you educate people. John Shegerian: Renaud, so when you are the Northeast Sales Manager… Renaud Renvoye: Yes? John Shegerian: Is part of your job educating potential clients? The people using it? And also part of your job, educating your clients? The retailers selling it? And how do you break that up every day and how do you go about attacking that? Renaud Renvoye: So, it’s actually a big part of the job, educating our retailers. What we do a lot of the time is do like a staff training. So we educate the staff on selling our product, bringing this, the green aspect of it, and then they can tell the third party buyer, client. John Shegerian: Yes. Renaud Renvoye: So, that is how it goes from the company to our retailers to the third party. John Shegerian: Do you work around and talk directly to the third party and help create the demand for your product by telling your story on social media and online? Renaud Renvoye: Yes. Well, we have a PR Department – marketing department – that works a lot on social media. John Shegerian: Got you. Renaud Renvoye: That really spreads the word. But nowadays people know we are green. Even the Pur Project, which is the project in Peru, it’s relatively new. John Shegerian: What is that? Renaud Renvoye: The re-forestry in Peru. John Shegerian: Oh okay. Two for one. Renaud Renvoye: No, this is the trees campaign. John Shegerian: Okay. Renaud Renvoye: The re-forestry in Peru, the association we have, they plant trees there to decrease the carbon print. John Shegerian: And that’s p-u-r for our listeners. Renaud Renvoye: P-u-r Project. John Shegerian: Pur Project. Renaud Renvoye: You can go on their website as well. John Shegerian: On their website. What is it? Renaud Renvoye: It’s www.pur-project.org. John Shegerian: P-u-r –project.org. Renaud Renvoye: Yes. John Shegerian: Got it. And they are helping offset the carbon footprint of your company. Renaud Renvoye: Exactly. John Shegerian: So like you said, when you calculate the amount of energy your company is expending in your offices and in your travel and everything else, they’re helping to offset that. Renaud Renvoye: Exactly. So we do the do the nation to them and then they plant directly in Peru. John Shegerian: That’s awesome. What is your No. 1 seller? Renaud Renvoye: Spot-it is definitely still the No. 1 bestseller of the company. John Shegerian: When did that come out? Renaud Renvoye: It’s actually funny because we are celebrating five years of the collection of Spot-it. John Shegerian: Why is that so special? What does that game do? Renaud Renvoye: So I know it’s hard to believe, but between any two cards, you always have one matching symbol but only one and always one. So, technically, you deal the deck evenly and then the players are going to race against each other in order to get rid of the deck. They want to get rid of the deck as fast as possible based on the same card in the middle. So, they have to find the only one matching symbol in their card and the card in the middle, and when they see it, they have to pull out the matching symbol and get rid of their card. So you want to be as fast as possible getting through your deck. John Shegerian: And what ages is that for? It sounds like almost any age? Renaud Renvoye: So this one is for seven and up, but we actually have really early age games that start at three to learn the alphabet. So, technically, between any two cards you only have one matching letter, so for kids who just learned the alphabet that’s perfect. We have some to learn the basic word in English, the basic word in Spanish and in French so a lot of different ones. We have a waterproof one, which during summer you can play by the pool. John Shegerian: Can you share with our listeners what the future holds for Blue Orange Games? Renaud Renvoye: Well, first of all, in the culture of our company, we really want to be close to them and even closer. But every year they see a new French rep coming to their store, which they love having us in their store. And we love that as well, because everybody is enthusiastic to see the collection. So we want to continue on this path of developing even more partnerships with clients and everybody involved. We want to launch more and more toys, trying to reach as many people as we can and bring joy to kids and family. Most of our games are really family games for both kids and parents. John Shegerian: For our listeners out there, to buy green and buy green toys for your children, go to BlueOrangeGames.com. This is the Green Festival edition of Green is Good, we’re here in New York City, New York. Renaud, you are a sustainability superstar and truly living proof that green is good.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome back to Green is Good. This is the Green Festival edition of Green is Good. We’re here in beautiful New York City, New York, and we’re so excited to have with us today Peter Yuskauskas. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You are welcome to be here today. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Thank you. We’re so excited to be here at the Green Fest. We’ve had a tremendously exciting time just seeing all these smiles and people riding the electric bikes. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Peter, before we get talking about the electric bikes that you sell, let’s talk a little bit about your story, how you became the owner and the CEO of NYCeWheels.com. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: It’s kind of a funky, weird story. I moved to New York way back to study jazz performance at the New School. So, I actually have a degree in performance on bass. I was like, OK, what do I do to make money while I’m in the City doing my art? OK, I’ll work at a bike shop. So, I started working at NYCeWheels and sure enough, this is much more fun than trying to bust myself making music. I still love music, but this is a way to have passion and be involved in cycling and also make some money on the way. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where did you grow up? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: I’m from Boston. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’re from Boston, and now you’re living in New York? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And you’re the owner, you’re CEO is NYCeWheels Bike Shop. NYCe is spelled NYCe. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yeah, New York City Electric Wheels. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s talk a little bit about NYCeWheels. What year did you found it? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: NYCeWheels started in 2001. Actually, I’m not the founder or the owner, but I am the CEO. I was running the shop for the last three years, and I’ve just sort of taken over the operations. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is all your electric bikes there or do you do other things too? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: We specialize in everything that’s really fun that regular bike shops don’t sell, so electric bikes, folding bikes, kick scooters and even electric scooters. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You have a physical store. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes. We’re on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where exactly? Give a call out. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Eighty-five and New York Avenue. Come by and take a test ride. JOHN SHEGERIAN: NYC in the house. You also have a website. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes. We do a lot of ecommerce. If you like our products but you’re not in the New York area, you can go to www.nycewheels.com. We ship all over the country and everything that we sell is fully assembled. It is ready to go right out of the box. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We have right here in front of us one of your electric bikes. PETER YUSHAUSKAS: Yes. JOHN SHEGERIAN: The one you brought from the show. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: This is the coolest one. JOHN SHEGERIAN: The coolest one. Talk a little bit about the coolest one so you can inspire our audience members in the United States and around the world. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: This is the Stromer ST2. This is the latest in electric bike technology. It’s designed in Switzerland and made in Taiwan. It has a lot of cool features. The first one is the most basic. It helps you automatically whenever you’re pedaling. When you go and you’re biking, what is it that you worry about? You worry about hills. You worry about sweating. You worry can I go the distance? Will I keep up? With an electric bike, this has taken care of all of the negative factors for you. When you’re climbing a hill, it’s just like the sensation of pedaling a regular bike but you have super-charged legs. Somehow, you’re just rocketing up the hill 20, 28 miles an hour. With a battery like this one – it’s actually a Tesla Technology’s lithium battery – you can do 50 to 100 miles on a single charge. You don’t have to sweat. You don’t have to work too hard if you don’t want to. You can still get that workout. You just tailor it to be exactly the way you want it with the settings right here on the handlebar. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What are we talking about here? What’s this here in front of us? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: This is your battery. So, this is what’s powering you and that is a lithium ion battery. You recharge it by plugging it into a wall socket just like a laptop and it takes about five to six hours to recharge. On that, it’s going to help you for your 50 to 100 mile ride. JOHN SHEGERIAN: While you sleep. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: While you sleep. While you’re at work. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And these keys are the keys? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: The keys lock the battery in place on the bike, and you can pop that out to charge it on or off the bicycle. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, this is just one of your coolest bikes that you assemble? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Right. One of the coolest things about this bicycle that is unique compared to any other electric bike we sell is the GPS and cellphone integration. Just like some of the high-end electric cars these days you can have an app on your phone where you can tailor the settings of the bike. You can make it faster, slower, more responsive, less responsive. Then you hit apply and this actually sends the signal up to the cell network and back down to configure the bike exactly the way you want it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: If I’m a guy who likes to think about my health and I like to get exercise, I think, wow, if I buy this bike, that’s wonderful but is it cheating? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Exactly. This is a big preconception that everyone thinks like, oh, an electric bike, that’s cheating. Well, you know what it is? It’s more fun. You get out there. You go out more often. You don’t have the same strain. You don’t get exhausted. So, instead of going out for a bike ride once a week, now you can do a 20-mile bike ride before work every single day, get that fresh air and have more fun. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Isn’t there scientific evidence, Peter, that people use an electric bike more than a regular bike? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yeah, for sure. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, it does really get more use. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: It’s like instead of getting a super high-intensity, compact workout, you get a more low-intensity, easier workout that you can do more often and keep up for a longer duration of time. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right, right. So how is it going? You’re here at the Green Festival today here in New York City. What’s the reception been compared to what you thought the reception would be coming into the festival? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: We typically have done more like tech, car-type trade shows. I didn’t really know what to expect coming to Green Fest, but we’ve seen just a fantastic response. Everyone we get out there is signing our waiver and checking the box, nope, never ridden an electric bike before. I’ve got to say, some of the people taking off, it’s like whoa, this is incredible. Then they come back and we see their smiling faces and everyone is just blown away by the concept of a bicycle that will help you automatically. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s the age group that should be riding this kind of bike, because it’s an electric bike and things of that such? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: What we tend to see is folks that are late 30s and up who are riding the bike, people who have been into cycling but they want a little help or they want to get into it for the first time and they want to get rid of that fitness barrier. It is a pricy product as well. It’s $7000, so you do have to have a little bit of money to get it. That definitely cuts some people out. But yeah, it’s generally older folks or people who just want to get that extra boost of assistance. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When do you start selling this at your store? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: This is a very new product. March 21 was the launch date. We’ve sold almost like 15, 20 bikes. Again, we ship them to Texas, to Florida, California. We also have a lot of customers in Jersey and Manhattan. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You are the U.S. distributor for this bike? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: There are actually lots of other Stromer dealers. We just happen to be Stromer’s largest dealer and one of the few that will actually ship the bike to you ready to go. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Do they have other lines of bikes that you sell also for them? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes. We have the ST1, which is the original Stromer. We have the ST2, which is the latest model. Then NYCeWheels actually specializes in this so we have all different brands of electric bikes from full suspension electric mountain bikes to motor kits that you can install on your own bicycle if you want to get that boost on the bike that you already own. There is a whole variety of different stuff, and it’s all there on the website too. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What does the sales look like? Are they growing year over year at NYCe? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yes. We’ve seen a tremendous steady growth over the years. Since I’ve been there, I think we’ve already grown more than 60 percent since I started about five years ago. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. In terms of your sales year over year. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Year over year. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Holy Toledo. Do you do more online or do you open up another physical store? How do you get the word out there more? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: What we try to do is we try to have an expert staff of a few people that can really walk you through, you know, what is the bike, what does it do, is this one good for me or is that one good for me. We prefer to have that small team who are real experts. Because we can ship anywhere, it gives people in like Kansas, Wisconsin, California, Florida, wherever you are, if you don’t have an e-bike specialist, you can come to NYCeWheels and get it from us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. If someone goes online and they want to look at your different lines of bikes, go to www.nycewheels.com and they can learn more about electric bikes and of course NYCeWheels bikes, NYCe, New York City Electric Wheels. What are the top green or sustainable reasons to be buying one of your electric bikes? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: The first thing I would say to you is if you like cycling, this is the most fun that you’ll have on a bike consistently. You can get out on a park and even on a day when you’re not quite feeling up to it, you’re going to be flying around the loop doing like three or four loops when you might have only done one. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And they’re allowed in the park? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Okay, here’s the rub. They are actually illegal in New York City. There is some legislation now that’s moving through that could come to legalizing or regulating them. Under Federal law, an electric bike is legal up to 28 miles per hour as long as you have to assist it. So, like none of the bikes we have have a throttle. You’re always required to pedal with it, it just adds power on. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, under Federal law this is legal, under New York City law not yet. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Not yet. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Can I ride this on the streets of New York? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: We have customers for the last 10 years riding these. To be honest, I’ve never had someone get a ticket except for one lady. She was running red lights and dodging through pedestrians. JOHN SHEGERIAN: She was due a ticket. She was asking for it. You don’t want to be the police officer pulling over someone on an electric bike in today’s day and age. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Probably not. I mean, most times when I am talking to police they are just kind of like, wow, that thing looks cool. Where can I get one? JOHN SHEGERIAN: Probably the police force eventually is going to end up buying some of these as well. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Yeah, it would actually make a lot of sense. There are police forces in London and Switzerland that have fleets of this ST2 Stromer. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That would make a lot of sense. What other reason should I-? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Another thing that cyclists are concerned with in New York is theft. You have this really expensive bicycle. Do you have to carry like this massive, honking lock around with you all time? Not with the ST2. That’s because if someone steals your bike, you can lock it into theft mode. What happens in theft mode is it locks the rear wheel, brings that thief to a stop and they can’t go further. The lights are flashing and it reports the GPS location every 10 minutes until the bike is recovered. There is actually a story in Wired Magazine. One of the first people to buy the ST2 in San Diego had it on their bike rack. They went up to a Starbucks or coffee shop, whatever. They came out, it’s the first day, and their bike is gone. They were like, “Wow, I hope this works.” They pull out their phone. They get into their Stromer app and they get over here to control. Then you can see you just click enable theft mode. If you press that button, it’s just going to lock up the bike, tell you where it is and then you say, “Hey cops. Here’s the VIN number, the description. Go find the blinking bike with the guy struggling to push it along.” They actually recovered that bike within one hour of it being stolen. It’s pretty intense. You know what the thief said? The thief said, “This is one of the most incredible bikes I’ve ever ridden” after he’s been arrested. He still can’t stop thinking about riding the bike. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. That’s another good reason to buy one of these bikes. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Exactly. Now lastly I’d say tying it into Green Festival, you have here a vehicle that can assist you up to 28 miles an hour. You can do 50 to 100 miles on a charge. It really becomes a vehicle more than a bicycle. You’ve got integrated lights. You’ve got fenders and a rack. It’s the kind of thing that you can ride everyday as a commuter. To charge it up you’re using about 50 cents of electricity to get you your 50-mile ride. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk a little about Stromer’s success already in Switzerland and do you see that success eventually replicating here in the USA? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: I think one of the things that Stromer has done, which is really incredible, is taken a concept, package it in a gorgeous frame, like a really beautiful bike, and then give it all of these features that really make it practical and useable. People can get excited about cell phone integration. They can get excited about the assistance, but they’re never going to get excited about anything that doesn’t just look really good. So, Stromer has done that. They’ve actually become one of the largest electric bike companies in Europe. There’s kind of a different attitude in Europe about electric bikes. They see it much more as transportation. They see it as a healthy option compared to cars, a less expensive way of getting around. I think that attitude is becoming more and more prevalent in the United States, especially with more bicycle infrastructure here in New York and in cities like Portland and Austin, Texas. When you have more people out on bikes instead of in cars, everyone is just going to be happier. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Right. That is awesome. For our audience out there, if they want to come up to your store it’s 85th? PETER YUSKAUSKAS: 85th Street and York Avenue. You can take the 4, 5 or 6 trains to 86 and Lexington. You can also find us online at www.nycewheels.com or give us a call. We can definitely help you figure out what’s the perfect electric bike for you. If you just want to ask us some silly questions, we’d be happy to hear them. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And everybody’s like you I bet at NYCe, whereas they’re real experts. PETER YUSKAUSKAS: Right. The thing about NYCeWheels is the electric bike isn’t the sad, little stepchild-on-the-corner product. It’s not like we love to sell our road bikes and we’d be happy to talk to you about electric. This is what we do. This is what we love to do and we want to make sure that you get out and have fun. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re so happy that you joined us today, Peter. You are obviously an ecopreneur, sustainability superstar and living proof that green is good.