Josh Lloyd - What It Takes to Be the Number One Green Builder

[00:00:10] Christy: ​Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:11] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:16] Christy: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Christy. 

[00:00:21] Dominique: I'm Dominique. 

[00:00:22] Christy: Today we're back with Josh Lloyd. He's the regional sustainability manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental operational footprint for 10 offices across eight states.

You can listen to last week's episode to learn a little bit more about Josh's personal journey, what led him to this work, and it's an exciting episode. I think Josh is a really cool person. It gives you such insight into who he is as a human. So check it out. But this time we're gonna talk more about the impact that he's had, particularly at Turner Construction.

So Josh, welcome back.

[00:00:56] Joshua: Thank you. I'm looking forward to, uh, sharing the impact that I've had the last couple years. 

[00:01:00] Dominique: I'm so glad. And I wanted to do a little bit of a recap for our listeners. So I know last time we got to hear about, first kind of love of architecture and how that found you first, and then how design and the environment was an early light bulb for you. You worked in home energy, you worked on social impact and looked at kind of the community, impact of our built environment as well.

And then now we're talking a lot about what you're doing at Turner and this high impact opportunity and why that's the case. And then, I just really love the kind of sentiment we wrapped up with last time around that magic combination of persistence, curiosity, and passion. I think that shows through in a lot of the things that you do.

Yeah, in this episode we're gonna talk about Turner. So what better way to start us off? What is Turner Construction?

[00:01:42] Joshua: So Turner Construction is a general contracting firm, that's been around here in Columbus for just about a hundred years. So, we're based out of New York City. And so we build some of the most complicated buildings out there. We do a lot of stadiums, airports, hospitals.

I mean, we just finished the new Wexner Center, Medical Center at Ohio State. We built the Crew Stadium and quite frankly, most of the arena district. But yeah, if there's one of the complicated buildings out there, we're probably the general contractor 

on it. 

[00:02:11] Dominique: Turner is also the number one green builder since 2008, you told us last time.

[00:02:16] Joshua: Yes. According to the Engineering News-Record, we have been listed as number one green builder since 2008. 

[00:02:21] Dominique: What is a Green Builder?

[00:02:22] Joshua: The definition that they use, it's based on our revenue, how much of that is associated to green buildings. And their definition of green buildings is any project that seeks a third-party certification. So for instance, seeking LEED certification, or another one that's out there as well, which focuses less on energy and focuses more on human comfort and health inside the building.

But we built a lot of projects where the clients want to build to those standards, they just don't seek those certifications.

[00:02:53] Dominique: In your role, regional sustainability manager, we talked about that being eight states as a region that you are responsible for. What does that mean? What is your role? What does Josh's day-to-day look like?

[00:03:05] Joshua: I wish I had a regular schedule. One of the gentlemen that works here in the Columbus office actually harasses me quite a bit. But I've known him, I worked with him in my previous lives as well. And he's like, "The sustainability director has quite a bit of a carbon footprint with all your travel."

Which is great, they are thinking about my 

impact. 

[00:03:24] Dominique: You've trained them too well is what I'm hearing.

[00:03:27] Joshua: But it's really the job entails, one, promoting and implementing, getting our internal sustainability commitments implemented on our, our projects. So that's the number one role.

And I oversee this entire region, and I assist the projects. I've actually been able to create a team. So I have a sustainability manager that's based in Detroit that's now working directly with projects in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. And then I have two part-time people, one in Nashville and one in Memphis that assist the projects there locally.

So now I have a team that we work to push those, but not only that, we're also pushing some of our clients' sustainability initiatives. You know, making sure they're being implemented, but in some cases we're going above and beyond what their commitments are.

How do you decide when you're talking about going above and beyond, how do those ideas emerge when you're talking to a client? So with a couple clients in particular, they have pretty strong sustainability commitments. And one of them, I can't take credit for it, but someone else from Turner who works directly with them has really, over the last few years, brought them from zero to being one of the leaders in terms of sustainability within their industry.

So, it's really looking at what are their commitments and then what can we do locally? 'Cause a lot of this too is regional. There are things that we can do in terms of sustainability easier here than we can, say, in Memphis or Indianapolis. It's finding what those opportunities are and running home with them. 

Is that one of the things that drew you to Turner? No, I would say that's something that's ingrained in Turner, at least, in my short two years here, is they are willing to try new things. They're not just kinda like to say the good old boys stuck in their ways. I mean, there's some of those people within the organization, but as a whole, they're definitely, they wanna be the leader.

And they give the sustainability managers and the leeway to really try and promote this as much as possible 'cause when I was hired, they, I was told I am the face of sustainability for Turner, for our region.

[00:05:29] Dominique: That's a lot of pressure. That's exciting, but also a lot of pressure. I'm glad you're doing it though, because I know that you're such a good communicator and 

So who do you communicate with when you wanna get an initiative moved along, and who are the stakeholders that you're mindful of in your role?

[00:05:42] Joshua: So, majority of the time I'm working directly with the project teams, the ones that are out there, delivering the structures. So the conversations typically start with a project manager on the site who's leading the team. And then eventually I start getting in, have more conversations with an engineer or a superintendent that gets assigned to the day-to-day tracking for our commitments, whether it's waste or fuel consumption, or even making sure the waste is being reported correctly and we're not contaminating our loads.

So that's kind of the typical, but then there's also projects where we do have full-time sustainability people on a project, and that's what they focus all of their time on. And a lot of that comes down to the client is asking for it because they have such a large sustainability commitment.

They have additional reporting that they want from us. But I'm always there trying to build a team, 'cause what I bring to the projects for some is additional button clicking and responsibilities for them. So always trying to say, "All right, find your people who can help, help you."

And that's where things really start to blossom when they find people who are interested in a specific task and they run home with it and really make it successful. 

[00:06:55] Christy: Yeah, I think that's a credit to some advice that you gave to identify people in the room and how to talk to bring them on board. Because you're right, sometimes it is like, "I need you to do these few extra things," and you've gotta have that buy-in. Yeah. 

[00:07:09] Joshua: We had one project where a gentleman was voluntold to do the sustainability stuff, and he was struggling because he didn't know everything about the project. It was a very large project. And it took a number of months for me to convince him, "You need to find others that can help you."

And then once he did, things really started 

moving in the right direction. 

[00:07:27] Christy: Yeah. I wish there were more of you, Josh. 

So what are the biggest challenges that you're seeing in that, with construction sites?

[00:07:35] Joshua: Right now, I would say the number one thing that I am dealing with is waste, and specifically here in central Ohio. Just because one of the haulers that we use changed the reporting method. So we went from being reported at an 80, roughly 75 to 80% diversion down to it's trending at 60% now. And we didn't change anything about our practices, it's just the way they report to us now.

So now what that means too for our project sites is they have to be better about not contaminating different containers. 'Cause we'll have a container for waste, we'll have a container for wood or metal. But as soon as there's contamination in any of those, that rate that we get reported back to us drops significantly. I would say that's my biggest struggle right now, is just the recycling efforts on some of our sites. 

[00:08:23] Dominique: Yeah. And I think that's a perfect transition for us into the impact you're having now and the problems you're already solving or the things you're working on. I don't know if this fact is true, and I don't know where to double check that it's true, so I'm also curious for your thoughts on it.

But I think the construction industry, when you think about its footprint largely, is like over a third of our global greenhouse gas emissions, and then it's also like half or something of our natural resource extraction. And I say that, and I'll let you react to if those numbers are correct. But I'm also saying that just for listeners to understand how big the potential is here. And I think that... I remember like at one point in time, London as a city said their environmental action for their like new initiative was just not doing more construction. And it was like talking about just how high impact it is to even make those builds. So yeah, react to those numbers, and then I wanna get into projects.

[00:09:13] Joshua: So I believe you in terms of those numbers 'cause I do know that our industry has a great big impact on those. And actually I get a chance to onboard a lot of our new employees, and that is actually one of our, the slides that I have where I talk about small things that we do on our project can have a much greater impact than what we do personally at home.

And so like, just reducing the amount of concrete we use by a single truckload would actually have a greater impact than you living car-free for a year or having a non-meat diet. What we can do can have significant impacts. 

[00:09:47] Dominique: And I'm really glad for that reframe, 'cause I think that's also you mentioned last time too that you came to this role because of the opportunity for impact, and that's exactly what you're seeing. Okay, so what projects are you most proud of that you've gotten to work on with Turner?

[00:10:01] Joshua: I hate to say it because it's such a hot button topic right now, but the data centers in terms of sustainability, are the best projects to be working on right now because they are energy intensive and they know that. But in my mind, they're leading the way in regards to the material side of things, reduce overall emissions.

They are getting us to learn a lot and to push the industry and we're helping them with that, whether it's low carbon, low carbon concrete, low carbon green steel, as well as, we're starting to look at biofuels as well for some of our projects.

[00:10:35] Dominique: No, it's very interesting. And I also watched Christy light up when you said data centers. We were just talking about how we wanted to have this as a topic on the podcast. It's obviously just so important that people are talking about it.

 I think from my standpoint, a lot of these data center projects, we could talk about every angle of them, but they're gonna happen.

In some ways, we're gonna be building them. And so I'm very grateful people like you are building them, and that there is a thoughtful process as much as there can be in how those come to life. What are some tangible strategies or things that we can maybe bite our teeth into a little bit in terms of things that you've been talking about and seeing come to life?

Is it thinking about like water usage? Is it the land selection in the first place? Is it the materials for the building? What are things we can visualize?

[00:11:16] Joshua: So by time we get to the project, the clients have already chosen the land. So it's really what we do with it when it's within our control. We are looking heavily at the materials and really trying to drive down the carbon emissions, the embodied carbon associated with each of those materials that we use, especially the high-volume materials such as steel, metals, and concrete.

So especially on the concrete side, that's where we have a lot of opportunity for impact for reducing emissions. And we have a lot of great local ready-mix suppliers that are fully on board and work with us to even drive the number, the global warming potential numbers down even further.

And that's what the excitement I have with the data centers is they want us to do this. They want us to pilot different concrete mixes to see how it's gonna perform versus its emissions impact. And I mentioned biofuels. We're using a lot of renewable diesel and which is not readily available here in Central Ohio.

But it greatly reduces our overall emissions. I am not an expert in biofuels, but I do know it reduces our reported emissions by about eighty percent, but then it also does reduce the amount of tailpipe emissions as well. A small percentage, but it's still something which leads to the health and safety aspects of our construction sites, reducing that.

But then we're also being asked to electrify. They're asking us to electrify our equipment. Now, not all of it can be electrified right now, but we're getting the opportunities to play with different machinery, and test it and, again, be a leader in that market.

[00:12:45] Christy: That 80% reduction from biofuels, I didn't realize that impact. That number struck me. That was interesting

[00:12:52] Joshua: Yeah, it's something about biogenic. So it comes out of our scope one and kind of moves to scope three. I'm not fully averse to the carbon accounting. I know that number's on one of my slides for my presentation, but we get to report a zero in our scope one, but some of that shows a scope three impact. 

[00:13:09] Christy: You've shared with us some interesting innovations with the biofuels and other things. And you also mentioned that waste is one of the areas that whether it's reporting or you're just thinking about it, something that's very top of mind right now. Have you had any creative ways where you've thought about waste diversion or material reuse that you're working on right now?

[00:13:28] Joshua: All the time. And it's different in every region. Like actually in Memphis, there is a new waste hauler that is kind of expanding their operations from another city into Memphis. So we're looking at utilizing them to help grow them and really bring a new market, because in that particular market, there isn't a whole lot of companies that are recycling construction waste.

So, in Memphis, we are looking to help expand that company's services and really help them grow because C&D recycling in Memphis is something that's lacking. And that is talking with the general manager of that particular office, they wanna help that market and make that something viable. We've also been talking with a company that recycles drywall. That's something that's not easily recyclable here in Ohio, Michigan or Indiana, and actually Wisconsin as well. So most of the region I covered, drywall is not something that's readily recyclable.

What they do is they'll grind it up and then they'll put it on the top of the landfill as what they call alternative daily cover. But we want it as a beneficial use, so we've started talking with the company on how we could potentially get them the product. But for us, it's logistically, it's much different than just throwing it in a dumpster, so there's a lot of planning involved.

But if we can, it'd be successful for us because now we're getting product either back to the manufacturer to put into their new wall boards or potentially going out for agricultural use as amendment, soil amendments, or even it can be put into compost. I actually initially started conversations with Price Organics to try and do a pilot where we send our drywall, clean drywall to them to put into their compost pile, to help reduce smell and help with the PH levels. 

[00:15:05] Christy: One of the things I struggle with at whether it is a sporting venue, convention center, and frankly anywhere almost, but through design, there's not enough space to accommodate, whether it is separation of recycling, organics, things like that in a loading dock or even the ability to have enough cooler space for donating food properly, you know, and such. Have you done any design work on things like that as well and, or any innovations in that area?

[00:15:36] Joshua: With recycling on a construction site, space can be a limiting factor sometimes where we can't have multiple dumpsters to separate the materials. And for a building, it is a design problem that they should plan for it. But really came to light a few weeks ago when I was up at the Cleveland Green Sports Alliance Summit on the professional sports industry is really looking at this and with what Ohio State's doing with their zero waste initiative for game days, that's the sporting industry as a whole is looking at that and moving in that direction.

And I was having conversations recently that these event planners are asking these facilities, "Are you zero waste?" And that is a contributing factor to their decision on whether they're gonna host their event there. So I think it's definitely coming down being more and more of an 

important issue. 

[00:16:22] Dominique: That's really awesome, and I also hope that that's what Turner is doing as a construction company. I hope that you're changing the game on what people think of as possible. And then when they're gonna do a build, it's like, "Well, are you gonna do all these things for us?" 'Cause that's really important.

And I think that's at least how I envision being a leader in your space is gonna take shape. Something else that you're doing that I am very excited about, and I know that it's been a great community impact leading back to our previous chat with that being a big part of your journey too, is you've found ways to do food recovery, as well as an organization.

And I think people might not have thought of that because they're not as aware, I'll at least say that I'm not as aware of the fact that not only do you have to put a building together, but that spans across many days, and that requires a lot of crew, and that requires not being in an office.

And so they're out on site. So what does that mean from how food shows up in your work and how you've implemented recovery?

[00:17:15] Joshua: No, absolutely. I'm surprised on the impact that we've had, quite honestly, in regards to our food impact. 'Cause some of our larger project sites, we have 2,000 trade partners coming to the project site every day. I would say a small job these days are 100. And some of these projects are also in places that don't have food readily available to drive to grab lunch and there's not refrigeration for them to store all that, a packed lunch. And also just think of the mass 2,000 people leaving for lunch all at one time.

Logistically it'd be a nightmare. So some of our projects will bring caterers in to provide lunch for them. And also, we have different ceremonies. We have like a topping out ceremony for when the last piece of steel goes in, or even the groundbreaking ceremony where we ca- cater lunch so. It goes back to finding that team, finding those passionate people. One of our project sites, we had an administrative assistant literally just ask me, "Why are we throwing away so much food?" So that led to the two of us, me reaching out to SWACO and that having them come out and evaluate kinda what we're doing.

And eventually getting our catering company that we use across multiple projects, sites to partner with the Columbus Food Rescue. So any time we do have leftover food on our project sites, Columbus Food Rescue gets called and they pick it up. And so that started in September on one site, September of last year.

After about two months, Fooda is, who's the caterer, thought it was a very successful full program and expanded it to four more of our construction sites. So since September, are you ready. for this, Dominique? We have diverted almost 22,000 pounds of food.

[00:18:49] Dominique: Wow 

[00:18:50] Joshua: I mean, that's insane. And, I never thought it would get to that.

And what was great for me is like when we first started this is when the stat benefits disappeared for a while. So, you know, we are having a huge impact to the local communities and the people with food insecurities and talking with Emily from the Columbus Food Rescue, it's quality food that they're getting and who she's delivering that to, they are very appreciative. 

[00:19:15] Dominique: Yeah, I was gonna say, I think that the mental image there of 22,000 pounds of food, you know, it's not just diverted from the landfill, which would already be a big win on a sustainability front, but it's actually ready-to-eat food that's going to feed people. And we've had Food Recovery Network on as well as Columbus Food Rescue from like a more nationwide standpoint of food recovery and then like a local standpoint. But I think something we've talked about with both groups is like the quality of the food, like you're saying, but also like ready to eat, like the fact that it can be driven from your site to someone who needs it.

[00:19:49] Joshua: Yep. Absolutely. We are actively looking at how can we expand this in some of the other cities that, we work in. So we're identifying which cities have food rescue programs so we can continue this quite honestly. So that is my, I think one of my bigger pushes for this year is 'cause it's, for us, it's free. They're coming and picking this food up and it could reduce our overall costs because that's 22,000 pounds we are not throwing away and we have to pay to get it hauled away. And it's not going in a dumpster to contaminate that load.

So instead of being materials being recycled, it's getting thrown away because of contamination. We're reducing that opportunity. 

[00:20:27] Dominique: That's awesome. Thank you for doing that. I'm so glad we got to share that. I'm excited to see what you do with it next, and I'm just really glad you ran headfirst into that problem.

That's amazing 

[00:20:36] Christy: Yeah. Josh, I'm so glad that you are doing this work and so excited to chat with you today on this. Thank you.

[00:20:44] Joshua: No, I, like I said, I am enjoying it. This is truly right up my alley. Get to work with all these different people and solve different problems. 

[00:20:51] Christy: Well, thank you so much for being on today. You know, we kind of started this in a way talking about the huge impact of construction on the environment, and I love that you think about that as opportunities to do better, going back to your puzzle-solving and, you know, just thinking about how an impact in a construction, having one less load of concrete is more than you can do in your home for not driving a year, not eating meat.

Like, that is just powerful. The work you do matters, and I love the innovations with the drywall, thinking about concrete mixes and the food recovery. You're not just thinking about the construction site. You're thinking about the people that are a part of building that. That's a different area of design that I don't think everybody's into.

 I love how your brain is working and your team that you have around you, how you're inspiring them to help come up with those ideas.

[00:21:39] Joshua: Yeah. We have quite an extensive sustainability team at Turner, and they're all passionate, about this. So we get to feed off each other and share practices about what we're doing across the country, and I'm looking forward to, we're getting together in a couple weeks up in Denver to kind of look at how we've been and what can we do to even be better at delivering what we do.

[00:22:00] Christy: It's amazing. Josh, I hope everybody in the construction world wants to give you a call after this. How can they reach out to you?

[00:22:08] Joshua: They can absolutely reach out to me on LinkedIn or they can email me at jlloyd@tcco.com

[00:22:15] Dominique: Perfect. I think this episode kind of just feels like a perfect reminder of why this podcast exists. Like, we need people like you in roles like you're in to make really big change, but to also solve the problems that maybe felt impossible before. So, thanks for existing, Josh. I was already obsessed with you before today, but this has been really exciting and really fun.

Thank you.

[00:22:35] Joshua: No, thank you. This has been fun and I'm looking forward to doing more and I know we'll be presenting again together in a couple months. 

[00:22:41] Dominique: Yeah. Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability, and we're here to highlight the people doing the work that inspires others, because climate action takes many forms.

[00:22:48] Christy: As always, you can find all of our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn and Instagram, @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions, and we'll be back next time with another sustainability success story.