Live Recording - How Columbus is Moving the Needle on Waste Diversion

[00:00:10] Dominique: Hello. Welcome to Green Champions, 

[00:00:12] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Dominique, our sustainability expert. 

[00:00:19] Dominique: And I'm so glad to be here alongside Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and did something about it. 

[00:00:27] Adam: Green Champions is a platform to share sustainability, success stories, and plant new ideas.

[00:00:31] Dominique: This is the last episode in our mini series with the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit. Today's episode was actually recorded in front of a live audience as Green Champions hosted a panel during the summit. So this session was called Change in Columbus. Referring to Columbus, Ohio and focuses on key players in waste diversion efforts.

You're gonna join us in chatting with three different champions, some new, some returning, and I'm particularly excited to show the work that these people are doing because I get the pleasure of working with each of them in different ways through my sustainability consulting work with Green Scope, and with that, enjoy the episode.

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[00:01:07] Dominique: Thanks for joining us. This is a panel exploring the collaboration and innovation behind Columbus's waste diversion efforts. My name is Dominique. I live and work in Columbus alongside these lovely folks up here. I am part of the Green Champions Podcast, I'm also the founder and owner of Green Scope Consulting which is a firm located in Columbus, Ohio that offers sustainability consulting services.

Since starting my business in 2021, I have been very fortunate to be able to support local organizations in diverting over a thousand tons of material. Some of those folks are up here and we'll talk about their projects. But that's been really, really fun passionate work for me. Co-host of the Green Champions Podcast, and I'm gonna toss it now to my podcast co-host, Adam. 

[00:01:47] Adam: Well, thank you Dominique. I'm Adam. I do a lot of work with early stage social enterprises, so social impact businesses getting off the ground. And we started this Green Champions Podcast last year to really share the stories of people doing great climate change work across different industries.

One thing that you can do to really help us is if you can subscribe to our podcast that really helps us connect to more people and get the word out. We really appreciate that and we promise to bring you really insightful stories. With that, we've got a live podcast for you today. So welcome and we're very excited to bring to you some of the greatest people from Columbus that are doing really interesting things in waste diversion.

[00:02:26] Dominique: So today our panel is really talking about kind of how government and some of our larger leadership organizations in the community are driving waste diversion. 

 I wanted to add some, context around our Columbus Climate Action Plan to share a little bit about kind of the stage that Columbus is at and the things that we're looking at. So when we're thinking about Columbus's climate it's actually warming faster than the national average. And so our annual low average temperatures are warming by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Our average growing season, which is like our freeze-free season has actually increased by 25 and a half days. And these trends are gonna continue hopefully not, but they are set to continue. By 2050,we will be experiencing up to a five degree Fahrenheit temperature difference be that much warmer.

And also we're seeing precipitations changing. We've seen dramatic wet seasons in Ohio, as many in this room might know. And then also when thinking about our, the waste side of that equation, regionally, a waste causation study was conducted by SWACO in 2019. That study found that 76% of materials that are in the landfill should have been recycled or composted. But some key solutions that are in the Climate Action Plan, is focusing on one, empowering a community of leaders. So how are we building space for different individuals to take part in that effort? And then how are we also reducing our waste generated, wasting less duh, but also diverting more?

And so yeah, now I'll pass it around and each panelist, if you could just share kind of what your role is and kinda your area of focus. And

[00:03:52] Aryeh: Thank you. I'm Aryeh. I am the sustainability manager for the City of Columbus Department of Public Service. We are the 14th largest city in the country. The largest city in Ohio. We have nearly a million people living in Columbus. We service about 360,000 single family houses for trash and a quarter million multi-family units for trash every single week.

We also do weekly recycling outta there. My purview, while I do a lot of trash, I do a lot of other sustainability is issues as well within our department. I oversee part of our Climate Action Plan on our waste diversion, which includes organics diversion and recyclable diversion, and creating circular economy jobs, which I think we're gonna dig into a little bit in this podcast. 

[00:04:39] Christy: I am Christy. I'm the GreenSpot Coordinator, which is a program housed under Sustainable Columbus. 

[00:04:46] Marcus: We were just renamed Columbus Water and Power. We handle a lot with obviously water and power. So a lot of what I do is facing residents, businesses and community groups to educate them about not only being more sustainable and giving them a framework, but also connecting them with resourcesHi y'all. My name's Marcus. I lead corporate partnerships in sustainability for Smart Columbus. Smart Columbus is a nonprofit, obviously located in Columbus, but we serve as central Ohio's Regional Innovation Lab. So we do some work in sustainability. We also do a, a, a handful of work outside of the sustainability purview. But really our main role is to work with public sector leaders, whether they be the mayor's office, the city or our public sector leaders at other municipalities throughout the, the Central Ohio region, which we define as the 11 county region in Central Ohio, focusing around Columbus.

And then also to work with our business sector and to understand where our private sector leaders, where do they see large challenges to continue the regional growth, resident outcomes and, and regional prosperity. And we use that innovation lab narrative, we use technology to try to solve those problems.

[00:05:45] Dominique: You just triggered this in my mind. GreenSpot is also unique in that we are a City of Columbus program, but we do service Franklin County and surrounding areas.So we're gonna first kind of have the section of questions a little bit about residents. 

Aryeh, when we talk about city led initiatives to promote waste diversion I think about your transition from recycling being biweekly to being weekly collection at houses, and then also about your compost drop off site that are free for everyone to use and access. Can you share a bit about what the impact of those two programs has looked like so far about what the resident behavior change has looked like? 

[00:06:19] Aryeh: I, when we look at residential behavior change it, it, it's creating the infrastructure so that residents can make that behavior change. It's gotta be easy and accessible. When we looked at our recycling, we had recycling being picked up every other week. And what happened when that recycling bin filled up, it would just go into the trash bin because the recycling would not be picked up for another week. So a lot of recyclable material would end up going into the trash.

When we moved to weekly, we saw a 15% increase of material from residents, which we knew was all going to the landfill. We're also seeing the participation rate increase because residents no longer need to think, "Oh, is this a week? I need to put my recycling bin out or not?" They know it goes out every week. So the rate of participation goes up because it's so much easier for them.

On the food scraps drop off, we are throwing away over a million pounds of food a day in Franklin County where Columbus sits. And at the same time we have residents in Columbus are missing about three and a half meals a week. So we're throwing away a ton of food and we have people that are hungry and not getting enough food.

Now, the food scraps drop off sites are really great because when you can no longer eat a piece of food, it can go to one of those sites and help divert that material. But what's really important, it's an opportunity for us to educate residents about how to actually reduce that waste in the first place because we spend a lot of time talking about recycling and composting. Those are the nearly bottom of the last choice that we should be making.

It's, how do we buy less? How do we eat our leftovers? How do we reuse our items? Do I need to buy a coffee mug at the coffee shop, or can I use a reusable mug? And so having the basic infrastructure in place for recycling and composting is wonderful because we can say, yeah, we have that, but here are all the other things that we need to do.

Last year, the city of Columbus actually saw a 3% decrease in total trash generated which is a huge number when we think of the over 300,000 tons of material that we send to the landfill every year. Part of that is because of the infrastructure we have in place for weekly recycling and organics collection. But the larger part of that is that we are educating residents to change their behavior and practices, to consume less, to consume smarter, to reuse and repurpose items. And that's, that's where I think we're really gonna see more action driven towards this work over the next couple of years. But having that infrastructure in place is like the, the stop gap that we can say we're doing it.

[00:08:47] Adam: I love that. Aryeh, I don't think I've ever said thank you enough for having the weekly recycling. My recycling can was always overflowing and now it's so much easier. I love it. 

With that, Christy, when you are, are talking to the community and, and residents, how are you incentivizing them to adopt more kind of waste friendly actions?

[00:09:06] Christy: Yeah, so with GreenSpot, we are a free program. So a lot of times when I'm out, what we call tabling, doing community outreach at festivals or really trying to meet people where they are, I am amplifying the fact that we have this dashboard tool that residents and businesses and community groups can utilize that helps them see like, "Hey, maybe they're overwhelmed, maybe they're a novice, or maybe they're experienced."

Wherever they are on the spectrum, they can hop on our dashboard for free, make their own personalized account and say, these are the things that I want to do or be inspired by opportunities like Aryeh was talking about with waste reduction in terms of recycling properly in terms of what can individuals do for composting.

 I try to meet people where they are in a kind and empathetic way. So we're not expecting people to solve everything today. We're trying to celebrate those small wins and advocate for change and again, really amplify the resources that are available. 

 I wanted to add,

[00:09:58] Dominique: I appreciate how much we're hearing all of you mention like people you collaborate with organizations you collaborate with. I'm glad we have some of them in the room. we have so many other large organizations in the community that are really passionate about and taking the lead on a lot of the waste efforts. But it's really cool to hear the, the role you're playing in driving that from the seats that you all sit in.

So that in mind, Marcus, taking a step back and thinking about Smart Columbus's mission and your impact areas, which I'll rattle off real quick, mobility, sustainability, digitalization and technology, when we think about the role of those different aspects in our city and thinking about smart cities, what does that really mean? Like how does that play a key role in waste diversion and how do you see your critical role in all of that? 

[00:10:41] Marcus: I'll start with kind of the, the technology piece and, you know, some of the statistics that, that you started off with Dominique and, and some of the things that Aryeh's mentioned.

Where Smart Columbus and where smart cities really enter into the conversation is yes, behavior change is a huge part of it. Yes, infrastructure is a huge part of it, but that infrastructure is always evolving. So when we think about not only how do we expand programs, how do we market better, how do we reach more audiences it's also where is technology moving us so that we can process that material that is collected better achieve better outcomes, be able to hit some of our climate targets that are outlined in the Climate Action Plan or some of those other regional priorities.

So there's an innovation lens and really the role we play at Smart Columbus in that is to highlight and recognize what trends we're seeing, whether there's a business that's being really innovative, we want to promote that business. If we see another city or another community across the country that's doing something really interesting, you know, can we look to Chicago, New York, LA, Cincinnati, Cleveland, right? And, and say, "Hey, they did this, it worked really well. What does that look like in the Columbus lens?"

 and then I think to your other point about where the sustainability portion comes in, Smart Columbus works very closely with the city to help activate some of these, you've heard all of us refer to the Columbus Climate Action Plan, right? And so that's Columbus and the Central Ohio's region. our strategic long-term vision to, to reduce carbon emissions across our community. Obviously that has a lot of little nuances that get into it from waste to transportation to energy and down throughout the list.

But finding ways where Smart Columbus can bring the business community into some of those conversations. And we know that residents are certainly part of the equation, but we also need our businesses and our industry to adopt sustainable practices as well to hit our overall goals. 

[00:12:19] Dominique: Marcus, how has your role also changed? Because when we think about technology, we can all relate to the fact that a lot has changed rapidly in the last 10 years, let alone the last couple. Can you just share a little bit, a bit of that, of like maybe a program or two or something that has adapted most recently because of how technology's different? 

[00:12:38] Marcus: So, one of kind of the most direct waste diversion programs that, that is part of our sustainability portfolio is our device donation program. And so this is a program that Smart Columbus has stood up in cohort with about a dozen or so different community partners, some of whom are in the room today to take the technology that is being retired from our largest public sector institutions and from our leading business communities.

And to say, how are we making sure that technology gets recycled or reused sustainably? And this kind of serves two purposes. One, it's a waste diversion tactic, right? So evidently, can we get those laptops, cell phones, servers, printers recycled in the proper way if they truly don't have any usable life left in them?

But the other way is we know, diverting from sustainability, talking about some of the digitalization and digital divide issues that Smart Columbus deals with. How can we use those retired laptops, tablets and give them to residents or nonprofits that lack devices? We have 110,000 households in Franklin County where Columbus sits that do not have a device in the household larger than a smartphone.

So think about trying to write a resume, do homework on, just an iPhone, right, and the barriers

that produces. So how can we take this waste diversion, tech tactic, take technology and, take that 3-year-old laptop that, one of our business partners might be retiring 'cause they got a new one. Refurbish it, wipe the data. We work very closely with our colleagues at Columbus Micro who are in the room and, and a couple other partners in Columbus to do that and get them back into the hands of the community to, to not only kind of have that raising tide that lifts all boats, but also have a sustainability impact as well.

[00:14:08] Dominique: Aryeh, we didn't touch on your convenience centers. And I would love for you to share a bit about what they are and how long they've been around and how many you have. But what Marcus mentioned that I thought was interesting is the idea of looking at other cities as benchmarks and inspiration, and I think the convenience centers, if I'm correct, was inspired by another city as programming. Can you share a bit about that and how that came to be? 

[00:14:26] Aryeh: Yeah great question. So, we, at the City of Columbus pick up bulk materials for free from residents. You call 3-1-1, you schedule to have your couch picked up, It's usually two week delay. And our trucks come by, they throw everything in the back of the rear loader, yellow trash truck, gets crushed, goes right to the landfill.

And so I'm thinking, my gosh, there's a lot of great material that can be reused or recycled or repurposed out of there. So I'm like, what are other cities doing? So I looked at what the city of Austin was doing and they have this kind of reuse hub where they are standing up, they've had it for 10 years. I think they're a real leader in waste diversion. And I straight up stole their idea and took it our own here in, in the City of Columbus.

We opened two waste and reuse convenience centers. These are staffed by city employees. They are open evening and weekend hours for residents to come through and drop off materials for free. And at those sites we have a station for furniture that is in great condition to be donated that furniture, that it needs some repair that can go to the furniture bank, Bicycles in any condition that works with a couple of our bicycle partners that refurbishes them and gets them back out there. We collect yard waste, food scraps oil, fats and grease their recyclables, e-waste.

 this year, we have diverted over 276 tons of material from those two sites. And because of that, we've also seen a reduction in the amount of bulk collection that has gone out. 

So, we're actually seeing some great engagement. We're averaging about a hundred, 150 people a day between those two sites, bringing some type of material there. Which I think is a, a really cool diversion tactic. And it's not just diverting it, it's repurposing a lot of this stuff too. 

[00:16:08] Adam: That's fantastic. That's a lot of people that are coming out. Now we've just been talking about how, you've been working with residents and, and the community. Let's shift gears and talk about how this works with corporations and, and corporate engagement. 

Christy with like GreenSpot and your Spotlight Awards, how are you working with public and private companies in order to do more waste diversion? 

[00:16:30] Christy: GreenSpot was a program started in 2008 and we had developed these green spotlight light awards to try to recognize large medium and small businesses in not just their waste diversion efforts, but all across the sustainability spectrum.

So part of that GreenSpot member dashboard that everyone has access to for free. columbusgreenspot.com or org and it'll both take you there. But basically with these businesses, when they have a framework and we're offering them pledges and ideas to, with waste diversion specifically, they submit an annual report to us.

We've got an advisory board of about 30 people who vote on those annual reports, and then that's how we select our winners who would receive an award from the mayor's office or city council and that's really special. our last year's winners is a great example of meeting people where they are with Bath & Body Works being our large winner and then this company called Ohio Native Concepts being our small winner.

So it is amazing to look at within the sustainability community there no shame, but there will be people who are a little judgemental, like, why would you pick Bath & Body Works with all their single use plastic bottles? But what we were really trying to highlight was the fact that they recognize things have been imperfect in the past, and what can they do with what they have now They're doing unique things to divert waste. And so we really wanted to highlight that.

And then with Ohio Native Concepts, they are a very small business who like their name, they plant native plants.

And their landscaping business who really focused on a lot of things beyond waste aversion. But for the purposes of this conversation, we thought that it was really cool that they are plugging in, tens of thousands of plants. 

we're really trying to emphasize not only celebrating the small wins, but educating along the way of some of those changing technologies. 

[00:18:06] Dominique: and for your Spotlight program, can you share a little bit about what it's like for a business that, they submit an annual report and then when you deliver your Spotlight awards it's at an open to anyone ceremony. 

[00:18:18] Christy: Yes. So that again, is one of those removing barriers to entry. We wanna be as inclusive as possible. I always like that quote about progress moves at the speed of trust, right? So being government employees, we want to welcome everyone to our table and say, celebrate with us these private public partnerships. I think last year we had about a hundred people. It was really great at Grand Ubon,

Everybody's doing great stuff, and we're trying to amplify the winners, the hosts, the everybody along the way and educate on how others can be doing the same things. 

[00:18:47] Dominique: Marcus we talked about Smart Columbus and how you're engaging residents on the device side. Can you share a little bit about how you're moving the needle with corporate organizations for waste reduction and how you focused also on like an initiative with an IT recycling?

[00:19:03] Marcus: Yeah, so, I'll take the IT recycling first and the, the program I alluded to earlier,I'll just paint a little clearer picture on that. So, we know that from a Smart Columbus perspective I, I mentioned the digital equity piece earlier. We know that there's a huge digital need in Columbus 

we know what that need is acutely. And so this was a win-win program where, yes, we can take e-waste from residents and work with partners like the city and Franklin County to collect e-waste, but also to work directly with our business partners from a standpoint of, okay, how do we leverage your technology as it's retired not only for this community benefit, but also how does it help your sustainability programs as a company or as a corporation.

And I, and that's one of the things that, that we try to do holistically. much to, to Christy's point, celebrating progress instead of perfection. we work very closely with companies across the board who have very robust sustainability targets and programs. How do we provide them resources and play a little bit of quarterbacking to, to connect them with resources that exist throughout our community. But also how to bring them into the fold, right? That if the City of Columbus puts out a climate action plan like you all did, that it isn't just a city owned plan, that it connects with residents, that it connects with businesses, that it connects with kind of folks across the spectrum of our community because we all need to chip in to hit these targets at the end of the day, it can't all be driven by, by one actor.

And so finding opportunities to plug those businesses in in different ways and say, Hey, if you have an emissions reduction goal for, for your company, that's great. How do we make sure you're talking with the same metrics, the same targets, using the same systems that some of our other employers in Columbus are that our partners at the city are, are kind of tracking data the same way and all kind of marching in the same direction.

[00:20:36] Adam: I think that's so important just to be able to share these stories and, and connect those dots. Which is what we're all doing here. Like we're learning from each other, all these great things that we can do in order to take those back to our businesses and our initiatives and implement those. So, great that you're doing that in Columbus.

Now Aryeh, we have not yet touched on how policy affects waste diversion. And I'm just curious, like when you think about how Columbus is growing, how do you amplify and grow the programs that are working and how do you take equity into account in terms of making sure that those are grown in a way that supports everybody?

[00:21:11] Aryeh: Yeah, so policy is critical and I think, look, Mayor Andrew Ginther of Columbus not only initiated our Climate Action Plan, but has codified it and committed to us being part of the the UN Paris climate accord again, even as the country is pulling us out of there. And our city council is firmly in supportive of taking climate action at the local level.

And our Climate Action Plan is rooted in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We know that our communities have been traditionally redlined and we are focusing our efforts in those areas. I don't need to set up a food scraps drop off location in an affluent area where everyone has a car and they have resources and they're working one job and can take their food scraps themselves. We need to set those up in areas that people can walk to, bike to, that are in their community so that they have access to these programs first.

And we are committed to doing that at the City of Columbus. And every action we take in our Climate Action Plan is going to do that. And so our policy really kind of focuses from that lens down. And we are looking at policies that make those those, those changes. And, and one of those things that I think is really important, it is food, right? So people are hungry people are not getting enough meals. We have food insecurity. At the same time we're throwing away really good edible food. And so we work with organizations like Columbus Food Rescue and others that are actually getting that food from the food systems that are actually failing us now, right?

The food systems not only in Columbus but across the country, are set up to provide and move as large amount of foods to select people, and that's it. If someone needs a meal, they shouldn't have to worry about, do I meet the qualifications for this meal? Do I meet the income threshold? Do I meet the citizenship threshold? That doesn't matter. If someone is hungry, we should be feeding them because we produce enough food and we have enough food in Columbus to feed everyone that's hungry in Columbus.

And I know Columbus Food Rescue rescued about a over a million pounds of food last year and fed people with it. And they have set up a a kitchen that actually takes a lot of food. So if there's pallets of beets or other things, they actually can convert it to meals to give to people that they can heat up or readily eat.

And so it's innovation, innovative policies like that will not only set us up now, but in the long term as like people are getting to set up new businesses. If there's a restaurant or a food supplier or a distributor, they know we have the infrastructure and network in place to capture that food and feed people. And I think that those are the kind of policies that we're really gonna dig in and expand as we go through this tumultuous time here in America. 

[00:23:48] Christy: I'm all riled up. Like that's really needed and really important work that you're talking about. And like we know that people being hungry and there being food waste is a logistical mismatch. That's the problem.

[00:23:58] Dominique: But like, when you talk about moving policy along in that area, how, how does that work? How, how does your role fit into that? I'm curious like what action groups are you a part of? I'm curious to kind of peel the layers back in terms of like, how is Columbus working together with different folks? Who's at the table and what do you talk about?

[00:24:17] Aryeh: Yeah, so the City of Columbus hosts a Jazz and Ribs Festival every year. And Columbus City Council our Columbus Public Health, Public Service, Columbus Food Rescue, and our Recreation and Parks Department last year actually came together to set up a food rescue operation which the city partially funded.

We had volunteers and city staff come together and we had a refrigerated vehicle that actually went. And each vendor there at the end of the festival and said, "What food are you throwing away? We don't care if it's completly cooked or what status it's in. We'll take it, we'll rescue it, we'll get it over to Columbus Food Rescue."

That rescued about a thousand pounds of food at that event, which would've just gone straight to the landfill. That then helped us develop a policy internally for city events and saying, what if there are other food festivals in the city, how can we make sure rescue is in there? How do our public health inspectors that are going to inspect restaurants, how are they able to educate the restaurants what they do with their leftover food and food scraps that can then go to Food Rescue and other donation items?

And so pilots like that, which were city coordinated, are now driving policy internally which we control the waste permits. So if you're putting on an event in the city, guess what? We can tell you, "Hey, here are your options for composting, for food donation, for recycling." And so we're able to push towards that as we make larger changes. But it starts with little pilots that brings a bunch of people together and then it rolls out into larger policies, which has really big impacts. 

[00:25:46] Dominique: Thanks, Aryeh. And I appreciate all of you touched on the fact that a big part of your role, 'cause we're talking about today, is like, how do folks sitting in seats like yours in their cities, see their role in moving the needle?

I appreciate the way you've all shared the way that you've found a pocket that isn't engaged. Maybe it doesn't have the incentive to be engaged and found a way to build that incentive 'cause that's what, I mean, frankly, I sit as like a sustainability consultant wanting to help these different projects work and it takes folks like you to build the programs to start the initiatives.

And we'll kind of just shift our gears now looking ahead at what you all think about what's coming and opportunity areas.

But Christy, I wanted to ask you first, Who's not at the table that you want to be there or you think should be there or maybe is next in line to be there? 

[00:26:29] Christy: Way too many people are not at the table. So what we are trying to do is diversify how we're reaching people in Columbus and Franklin County. What we're trying to do is, yes, measure it with metrics where we're documenting which neighborhoods we're going into, which zip codes we're hitting, how are we talking to them? Are we showing up and listening first, or are we just going towards them and talking about our ideas?

So I'm a big proponent of going into a community and listening to what they already have in place and what kind of help they need first before we kind of tell them, "Here's what you should be doing." But then also, so I would say really quickly, one way that Marcus and I have kind of captured some people who maybe aren't necessarily thinking about being a waste diversion champion is when Smart Columbus and Sustainable Columbus have partnered to talk do Lunch and Learns.

And so it's been really fun. Marcus and I have done a few with Bread Financial and Huntington. And so they have thousands of employees across the country. And so we can go ahead and say, Hey, look what's happening in Columbus, and here's our Climate Action Plan. And here are some tips for your work from home employees and how it relates to your company, your ESG goals, your scope one and one, two, and three.

And just educating them, but then giving them concrete examples of, yes, maybe you're a work from home employee, here's how you can compost your food scraps at home. Or here's an idea what Columbus does with our food scrap drop off location. 

So there's lots of opportunities where we're trying to meet people who aren't thinking that way about waste diversion but like beyond those Lunch and Learns, we're also amplifying when there are people in different neighborhoods. Like in Franklin County, we have Upper Arlington who does Swap Day UA, which is basically like a free garage sale day. We have let's see, so Worthington has Precycle Day and Westerville has ReUse-A-Palooza.

So those are all ideas where residents who may not be thinking about sustainability again have the opportunity to divert things from the landfill. And by us supporting that vocally and saying, look, if you have people who aren't aware of this stuff, please share it." That's that empowering a community of climate leaders, like really trying to encourage more people to come to the table.

I love that. I am new to the sustainability world and I think that's one thing that Dominique taught me was that with everything going on with climate change, we're always learning. We're always moving from point A to point B to point C. What we know today to be best practice is gonna be changed tomorrow. So being able to keep that open mind and adapt to everything that we're learning is key. So Christy, thank you. 

[00:28:49] Adam: Marcus you've seen a lot of corporate leaders coming to the table. What gives you hope for the future? 

[00:28:54] Marcus: I think a lot of things do. and I think we, so at Smart Columbus, we manage and I think some other, I know Cincinatti

 has a version. I know Cleveland has a version 

but we organize .,What we call our Sustainability Leaders Group.this is effectively the sustainability leaders from our business community. So, in Columbus, Smart Columbus we gather roughly our 80 largest employers from across the Central Ohio region and they're lead sustainability teams, right? Whatever title that might manifest into at, at a respective company or organization. And bring them around the conversation of what does sustainability mean in your industry, in your organization? Where does it align with, regulatory requirements that you may or may not have, or stakeholder requirements that you may or may not have? And where do we find common ground?

And so I think that's allowed us to really narrow our focus on specific key issues that are relevant to Central Ohio in the sustainability and in the climate conversation. 

Obviously we've seen a shift in the narrative and the language that folks use when we talk about sustainability, when we talk about climate. It does provide us an opportunity to kind of translate some of that sustainability conversation into more of a quantitative dollars and cents conversation.

And while that's not always, the should be the top line lead narrative it, it does I think, provide us an avenue and give us a space to reflect in the language we use and how to make that business case for a lot of the actions that, that we want to take as a community. How to make that business case stronger to speak agnostically to more audiences. 

[00:30:16] Dominique: Thanks Marcus. 

So Aryeh, So we heard earlier in our session today actually a bit about how Columbus is seeking to create more circular economy jobs, green jobs. Can you share a little bit about like what do those look like? Where are you starting with that and what does that future look like for Columbus in particular?

[00:30:35] Aryeh: Yeah. So the City of Columbus has a, a very large green jobs goal, part of those are circular economy jobs. And when we think of circular economy it is not just, it is something we recycled and then that got turned into something else. It is how do we keep materials in circulation here? So, and, and how do we continuously reuse that? It's not, how do we turn a plastic bottle into a park bench and then that park bench 25 years from now goes to the landfill. That's not recycling, that's not circularity. That's plastic pollution and we don't support that.

What we want is something that is actually staying here in the region that can be maintained perfectly. So particularly if we look at like fibers and we have the Ohio State University, 10,000 mattresses get thrown away on the off campus area as students move out. All of those go to the landfill at the moment. We would love to have entities that refurbish those or to be able to pull the materials out of those mattresses and turn them into something in Columbus. And we count a circular job as someone that's collecting that material, turning that material into something else, delivering that new material to someone and then turning that material back into something else, right? So it's just that circularity, and that's what's really critical. We know we have the materials in Central Ohio to drive business decisions, and it should be part of our business recruitment strategy. It should be part of our e effort to pitch Central Ohio as the place to be.

And it's a way to ensure that people have jobs. When you send something to the landfill, it is one job. It is our refuse driver picking it up from your house, taking it to the landfill. When we have something that's actually circular, it can create 5, 6, 7, 8 jobs for every item that we might have. And that's what's really important and that's what we're really driving here. 

[00:32:22] Dominique: And I like that economic development connection to circular economy, waste diversion 'cause that is so true. I mean, we're using resources more effectively, but also if we're building more entrepreneurs, more small businesses. I mean, Marc is hitting that too. We have to change the narrative a little bit right now, but there are so many like positive outputs under this stigmatized word, which can be frustrating. 

[00:32:43] Adam: I just want to give a round of applause to our, our panel up here. Thank you guys. 

[00:32:51] Kwesi: ​

[00:32:53] Dominique: Thank you so much to Aryeh, Marcus and Christie for sharing their stories with us and for a really great audience, if you also have sustainable initiatives that are in need of support, you can reach out to me and the green scope consulting team at www.greenscopeconsulting.com.

[00:33:07] Adam: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We are here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change. 

[00:33:19] Dominique: You can find our episodes and reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us in your favorite podcast platform.

[00:33:26] Adam: Our music is by Zane Dweik. Special thanks to Green Umbrella hosts of the annual Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit. And thank you for listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode. 

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