Full Transcript for RECYCLING

right now. It's a system where 00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:07.780 we're extracting resources from the earth, we 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:10.379 make them into things, we use those things for 00:04:10.379 --> 00:04:12.879 a very short amount of time, sometimes only once, 00:04:13.020 --> 00:04:15.439 and then we dump them in the ground or burn them. 00:04:15.759 --> 00:04:19.079 That's really dumb. Yeah, it is. And it's not 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:21.740 just dumb, it's really wasteful and a lot of 00:04:21.740 --> 00:04:24.779 people get caught in the crossfire and it's damaging 00:04:24.779 --> 00:04:26.740 to our environment and our planet. And what's 00:04:26.740 --> 00:04:28.879 really crazy about it is that circular economy 00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:31.860 isn't really a new concept. It used to be how 00:04:31.860 --> 00:04:35.500 we did things. There are tons of examples. Glass 00:04:35.500 --> 00:04:37.879 recycling in the Byzantine Empire, the library 00:04:37.879 --> 00:04:41.139 at Alexandria, centuries of farmers composting, 00:04:41.279 --> 00:04:44.560 the milkman, cobblers, the entire island nation 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:48.300 of Cuba. For sure. It's something that we know 00:04:48.300 --> 00:04:50.439 how to do as a society and it's been happening 00:04:50.439 --> 00:04:53.540 for thousands of years. It's really only been 00:04:53.540 --> 00:04:55.500 in the last couple hundred years that we've moved 00:04:55.500 --> 00:04:58.279 away from those ways of doing things. So we don't 00:04:58.279 --> 00:05:01.540 really need to wait to make the transition. Speaking 00:05:01.540 --> 00:05:03.759 of which, that's why you started Circular Philadelphia, 00:05:03.939 --> 00:05:06.300 right? Yep, sure is. Can you tell me more about 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:08.860 that? I want to take you back. I'm going to channel 00:05:08.860 --> 00:05:12.300 my favorite golden girl, Sophia Petrillo, and 00:05:12.300 --> 00:05:17.959 ask you to picture it. Philadelphia 2018. The 00:05:17.959 --> 00:05:23.050 city manages to not get on the ball as far as 00:05:23.050 --> 00:05:26.209 making the waste contracts renew for the city 00:05:26.209 --> 00:05:30.750 and as a result they are behind and end up having 00:05:30.750 --> 00:05:33.689 to burn about half of the city's recycling. This 00:05:33.689 --> 00:05:36.490 was widely reported in the news that this had 00:05:36.490 --> 00:05:38.269 happened. I had been working as a consultant 00:05:38.269 --> 00:05:41.730 to the city's recycling office since 2013 and 00:05:41.730 --> 00:05:45.879 had seen the flaws in the way that the city manages 00:05:45.879 --> 00:05:48.199 materials and how it deals with its waste and 00:05:48.199 --> 00:05:51.439 recycling and saw some of the difficulty that 00:05:51.439 --> 00:05:55.639 they had in managing to do things like plan appropriately 00:05:55.639 --> 00:05:58.319 in order to do things like get an RFP out to 00:05:58.319 --> 00:06:01.660 renew waste contracts and really felt like there 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:05.720 had to be a better way. There had to be a way 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:11.259 for us as advocates, as businesses, as Philadelphia 00:06:11.259 --> 00:06:16.019 residents. to push the city to do better as far 00:06:16.019 --> 00:06:18.160 as waste and recycling was concerned. And it 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:21.899 was really that little bit of a seed that started 00:06:21.899 --> 00:06:24.259 at the time when we were burning half of our 00:06:24.259 --> 00:06:28.560 recyclables that grew into what became two years 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:31.500 later, the idea for Circular Philadelphia. So 00:06:31.500 --> 00:06:35.339 flash forward to 2020, the city during the pandemic 00:06:35.339 --> 00:06:39.379 had eliminated the zero waste and litter cabinet 00:06:39.379 --> 00:06:42.180 and also the position of the zero waste and litter 00:06:42.180 --> 00:06:45.199 director. That was Nick Esposito, my co -founder 00:06:45.199 --> 00:06:49.000 at Circular Philadelphia. And so in August of 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:53.060 2020, I reached out to him and said, hey, we 00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:57.550 are seeing the effect. of the city's inability 00:06:57.550 --> 00:07:00.730 to properly manage materials. People are being 00:07:00.730 --> 00:07:03.189 confronted with it. When they walk out of their 00:07:03.189 --> 00:07:06.870 house on their curb, we saw a month's worth of 00:07:06.870 --> 00:07:11.129 trash and recycling piling up. And I think now 00:07:11.129 --> 00:07:14.230 is the time. Now is the time where we can have 00:07:14.230 --> 00:07:18.060 these conversations about... how do we do this 00:07:18.060 --> 00:07:20.500 better in the city of Philadelphia? And people 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:24.100 are craving some sort of organization to help 00:07:24.100 --> 00:07:26.759 them understand these issues, help them become 00:07:26.759 --> 00:07:30.000 engaged, help them take action, help them advocate 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.959 for policy change. And I, at the time, was very 00:07:33.959 --> 00:07:37.259 focused on how do we focus this around zero waste? 00:07:37.759 --> 00:07:41.079 And so I approached Nick about this and he said, 00:07:41.319 --> 00:07:44.040 yeah, this sounds great, but... What we need 00:07:44.040 --> 00:07:46.759 to do is not just focus on zero waste and how 00:07:46.759 --> 00:07:50.100 do we do a little better, but really focus on 00:07:50.100 --> 00:07:52.740 how do we change the system, meaning how do we 00:07:52.740 --> 00:07:55.680 move from a linear economy to a circular economy. 00:07:55.819 --> 00:07:59.720 And I said, you know what, you're right. From 00:07:59.720 --> 00:08:02.480 there we went off to the races trying to figure 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:04.800 out what an organization would look like that 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.000 would really help us move forward in this direction 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:11.680 in the city and we started talking to various 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:15.120 businesses

that were operating in the circular 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:18.319 economy space or circular economy adjacent spaces, 00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:21.060 folks in the built environment. folks working 00:08:21.060 --> 00:08:24.620 in food systems, folks working in textiles. And 00:08:24.620 --> 00:08:27.319 we talked to them and said, hey, we're thinking 00:08:27.319 --> 00:08:29.259 about launching this organization that would 00:08:29.259 --> 00:08:32.399 support not just your business, but how do we 00:08:32.399 --> 00:08:34.720 grow this and make this transition happen here 00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:37.860 in Philadelphia writ large? Would this be something 00:08:37.860 --> 00:08:40.539 that seems valuable to you? And every single 00:08:40.539 --> 00:08:44.600 person we talked to said, absolutely. In fact, 00:08:44.830 --> 00:08:48.690 I wish this already existed. And so with that 00:08:48.690 --> 00:08:52.269 kind of support and encouragement, we really 00:08:52.269 --> 00:08:54.350 went forward and, you know, did all the things 00:08:54.350 --> 00:08:56.129 that you have to do, all the really boring things 00:08:56.129 --> 00:08:59.649 like setting up, you know, your your your corporation 00:08:59.649 --> 00:09:01.470 and all your nonprofit corporation doing all 00:09:01.470 --> 00:09:03.590 that sort of stuff, launching a website, whatever. 00:09:03.870 --> 00:09:07.590 And in 2021, June of 2021, we launched Circular 00:09:07.590 --> 00:09:11.049 Philadelphia with the support of a lot of these 00:09:11.049 --> 00:09:13.690 folks that were already operating in this space 00:09:13.690 --> 00:09:22.320 in. Philadelphia. So I often say that recycling 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:26.159 is the gateway drug to sustainability for a lot 00:09:26.159 --> 00:09:30.000 of people. It's their way in to environmentalism. 00:09:30.379 --> 00:09:32.980 Here in the city of Philadelphia, we have a single 00:09:32.980 --> 00:09:36.659 stream recycling program. This is different from 00:09:36.659 --> 00:09:38.700 what it used to be in the aughts when we had 00:09:38.700 --> 00:09:40.779 a dual stream recycling program where you had 00:09:40.779 --> 00:09:43.720 to separate out all of your glass and your bottles 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:46.000 and your cans from your paper and your cardboard. 00:09:46.820 --> 00:09:48.779 Those materials would go to different facilities 00:09:48.779 --> 00:09:51.379 where all of the like materials get compressed 00:09:51.379 --> 00:09:55.539 into a block called a bale and shipped off. And 00:09:55.539 --> 00:09:58.620 in the aughts, under the Mayor Nutter's administration, 00:09:58.820 --> 00:10:01.599 we switched to single stream recycling. Everything 00:10:01.599 --> 00:10:03.639 recyclable would go to the same place called 00:10:03.639 --> 00:10:06.539 a MRF. That's a material recovery facility. And 00:10:06.539 --> 00:10:09.000 that then separates the materials to create bales 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:12.399 of like materials to sell on to buyers. There 00:10:12.399 --> 00:10:14.179 are some really great things about single stream 00:10:14.179 --> 00:10:16.059 recycling. In that it meant everything could 00:10:16.059 --> 00:10:18.220 go in the same bin. It made it a lot easier for 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:20.700 people. And what did we see? We saw that people 00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:23.279 recycled at greater rates than we had ever seen 00:10:23.279 --> 00:10:25.399 in Philadelphia. It made it super simple for 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:29.039 them to do it. However, on the flip side of that, 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:31.190 it also meant that now that you had everything 00:10:31.190 --> 00:10:33.649 going into the same truck and that it got all 00:10:33.649 --> 00:10:36.210 mixed together, it made it a lot harder to pull 00:10:36.210 --> 00:10:39.409 those things back apart on the back end and turn 00:10:39.409 --> 00:10:41.710 them into valuable commodities that could then 00:10:41.710 --> 00:10:44.350 get sold down market to somebody who wanted to 00:10:44.350 --> 00:10:49.909 turn them into something else. A lot of people 00:10:49.909 --> 00:10:53.309 think recycling is just a service that exists. 00:10:53.889 --> 00:10:55.889 And if they see the trucks come around, maybe 00:10:55.889 --> 00:10:58.830 they assume that the city is just paying for 00:10:58.830 --> 00:11:00.809 all of this and it just goes around, you know, 00:11:00.870 --> 00:11:02.889 it's just a service. It's there. Recycling happens. 00:11:03.450 --> 00:11:06.830 But when you really start to understand recycling, 00:11:07.870 --> 00:11:11.309 you realize it's a business. The recycler as 00:11:11.309 --> 00:11:13.970 a business is relying on being able to sell that 00:11:13.970 --> 00:11:17.129 material to cover some of their costs. When it 00:11:17.129 --> 00:11:20.879 comes to recycling, Oftentimes what determines 00:11:20.879 --> 00:11:24.159 if something is going to be recyclable is if 00:11:24.159 --> 00:11:26.940 the cost to collect and process that material 00:11:26.940 --> 00:11:31.279 is less than the value of that material. Technically 00:11:31.279 --> 00:11:34.220 a lot of things can be recycled, but then... 00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:36.179 Do we have the collection logistics? Do we have 00:11:36.179 --> 00:11:38.559 the end markets to practically recycle those 00:11:38.559 --> 00:11:41.700 things? And so when we start to think about recycling 00:11:41.700 --> 00:11:44.639 in terms of those variables, I think it gets 00:11:44.639 --> 00:11:47.139 a lot easier to understand why there's so many 00:11:47.139 --> 00:11:51.080 nuances to recycling. There are challenges and 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:54.460 those are real and true challenges when it comes 00:11:54.460 --> 00:11:58.279 to the infrastructure to make it a valuable material 00:11:58.279 --> 00:12:00.059 when it comes out of the recycling processing 00:12:00.059 --> 00:12:03.159 facility and to be able to find markets for those 00:12:03.159 --> 00:12:06.419

materials. Fortunately, there are companies right 00:12:06.419 --> 00:12:09.080 here in Philly trying to make it easier for folks 00:12:09.080 --> 00:12:13.679 to recycle efficiently. My name is Ben Ditzler, 00:12:13.820 --> 00:12:16.720 I'm with Divert. I founded the company, so I'm 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:19.139 the founder and owner of Divert. We make recycling 00:12:19.139 --> 00:12:21.299 bins and recycling lids that make it easy to 00:12:21.299 --> 00:12:28.299 know which recycle. It's been cool in the media 00:12:28.299 --> 00:12:31.399 to talk about how recycling doesn't work, it's 00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:33.320 broken, it's been this narrative for the past 00:12:33.320 --> 00:12:36.120 four or five years. And there's definitely been 00:12:36.120 --> 00:12:39.000 a lot of changes and some challenges to the recycling 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:42.230 industry, but it's still... a multi -multi -million 00:12:42.230 --> 00:12:45.169 dollar industry that is happening and is happening 00:12:45.169 --> 00:12:49.970 domestically. I remember being a kid and hearing 00:12:49.970 --> 00:12:52.110 like, oh, we're running out of space and landfills. 00:12:52.289 --> 00:12:55.090 That's not really the reason to recycle. We actually 00:12:55.090 --> 00:12:58.049 still have plenty of landfill space in this country. 00:12:58.490 --> 00:13:00.629 The United States is a very large country. If 00:13:00.629 --> 00:13:02.090 you go to Europe, they actually don't really 00:13:02.090 --> 00:13:04.970 use landfills. They primarily burn their trash, 00:13:05.049 --> 00:13:07.350 which has its own set of issues. Here in Philadelphia, 00:13:07.350 --> 00:13:11.460 we also do burn our trash. but there's still 00:13:11.460 --> 00:13:13.980 tons and tons of space for landfills in this 00:13:13.980 --> 00:13:17.740 country. The bigger issue is these are resources 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:21.179 that are, there's energy and there's resources 00:13:21.179 --> 00:13:23.740 embodied in these materials that really should 00:13:23.740 --> 00:13:26.539 be extracting and we really should be diverting 00:13:26.539 --> 00:13:29.559 so we don't have to extract raw materials from 00:13:29.559 --> 00:13:33.200 the ground, from the earth, and all the results 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:34.860 of that when we already have these materials 00:13:34.860 --> 00:13:39.299 and we just need to use them better. Here in 00:13:39.299 --> 00:13:40.980 Philadelphia, we have single stream recycling. 00:13:41.179 --> 00:13:44.720 So single stream recycling is The terminology 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:46.620 itself can get a little bit complicated because 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:48.740 people sometimes think like oh single stream 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:50.840 means we can put our trash and recycling together 00:13:50.840 --> 00:13:53.639 That's not what I mean single stream means that 00:13:53.639 --> 00:13:55.659 is different from dual stream recycling Which 00:13:55.659 --> 00:13:58.620 is paper on one side and bottles of cans the 00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:00.679 other side single stream Just means paper and 00:14:00.679 --> 00:14:03.299 bottles of cans are mixed together. So here in 00:14:03.299 --> 00:14:06.899 Philadelphia Single stream is collected by your 00:14:06.899 --> 00:14:08.850 truck going through your neighborhood at least 00:14:08.850 --> 00:14:11.350 on a residential level. It either goes directly 00:14:11.350 --> 00:14:13.350 to the MRF, which is a recycling center, or it 00:14:13.350 --> 00:14:15.210 goes through a transportation and then it's brought 00:14:15.210 --> 00:14:18.710 to the MRF. So the MRF is the MRF that Philadelphia 00:14:18.710 --> 00:14:21.250 uses right now. It's called the Forge. It's run 00:14:21.250 --> 00:14:23.809 by Waste Management, although Waste Management 00:14:23.809 --> 00:14:26.490 just changed their name to WM. It's up in Northeast 00:14:26.490 --> 00:14:29.789 Philly. I've been there half a dozen times before. 00:14:30.029 --> 00:14:35.480 I've done waste sorts there. It's a large, large 00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:37.500 operation. If you ever go there, you will literally 00:14:37.500 --> 00:14:41.679 see the mountains 100 feet high of recycling 00:14:41.679 --> 00:14:44.659 piled up outside of the facility. It's incredible 00:14:44.659 --> 00:14:47.700 how much material that Philadelphians discard. 00:14:48.159 --> 00:14:50.200 If you ever go to the Murph, if you ever Google 00:14:50.200 --> 00:14:53.019 a video of how the Murph works, it's kind of 00:14:53.019 --> 00:14:56.460 amazing, actually, where there's a lot of people, 00:14:56.539 --> 00:14:59.590 but a lot of machinery. separates this material. 00:14:59.850 --> 00:15:03.029 So what tends to happen is the big bags get ripped 00:15:03.029 --> 00:15:06.710 open by people on the front end, the plastic 00:15:06.710 --> 00:15:09.350 bags get thrown in the trash, but you try to 00:15:09.350 --> 00:15:13.450 loosen things as much as you possibly can. And 00:15:13.450 --> 00:15:18.370 then as the materials go through the facility, 00:15:18.690 --> 00:15:20.549 more and more materials get pulled off. Sometimes 00:15:20.549 --> 00:15:22.269 the cardboard gets pulled off first, then the 00:15:22.269 --> 00:15:24.409 paper gets pulled off, then the bottles and cans, 00:15:24.730 --> 00:15:26.809 then the glass gets pulled off, metal gets pulled 00:15:26.809 --> 00:15:29.789 off. Each facility runs in their own particular 00:15:29.789 --> 00:15:33.929 way, so there's no one way to do it. Convariables 00:15:33.929 --> 00:15:38.110 run so unbelievably fast, and also the workers 00:15:38.110 --> 00:15:43.470 who do this are incredible workers. The speed 00:15:43.470 --> 00:15:46.190 at which they work is unreal. Human beings are 00:15:46.190 --> 00:15:49.090 doing the quality control. WM runs the facility. 00:15:49.470 --> 00:15:52.110 They will sort materials into different commodities, 00:15:52.929 --> 00:15:56.190 plastics together, or number one bottles

together, 00:15:56.490 --> 00:15:58.710 number two bottles together, you get the idea. 00:15:59.210 --> 00:16:01.450 And then they will ship all those materials off 00:16:01.450 --> 00:16:04.450 and usually in baled form to another recycler 00:16:04.450 --> 00:16:08.389 and they will process it further. So much of 00:16:08.389 --> 00:16:10.990 the business of recycling is based around commodity 00:16:10.990 --> 00:16:16.850 markets. So if you have a bale of aluminum, It 00:16:16.850 --> 00:16:19.529 generally stays with, it's almost certainly staying 00:16:19.529 --> 00:16:22.629 within North America because it's very valuable, 00:16:23.509 --> 00:16:27.809 it's easy to sort, and it has a definite need, 00:16:27.990 --> 00:16:30.629 a definite use here in North America. Anheuser 00:16:30.629 --> 00:16:33.909 -Busch is one of the biggest purchasers of aluminum, 00:16:34.149 --> 00:16:36.850 scrap aluminum, around the big... breweries, 00:16:36.970 --> 00:16:39.629 the big canning, Coca -Cola, they're one of the 00:16:39.629 --> 00:16:42.090 biggest purchasers of aluminum. So aluminum recycling 00:16:42.090 --> 00:16:45.669 is very efficient and I try to buy my beer in 00:16:45.669 --> 00:16:48.690 aluminum cans because they're incredibly easy 00:16:48.690 --> 00:16:50.730 to recycle and they are incidentally recycled 00:16:50.730 --> 00:16:55.669 versus a glass bottle. So glass bottles collected 00:16:55.669 --> 00:16:57.970 in the curb cyber recycling stream by the city 00:16:57.970 --> 00:17:00.990 of Philadelphia are not truly recycled. Glass 00:17:00.990 --> 00:17:02.590 bottles tend to get crushed in the back of the 00:17:02.590 --> 00:17:05.769 compactor trucks. that crushed glass is very 00:17:05.769 --> 00:17:08.950 difficult to separate out in a usable form so 00:17:08.950 --> 00:17:12.910 it usually ends up on a landfill and it's landfill 00:17:12.910 --> 00:17:15.890 cover every day so they have to cover up the 00:17:15.890 --> 00:17:17.710 waste at the end of the day they don't want the 00:17:17.710 --> 00:17:20.190 food scraps on the top so the seagulls don't 00:17:20.190 --> 00:17:22.269 get it so they just cover it with a bunch of 00:17:22.269 --> 00:17:24.789 crushed glass so any glass bottle you put in 00:17:24.789 --> 00:17:28.690 the Philadelphia stream goes to a landfill in 00:17:28.690 --> 00:17:33.529 that regard. Luminum as a material is great because 00:17:33.529 --> 00:17:36.809 it's something like aluminum that is in your 00:17:36.809 --> 00:17:39.869 recycling bin gets turned into a new can within 00:17:39.869 --> 00:17:42.509 three months. The aluminum system is very, very 00:17:42.509 --> 00:17:45.430 efficient. So there's other materials out there 00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:48.309 that are less efficient. Plastics tend to get 00:17:48.309 --> 00:17:53.059 down cycled. Number one, PET bottles. frequently 00:17:53.059 --> 00:17:55.799 downcycled into other materials like fleece like 00:17:55.799 --> 00:17:58.119 fleece in your clothing so when we throw away 00:17:58.119 --> 00:18:02.259 a bottle it throws out resources that are just 00:18:02.259 --> 00:18:04.740 going to the landfill that if we are able to 00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:06.859 keep this material if we are able to keep this 00:18:06.859 --> 00:18:09.819 resource going it means we do not have to extract 00:18:09.819 --> 00:18:13.200 that resource from the ground we can keep it 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:19.109 in use being used by human beings what has happened 00:18:19.109 --> 00:18:21.789 to the commodities, to the recycling commodities 00:18:21.789 --> 00:18:26.549 market over the past 15 years is that in the 00:18:26.549 --> 00:18:30.809 late aughts, China was essentially subsidizing 00:18:30.809 --> 00:18:34.069 the recycling markets by buying all of North 00:18:34.069 --> 00:18:38.549 America's junk. And they couldn't get enough 00:18:38.549 --> 00:18:43.349 of our junk because they didn't have as much 00:18:43.349 --> 00:18:45.809 of the scrap resources that North America had. 00:18:45.930 --> 00:18:48.789 So they were paying what was inflated prices 00:18:48.789 --> 00:18:50.930 for our junk. And they weren't buying our good 00:18:50.930 --> 00:18:52.750 junk. They were buying our bad junk. They were 00:18:52.750 --> 00:18:57.150 buying the bottom of the market stuff. So it 00:18:57.150 --> 00:19:00.329 inflated the entire market. And in the mid teens, 00:19:02.210 --> 00:19:04.910 they started to change this policy. And the first 00:19:04.910 --> 00:19:08.829 policy was called Green Fence. And it started 00:19:08.829 --> 00:19:11.869 shifting the market. Away started shifting the 00:19:11.869 --> 00:19:14.529 North American market away from China. So it 00:19:14.529 --> 00:19:17.450 said China. We are not going to import this junk 00:19:17.450 --> 00:19:20.710 anymore North America needs to find out some 00:19:20.710 --> 00:19:23.809 other outlet further its junk and then a few 00:19:23.809 --> 00:19:25.690 years later There was another Chinese policy 00:19:25.690 --> 00:19:28.390 called national sword and that really kind of 00:19:28.390 --> 00:19:31.670 shut the door on China buying North America's 00:19:31.670 --> 00:19:36.309 junk The first step had eliminated some of the 00:19:36.309 --> 00:19:38.430 junk that we were sending to China and the second 00:19:38.430 --> 00:19:42.650 step almost totally sealed it off, the junk that 00:19:42.650 --> 00:19:45.369 North America was sending to China. But what 00:19:45.369 --> 00:19:48.809 it ended up doing was it took out the bottom 00:19:48.809 --> 00:19:51.690 of the commodities market here in North America. 00:19:51.750 --> 00:19:55.210 So it took out the mixed plastics primarily in 00:19:55.210 --> 00:19:58.250 the mixed paper market. The aluminum can that 00:19:58.250 --> 00:20:01.569 is currently being recycled here in North America 00:20:01.569 --> 00:20:03.809 was probably being recycled in North America 00:20:03.809 --> 00:20:07.069 15 years ago.

That didn't change. The mixed plastics, 00:20:07.190 --> 00:20:12.609 like... the cups and the tubs and the lids and 00:20:12.609 --> 00:20:16.210 the caps, the plastics that are not one and two 00:20:16.210 --> 00:20:18.950 bottles, that was the stuff that China was taking. 00:20:20.130 --> 00:20:22.650 And it was actually sort of unclear as to what 00:20:22.650 --> 00:20:24.650 they were doing with it. Were they burning it? 00:20:24.690 --> 00:20:27.490 Were they melting it down? Were they actually 00:20:27.490 --> 00:20:30.509 sorting the good stuff from the stuff they didn't 00:20:30.509 --> 00:20:32.529 want? That's probably the most likely scenario. 00:20:33.289 --> 00:20:35.069 Again, these are all commodity markets and once 00:20:35.069 --> 00:20:36.950 you sell this commodity, you don't really know 00:20:36.950 --> 00:20:40.069 what happens with it. So they were taking that, 00:20:40.069 --> 00:20:42.730 those mixed plastics and mixed paper previously 00:20:42.730 --> 00:20:45.329 off our hands. Now, currently a lot of those 00:20:45.329 --> 00:20:48.170 mixed plastics and mixed paper are being landfilled 00:20:48.170 --> 00:20:50.769 here in North America, but there's also, especially 00:20:50.769 --> 00:20:53.109 on the mixed paper side, there's a lot of new 00:20:53.109 --> 00:20:55.829 paper mills that have opened up to take advantage 00:20:55.829 --> 00:21:00.190 of this relatively low cost commodity that is 00:21:00.190 --> 00:21:02.950 widely available now. Plus a lot of paper mills 00:21:02.950 --> 00:21:05.990 have reformulated what they will take. So when 00:21:05.990 --> 00:21:08.519 you have a paper mill, it's kind of like baking 00:21:08.519 --> 00:21:10.359 a pie like you take a little bit of this little 00:21:10.359 --> 00:21:13.140 bit of that so you have you will take a little 00:21:13.140 --> 00:21:16.140 bit of old corrugated boxes and you'll take a 00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:17.779 little bit of mixed paper depending on what you 00:21:17.779 --> 00:21:19.859 are making and what you're producing you will 00:21:19.859 --> 00:21:24.039 take little bits of different amounts and mix 00:21:24.039 --> 00:21:26.859 it together and produce whatever you're making. 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:34.880 So late aughts the commodity market had really 00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.589 started running away and commodities were very 00:21:38.589 --> 00:21:40.910 valuable. And single stream was the best, one 00:21:40.910 --> 00:21:43.789 of the best ways of capturing as much recycling 00:21:43.789 --> 00:21:46.109 as you possibly could to extract all that value 00:21:46.109 --> 00:21:49.369 out of it. So Philadelphia moved to a single 00:21:49.369 --> 00:21:53.369 stream system about 18 years ago. You could throw 00:21:53.369 --> 00:21:56.549 everything in one big compactor. You can compact 00:21:56.549 --> 00:21:58.269 the recycling and it was much more efficient 00:21:58.269 --> 00:22:01.710 from a collection standpoint. Since that time, 00:22:01.789 --> 00:22:04.049 the commodity markets have changed. Yes, that's 00:22:04.049 --> 00:22:07.500 true. So the... Metal is not as valuable and 00:22:07.500 --> 00:22:09.920 the paper is not as valuable. The plastic is 00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:11.599 not as valuable as it once was but there's still 00:22:11.599 --> 00:22:16.920 a lot of value in it. So some of the big producers 00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:20.380 are trying to purchase as much of this stuff, 00:22:20.740 --> 00:22:22.359 clean stuff as they possibly can. They really 00:22:22.359 --> 00:22:24.339 don't want the dirty stuff, they want the clean 00:22:24.339 --> 00:22:27.259 stuff. So that's one of the downsides of single 00:22:27.259 --> 00:22:29.299 stream recycling. We got a lot more of the dirty 00:22:29.299 --> 00:22:31.960 stuff in the recycling stream and it's much more 00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:35.799 difficult and more energy. and more cost has 00:22:35.799 --> 00:22:37.740 to go into cleaning the materials to get enough 00:22:37.740 --> 00:22:41.859 good stuff. If trash gets into recycling, especially 00:22:41.859 --> 00:22:46.059 single stream, there's a certain amount of trash 00:22:46.059 --> 00:22:49.660 that is to be expected in there. If there's 10 00:22:49.660 --> 00:22:52.880 % of the total quantity is trash, they can definitely 00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:56.019 deal with that. If there's 30 % of the total 00:22:56.019 --> 00:22:58.740 amount of material there is trash, they don't 00:22:58.740 --> 00:23:01.140 want that because they have to put in so much 00:23:01.140 --> 00:23:05.509 more extra effort. time, money to remove that 00:23:05.509 --> 00:23:08.170 trash, plus it contaminates a lot of the paper. 00:23:08.950 --> 00:23:11.349 Soil paper gets food on it, gets wet, you really 00:23:11.349 --> 00:23:14.829 can't use it again. So they like to have it under 00:23:14.829 --> 00:23:22.309 10 or 15 percent. Diver came to be through a 00:23:22.309 --> 00:23:29.539 desire to make it easy to recycle. It seems like 00:23:29.539 --> 00:23:32.759 it should be easy, but it is surprisingly complicated 00:23:32.759 --> 00:23:36.180 depending on where you go, market conditions. 00:23:36.380 --> 00:23:38.680 There's a lot of different factors that actually 00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:42.819 influence it. I was working on a project for 00:23:42.819 --> 00:23:45.240 the city of Philadelphia. I was tasked with coming 00:23:45.240 --> 00:23:47.440 up with the commercial recycling toolkit. So 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:50.059 how do businesses recycle better? And I had seen 00:23:50.059 --> 00:23:55.099 this idea out there where... at common spaces, 00:23:55.980 --> 00:23:59.839 at Whole Foods, colleges, universities, to display 00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:03.180 the real -life items. Like, this is the cup that 00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:05.059 should be recycled. This is the plate that should 00:24:05.059 --> 00:24:08.420 go in the compost. And it was done in a certain 00:24:08.420 --> 00:24:13.279

way. And the idea was great, but it was not executed 00:24:13.279 --> 00:24:15.680 in the best possible way. So I was literally 00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:20.289 riding the L one day to work. And I had this 00:24:20.289 --> 00:24:22.769 idea like, oh, what if we just move this display 00:24:22.769 --> 00:24:27.069 case from up there on top of the bin? That should 00:24:27.069 --> 00:24:30.130 exist. So I went home and I Google searched it 00:24:30.130 --> 00:24:33.390 and I did not find anything. And then I'm like, 00:24:33.450 --> 00:24:35.829 why does this not exist? And then I did a patent 00:24:35.829 --> 00:24:38.309 search and nothing came up and I was like, this 00:24:38.309 --> 00:24:41.170 should exist. So I started down the road of making 00:24:41.170 --> 00:24:46.589 this exist. So this is our first line. So this 00:24:46.589 --> 00:24:50.579 bin is a Slim Jim bin. So there's no standard 00:24:50.579 --> 00:24:53.779 bin, but a Slim Jim bin is more common. We also 00:24:53.779 --> 00:24:56.559 have another product rolling out soon that will 00:24:56.559 --> 00:25:00.799 fit on a 32 and 44 gallon round bin. Those are 00:25:00.799 --> 00:25:03.440 typically used at events or more informal spaces. 00:25:03.700 --> 00:25:06.039 These are sort of middle of the road formality. 00:25:06.839 --> 00:25:08.880 We will also have another product rolling out 00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:11.259 soon that's much more of a high -end bin. It's 00:25:11.259 --> 00:25:14.259 more of a cabinet style for like a high -end 00:25:14.259 --> 00:25:16.700 office where there's interior bin that can be 00:25:16.700 --> 00:25:20.099 emptied as well. But the domes on top are primarily 00:25:20.099 --> 00:25:22.420 what we sell. So we sell both the lids and the 00:25:22.420 --> 00:25:24.559 bins, but a lot of our customers just purchase 00:25:24.559 --> 00:25:27.400 the lids, the dome lids on top to retrofit their 00:25:27.400 --> 00:25:31.460 existing bins. So the lids on top contain the 00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:35.460 actual real life items, the actual cup, the actual 00:25:35.460 --> 00:25:39.740 plate, the actual bottle as display, as example 00:25:39.740 --> 00:25:42.299 items for what should go in, what should be deposited 00:25:42.299 --> 00:25:48.740 in those bins. The first, I would say the first 00:25:48.740 --> 00:25:55.779 large customer we had was a HBCU in Louisiana. 00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:01.359 Definitely not your typical recycling facility. 00:26:02.539 --> 00:26:05.579 In the South, landfill costs are way, way lower 00:26:05.579 --> 00:26:09.400 than they are here. They had rolled out a recycling 00:26:09.400 --> 00:26:14.549 program a few years prior. They were getting 00:26:14.549 --> 00:26:17.109 massive amounts of contamination, close to 50 00:26:17.109 --> 00:26:20.990 % contamination in their streams. It was undoubtedly 00:26:20.990 --> 00:26:24.049 being thrown in the trash because you just cannot 00:26:24.049 --> 00:26:26.750 recycle material with that

much contamination. 00:26:27.309 --> 00:26:31.869 They saw our products. They implemented our products 00:26:31.869 --> 00:26:36.230 across their campus. and they saw their contamination 00:26:36.230 --> 00:26:38.049 cut by about two thirds. So they were previously 00:26:38.049 --> 00:26:40.869 close to 50%, they got the contamination about 00:26:40.869 --> 00:26:44.369 to 10 or 15%. 10 or 15 % is definitely below 00:26:44.369 --> 00:26:46.809 the threshold to recycle. So we took this facility 00:26:46.809 --> 00:26:49.630 that was recycling nothing, even though they 00:26:49.630 --> 00:26:53.009 were trying, recycling nothing, got them underneath 00:26:53.009 --> 00:26:55.109 the contamination threshold, now they're fully 00:26:55.109 --> 00:26:59.029 recycling. I think the... The number one reason 00:26:59.029 --> 00:27:01.009 for contamination is people are not paying attention 00:27:01.009 --> 00:27:03.069 and they're not paying attention because they 00:27:03.069 --> 00:27:04.930 think it doesn't matter or they think it's all 00:27:04.930 --> 00:27:07.990 going to get thrown together. The second reason 00:27:07.990 --> 00:27:10.349 for contamination is people are just confused. 00:27:10.950 --> 00:27:14.049 A lot of times people see the housekeepers combining 00:27:14.049 --> 00:27:17.170 the trash and recycling and it does happen frequently. 00:27:18.089 --> 00:27:20.289 Usually it's not the housekeeper custodian's 00:27:20.289 --> 00:27:23.029 fault. Usually they're just doing their job because 00:27:23.029 --> 00:27:24.410 they'll look in the recycling and they'll look 00:27:24.410 --> 00:27:26.529 in the trash and they basically look the same 00:27:26.529 --> 00:27:28.630 inside the bag. So they're just doing their job 00:27:28.630 --> 00:27:30.210 and combining these things because they know, 00:27:30.210 --> 00:27:32.410 hey, all this stuff has to go in the trash. So 00:27:32.410 --> 00:27:35.190 when people see, oh, the housekeepers are not 00:27:35.190 --> 00:27:37.809 doing their job, why should I care? And it's 00:27:37.809 --> 00:27:40.130 coming from both ends where the housekeepers 00:27:40.130 --> 00:27:42.190 see like, oh, these guys are not doing their 00:27:42.190 --> 00:27:43.630 job because they're not properly separating. 00:27:44.069 --> 00:27:46.099 So both. sides are kind of pointing the finger 00:27:46.099 --> 00:27:47.880 at each other and sort of chicken -and -the -egg 00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:51.240 problem. So as much as you can, as the facility 00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:54.900 message, hey, we actually do care about this, 00:27:55.579 --> 00:27:57.539 let's do this the right way. That's at least 00:27:57.539 --> 00:27:59.960 half the battle. I mean, honestly, the city is 00:27:59.960 --> 00:28:04.380 not saving money by recycling. And operationally, 00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:06.759 it costs them more money. I mean, you do have 00:28:06.759 --> 00:28:09.380 to give the city credit for doing the right thing 00:28:09.380 --> 00:28:12.559 and recycling. The city could save a lot more 00:28:12.559 --> 00:28:15.779 money if their recycling was collected more efficiently 00:28:15.779 --> 00:28:18.539 and also if the recycling was collected in a 00:28:18.539 --> 00:28:22.579 much cleaner state. The recycling that the city 00:28:22.579 --> 00:28:27.039 of Philadelphia collects is quite dirty and they 00:28:27.039 --> 00:28:30.819 should be doing a much, much better job of informing 00:28:30.819 --> 00:28:34.099 residents to keep it clean. Yes, they will yell 00:28:34.099 --> 00:28:36.839 at residents for not keeping it clean, but there's 00:28:36.839 --> 00:28:39.319 very, very little outreach that the city is actually 00:28:39.319 --> 00:28:42.829 doing to clean up the recycling stream and save 00:28:42.829 --> 00:28:49.710 themselves money. The city also has a lot of 00:28:49.710 --> 00:28:52.230 difficulty when it comes to contracting their 00:28:52.230 --> 00:28:55.329 recycling contracts because they tend to be very 00:28:55.329 --> 00:28:57.470 inefficient. They roll out the contract at the 00:28:57.470 --> 00:29:04.150 last moment and it does not allow recycling companies 00:29:04.150 --> 00:29:07.730 that would otherwise relocate or open up a facility 00:29:07.730 --> 00:29:11.849 in Philadelphia. and does not guarantee them 00:29:11.849 --> 00:29:17.170 a long -term contract. So because the city is 00:29:17.170 --> 00:29:19.190 relatively disorganized rolling out the contract, 00:29:19.609 --> 00:29:21.109 companies don't want to come here. And they're 00:29:21.109 --> 00:29:23.069 not able to get that guarantee of a long -term 00:29:23.069 --> 00:29:30.809 contract. It definitely could be better. Divert 00:29:30.809 --> 00:29:33.369 is based in the Riverwoods. I'm in Kensington. 00:29:34.130 --> 00:29:36.710 So our office is in Kensington. We do serve some 00:29:36.710 --> 00:29:39.819 businesses here. In the River Wars, so right 00:29:39.819 --> 00:29:42.640 now we are at the Resource Exchange. Resource 00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:44.779 Exchange are old friends of ours who do great, 00:29:44.779 --> 00:29:48.119 great work. We also have businesses, we also 00:29:48.119 --> 00:29:49.839 have customers across Philadelphia, and we also 00:29:49.839 --> 00:29:53.839 have customers across the country. Our primary 00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:56.339 market is colleges, universities. That's our 00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:58.759 primary market, but it also works in offices. 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:03.299 It works in coffee shops. The event space is 00:30:03.299 --> 00:30:05.220 both large and small, so if there's a pop -up 00:30:05.220 --> 00:30:07.750 event, You can have it there, but if there's 00:30:07.750 --> 00:30:10.210 like a sports stadium or entertainment venue, 00:30:10.309 --> 00:30:12.369 it also works in those places. It's basically 00:30:12.369 --> 00:30:15.349 anywhere where people gather and are unsure of 00:30:15.349 --> 00:30:19.130 the rules as to what you

should recycle. It's 00:30:19.130 --> 00:30:21.789 a great tool for facilities to have because you 00:30:21.789 --> 00:30:24.829 can customize it to the exact materials that 00:30:24.829 --> 00:30:27.430 you have in that facility. So if you have a Coke 00:30:27.430 --> 00:30:28.750 machine right next to it, you should probably 00:30:28.750 --> 00:30:31.069 put that Coke bottle in the display case. If 00:30:31.069 --> 00:30:36.700 you have compost, and you have compostable wares 00:30:36.700 --> 00:30:38.980 that are most compostable wares are unique to 00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:41.579 your facility. So this is the actual cup. This 00:30:41.579 --> 00:30:44.099 is the actual plate. This is the actual fork 00:30:44.099 --> 00:30:46.640 that comes from this facility. Definitely put 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.339 those in there. We are a member of Circular Philadelphia 00:30:51.339 --> 00:30:54.740 for the past two years. We have a lot of personal 00:30:54.740 --> 00:30:57.480 connections there. But Circular Philadelphia, 00:30:58.039 --> 00:31:00.759 they have a lot of connections themselves. So 00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:05.079 they... make introductions for us, which is fantastic. 00:31:05.559 --> 00:31:10.400 When they come across facilities who have this 00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:12.539 need that we can solve or have this problem that 00:31:12.539 --> 00:31:14.559 we can solve, they make that introduction, which 00:31:14.559 --> 00:31:18.160 is the best marketing and sales we could ask 00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:25.380 for. Number one advice I give to people is compost. 00:31:25.619 --> 00:31:29.019 If you're not composting, you should be composting. 00:31:29.019 --> 00:31:32.400 That is... I think it's the number one way that 00:31:32.400 --> 00:31:36.599 one person can help fight against climate change. 00:31:38.859 --> 00:31:41.460 Really moving food waste into that compost stream 00:31:41.460 --> 00:31:44.420 is the number one thing. I would also say one 00:31:44.420 --> 00:31:46.319 of the best things you can do is just be aware 00:31:46.319 --> 00:31:50.900 of where your trash and recycling goes. Some 00:31:50.900 --> 00:31:52.880 people think, oh, it just goes away. There's 00:31:52.880 --> 00:31:54.740 obviously no away. It needs to go somewhere. 00:31:55.339 --> 00:31:57.920 So as much as you can be aware of what happens 00:31:57.920 --> 00:32:04.740 to your stuff, figure out where it goes. As soon 00:32:04.740 --> 00:32:06.440 as you start figuring out where your stuff goes, 00:32:06.720 --> 00:32:10.900 it makes you become a savvier consumer or a savvier 00:32:10.900 --> 00:32:16.819 citizen when it comes to collecting or acquiring 00:32:16.819 --> 00:32:20.000 stuff. And the more you learn about where your 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:21.980 stuff goes, the more you're going to want to 00:32:21.980 --> 00:32:24.539 change your behavior on where your stuff comes 00:32:24.539 --> 00:32:29.430 from. That was Ben Ditzler from Divert Recycling 00:32:29.430 --> 00:32:32.430 located in East Kensington, but providing easy 00:32:32.430 --> 00:32:40.630 recycling solutions nationwide. So we just heard 00:32:40.630 --> 00:32:43.369 about what happens to all the recycling that 00:32:43.369 --> 00:32:45.849 can kind of go in your blue bin and it gets recycled 00:32:45.849 --> 00:32:48.650 at larger recycling facilities. But what about 00:32:48.650 --> 00:32:51.049 all of those materials that can't go into your 00:32:51.049 --> 00:32:54.950 blue bin, but could still have another life as 00:32:54.950 --> 00:32:57.059 something else? We're going to talk about that 00:32:57.059 --> 00:33:10.779 next. My name is Matt Siegfried, co -owner of 00:33:10.779 --> 00:33:14.279 Rabbit Recycling, and we are in Southwest Philly. 00:33:14.759 --> 00:33:16.980 Up until this month, we were in East Kensington. 00:33:17.319 --> 00:33:20.220 We are a service for businesses and households 00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:24.240 looking to recycle common and hard to recycle 00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:28.490 material. We offer transparency in our recycling 00:33:28.490 --> 00:33:32.069 and we offer different options in our service 00:33:32.069 --> 00:33:40.430 for pickups. It started as an idea from my brother 00:33:40.430 --> 00:33:44.829 Brian. He is the other co -owner. Him and I, 00:33:44.849 --> 00:33:47.150 you know, we recognized that there were places 00:33:47.150 --> 00:33:49.730 where you could take, for instance, your plastic 00:33:49.730 --> 00:33:53.730 bags. You could go to a Target, light bulbs, 00:33:53.950 --> 00:33:57.470 batteries. batteries plus bulbs. There's sort 00:33:57.470 --> 00:34:01.509 of various solutions for unique material. And 00:34:01.509 --> 00:34:03.589 as we started talking about it, you know, he 00:34:03.589 --> 00:34:07.349 had the idea of, could there be sort of a one 00:34:07.349 --> 00:34:12.969 -stop shopper service for material that often 00:34:12.969 --> 00:34:16.429 ends up in a landfill? And can we also offer 00:34:16.429 --> 00:34:19.570 transparency through it being a paid service, 00:34:19.730 --> 00:34:22.690 but through transparency be able to provide people 00:34:22.690 --> 00:34:29.869 the peace of mind? We grew up respecting recycling 00:34:29.869 --> 00:34:33.610 laws, but not really on not going too far beyond 00:34:33.610 --> 00:34:37.530 that So he lived in the spring garden section 00:34:37.530 --> 00:34:40.750 and there was a bar that all the neighbors go 00:34:40.750 --> 00:34:44.570 to and he pitched the idea There was some interest 00:34:44.570 --> 00:34:47.070 seemed like a good idea. How could it work kind 00:34:47.070 --> 00:34:50.349 of you know, that's really what came next knowing 00:34:50.349 --> 00:34:55.190 that there's a need for this. It was 2019 when 00:34:55.190 --> 00:34:58.650 the idea came about, so it was before COVID. 00:34:59.030 --> 00:35:02.210 But even at that time, folks were pretty frustrated 00:35:02.210 --> 00:35:06.489 with whatever solutions that are

out there. Him 00:35:06.489 --> 00:35:09.590 and I are both engineers, background, so the 00:35:09.590 --> 00:35:12.349 problem -solving side kind of lined up with it. 00:35:12.590 --> 00:35:15.610 And then we just did some door knockers. We started 00:35:15.610 --> 00:35:19.510 printing out some advertising. Going around got 00:35:19.510 --> 00:35:22.389 a couple businesses and really it's all been 00:35:22.389 --> 00:35:28.949 word -of -mouth since. So our service area right 00:35:28.949 --> 00:35:34.650 now is most of Philadelphia except parts of North 00:35:34.650 --> 00:35:37.670 Philly and far northeast. For three years we 00:35:37.670 --> 00:35:41.989 were out in the East Kensington area so we serve 00:35:41.989 --> 00:35:48.130 Port Richmond. We serve East Kensington. We serve 00:35:48.130 --> 00:35:50.989 Northern Liberties. We also serve some of the 00:35:50.989 --> 00:35:54.730 mainline Delco area. Those are on weekends. And 00:35:54.730 --> 00:35:57.409 then the final area we serve is part of Montgomery 00:35:57.409 --> 00:36:00.269 County, being Degentown, Glenside, and Elkins 00:36:00.269 --> 00:36:06.489 Park. The way it works is we have different options. 00:36:06.829 --> 00:36:09.650 Essentially, you order a container. it's eight 00:36:09.650 --> 00:36:12.809 dollars that container is delivered to your household 00:36:12.809 --> 00:36:15.989 and then at that point you have the option to 00:36:15.989 --> 00:36:18.849 either sign up for a subscription or just an 00:36:18.849 --> 00:36:22.030 as needed service option. That is simply you 00:36:22.030 --> 00:36:24.389 just go on our website when your container is 00:36:24.389 --> 00:36:27.510 full with all the materials that we accept and 00:36:27.510 --> 00:36:29.929 then we schedule a pickup when we're back in 00:36:29.929 --> 00:36:33.670 your neighborhood. The other common option is 00:36:33.670 --> 00:36:36.840 a subscription so a once a week pickup. once 00:36:36.840 --> 00:36:41.760 every two weeks or once a month and we do also 00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:44.480 offer drop -offs at our location so you can go 00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:47.239 on our website and schedule appointments. We 00:36:47.239 --> 00:36:52.420 also offer free pickup of materials. We are seeing 00:36:52.420 --> 00:36:56.460 a large interest beyond where we are just now 00:36:56.460 --> 00:36:59.599 further out in other suburbs but as you can see 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:01.639 from our shop like we've got a lot of work to 00:37:01.639 --> 00:37:05.760 do here and we want to get the operation as streamlined 00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:09.199 as possible before we promote and target other 00:37:09.199 --> 00:37:19.639 areas. The reason why there's a small list of 00:37:19.639 --> 00:37:23.239 acceptable material for blue bins is twofold. 00:37:23.360 --> 00:37:27.800 First, the city contracts with private recyclers. 00:37:28.239 --> 00:37:32.199 So it's really up to the private recycling contracts. 00:37:32.440 --> 00:37:35.679 to determine what's being accepted. Generally, 00:37:35.960 --> 00:37:38.780 in almost all municipalities and cities, your 00:37:38.780 --> 00:37:42.920 standard paper, cardboard, plastics, metal and 00:37:42.920 --> 00:37:45.960 glass are all part of the acceptable profile. 00:37:46.340 --> 00:37:49.760 It's not uncommon when a municipality may decline 00:37:49.760 --> 00:37:52.500 to accept the material anymore, or a city will 00:37:52.500 --> 00:37:55.880 stop, and that's really based on pricing -wise, 00:37:56.219 --> 00:37:59.860 how... a plastic may sell, for instance, the 00:37:59.860 --> 00:38:04.980 contamination level and technology. So certain 00:38:04.980 --> 00:38:07.179 plastics can be different colors and that can 00:38:07.179 --> 00:38:09.900 affect the technology in their recycling centers. 00:38:10.539 --> 00:38:14.199 So the reason why the material, what we can accept, 00:38:14.360 --> 00:38:16.739 most of it will not actually be allowed in a 00:38:16.739 --> 00:38:19.599 blue bin is because we are reaching out directly 00:38:19.599 --> 00:38:23.639 to the facilities that make the material. We 00:38:23.639 --> 00:38:26.639 are essentially finding outlets and solutions 00:38:26.639 --> 00:38:30.460 right away for the material. And then the bigger 00:38:30.460 --> 00:38:33.079 side of it is contamination. So something like 00:38:33.079 --> 00:38:35.840 styrofoam. It's easy to get contaminated. It's 00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:39.679 hard to recycle. There's some, in many ways, 00:38:39.940 --> 00:38:42.340 you have to densify it before it can be resold 00:38:42.340 --> 00:38:45.920 again. So there's no real profit for these private 00:38:45.920 --> 00:38:49.579 companies to sell it. Things like plastic, metal, 00:38:50.099 --> 00:38:54.480 and cardboard. contamination levels can be slightly 00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:59.119 higher when they're selling it at these large 00:38:59.119 --> 00:39:02.519 commodity -based pricing. Plastics truthfully 00:39:02.519 --> 00:39:06.760 really can't have high contamination, so the 00:39:06.760 --> 00:39:10.579 plastics are barely actually making it to any 00:39:10.579 --> 00:39:14.480 recycling end of life. So what we're saying is 00:39:15.119 --> 00:39:18.159 If you want to pay for a service that is willing 00:39:18.159 --> 00:39:22.239 to make sure anything you give us can be recycled 00:39:22.239 --> 00:39:25.159 as long as it's clean, we can go above and beyond 00:39:25.159 --> 00:39:34.599 what the cities take. Our biggest emphasis on 00:39:34.599 --> 00:39:38.159 acceptable material is we need the material to 00:39:38.159 --> 00:39:40.949 be clean, we need the material to be dry. So 00:39:40.949 --> 00:39:44.090 we do offer some tips and some advice on how 00:39:44.090 --> 00:39:46.590 to clean certain materials. For instance, like 00:39:46.590 --> 00:39:49.230 a snack bag. Some of the best ways to do that 00:39:49.230 --> 00:39:51.829 is just kind of tearing it open, getting a wet

00:39:51.829 --> 00:39:55.769 cloth, wet paper towel, and then just using a 00:39:55.769 --> 00:39:58.670 dry paper towel or simply letting it sit on a 00:39:58.670 --> 00:40:01.590 drying rack. So there's different tips involved, 00:40:01.769 --> 00:40:05.650 but cleanliness is the number one thing. We sort 00:40:05.650 --> 00:40:08.230 of have a holistic approach to our whole recycling, 00:40:08.449 --> 00:40:12.269 upcycling, and donation. So the bins arrive from 00:40:12.269 --> 00:40:15.090 our driver they'll come drop off the bins and 00:40:15.090 --> 00:40:19.409 then our staff is taking it over to the processing 00:40:19.409 --> 00:40:23.269 area where they are sorting by hand every individual 00:40:23.269 --> 00:40:28.250 item in there and once that bin is empty then 00:40:28.250 --> 00:40:30.610 we go ahead and clean them and those bins are 00:40:30.610 --> 00:40:34.369 then used for our next route. We are not commingling 00:40:34.369 --> 00:40:38.349 the material so we aren't dumping one customer's 00:40:38.349 --> 00:40:41.489 material in with another. And a big reason why 00:40:41.489 --> 00:40:45.369 we don't do that is for contamination. We have 00:40:45.369 --> 00:40:48.650 great customers, but nobody's perfect, including 00:40:48.650 --> 00:40:53.429 myself. So what we strive to do is if a new customer 00:40:53.429 --> 00:40:57.010 or a customer is just really maybe not up to 00:40:57.010 --> 00:41:00.289 the level of cleanliness their material would 00:41:00.289 --> 00:41:03.909 be otherwise, we are not dumping it in with another 00:41:03.909 --> 00:41:08.300 customers that should have clean material. There 00:41:08.300 --> 00:41:14.760 are many places that the material goes. So the 00:41:14.760 --> 00:41:16.780 main goal of what you have to do is you have 00:41:16.780 --> 00:41:19.480 to have clean material, you have to have enough 00:41:19.480 --> 00:41:21.920 of it, and you have to be able to provide it 00:41:21.920 --> 00:41:25.380 to these companies with some degree of frequency. 00:41:25.900 --> 00:41:30.000 So what we typically do is, for instance, like 00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:32.519 plastic bags. Plastic bags would be considered 00:41:32.519 --> 00:41:37.469 a hard to recycle material. A few years ago there 00:41:37.469 --> 00:41:40.809 was a city -wide ban on plastic bags, but they 00:41:40.809 --> 00:41:43.889 still exist. They come in all different forms. 00:41:44.889 --> 00:41:47.309 You would consider that a hard -to -recycle material. 00:41:47.849 --> 00:41:51.949 Standard city and municipality recycling doesn't 00:41:51.949 --> 00:41:54.730 have that as part of their acceptable material. 00:41:59.260 --> 00:42:03.079 accumulate enough plastic bags, we bail them. 00:42:03.260 --> 00:42:06.019 They go on bails, and then a truck comes and 00:42:06.019 --> 00:42:08.780 picks them up. They take them to a company of 00:42:08.780 --> 00:42:12.039 trucks who makes outdoor decking. There are other 00:42:12.039 --> 00:42:15.380 materials that have different things. Polyurethane, 00:42:15.380 --> 00:42:20.340 which is your standard couch cushion type of 00:42:20.340 --> 00:42:24.699 foam. There's a local place in Northeast Philly 00:42:24.699 --> 00:42:28.219 that we take that to. They repurpose the foam. 00:42:28.650 --> 00:42:33.289 rigid plastics. We sell them to resin or plastic 00:42:33.289 --> 00:42:35.590 companies that are basically turning that back 00:42:35.590 --> 00:42:42.289 into their material to sell. We do a lot of donation, 00:42:42.809 --> 00:42:45.989 so roughly two times a week we are taking things 00:42:45.989 --> 00:42:48.989 to donation shelters, but we also do homeless 00:42:48.989 --> 00:42:52.110 shelters, animal shelters, and then we also have 00:42:52.110 --> 00:42:54.130 schools involved that come and take materials. 00:42:54.650 --> 00:42:59.210 So it's a pretty in -depth response for where 00:42:59.210 --> 00:43:02.530 does everything go but everything has a home 00:43:02.530 --> 00:43:05.389 everything has some things that multiple places 00:43:05.389 --> 00:43:08.090 we can take things to and some are a little more 00:43:08.090 --> 00:43:16.929 specialized. We don't have a large team so there 00:43:16.929 --> 00:43:19.429 are a couple very difficult things for instance 00:43:19.429 --> 00:43:22.710 things that you have to deconstruct we really 00:43:22.710 --> 00:43:26.119 have a tough time. So for instance, we get things 00:43:26.119 --> 00:43:29.300 like broken suitcases and stuff where, you know, 00:43:29.400 --> 00:43:31.400 you really have to take apart the metal, the 00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:35.039 plastic, the fabric to truly recycle those. Things 00:43:35.039 --> 00:43:38.280 like mailers that tend to have a paper outside 00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:42.699 and a bubble on the inside. So one of the ways 00:43:42.699 --> 00:43:45.079 that you could do this is you would tear apart 00:43:45.079 --> 00:43:49.679 the lining. The bubble wrap essentially is a 00:43:49.679 --> 00:43:52.500 plastic... similar to like we take the treks 00:43:52.500 --> 00:43:54.739 and then you're left with a paper that's coated 00:43:54.739 --> 00:43:57.059 and we have some specialty paper companies that 00:43:57.059 --> 00:44:00.139 can recycle that. But the better way we handle 00:44:00.139 --> 00:44:04.280 something like that is we just have several boxes 00:44:04.280 --> 00:44:07.639 and stacks of them and we allow people to come 00:44:07.639 --> 00:44:11.179 reuse them. So they're a common thing you purchase 00:44:11.179 --> 00:44:15.019 at department stores for selling materials, for 00:44:15.019 --> 00:44:18.039 shipping materials. So we encourage people to 00:44:18.039 --> 00:44:21.019 come and take them from us for free. It's less 00:44:21.019 --> 00:44:25.079 labor intensive. It's a way to get a second chance 00:44:25.079 --> 00:44:29.340 for the material. And it's also just giving the 00:44:29.340 --> 00:44:34.599 community a way to find

free stuff. I think if 00:44:34.599 --> 00:44:38.300 we were to estimate how much each year it's, 00:44:38.300 --> 00:44:43.559 you know, it's really, it's hard to fully formalize, 00:44:43.559 --> 00:44:50.690 but I would say it's on the 20 to 40 ton. We 00:44:50.690 --> 00:44:54.369 are able to divert because just looking at how 00:44:54.369 --> 00:44:58.630 much our truck is able to take to some of these 00:44:58.630 --> 00:45:01.630 local locations and we get weighed, scaled on 00:45:01.630 --> 00:45:05.389 all that. Looking at most of the data since we've 00:45:05.389 --> 00:45:09.369 existed, it's probably around 100 ton that we've 00:45:09.369 --> 00:45:12.670 been able to divert from landfills. And it's 00:45:12.670 --> 00:45:21.599 hard to even conceptualize that. We get a lot 00:45:21.599 --> 00:45:24.679 of updates from customers about how small their 00:45:24.679 --> 00:45:27.579 trash becomes because there are things that we 00:45:27.579 --> 00:45:30.280 can't accept that frankly you know we just have 00:45:30.280 --> 00:45:32.500 to accept them that they're going to be waste 00:45:32.500 --> 00:45:35.519 and some of those materials would be like grease 00:45:35.519 --> 00:45:38.699 on a pizza box we just have to accept that that 00:45:38.699 --> 00:45:42.539 cannot be recycled broken glass is another example 00:45:42.539 --> 00:45:44.980 of something that will end up in a landfill anything 00:45:44.980 --> 00:45:48.735 that is contaminated with food that they aren't 00:45:48.730 --> 00:45:51.849 composting or they don't already compost with. 00:45:52.030 --> 00:45:54.650 That's going to be considered as waste. Tape, 00:45:54.670 --> 00:45:58.829 stickers, some things we don't accept are things 00:45:58.829 --> 00:46:01.670 that usually come into contact with bodily fluids. 00:46:02.210 --> 00:46:04.489 So use masks, for instance. We don't accept you. 00:46:04.690 --> 00:46:08.989 Use rubber gloves. Yes, rubber can be recycled, 00:46:09.070 --> 00:46:11.730 but we knew you were picking up something dirty. 00:46:12.989 --> 00:46:18.150 air filters for HVAC. Yes, they're made of wire, 00:46:18.250 --> 00:46:20.889 cardboard, and paper, but it's collecting all 00:46:20.889 --> 00:46:25.170 of this contaminants. And we, as staff sorting 00:46:25.170 --> 00:46:28.630 by hand, are not here to come in contact with 00:46:28.630 --> 00:46:34.030 that. So it really does get a lot smaller. And 00:46:34.030 --> 00:46:37.869 in many ways, you're seeing then... a butterfly 00:46:37.869 --> 00:46:41.469 effect on waste in the city. If you start our 00:46:41.469 --> 00:46:44.610 service and you never have, your trash might 00:46:44.610 --> 00:46:48.289 reduce to a quarter of what you used to. So it 00:46:48.289 --> 00:46:52.050 really starts to become very, very, it dwindles 00:46:52.050 --> 00:46:55.329 down in your volume. And that's one less bag, 00:46:55.610 --> 00:46:57.789 maybe two less bags that they're picking up. 00:46:58.610 --> 00:47:03.550 And even if it's 10 neighbors around your zip 00:47:03.550 --> 00:47:06.340 code that use us. that starts to add up each 00:47:06.340 --> 00:47:13.800 week. So we will see less waste when people are 00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:21.900 able to find solutions. Rabin Circular Philadelphia 00:47:21.900 --> 00:47:25.019 really probably met, obviously everything meets 00:47:25.019 --> 00:47:27.960 through Nick Esposito. He had found out about 00:47:27.960 --> 00:47:32.300 us early on prior to the existence of Circular 00:47:32.300 --> 00:47:38.070 Philly. We spoke a lot during COVID. There were 00:47:38.070 --> 00:47:42.409 different panels and virtual calls. They're a 00:47:42.409 --> 00:47:47.489 great organization for us to, A, just kind of 00:47:47.489 --> 00:47:51.989 show who we are to other businesses, to people 00:47:51.989 --> 00:47:55.170 out there in the community, but it just is sort 00:47:55.170 --> 00:47:57.530 of a no -brainer because of all the other businesses 00:47:57.530 --> 00:48:00.610 that we already interact with. that it's sort 00:48:00.610 --> 00:48:03.610 of just a committee or organization that already 00:48:03.610 --> 00:48:07.489 has itself in so many things that we do, that 00:48:07.489 --> 00:48:13.389 it's just a parallel to what we want to improve 00:48:13.389 --> 00:48:16.690 and how we want to get more out of relationships 00:48:16.690 --> 00:48:18.789 with other businesses. They just sort of help 00:48:18.789 --> 00:48:23.889 fulfill those needs really easily. In the River 00:48:23.889 --> 00:48:27.460 Wards area in particular, There are a few ways 00:48:27.460 --> 00:48:31.179 that we've collaborated. One of which is with 00:48:31.179 --> 00:48:34.860 Bottle Underground. I know that they've had a 00:48:34.860 --> 00:48:38.059 large improvement project with the watershed 00:48:38.059 --> 00:48:41.340 and the Delaware River out there. So a lot of 00:48:41.340 --> 00:48:44.940 our glass is being crushed, turned to sand, and 00:48:44.940 --> 00:48:50.800 used as far as the irrigation. There are businesses 00:48:50.800 --> 00:48:54.159 that we have looked to provide services for out 00:48:54.159 --> 00:49:00.400 there. Raise Reusables is the only company that 00:49:00.400 --> 00:49:05.340 we partner with in a unique way where we allow 00:49:05.340 --> 00:49:11.940 Raise Reusables customers to bring materials 00:49:11.940 --> 00:49:14.880 that would be on our list instead of signing 00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:18.800 up with our service. They can go into a Raise 00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:22.099 store in Northern Liberty's and they can drop 00:49:22.099 --> 00:49:25.059 off material. that they would otherwise be putting 00:49:25.059 --> 00:49:28.519 in our bin. And then once a month our driver 00:49:28.519 --> 00:49:33.599 goes to raise and picks up boxes of all the material. 00:49:34.059 --> 00:49:36.920 It's already sorted. You know, their team does 00:49:36.920 --> 00:49:39.820 a great job going through it. Materials

would 00:49:39.820 --> 00:49:43.800 include like produce netting, contact lens cases. 00:49:45.519 --> 00:49:47.980 different numbered plastics that are soft, so 00:49:47.980 --> 00:49:50.639 your fives, your fours, your fives, and your 00:49:50.639 --> 00:49:55.420 sevens, and your twos. A couple other items that 00:49:55.420 --> 00:49:58.739 they will do, but it's a great way to, you know, 00:49:58.780 --> 00:50:00.340 some people might not be able to either afford 00:50:00.340 --> 00:50:03.199 our service, some might not have the space in 00:50:03.199 --> 00:50:08.320 their home for the container, and it's been a 00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:11.440 great partnership because it gets people in her 00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:14.619 door knowing that there's extra... you know maybe 00:50:14.619 --> 00:50:16.579 there's an extra fun reason to go there that 00:50:16.579 --> 00:50:20.199 day dropping off something and and you know whether 00:50:20.199 --> 00:50:22.179 or not those customers would use our service 00:50:22.179 --> 00:50:24.719 or not they know about us through raise and that's 00:50:24.719 --> 00:50:27.739 really what we're trying to do right now and 00:50:27.739 --> 00:50:31.380 about two months ago we launched a program with 00:50:31.380 --> 00:50:35.659 Circle Compost and essentially what it is is 00:50:35.659 --> 00:50:42.500 their customers can use Our services are on Circle 00:50:42.500 --> 00:50:47.539 Compost's website. So our bin can be purchased 00:50:47.539 --> 00:50:50.659 on their website. They can use this as needed 00:50:50.659 --> 00:50:55.619 or they can use this as subscription. So everything 00:50:55.619 --> 00:51:01.539 is done through their platform and the bins are 00:51:01.539 --> 00:51:03.739 collected by their driver because they're already 00:51:03.739 --> 00:51:07.610 going there to pick up. There's their compost 00:51:07.610 --> 00:51:10.909 bucket. The benefit is a customer doesn't have 00:51:10.909 --> 00:51:14.449 to necessarily schedule multiple services for 00:51:14.449 --> 00:51:19.349 two sustainable businesses at once. Circle picks 00:51:19.349 --> 00:51:22.170 up on a week many magnitudes more than what we 00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:26.260 do. So in that case, we knew that they had the 00:51:26.260 --> 00:51:28.800 capacity to pick up, we knew they had a larger 00:51:28.800 --> 00:51:32.920 customer base, and we knew that there's a congruency 00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:38.719 in the customer's needs and interests. So the 00:51:38.719 --> 00:51:44.599 idea was we could do grassroots customer work 00:51:44.599 --> 00:51:48.380 to... to even find a fraction of what he has 00:51:48.380 --> 00:51:51.000 or we could just introduce our service directly 00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:54.300 to their customers. Some knew about us, some 00:51:54.300 --> 00:51:57.500 didn't, and we've even had some of our existing 00:51:57.500 --> 00:52:04.139 customers that were using Circle move over and 00:52:04.139 --> 00:52:07.900 just use them completely. So it wasn't just customers 00:52:07.900 --> 00:52:11.039 that weren't using our service that Dave was 00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:14.579 able to introduce Rabbit to. It was existing 00:52:14.579 --> 00:52:17.639 customers that then they are able to get this 00:52:17.639 --> 00:52:20.380 wholesale pickup of both their items. They moved 00:52:20.380 --> 00:52:25.500 completely over to Dave and we still are, both 00:52:25.500 --> 00:52:28.000 of us are making revenue on it and the customer 00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:38.659 is one less service to think about. Recycling, 00:52:38.760 --> 00:52:41.739 you know, there is this sort of hopeless feeling 00:52:41.739 --> 00:52:44.500 that, you know, you can do whatever you can to 00:52:44.500 --> 00:52:46.760 clean it and anyone can come by and put something 00:52:46.760 --> 00:52:50.820 in your container and contaminate it. You know, 00:52:51.019 --> 00:52:54.639 there is, a percentage of it does get recycled. 00:52:54.780 --> 00:52:58.480 There are efforts that are being put in place 00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:01.300 like businesses like ours that are trying to, 00:53:01.300 --> 00:53:05.719 you know, fill gaps where they can be. We encourage... 00:53:06.239 --> 00:53:09.780 people to put out clean recycling for the city. 00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:13.739 We aren't necessarily trying to shift people 00:53:13.739 --> 00:53:17.119 over to using us. We encourage people to find 00:53:17.119 --> 00:53:21.500 any solutions. And I think it's important because 00:53:21.500 --> 00:53:25.179 you do see waste reduction when people are reusing. 00:53:25.659 --> 00:53:28.159 And again, it's not just the recycling side. 00:53:28.519 --> 00:53:32.369 It's the upcycling. It's the... plastic planners 00:53:32.369 --> 00:53:35.250 that people wash and clean and give us, someone's 00:53:35.250 --> 00:53:38.570 looking for a plastic planner. It's that relationship 00:53:38.570 --> 00:53:42.929 of not purchasing another item that could be 00:53:42.929 --> 00:53:49.909 already found at a place like ours. Tax dollars 00:53:49.909 --> 00:53:53.670 go to recycling and trash, so we should get the 00:53:53.670 --> 00:53:56.250 best out of that. We're here for the harder stuff. 00:53:56.590 --> 00:53:59.460 We're here for the people that are fed up with 00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:02.179 the common, you know, way that it's been going. 00:54:05.340 --> 00:54:08.559 And we just want to tell people that, look, there 00:54:08.559 --> 00:54:11.619 are many solutions out there. Some of them are 00:54:11.619 --> 00:54:13.599 really unique, some of them are hard to find. 00:54:14.280 --> 00:54:19.199 We're here if people want to use us. We really 00:54:19.199 --> 00:54:23.510 tell customers, this is a... This is higher level 00:54:23.510 --> 00:54:26.250 recycling. This is a bit harder. We understand 00:54:26.250 --> 00:54:28.349 there's a lot of other things in your day -to 00:54:28.349 --> 00:54:31.610 -day. Start small if you're using us. You

don't 00:54:31.610 --> 00:54:35.469 need to clean every wrapper that you've ever 00:54:35.469 --> 00:54:39.710 come in contact with. We will only see what you 00:54:39.710 --> 00:54:44.170 give us, so just give us clean stuff. We don't 00:54:44.170 --> 00:54:46.489 know what you aren't giving us and start small, 00:54:46.489 --> 00:54:48.750 start with things on our list that you never 00:54:48.750 --> 00:54:51.469 knew could be recycled and then build up maybe 00:54:51.469 --> 00:54:54.670 to some more, you know, things that may require 00:54:54.670 --> 00:54:57.389 a little more cleaning. But that's kind of how 00:54:57.389 --> 00:55:00.309 it works and some tips I'd give on first timers. 00:55:01.489 --> 00:55:09.619 We'll never know what you don't give us. That 00:55:09.619 --> 00:55:12.599 was Matt Siegfried from Rabbit Recycling and 00:55:12.599 --> 00:55:15.699 they provide specialized recycling services to 00:55:15.699 --> 00:55:31.219 customers across the city. My name is Jeff Friedman 00:55:31.219 --> 00:55:35.739 and I live in East Kensington. I've been a customer 00:55:35.739 --> 00:55:41.360 of Rabbit Recycling for Over two years, I decided 00:55:41.360 --> 00:55:44.679 to use their services because I really appreciate 00:55:44.679 --> 00:55:49.480 the regularity, the flexibility, the customer 00:55:49.480 --> 00:55:52.900 service in general. And I also like that I can 00:55:52.900 --> 00:55:56.980 put a broad range of materials into the recycling 00:55:56.980 --> 00:56:00.960 bin. Rabbit takes all of the traditional materials, 00:56:00.980 --> 00:56:05.599 but they also go beyond what a traditional municipal 00:56:05.599 --> 00:56:09.460 recycling program. will take. So for instance, 00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:14.659 I can recycle textiles as well as appliances. 00:56:15.260 --> 00:56:21.980 I just had a microwave recycled last week. I've 00:56:21.980 --> 00:56:23.900 personally benefited from the services, just 00:56:23.900 --> 00:56:28.559 gives me peace of mind knowing that my recycling, 00:56:29.139 --> 00:56:31.719 a broad range of recycling materials will get 00:56:31.719 --> 00:56:34.949 picked up on a regular basis. It's always been 00:56:34.949 --> 00:56:37.030 important to me. I've been an environmentalist 00:56:37.030 --> 00:56:41.909 and a conservationist my whole life. Thank you 00:56:41.909 --> 00:56:50.510 very much. Nancy Goldenberg, I'm the president 00:56:50.510 --> 00:56:54.670 and CEO of Laurel Hill. Ryan Byrd, assistant 00:56:54.670 --> 00:56:58.090 superintendent for Laurel Hill. Laurel Hill is 00:56:58.090 --> 00:57:03.780 a 265 acre cemetery. on both sides of the Schuylkill 00:57:03.780 --> 00:57:11.679 River. So we have 73 acres on the east side of 00:57:11.679 --> 00:57:14.440 Philadelphia and on the west side in Ballackinwood 00:57:14.440 --> 00:57:20.820 we have 187 acres. So actually very shortly after 00:57:20.820 --> 00:57:23.440 I started with Laurel Hill and became a member 00:57:23.440 --> 00:57:26.679

of the sustainability squad. our chair at the 00:57:26.679 --> 00:57:30.360 time, Jo Cosgrove, she had put together a plan, 00:57:30.559 --> 00:57:34.460 a recycling plan, kind of to revitalize the recycling 00:57:34.460 --> 00:57:37.900 plan, make sure that it's going through, going 00:57:37.900 --> 00:57:41.039 to a company that's properly sorting, and that 00:57:41.039 --> 00:57:43.039 we're doing the best possible job that we can 00:57:43.039 --> 00:57:47.480 on site to sort and minimize contamination of 00:57:47.480 --> 00:57:53.099 recyclables. And as part of that plan, we were... 00:57:53.070 --> 00:57:55.309 going to work with several companies, including 00:57:55.309 --> 00:57:59.650 Divert. And Divert primarily supplied us with 00:57:59.650 --> 00:58:05.489 containers, lids, and labels to make the training 00:58:05.489 --> 00:58:09.510 and implementation of the recycling program to 00:58:09.510 --> 00:58:14.630 our staff as easy as possible. Sometimes you're 00:58:14.630 --> 00:58:17.489 rolling out something to a large company if it's 00:58:17.489 --> 00:58:20.880 totally foreign to the individuals. It can be 00:58:20.880 --> 00:58:23.260 a little daunting, so she was able to come up 00:58:23.260 --> 00:58:26.119 with a plan to make it really easy to accomplish. 00:58:26.719 --> 00:58:29.599 That was March 2023 that we rolled out that program, 00:58:29.679 --> 00:58:32.099 so we're pretty well established at this point. 00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:35.599 All of our buildings are equipped with the containers 00:58:35.599 --> 00:58:38.739 and the lids. Yeah, we had been recycling as 00:58:38.739 --> 00:58:43.840 an organization, but people were not educated 00:58:43.840 --> 00:58:46.900 as to, and they were just... throwing things 00:58:46.900 --> 00:58:50.400 in the recycling bin that shouldn't be recycled 00:58:50.400 --> 00:58:57.440 and vice versa and The sustainability squad that 00:58:57.440 --> 00:59:01.619 Ryan referred to You know said wait we need to 00:59:01.619 --> 00:59:03.539 stop and educate people and we're getting new 00:59:03.539 --> 00:59:06.159 employees all the time and I guess it's really 00:59:06.159 --> 00:59:08.920 the old employees that you have to train right 00:59:08.920 --> 00:59:16.590 and so we learned about divert and others, Rabbit 00:59:16.590 --> 00:59:19.670 Recycling, they're our main recycling partner, 00:59:20.329 --> 00:59:24.349 Bottle Underground, all of these we visited and 00:59:24.349 --> 00:59:28.050 Jo Cosgrove on our staff took the lead, she brought 00:59:28.050 --> 00:59:32.309 them in, the whole staff, it was required mandatory 00:59:32.309 --> 00:59:36.030 education, but it was really fun and we were 00:59:36.030 --> 00:59:40.269 retrained and Ryan helped make sure all the lids 00:59:40.269 --> 00:59:45.159 are in all the facilities from Divert. And quite 00:59:45.159 --> 00:59:48.679 honestly, we went back and looked at our waste 00:59:48.679 --> 00:59:51.420 capture over the past couple years. It's quite 00:59:51.420 --> 00:59:56.119 impressive since we partnered with these organizations. 00:59:56.900 --> 01:00:01.360 So we've upped the number of pounds of waste 01:00:01.360 --> 01:00:04.980 that we're capturing. And so we're quite pleased 01:00:04.980 --> 01:00:13.280 about that. Thanks for listening to episode one 01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:15.719 of the Circle Up podcast. You can learn more 01:00:15.719 --> 01:00:17.880 about Divert and Rabbit Recycling by visiting 01:00:17.880 --> 01:00:21.099 their websites. Divert, that's D -Y -V -E -R 01:00:21.099 --> 01:00:25.159 -T dot com and Rabbit Recycling dot com. We have 01:00:25.159 --> 01:00:27.280 those sites and a whole lot more resources in 01:00:27.280 --> 01:00:30.659 the show notes. The Circle Up podcast is presented 01:00:30.659 --> 01:00:33.699 by Circular Philadelphia. It was produced by 01:00:33.699 --> 01:00:36.760 Meredith Nutting at Cool Goon Productions. This 01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:39.280 podcast was supported by a grant from Penn Treaty 01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:42.079 Special Services District. If you want to learn 01:00:42.079 --> 01:00:45.000 more about the circular economy, go to circularphiladelphia 01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:45.820 .org.