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Ep 5: Rose Hartley on the Economics and Emissions of Waste
11 Plays5 months ago
In this episode of Sustainability Square 1, Rose Hartley, Sustainability and Zero Waste Specialist, joins GLYNT.AI’s Martha Amram to explore the economics and emissions of waste. Rose shares insights from her career in sustainability, touching on innovative waste reduction practices, the challenges of processing waste data from invoices to emissions, and the critical role of consumer engagement in reducing landfill impact. Discover why compost access and accurate data preparation are vital for meaningful progress in waste management and sustainability.
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Transcript
Introduction to Rose and Her Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
what what
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey Rose, thank you for joining us today on Sustainability Square One. You are one of the people I think of when I think about waste expertise. So one of the my very first questions is how in the world did you get so interested in waste? Oh, thank you. I think it came pretty naturally because at the time I was working at a company called Imperfect Foods, now called Misfits Market. And the mission of the company is really around reducing food waste in the food system. So waste was this natural through line when we started creating sustainability initiatives for the company's operation itself. So in that
Misfits Market's Waste Management Strategies
00:00:42
Speaker
case, in our case, it was really about what is coming into our facilities and how do we make sure that as many of the materials that are coming in our doors
00:00:50
Speaker
are avoiding the landfill, are going to reuse donation, compost, et cetera. So that's that's part of the reason it came into my life around six years ago. And you mentioned one of the things that took me a while to get my head around, which is where does waste go? And so when you look at you know what you were reporting for imperfect now misfits foods and what you see more generally in the US landscape, where does waste go and what gets you excited about something that's new that's happening in that space?
00:01:19
Speaker
Well, I think it was the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that said you know waste is a design flaw. So a lot of times when we say waste, which could be anything from you know in the case of imperfect or misfits or really anyone's home, it could be food that's you know no longer good to eat or sell. It could be pallets that can be reused, it can be a lot of cardboard, all of those things, you know, could be waste. But if we design our systems differently, it can actually be reused, repurposed, or at least recycled, you know, instead of going to the landfill. So waste in general, it can sometimes be recycled or landfilled in the US and other times it can be shipped overseas to be recycled. So it really just
Financial and Sustainability Aspects of Waste
00:01:58
Speaker
depends on
00:01:59
Speaker
the material itself and what the possible outcomes are. And what is the importance of waste in the business models? like Is it like it's nice to have because you're reporting something or does it actually change the P and&L in any way? Yeah, it does. I mean waste is very expensive. I don't have to tell you. and We've all seen our waste bills at home, but also when you're talking about a you know business level or an industry level, it's it's very expensive to throw things in the trash, which is great.
00:02:27
Speaker
because it means that waste is one of those things where the sustainability incentive is aligned with the financial incentives. So we want to keep waste out of the landfill, um repurpose this waste, or recycle it, and that can help us save on operating costs too. So one of the things I've noticed when preparing waste data, we do this now for quite a few customers, is they give us their waste invoices and we're like, oh, source of truth, this is awesome. But it actually takes a huge number of conversion factors to go from like yeah yards to weight, because that depends on the waste type, and then weight to emissions. So when you think, have you ever seen a study where they actually measured the weight of real containers as they were picked up,
00:03:10
Speaker
And then actually scientifically went through that entire flow to this is the emissions and said, okay, the estimates that we all use are wildly wrong or wildly correct. I mean, I know yards is a really weird ah unit of measure that I think you see in the world of waste.
00:03:29
Speaker
yards are how you measure your waste bin. So like a one yard, maybe it's the smallest dumpster you can get out there. 30 yard is going to be really, really large. on So you don't see that in too many other places, square yards, but, or cubic yards, I guess. But yeah, you can definitely, I mean, there are emissions factors for each type of waste. And then you can also do things like waste characterization studies where you're doing like a waste audit to figure out, okay, what all on average is actually going into our trash, is actually going into our recycling, is actually going into organics or compost. In Perfect and Misfits, we worked with a company called Watershed to identify the emissions factors and then the total emissions of our waste. We had pretty detailed data that we had, you know, gotten together in order to measure our carbon footprint. So there are definitely emissions from all types of waste, but a lot ah fewer emissions from compost, organics and recycling. than there
Challenges in Waste Data and Emissions Calculation
00:04:25
Speaker
are from landfill. I'm really glad you mentioned watershed because as we think about the world, you know, glints in the world of sustainability, data preparation, and our customers send it to watershed or fig bites or Microsoft or, you know, and it, but there's this moment called submit your data or type in your data. So if you had to give advice to a sustainability manager who's confronting that submit or upload moment and you want to talk about waste, what are the two things they should do to get their act together so they have that data ready and it's the right data?
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this is part of the reason that we've partnered with Glenn because there's this interesting middle mile, right? Where you may have all of your raw data. And a lot of times, like you said, that's coming from invoices or that is coming from something that is related to payments, right? and It's saying, okay, you sent us 40 tons of trash in March. And so here's how much you're going to pay for that. But also what's really important in that is the amount of waste itself, right?
00:05:25
Speaker
Sometimes you have to kind of do some backend math to figure out ah approximately how much waste was sent. And then oftentimes that data is really uneditable, right? It's living on a PDF or maybe even a paper document somewhere. And then you want to get it onto an Excel sheet or Google sheet so that you can start to do your calculations for emissions. And that could be a little bit of a painful or time-consuming conversion, taking something that is hard to edit and making it more useful.
00:05:53
Speaker
So, you know, Glint is one of those great companies that can, that can do this, that can help make that conversion possible. And I think hopefully in the future, we're looking at, you know, a more integrated system where maybe that data is already living on online, or it's incorporated in your, your payment processing, you know, a software or whatnot. So,
Future Vision for Composting and Consumer Role
00:06:14
Speaker
but right now it's a lot of PDFs and a lot of paper documents that you're trying to scrape that data from.
00:06:18
Speaker
Thanks. And then my last question, let's wave our magic wand and what do you want in 2025 in the world of waste? What would you like to see happen? What what would make the biggest strategic impact? I would love to see it everyone have access to composting or a better end of life for any foods that they don't eat. You know, we're all getting ready for Thanksgiving and it is Thanksgiving day after Thanksgiving are two of the biggest days of food waste in the US. And, you know, some food waste is inevitable, right? You're trimming off ends and and bits and things that you you know you can't cook with, right? But if you don't have an option to do better than landfill at your home, then it's really hard to avoid that impact. The emissions from food waste are something like
00:07:06
Speaker
five times, you know, greater globally than the emissions of the entire aviation sector. And we're talking military, domestic, you know, private, all of that. So it really, really adds up. And I would just love for everyone to have access to something better than landfill for their food waste and for anything that can be composted. So that that would be my dream if I could make wave a my one is that everybody in the US has access to compost. You've hit on one ah and one of the trends, I think, for 2025 as well, is like we will say, you can't manage what you don't measure, and that's starting to move through at the corporate level. But it the end of life is often at the consumer level. And so we'll see increased visibility for consumers, so like emissions into product measurement, and increased responsibility for consumers around end of life. So 2025 starts moving to the consumer.
00:07:55
Speaker
I think that the trend starts there. Thanks for joining Sustainability Square One and talk with you again. thanks martha