Hi, I'm here with Graham Russell. Graham is associated with the Managing With Sustainability Program at the University of Colorado Denver. He has a long history in doing environmental management and sustainable business. One of the leaders, in fact, in the Denver, Colorado area. And In particular, he has done a lot of work with Colorado Association for Recycling, and that's what we're going to focus on. But first I want Graham to talk a little bit about his background, because it's really quite interesting. Okay, well my background was really in the corporate arena. And I worked in the environmental services industry specifically, and in environmental chemical testing laboratories. And that goes back quite a number of years, to the point where environmental regulations had just come out. And what you had was institutionalized conflict, between the industries that were being regulated and the regulators. And of course, everything had to be tested, and it was a difficult arena. But there wasn't much appreciation of the value of my companies, of being environmentally responsible. Until it dawned on them, finally, that if they did things right in the first place, then it would save them an awful lot of money, in terms of legal costs and bad publicity and so on. And so gradually, a sense emerged among the larger companies that it was worth their while to invest in being environmentally responsible. Consciously, as opposed to just doing the least that they could to comply with the regulations. And that was really, in many ways, the first sort of glimmers of what has now become sustainability. And now it's expanded out into the human environment as well the natural environment, and that's what's now become sustainability. And so, after I finish my corporate career in that field, I became interested in sustainability. And I've done some consulting, a little bit of teaching here at CU Denver, and have got to know a lot of people. I contributed to a small book on small-company sustainability. And it's just become a very fascinating subject to me, to see how it's becoming mainstream. >> Well, you've sure moved our program forward, and we appreciate all the work you've done for us. I want to come back to that notion of doing it right the first time, in just a minute. But first of all, I want to get right into recycling. The big movement, at least that I see, is single-stream recycling, and frankly, I can't figure it out. How can single-stream recycling be more effective than sorted recycling? Can you give us a little background and maybe talk about participation versus actual recycling recovery, those sort of issues? because I know this is something that you deal with a lot. >> Well for the longest time, single-stream recycling was the holy grail. And the reason for that is, because people are not very well-versed in what is recyclable and what's not recyclable. And so the idea was, that if you could create a system where people could put everything that is recyclable is a single container. And you had mechanical, and in some cases, human sorting mechanisms at a central location. That would be convenient, people would do it. And the sorting operation at the materials recycling facility would stream it out into the different material streams. That was our holy grail. And so, consequently, you had municipalities and private companies all over the country building these MRFs. Single-stream, and single-stream collection systems have been set up all over the country. And what has happened over the last five years, perhaps five, seven years. Is that it's dawned on people, that single stream recycling isn't anywhere near as effective as everybody thought it was going to be. In creating nicely uncontaminated streams of recyclable material. >> So can you contrast the idea of participation, I put something in the green dumpster, as opposed to what we really want? What we really want is to reuse those materials, and recover them. And those are two very different things, from my perspective. >> Well yeah, and of course, if you go back 30 years, before single stream. People were encouraged to take their newspapers down to the local, whatever it was, supermarket parking lot, and put them in a pile. And they'd take their bottles, and they'd put them in a pile, and then their aluminum cans, and they'd put them in a pile over here. And then somebody would come along and collect those bottles and cans, and take them off to a paper recycler, or a glass recycler. That's not what happens anymore. And as the materials have been co-mingled in single-stream, it's become apparent that they are not sorted as effectively as they might be. And despite all the technology, the eddy currents, and the optical sorting equipment. And also having people on the lines tossing out, and paper bags, or plastic bags, and so forth, It just doesn't work as well as it should. And to give you one specific example of glass, which is a particularly major problem. Glass is actually pretty recyclable. And the brewing companies and other beverage companies, they cannot get enough recycled glass. And part of the reason for that, is that when glass goes into a single stream, it breaks. And in doing that, first of all, it contaminates the heck out of all of the other materials, cardboard and paper. And the Chinese paper recyclers don't want a lot corrugated cardboard that's full of glass chips, it doesn't do their equipment any good. And so a lot of that glass that could be used again by the beverage companies ends up, essentially, as landfill cover, it goes into the landfill. And the ratio, I don't, I can't quote the figure off the top of my head, but certainly here in Colorado. And the ratio of glass that goes into single-stream, compared with glass that actually does get recycled, it's many times over. Very, very little of it actually ends up being recycled. Now most of the public doesn't actually know that. And they go on putting their glass in single-stream, thinking that they're doing a wonderful thing. And in reality, they're being misled somewhat, unfortunately. >> That is kind of the dirty secret. That you put it in a single-stream and there's a portion, and I've read 40%, 35% that ends up in the landfill because of contamination, usually. And even in Sweden, 80, 90% recycling participation, 40 or 50% doesn't go to landfill, it gets burned. And so, it's not recovery, and when we think about life cycle, we really want this stuff to be reused, as its pure material. Now I think this glass example is really interesting. And you were just telling me a great story about a person in your hometown, Estes Park, your current hometown. Who's doing separated glass recycling, or trying to start a company to do that. Can you speak to that a little bit, about how that's working? >> Yeah, actually, there are a couple companies in Colorado. That have set up systems to collect glass, before it gets into the single-stream process. One of them, the one I'm referring to, is actually a company called Clear Intentions. Which is founded by an extremely enterprising young lady called Brittany Evans. Who graduated from the University of Utah a number of years ago, and got this business started, when she was actually a student, at college. And she has established a model, the stage is very small still, here in Colorado. Where she will set up collection bins for heavy users of bottles, so restaurants, hotels, bars and so forth, and the glass will go into these bins. And periodically, once a week, they'll be picked up by Clear Intentions, and brought back to a facility here in Denver. Where they will be crushed into colored, possibly sorted by color, depending on what the customers need. And then they sell this stuff to the brewing companies, to Molson, Coors, and so forth. And they have established an operation up in Estes Park, and it's gaining traction. And they've established several other operations in other localities. And so again, it's going back to what, that's what we used to do 30 years ago. It's actually collecting the material, the valuable material, before it actually gets into the the single-stream. >> So you maintain its economic value. >> Yes. >> So, I want to come back to a comment you made earlier, and I thought it was a really interesting one, doing it right first. And it seems, we've talked about green design in this class. And I'd like you to talk a little bit about design, material design, that sort of stuff, relative to recycling. And I know they're at opposite ends of a life cycle, but they're really are connected. >> Yeah I think that in some ways, recycling is making the best of a bad job. And arguably, it doesn't work all that well, for the reasons that we've talked about. And I think, increasingly, the sustainable materials management gurus, the experts are saying. What we really need to do, is to design the recovery capability into the materials, and into the production process upfront. Now in Europe, the laws and regulations and incentives are much more advanced than they are here, in the United States. So for example, the German car makers, BMW, are increasingly designing their cars out of materials. And in such a way, that they can be disassembled at the end of their useful life. And the materials streamed out into their separate components, whether it's plastics or aluminum or steel, or whatever the material is. And actually recovered, by the same companies that actually manufacture the products in the first place. And there are increasingly stringent take-back laws. And of course, once a company finds that it's going to take it stuff back? Well naturally, it's going to do everything it possibly can, to make sure that when it takes it back, it can actually reuse it. And some cases, maybe could use, that material is cheaper than actually going out and buying virgin steel, or virgin aluminum. We're quite a long way from that, in the United States. And if you look at an Apple iPhone, I mean essentially, it is unrecyclable, unrecoverable, almost totally. And there's a lot of stuff in an iPhone, or any other smartphone, not to pick on Apple. So design for environment, and designing, A, designing materials that are more recoverable than many of, for example, our plastics are. Which are almost totally unrecoverable, and really can't be reused anyway. Designing materials that are intrinsically recoverable, and reusable, and then putting them together in products. That when they come to the end of their useful life, are easily disassembled. And the various materials could then be streamed off into relatively uncontaminated reusable streams of material. That's designing for environment, and I think more and more people are looking that sort of thinking, as a better way to reduce material waste. Than struggling to recycle the mish-mash material that comes into the single-stream at the end of the day. But we got a long way to go before that becomes a norm. >> Well certainly, Europe does seem ahead, in a couple of ways. But Colorado, and I'm being chauvinistic, because this is where I'm housed, has done some pretty neat things, especially with aluminum. Coors Brewing Company, they were one of the first aluminum container companies, Ball Corporation in Colorado. Aluminum is a magical material, and yet we still don't, probably, take full advantage of its recyclability. And to make virgin aluminum from bauxite to the end, I mean, it's huge, could you talk about that a little bit? Because I think it's a magical material, that I'd like to see recycled 100%. >> Well it is, and I've heard the Ball Corporation people talk about this, and I can't recall the exact numbers. But I think the cost of reprocessing aluminum, once-used aluminum, is something like a single-digit percentage of the cost of producing a virgin aluminum from smelting bauxite. >> So 10 or 20 times? >> So yeah, I mean, it's huge, and so, it certainly true. I mean, aluminum is a wonderful material, because it's almost endlessly recyclable. It doesn't lose its material properties, in the way a lot of plastics do. A lot of plastics, you can only recycle them 20% into new material. The rest is going to be virgin, because it loses its properties in the recovery process. Aluminum is not like that, it loses, almost doesn't degrade at all in the recovery process. And so we're not taking advantage of that, even as well as we should be, even a place like Colorado. And the brewing companies, or the beverage companies that use aluminum cans. In particular would be dying to get their hands on more recycled cans, and other aluminum cans, primarily. And again, I think the game plan probably has to be, how do we keep them out of the single stream? And recover them from directly from whoever the users are? An awful lot of aluminum cans, I mean, they just get, they just end up in the trash anyway. So that's a wonderful example of a material we need to do a much better job on. Because it is so easily recycled, or recovered, I should say. >> So if you were a person starting on a company, didn't have much political capital. Wanted to do something that would have an impact, in terms of sustainability, and thought about recycling. How would you set up a program? I mean, would you just do a single, bring in a green thing and do single-stream? Would you sort, would you focus on maybe, procurement of more aluminum versus plastic? What, how would you do that? And I know I'm surprising you with this question. >> Yeah, you are, but it's interesting you bring that up, because we are, living up at Estes Park right now. We're actually looking to see whether we can find a company, that does with corrugated cardboard what Clear Intentions is doing with glass. Because corrugated cardboard, there is an enormous explosion in the amount of corrugated cardboard. Because every time anybody orders anything online, you order an ashtray that's about this big. And it comes in about a cubic meters' worth of packaging and stuff. Cardboard is phenomenal, it's easy to recycle, as long as it's not contaminated with pizza oil and goodness knows what. And again, a lot of goes into single-stream, and it's recyclable. But pulling that out, in viable, and setting up a viable business model to collect that corrugated cardboard uncontaminated. And sending it off to the corrugated cardboard reprocessors, of which there are quite a number in the United States. That's an interesting proposition, if you can do it on a sufficient scale to make it worthwhile. And there is some examples of that, in some of the larger markets. There isn't one that I'm aware of in Denver, that's specifically focused on corrugated cardboard. And it may just be there's an opportunity there. But the economics of it are not as good as they would have been, ten years ago, because the commodity value of all of these things has gone way down. Largely as a result of the fact that China just isn't using as much as this stuff as it used to, so its tough. But there might be an opportunity in that area. >> So it seems to me, that if a person were to separate things. And then find the vendors that are targeting glass, targeting aluminum, targeting cardboard or corrugated board. That might be a really viable and effective recycling program, that a little company could start. It would take some footwork, and it would take having people follow the rules. But it would actually get stuff where it would be reused. >> It might be, it's difficult, because the markets are not necessarily very close to where you are collecting it. Now, if you're in LA or New York, the density of the generation of this material is such that you can scale something like that. And there's probably a cardboard reprocessor and a glass reprocessor in those markets. Here in Colorado, particularly in the rural areas, what kills you is the transportation costs. And so you can collect it, like Clear Intentions but then you've gottta haul it all the way down the valley. And then you gotta process it, then you gotta have a local market. Well, in Colorado, there is a local market, because Coors will buy the glass, but that's not always the case. Where's the local market in Colorado for reprocessed, for corrugated cardboard? I don't know, so the transportation economics are the things that upset the financial model. >> Solar-powered electric trucks. >> Could be. >> Okay. >> Yes, to the extent that we get more fuel-efficient, or alternatively powered vehicles, that would play into that model quite nicely. >> Yeah, the ironic- >> Self-driven trucks, so you don't have pay a driver, yeah. But again, we're a couple weeks away from that. >> Yeah, it's ironic how all this stuff is tied together. But nobody ever said sustainability was going to be easy. >> No. >> And that's what makes it, maybe, so much fun. >> Yeah, it is. >> Graham, thanks so much for your time and your expertise, and your contribution to our program here at University at Colorado Denver. >> Very welcome, thank you.
