The Circular Future - A Quantum Lifecycle Partners podcast

49. Three circularity tips for next three months

• Quantum Lifecycle Partners • Season 1 • Episode 49

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Summary

In this conversation, Stephanie McLarty and Heidi Frasure discuss actionable circularity tips in celebration of Earth Week. They emphasize the importance of reframing messaging, redefining value in sustainability, and activating strategies to engage teams in sustainability efforts. The discussion highlights the need for integration of sustainability goals into corporate strategies and the importance of community impact. The conversation concludes with advice for sustainability professionals to take care of themselves amidst the challenges of the industry.


Takeaways

  • Reframe your messaging to be more inclusive and engaging.
  • Focus on how your sustainability efforts make people feel.
  • Redefine value by integrating financial and social wins.
  • Engage your entire workforce in sustainability efforts.
  • Integrate sustainability goals into corporate strategies.
  • Use storytelling to communicate the impact of sustainability initiatives.
  • Recognize the importance of community impact in sustainability efforts.
  • Sustainability is a team sport; everyone has a role to play.




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Want to be a guest on The Circular Future podcast? Email Sanjay Trivedi at strivedi@quantumlifecycle.com


Speaker 1:

Analysis. Paralysis is real, especially at a time when what we really need is action. So what are simple things your department or organization can do to advance circularity in the next three months? Welcome to the circular future. Your access to thought leaders and innovations to help you be a business sustainability champion, even if it's not your core job. I'm your host. Stephanie McLarty, head of Sustainability at Quantum Lifecycle Partners, your trusted partner in electronics circularity.

Speaker 1:

I'm a firm believer that change of any kind starts with education. So, to celebrate Earth Week, we decided to take our conversation to a whole new level of awareness. We decided to try something new. Go live on LinkedIn. Yes, I invited Heidi Fraser to join me live and share three tips to advance circularity in the next three months. Heidi is the Head of Sustainability at Green Standards, the global leader in sustainable office decommissioning. You may also recognize Heidi from episode 33 on how to measure circularity beyond just carbon.

Speaker 1:

The following conversation was recorded live on LinkedIn and I believe we are live on LinkedIn. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our inaugural live with a guest. This is the first time we're doing this. We're talking today, in celebration of Earth Week, about circularity tips. So three circularity tips in the next three months and I thought to myself who would be great to come on with me, who would be someone who could just roll with it in a very like-minded organization? And I have to admit, my mind went to Heidi at Green Standards, because you are very aligned. So thank you so much, heidi, for being here and testing this out.

Speaker 1:

So we're basically using a third party platform called Riverside to do this, because you can't directly stream through LinkedIn at least not anymore to my understanding, and I'm not sure entirely that we can see the comments yet. But if we can't while we're live, we will circle back and respond afterwards If you can. If you are joining us live and you can comment, give us a hashtag live in the comments. If you are joining the replay, give us a hashtag replay. And here's a question to answer If you're celebrating Earth Week, or perhaps Earth Day two days ago, what did you do? Or what are you doing? At Quantum? We're doing an Earth Week challenge where every site chooses a local community organization to support. I would love to hear what are you doing. Drop it in the comments and, Heidi, I'd love to know what you're doing too. But first of all, give us a quick intro on who you are and then tell us what you're doing, Sure?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so super excited to be here with you today. Stephanie, thanks for thinking of me on Earth Week. We were kind of chatting before, but this is kind of like our Super Bowl for the sustainability world, right, like this is a big deal for us While we live and breathe the sustainability every day. This week and this month is kind of our Super Bowl. So it's exciting what we're doing at Green Standards, because we do live and breathe sustainability and every project we do is actually a sustainable project. We are doing a global trash pickup challenge, and so, whether it's plogging where you're jogging and picking up trash, I was just in Kansas City with an amazing panel and a bunch of designers for Kansas City Design Week, and I picked up quite a bit of trash on my way to and from the event, and so that'll be kind of a fun thing. Everyone's sharing their pictures of trash cleanup with their kids and the dogs, and so it'll be fun to see all of those photos come through.

Speaker 1:

I love that. And what a perfect time of year to do it, because it's spring and when the snow melts, at least around here there's a lot of time to like yeah for sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So at quantum and, by the way, uh, stephanie mcclarty, head of sustainability, at quantum life cycle partners, we are your trusted partner in electronics circularity. Basically, we touch anything with a battery or a plug. We reuse it, recycle it, wipe the data on it, parts, harvest all of that electronic circularity stuff. And so for Earth Week in Hamilton, which I'm part of that team we did, there's a local organization that takes old trophies and basically upcycles them, deplacks them so they can be replacked, and gives them to kids. Organizations that will then give them to kids, and it's for organizations that don't have a budget for any awards or trophies, yeah, so it's really cool.

Speaker 1:

So, heidi, tell us a little bit about what you do at Green Standards.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, I kind of forgot to introduce myself and Green Standards in that regard. So Green Standards is a circular business model by nature, right? So we come in during workplace changes and moves and help keep assets interior assets in use for longer through reuse. First reuse we look for all sorts of reuse opportunities, either through employee donations, employee resale or reusing in their existing portfolio. Then we go down a waste hierarchy approach of going to donation partners all the community partners within a 30-mile radius that might find value in those assets and then we look for resale potential, trying to keep those assets in use for longer through resale, bringing value back into the project. And then we look for specialized recyclers that can take those assets and materials and at least recover the componentry to reuse the componentry in new products.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and I know that that quantum works with green standards in terms of that electronics piece. I also like how you describe your business as like basically taking an office and turning it over and shaking it out. Anything that falls out is what you would handle.

Speaker 2:

Yeah it's more than just furniture. It's decor, it's plants, it's you name it. We're doing some gym equipment right now for a client A lot of forklifts, ironically so we've probably come in contact with anything you could imagine that would be in an office.

Speaker 1:

That is amazing, and I see we've got Justin live hashtag live. Thank you, justin. And as we go through this, we welcome any comments, any questions in the comments, so please do add them. So let's get into our topic today, which is three circularity tips in the next three months, and we chose this because organizations are struggling about what they can do around circularity, but it also needs to be actionable, and so I'm going to ask Heidi for what are her three tips for the next three months for circularity, and especially applied to a business in general or a department of a business? So let's get started. So, heidi, what would be your first tip for circularity?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I think the first tip and this applies to anyone in any sustainability industry is to reframe, reframe your messaging, reframe your language.

Speaker 2:

Whether we like it or not, our messaging has become political, and I also think it's a good opportunity for everyone in the industry to re-engage different audiences, because I think we've become a little bit too jargony where you're using a ton of acronyms I know I use a ton of acronyms in my life, coming from a really highly technical background and so dropping those acronyms, dropping some of that language that is not inclusive, and really bringing people in with our messaging and our language.

Speaker 2:

I love the Maya Angelou quote about you know, people don't remember what you said or did, but they're going to remember how you made them feel, and I think really having compelling storytelling and messaging around what you're doing in the circular economy space can really bring people in and help break down some of those barriers that we all have from a sustainability perspective. And so that would be the first piece of advice Again, like, how do you want clients to feel? I love the Patagonia example. There, too, people buy Patagonia because of how it makes them feel, not necessarily because it's the most beautiful outdoors wear right. So I think it's important to really have that compelling storytelling and messaging, reframing your language and bringing people to the table.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that Reframe your language. It almost makes me laugh a little bit, because in our space, the acronym that we use all the time is ITAD, which stands for IT Asset Disposition, and everyone knows what it is sort of internally or within the industry. Nobody knows what it means externally. And even when you say IT asset disposition, for some people they may intuitively get it, but for others they may not, and so I often find myself using the word reuse and remarketing because it's the most simplistic, but it is a challenge. Often, too, we call ourselves electronics recyclers to make it the most simple thing that people can wrap their heads around, but we do so much more than just recycling and, to your point about earlier about the waste hierarchy, we do so much around reuse and parts reuse and the reduction through repair and all of that. So, yeah, it is a challenge and an opportunity to really reframe.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think for me actually shout out to Ben and Mark on my team. They've really helped me a lot. I mean, I come from a very technical background and I think a lot of people in the sustainability world do right, and so we kind of get in our little silos and we think everyone knows what we're talking about. But they don't, and I think we've isolated ourselves a little bit and I think that's also caused a lot of people to look at circular economy as something that's really complex and confusing. But it's really not. I mean, some of what we look at from a circular economy perspective is very straightforward. It's old fashioned in some sense, like think about the old milkman days of the milkman bottle delivery. That's a circular economy business model, right? So really reframing it so that it's not so complex and scary for folks and that they can really have an entry point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally Okay. So first tip reframe. Keep it simple. Focus on how you make people feel, okay, love that. What would be your second tip?

Speaker 2:

My second one is redefine, and so these are all kind of related. You'll notice the theme here.

Speaker 1:

Lots of re-words.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, redefine our language, redefine on value and resiliency those two topics are not controversial for anyone and really, quite frankly, from a circular economy perspective, there should always be a value involved in what you're trying to do. Or I know in my past life, anytime I was trying to initiate a project that was related to the circular economy, I looked for areas where there was a financial win, and there was also an environmental or social win too, and so I think, focusing in this, next year, next three months on, where can you find those financial wins? We just recently had a project with a client where we were able to run the return on investment for them, and it was a $700,000 year over year savings for them. Just recently had a project with a client where we were able to run the return on investment for them, and it was a $700,000 year over year savings for them. And so that's a no brainer. And then it's also a really positive storytelling opportunity for them to keep those assets out of landfill, be able to donate some brand new assets that were sitting in storage collecting dust to their local communities and nonprofits, and so there's some really amazing storytelling opportunities from a social side. And so don't forget about that social piece.

Speaker 2:

When you're defining value, that matters. The community impact matters. At Green Standards, we've donated over $50 million of in-kind donation in partnership with our clients, and that's over 5,500 community partners from shelters, schools, people who are reintegrating, folks from incarceration. Like this has a real impact because we're now giving them assets in their office like task chairs and stuff like that that they can now sit in and have dignity in the work that they're doing, and so there's some really important community work from a return on investment perspective to focus on.

Speaker 2:

And then the resiliency side of things. I think that's extremely important right now, obviously with the geopolitical environment. So finding resilient supply chains being able to harvest parts and materials, like quantum is doing, to be able to shore up some of our supply chain with critical minerals I think is really important and impactful, and so that's part of a circular economy, right. And so building out that resiliency can really help shore up and share that value and that return on investment. Don't just focus on short-term returns. Focus on those long-term ones too, and be able to really have that compelling storytelling and messaging to bring back to your internal stakeholders or your external stakeholders.

Speaker 1:

So redefine essentially is what you're saying here. Yeah, on the critical minerals front, we actually just did an analysis to look at what is our involvement in critical minerals, because we recycle about 100,000 minerals sorry, 100 million pounds of electronics per year. That's not even considering the reuse side, and there are critical minerals in those electronics.

Speaker 1:

We know through our, you know, smartphones and our laptops, like we need critical minerals for them existing in everyday products yeah, so we actually um did an analysis and every jurisdiction defines critical minerals differently in terms of what is considered critically or critical. But in Canada there are 34 critical minerals and we process in some way 11 of those 34, helping to put them back into the supply chain. But ultimately, I think what you're saying is sustainability, and doing these kinds of circularity efforts is really around creating value, and it's now well proven that sustainability helps to for, like the leading organizations, really increase sales but also decrease costs. Like there's a huge financial win here. We see it all the time at Quantum and what we're doing with remarketing and recycling. But, yeah, this is a win-win opportunity for organizations. So don't just look at it as something external and fluffy, but something truly core to the value that your organization can create and receive as well. That's right.

Speaker 2:

Salesforce just did a study and I'll put this link in the chat for other people to reference, but it's an interesting study and they found 56% of the corporate executives that they interviewed said that sustainability was helping their organizations with supply chain resiliency. So that's huge right. They're seeing the benefit within organizations with supply chain resiliency. So that's huge right. They're seeing the benefit within their own supply chain. So I think that it's important to look at it both from an external perspective, on a return on investment, and an internal perspective.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally. I see a comment here from Justin. It's mind-blowing how many reusable materials can be found in our everyday devices. That's right. And there is such a thing called electronic hibernation, where we put our old electronic devices in a drawer or in a closet and we forget about them. But we need to get them out and get them back into us yeah back in the recovery process.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't know the stat off the top of my head, unfortunately but I know in order to reach the Paris Agreement, we're going to have to extract and mine a lot more minerals, right? And so what does it look like to actually harvest some of those materials that already exist, rather than going back in and mining for more? And I think that's the beauty of what you guys are doing from a recycling recovery perspective, sometimes recycling gets a bad rap in a circular economy. I think it's absolutely crucial to mining some of those component trees that we need in order to advance into a green energy economy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, recycling is a huge and vital piece of a circular economy. But even we say at Quantum that reuse is the best form of recycling. Yeah, okay, let's move on. So we've had reframe, we've had redefine. So, heidi, what would be your third circularity tip?

Speaker 2:

It's activate action my favorite part. Right, let's act on all of that. So it's one thing to speak and share the messaging and storytelling, but you really need to have action in order to have those stories to tell. And so that's the main piece, and I know everyone is setting. Most corporations, most big companies and even small companies and mid-sized companies, are setting climate change targets or some sort of sustainability targets, and so my piece of advice there is to make sure you're integrating in your existing strategies, your business strategies.

Speaker 2:

Oftentimes, what I've seen is you have a corporate strategy sitting on one side of things of the business and then sustainability goals sitting off in the corner Maybe they're in a closet somewhere, forgotten, like your cell phone, and they need to be brought in and brought together. They need to inform one another. One should be derived from the other right, and so there's a lot of integration that needs to happen with sustainability goals and corporate strategy goals in order to really move the needle here. And then my second piece of advice under activate is engage, and that means engage your entire workforce, engage your finance department, engage your operations team and really level up their skill sets. Everyone should be wearing a sustainability hat. Really, there's no excuse anymore. You can use AI and learn almost anything you want to know about sustainability or circular economy, and so leverage AI to help upskill your internal teams and then, obviously, help engage your clients too, and that really speaks to that messaging piece. But it's time to act. The time is now, and I think it's really important.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's really important Love that Activate. The time to act is now. I will say that we at Quantum have fallen into the trap where some of our sustainability goals have not been integrated. They've been separate, really common it's so common. So this is you. Don't worry, we're actually about to start an updated materiality assessment process, which we do every three years, and one of the goals out of that is actually to make sure everything is fully integrated in terms of all of the metrics that we're tracking are ones that we're either already tracking or like that makes sense from an integrated perspective on our dashboard.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and also yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say in that reference that I'll share. They call them advanced integrators, but it's the companies that have really done a good job of integrating sustainability into their corporate business practices and they're seeing a lot more benefit out of it 67% more growth in sales, 70% more employee retention and attraction so like they're seeing more benefit from the fact that they've been able to integrate, and so I think that's really important.

Speaker 1:

Wow, okay, just another piece around, like the value creation that circularity and sustainability can provide, love that. The other thing around engaging your team, totally, totally agree with you. I was actually asked on a panel on Tuesday how is sustainability a team sport positions your forwards and your defense and your goalie, or whether you think about basketball, or my daughter's a competitive dancer, and so there's girls on her group that are bigger and they lift the smaller ones up.

Speaker 1:

Like everybody has a role to play Everybody has a strength, and when you have a goal, which is whatever it is waste reduction or greenhouse gas emissions reduction, circularity you basically need individuals from across the entire organization pulling in the same direction, whether it's operations and finance and procurement and whatever it is.

Speaker 2:

Everybody has to work together.

Speaker 1:

And I think at Quantum we do that really well, in the sense that we call all of our staff sustainability superheroes. That's the name for ourselves, and the planet is also one of our key stakeholders. So we're all in this together towards what we're working on, which is essentially keeping products and materials in use, at least electronics potentially keeping products and materials in use, at least electronics. Speaking of which ben noted that dead electronics in a drawer equals old furniture in a warehouse yes, that's our analogy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like I said we, we help clients save money by getting all that stuff out of the warehouse and getting it in the hands of the local community, who deserve it more than the landfill.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, love that. Okay, so, to summarize, we've had reframe, we've had redefine and activate. I love how. In itself, those are just three simple words to think about. So, heidi, as we close out this conversation, given everything we've talked about, what would you say is one piece of advice? It is, by the way, the last question we always ask on our podcast, circular Future. So what would be your last piece of advice that you'd leave our audience with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I guess I'm assuming I'm speaking to other sustainability professionals across probably different industries and different functional areas. I would just say take care of yourselves. I think we're kind of living in dark times as an industry. It's been a challenge. We're obviously having to reframe our language and we're having to do a lot of work to really prove our value, and I think the sustainability industry as a whole actually experiences more burnout than any other industry. Around 62% of sustainability professionals report some level of burnout, and so take care of yourself, take your vacation time. I just want to say thank you for everything you're doing. I know this is our Super Bowl week and so it's been exciting, but also make sure you're taking some time for yourself. We need you, the world needs you, so keep doing what you're doing, keep challenging the status quo, keep running those return on investment numbers. It's important and it's life's work.

Speaker 1:

And to our point earlier, everybody is working in sustainability in some way, shape or form.

Speaker 2:

So so thank you for all of your work.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I think that that is really great advice, and the phrase that comes up for me is fill your own cup and pour from the overflow, and too often, especially as women, we don't, and so that's really great advice. Love to hear from you in the comments what has been your biggest takeaway in this conversation. Also, if you have any questions, because even when we end here, the live will stay in the feed, you can watch the replay and Heidi and I will be around to answer any questions as well. Thank you so much, heidi. Be around to answer any questions as well. Thank you so much, heidi. Thank you for being our first one in this inaugural LinkedIn Live, where it's very much a test of what's possible with LinkedIn, and thank you for all that you do, both at Green Standards and you personally. I know you're a huge thought leader in this industry, and so I appreciate having you on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you for your collaboration. Always, stephanie, we appreciate Quantum as well as a partner and really appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you, keep up the good work.

Speaker 1:

And remember, if you're looking for a partner to help you repair, reuse and recycle your electronics, we'd love to chat Head on over to quantumlifecyclecom and contact us. This is a Quantum Lifecycle podcast and the producer is Sanjay Trivedi. Thank you for being a Circular Future Champion in your company and beyond.

People on this episode

Contributor

Stephanie McLarty

Host
Contributor

Sanjay Trivedi

Producer