Talking Safety, Cannabis and Public Sector Programs (Transcript)
April 7, 2020
[00:00:00] Liz Bothwell: Hi everyone, welcome to Waste360's NothingWasted! Podcast. On every episode, we invite the most interesting people in waste recycling and organics to sit down with us and chat candidly about their thoughts, their work, this unique industry and so much more. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode.
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[00:00:28] Liz: Hi everyone, this is Liz Bothwell from Waste360 with Joss Mann, Public Sector Solutions Manager at Waste Management. Hi, Josh and thanks for being on the show today.
[00:00:39] Josh Mann: Thanks for having me on, Liz. I'd say it's a surreal moment for me, I've listened to the past episodes and I never really thought I'll be in the same cohort as my fellow Waste Management folks, Like Susan Robinson, Tara Hemmer or people like Adam Minter. Kind of crazy, but here I am.
[00:01:03] Liz: Well, good for you, and it's well deserved for sure. [laughs] To get it started, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and how you found yourself working in this great industry.
[00:01:16] Josh: Yes. I'd obviously been familiar with Waste Management prior to joining the company, but my entrance into the industry was certainly not planned or expected. My background was really in economic development, I worked basically on a local level assisting businesses with either starting new projects, expanding, or even just retaining what they had.
I did that for a couple of economic development groups and then I went to work for a public affairs firm that specialized in land-use planning, which gave me some really great insight into how the regulatory world works. Then, from there actually made the jump into the tax world, spent some time working for a state tax agency and never really thought much more about the waste and recycling industry other than rolling my carts out to the curb on collection day. Obviously, as a kid, I recycled my bottles and cans to buy some ice cream and that sort of thing.
I had a chance encounter actually with a good friend of mine very involved in the communities where I work and I had basically-- took a lunch with somebody that was looking for some advice on to help out with the project I was doing for our local YMCA. Basically, as soon as we sat down to lunch, she said, "Are you interested in making a career change?" And I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, I heard about this position at Waste Management and I thought you would be perfect."
I just looked at her and I said, "Are you sure? I have no background in the waste or recycling industry." She said, "Don't worry about that. You have a passion for doing good things in the community and you work hard. They can teach you about the industry, they can't replace those intrinsic parts to being good at your job." Ultimately, she saw something in me and the next day I received a call from someone at Waste Management. They just confirmed my interest, from there I interviewed and five years later here I am.
[00:03:59] Liz: That's amazing. Clearly, she saw something special and those intangibles can't really be overlooked, that's what makes people do the job that they do and that passion fuels you, for sure. That's awesome. We're thankful in the industry that you made it here. [laughs]
[00:04:17] Josh: It's a trend that I'm seeing more and more in our industry, especially here at Waste Management, is that it's about finding the most talented people, the most passionate people at what they do, and sometimes they can be found within the industry and sometimes they're coming in from outside the industry, but I'm noticing a change. Especially, here in my role where we're bringing in some just really amazing talented driven people.
[00:04:49] Liz: That's great. Congrats on being one of this year's esteemed 40 Under 40 winners. I have to say your nomination was impressive and you were referred to as a real game-changer, which is an amazing way for someone to describe a person. Can you dig a little bit into the work you're doing in Waste Management and tell us more about that?
[00:05:13] Josh: Certainly. My role here with Waste Management is specifically, I design and manage municipal collection programs for our franchise customers here in Southern California. It's the bread and butter for our business, but it's actually fairly unique when you get down to it. I have to take basically our experience as a company, our resources, our capabilities, and then I got to distill that down into the actual services that we provide to meet the needs of our customers and the goals of the communities that we serve.
I've come to refer to it as a switch army position here at Waste Management. I don't directly handle the customer service, I've never driven a collection vehicle, I visited an MRF, but I don't know down to the detail of how the material gets processed, but I need to have an innate sense of how that all comes together. It is truly a game-changer role in terms of, in the last couple of years I've had the opportunity to take communities that maybe didn't have recycling programs or didn't have great recycling programs, basically, create and launch those programs and really take those communities to the next level.
We've been able to partner with communities on projects that were important to them, whether it was cleaning up their community or establishing programs to help educate young people about sustainability, those are the opportunities that being here at Waste Management and in the role that I'm in, that I have the ability to take a first-hand role and seeing through.
[00:07:08] Liz: That's great. I know you're doing some work with organics recycling, can you tell us how your organic recycling programs are going? I can't believe 2020 is already here and I know California is pushing for diverting 75% of organic waste and recyclables from the waste streams. How is that going?
[00:07:28] Josh: Yes. I think it's pretty fair to say that there's never been a more dynamic time to be in the industry, and probably no more challenging a place in the country to be in the industry than California. But I am very thankful that I get to do it on behalf of Waste Management, we're very, very engaged in the policy changes that have taken place in California, I really have seen the shift.
I think in a lot of ways, we've gone from a lot of education and good faith efforts to real tangible programs that are helping to divert out organic waste. I know that throughout our Southern California area, we've got a lot of different ways that we're approaching it based on the resources and capabilities we have available. We're also striking those partnerships that help basically pave the way for additional organics diversion to occur.
Then definitely working with our communities, the cities, counties and special districts that we serve to really build out the rest of those diversion programs on knowing that while today California is very focused on the waste stream generated by commercial businesses and multifamily properties that were not too far off from it extending to basically every generator in California. It's certainly, a tall task and it's not going to happen overnight, but we're seeing some great progress communities that have stepped up to the plate and embraced the change.
It's opened a lot of doors of communication with our customers. The fact that based on the regulatory changes and things they're reading in the news, they're certainly asking a lot more questions about their waste stream and their opportunities to see that more of it goes to places other than landfills. I have the great privilege of helping to deliver a lot of those solutions on a community-wide base.
[00:10:02] Liz: That's great. Speaking of educating residents, do you have any tips on doing that? Because I know that's a huge part of cleaning up the contamination.
[00:10:15] Josh: Yes. Here at Waste Management, contamination is one of our primary focuses for helping to ease the challenges we're seeing in the recycling industry. To that extent, several years ago folks like Susan Robinson really helped to break things down, that's how we ended up with our Recycle Right Campaign, really focusing on those items that I think we all know are recyclable and yet we're not capturing nearly as much of that stream as we should be.
Then, at the same time, finding those game-changer items that if we could get those out of the recycling stream would make the ability to process and obviously, get material moved on to their next life that much easier.
For my role, it's really a multi-pronged approach. Certainly, from the standpoint of educating customers through our digital resources and materials that we would distribute through our correspondence with our customers. Really down to actually one on one type of situations where you're doing workshops, you're doing site visits to customers and you're actually going to their waste container and doing an impromptu audit as you're taking stock of what the opportunities are.
Ultimately, I think that it's the combination of those steps that were consistently reminding residents and businesses of what is recyclable and how they can improve their recycling performance. But also that next step of going out and physically looking in containers, and giving direct recommendations based on their waste stream.
[00:12:25] Liz: That's super helpful and concrete, which is great. Then, Josh, how about cannabis? I read that you're working on solutions there as well, can you expand on any solutions you're seeing?
[00:12:39] Josh: