Recycling, Circular Economy, and Building Sustainability with Scott Breen

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Scott Breen, Vice President of Sustainability at the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) about Recycling and Creator and Co-Host of the Sustainability Defined podcast, Circular Economy, and Building Sustainability. Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

1:43  Nic & Laura talk about Field Safety
11:12  Interview with Scott Breen Starts
13:22  Recycling
19:19  Circular Economy
24:14  Sustainability
39:13  Recycling-continued 

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Scott Breen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottrbreen/

Guest Bio:

Scott Breen is Vice President of Sustainability at the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI). CMI represents U.S. metal can manufacturers and their suppliers. His responsibilities include promoting the can as a sustainable/circular package, advocating for federal and state legislation and regulation that reflect the can’s sustainability advantages, and leading the can industry’s efforts to build upon its leading recycling rates.

Scott is also the creator and co-host of the podcast Sustainability Defined. Previously, Scott was associate manager of the Sustainability and Circular Economy Program at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and attorney-adviser at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and welcome to EPR if your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura on today's episode, Laura and I discuss field safety.  Super important. We talked to Scott Breen, the Vice President of sustainability at Can Manufacturers Institute about recycling, the circular economy and developing sustainability program for your company was the word I couldn't think of. And finally, grasshoppers have ears in their bellies, and a pair of membranes that vibrate in response to sound waves tucked underneath their wings. How weird is that?

Laura 
That is very weird. I remember dissecting grasshoppers in school and I don't remember that.

Nic 
Yeah, well, I mean, according to the internet, but that's that's accurate.

Laura 
I'm not saying it's wrong just because I don't remember it.

Nic  
Oh, man. Yeah, but I just you know, I'm thankful I don't want I think my ears are right where they need to be. I don't think I would enjoy it if they were like, right behind her armpits be a little weird.

Laura 
picturing a different kind of headphones.

Nic 
Yeah, much bigger. Wow. And on that note, let's hit that music

[NAEP Event News]

Laura 
in addition to the New York chapter, we are excited to announce that there's another local NAEP chapter starting in Virginia. The VAEP is in its early stages of forming so stay tuned for more details or contacts on SunTemple Helgren. You can check out his EPR interview with us on episode 25. If you would like to learn more or let them know that you're interested in participating. We appreciate all of our sponsors and they're what keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment.

[Nice & Laura's Segment]

Laura
You know I had a white squall come through this morning.

Nic 
Yeah, but yeah, tell me more.

Laura 
We had about an inch in five minutes. So it was cool, but it didn't last very long. Well, it reminds me of the Florida hurricane memes where it's just like a lawn chair pushed over?

Nic 
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura 
My boyfriend's dad is like extremely risk averse. He was a risk manager for General Electric for a long time. So he's in the environmental field. So he's always like, anytime we're going on a road trip or going somewhere he's like, oh, you should be careful. It's supposed to be you know, you should we not go whatever because he's like checking the weather. I look out the window during the 10 minutes of this Squall and he's parked out front. I'm like, what are you doing here?

Nic 
Riding out the storm. Safest place for me away from all the trees to be downed.

Laura 
He obviously didn't get the alert on his phone that I did.

Nic 
It's funny. That is funny. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know squalls were a thing like that seems like a morning storm. I've never had

Laura 
Did you ever see the movie "White Squall"?

Nic
No.

Laura
Oh, dear. That movie haunted me.

Nic 
Is it like a horror movie or something.

Laura 
No, it's really good movie, but it's about a fishing boat that gets caught in Squall off of Boston or something.

Nic 
I heard the term Squall does that help or I mean, I know

Laura
It's a good movie, but it's very dramatic.

Nic
Yeah, is it like so dramatic that it's hard to watch these days at worry

Laura 
It's a true story and it just kind of like, freaks me out a little bit. Especially when I started doing field work on a boat.

Nic 
Oh, yeah. No, that would do it.

Laura  
There was actually one day that we got caught in what I guess would be termed a squall in Florida and it's just every day weather what we got we were doing our regular water monitoring runs out in the furthest run out in the bay. And it was just like, zero visibility raining so hard in my co captain was just like, driving full speed. And I'm like no, stop. Like, we're pulling over. You can't see a freighter. You can't see anything in front of us and like, he's being all like, you know, like, I'm being a sissy and like, No, I'm being smart. Let's pull over. So at one point, we could see a little piece of like, old I don't know it's like a, like, rock in cement. That's not really natural, but it's just there in the water. And, you know, is there I was like, let's just pull up there because we can see it. And we know where we are. And let's wait for this to pass, you know, and he was just like, No, let's keep going. I'm like, no, what, why?

Nic  
Why? Yeah, what's the rush? Yeah, exactly. I don't want to hurry up and be dead. That's

Laura 
Apparently he had not seen "White Squall".

Nic 
The perfect storm. That's the first thing I thought of.

Laura 
It's Yeah, similar kind of movie. I just taught a workshop on conflict resolution, and it's kind of like, those are the kind of conflicts you have that like there's no training can prepare you for that.

Nic
Right? Exactly.

Laura
I want to live today and you don't you don't come to an agreement.

Nic  
Geez, yeah, I mean, I had like, fired an assistant. Actually, in one of my projects early. We're doing something similar. He was driving us to and from the site and decided it'd be really funny to drive on the opposite side of the road. until everybody in the car spoke British.

Laura
Oh, my gosh.

Nic
Yeah. And I was like, if you actually know what, you can't do that, that's so unsafe, and we're talking like blind turns  two lane road in the middle of nowhere. I'm like, if any car come through there, we'd be dead. So

Laura 
Even if the risk of that is like super low, like the risk of us hitting a barge in the middle of the bay is super low. It's just a matter,

Nic
You have to be careful.

Laura
Things still happen.

Nic  
Oh my god that shows this stupid is just you know, it's a high he's a college kid just trying to be cool, I guess I don't know. But yeah, I'd rather keep my knees you know? Well, so yeah, that was that was bad, but I don't know.

Laura 
Yeah, stories, their conflicts. Yeah, like that. Reminds me of another one where someone got fired from they were doing street monitoring. And someone just decided to leave. So this was like, an over the knees deep kind of thing where you're in waders. And if you get caught in waders, you know, you're done.

Nic
Yeah, you're wet for the rest of the day.

Laura
Yeah, yeah. And the person who was who was with the other person, you know, you go on the field at twos, the other person just left.

Nic  
Why? Did he just quit?

Laura
Yeah.

Nic
Did he just decide like I'm out?

Laura  
I'm not, you know, again, conflict resolution. Sometimes the resolution is to walk away but not in that instance. Safety first.

Nic 
It's a safety thing. You can't just abandon someone out there.

Laura
Right.

Nic
That's terrible.

Laura 
So yeah, immediately firing that person there.

Nic 
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny to talk about in twos and maybe we need to talk about this a little bit too, like safety is super important. And, you know, I've got a couple you know, we always have couple of stories, but like, somebody the other day was asking me like, why do we do two people? And I'm like, Well, this is pretty standard, right?

Laura 
That person was never in the Boy Scouts, huh?

Nic  
I guess, but I don't know. It's just like sometimes like oh, well, we're trying to save money so only send one person into me if you're working for a company that cares so little about safety that they're so worried about margins that they can only send one person to a visit then that's not the company for you. You should leave, that is not safe, even if it's a small place where you're not that far off the road, right? The second I was telling my story, okay, so we were on installation on one of the Air Force installations, and we're just off the road but just off the road dips down about 15 feet so you can't see us or our cars because they're parked across the street in a normal parking lot. So it just seems like those cars there. And if I'm out there by myself in the middle of the desert, and I get heat exhaustion, and I pass out I'm dead, right? I'm dead. No one's gonna know that I'm there until hours later. It's too late. You have to have two people. You have to.

Laura  
Yeah, and well then there's you know the whole woman thing. The, you shouldn't send women out on their own and I hate to say it but it the world we live in. Yeah. People and men or women. Somebody needs protection just because there are the crazy anti-environmentalists out there are just crazy in general. But yeah, and actually what you said about the having the two people for safety, and if your company cares more about the bottom line, I actually had an argument with my managers way, way back when I was running a program where we had to do surface water monitoring and rivers. And the turbidity measure monitors were in the river. So we had to walk. Take a board with us put down a plank and basically walk the plank out so they were telling us and they had been doing it until I showed up one person at a time. And I was like, there's so many things that could go wrong here. My team is not going out one at a time. And I had to fight for that. But you know, I think just in the would that would be 10-15 years. I hope that that scenario is changing. And there's less need to argue about that.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just common. To me it's common sense. It's like if you if you care about at all about getting the job done, you can't do it if your workers are dead. It's impossible. Just as an FYI, in case you didn't and it can happen like the thing is it can happen in supremely safe scenarios, you can still get hurt. I mean, we just had we just did a site visit for a road construction. And one of the construction contractors he's I think it was like their accountant or something I don't know, but like he wasn't a field person at all. We all go out to the fields. With the site. And he all by himself, stepped on a rock and broke his ankle. Just hit the dirt and was like I'm fine. Like, you seem like you're in an incredible amount of pain. I don't know. Right? And literally it is less than one foot off. The road. Less than one foot off the road. He broke his ankle.

Laura 
Yeah, I did the same thing. I had a severe sprain, like unwalkable severe sprain right in the middle of downtown Tampa and on the curb. I couldn't have gotten myself to the hospital. It was my driving foot.

Nic  
Yeah, same with this guy. Actually,

Laura  
Actually, I don't think I even was able to get up there was fortunately, a handful of like city maintenance crew around and they helped me get back in the truck.

Nic 
Yeah, yeah. Right. But imagine if he was by himself. Imagine if he was by himself. Maybe you said he say Well, I've been in the field. So I I know how to step on rocks and you're like, yeah, sometimes sometimes the rock slips but or your foot gets caught. I had a friend of mine doing a wetland delineation in Massachusetts, and she took a step, the rock gave way and pinned her foot as she fell down, tore her Achilles, you know? I tore her Achilles by herself. This is years ago, decades ago, actually. Yeah, she had to like, crawl out of the forest to get help. That's dangerous. She could have died. Like you don't want that to happen.

Laura  
There's plenty of opportunities for interns and some, you know, technicians who need some entry level positions if you need some backup and field buddies. You know.

Nic 
And it's good field experience for them.

Laura
Right.

Nic
They get good field stories out of it too. You know, it's really good.

Laura  
Alright, well, we could talk about this all day long.

Nic
Yeah, we could.

Laura
Let's get to our interview.

Nic
Sounds good.

[Interview with Scott Breen Starts]

Laura
Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Scott Breen joining us on the show. Scott is the vice president of sustainability at Can Manufacturers, manufacturers did you hear that? Can Manufacturers Institute and creator and co host of the Sustainability Defined podcast. Welcome, Scott.

Scott Breen 
Thank you guys for having me. It's I'm excited about it.

Laura  
Awesome. It's great to see you again. So how things been going at Can?

Scott Breen 
Oh, man, I mean, cans, unprecedented demand for cans. So the key manufacturers I'd say are in a good place. They're happy. They're selling lots of cans. And you know, my job now is to help make sure that those cans get recycled. So I love my job. I get to wear my lawyer hat. Think about what policies we can do to get more of those cans back but also I get to think about who we can partner with what research can we do to tell our story better and hopefully motivate people to recycle more those cans so that we can make new cans.

Laura 
Awesome, I love it.

Nic 
Can you tell us a little bit about what the Can Manufacturers Institute does? what their mission is?

Scott Breen 
For sure. So Can Manufacturers Institute or Trade Association. We represent US metal can manufacturers and their suppliers. So it's companies that take aluminum steel and manufacture it in the cans as well as the people that provide the aluminum in the steel and other components to the manufacturers. To make the cans. So you can think of when it comes to aluminum beverage cans you have companies like our Domino Packaging, Crown Holdings, Can Pack and Envases. With steel food cans, it's Crown Holdings again, but also Silgan and Trivium and Envases and other companies. If you go to Can Central dot com, you can see our full membership was there. And so on behalf of this industry, we are out there telling people about the sustainability story, consumers but also lawmakers and regulators so that they understand it as they go about making their laws and regulations. And we're trying to create that environment for the can makers to keep on making cans, but to also do so in a way that further cements the can is the most sustainable package on the market.

Nic 
Awesome. That's fantastic.

Laura 
And what initiatives are you currently working on?

Scott Breen  
Oh, there's several. I mean, one is that last year, we did a can capture grants program. So tier recovery facilities, this is where a single stream recyclables go to be sorted out. And in the midst of that process, sometimes cans get mis sorted. And sometimes they still get recycled, but we want to make sure that those cans that someone put them in the recycling, they got transferred to the Material Recovery Facility that we get them sorted into the right place so that like I was saying earlier we can turn those use cans in the new cans. And so we put out some research saying up to one and for beverage cans mis sorted at these MRFs they call them. That's worst case scenario up to one and four, but even one in 10 You know that's still a lot of cams, right? So we did this grant program last year with funding from Ardagh Metal Packaging and Crown Holdings, and in partnership with the recycling partnership, and we gave grants to five MRFs and with the equipment that will be installed with those grants. Now we're going to capture 71 million of them in beverage cans per year when those cans are sold. That's more than a million dollars in revenue. And when those cans are recycled, that's enough energy savings to power 28 million US homes for one hour. So just five  MRFs, right that's amazing. And so this year, we're building off that doing what we're trying. This year, we're building off that with a lease to own program where the grants were nice, we'll still probably do some of those. But the Better Business Case will come from this lease to own program where we go into these MRFs we literally have like a clicker where we as the cans getting sorted and then we take that information back. We create an ROI business case specific to that MRF, and then they can say, done, you've convinced me I'm gonna go and invest or we'll pay for the equipment. They just take it as a lease and then they pay us back with some portion of the revenue from those additional cans captured from that equipment. And then hopefully other MRFs say wow, they were able to pay back that equipment, just with the cans captured from the equipment. I should do that too. And then we've started really making change. Well, that's one initiative. I can keep going but I like that one because it's just so tangible, the numbers right, even just last year.

Nic  
Yeah. And so you actually took it as a, like a case study and then expanded it into an actual business model. Is that something that you do a lot of?

Scott Breen 
I mean, it's more that we, for that one specifically, we wanted to make sure that there was a pathway to getting to the point where more MRFs were doing their own thing, right. Yeah. So there's 350 MRFs across the United States and they vary in terms of their volumes, how much material is going through how technologically advanced they are, things like that. And so it varies by MRF as to how much how quickly they can make the money back and how easy it is to add this can capture equipment. So we wanted to stimulate it with some case studies. That's where the grants come in. But I think the lease to own model will give us like I was saying those case studies where there's the money was paid back, you know, they didn't get free money to put it in, right and I'd also say that this is unique to aluminum that you can do this with. So plastic and glass, they're not worth nearly as much. And so aluminum allows for these sort of innovative models where you can the equipment can pay for it because aluminum can allow for these models. Where the material recovered can pay for the cost of the equipment itself.

Nic 
Really cool. That's really really neat stuff. So and it's funny. So we're an environmental podcast, right? So how did you become interested in the environment? Like what made you decide to pursue a degree in environmental law and how did that get you to where you are now?

Scott Breen  
Yeah, so when people asked me how did you get interested in the sustainability stuff. I typically go back to my time at camp Timberlane for boys and Minocqua, Wisconsin. Have you ever been to Northern Wisconsin?

Nic 
No.

Laura
Yes.

Scott Breen 
You have Laura? So beautiful place and at this summer camp, I went for 12 summers, and

Laura
Wow!

Scott Breen
Yeah. And when I was 13 years old, so I was a counselor for a good number of those years, but when I was 13 years old, and as a camper, I wasn't really an outdoorsy person. My parents didn't take me out camping. But I heard the advice from the older campers,  You gotta go on the trips. I wish I went on the trips. The outdoor trips, so I went on our longest trip this 12 Day canoe trip in Quantico Provincial Park in Canada. You might be familiar with the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. So this is the Canadian extension of that. And while I was there, enjoying this, I like the physical challenge of it. But I'm also thinking myself like, wow, this is amazing that this place is protected, that they're restricting how many people can come, the waters so clean? Like how did this come to be? How did this get protected? What are the rules? And I would say that was sort of the seed that was planted in me and then when I went to Georgetown University, which I went to, because I was that kid that watched Meet the Press on Sundays, and like policy and economics, and I did major economy, but I saw this environmental studies minor, I was like, Yeah, I should do that. And then as it did the classes, and I said, Okay, I can apply my interest in government economics in the environmental context. And then kept going with it to the environmental law stuff. And you know, right now, I don't practice law. I did practice law at NOAA for a couple years the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but what I realized NOAA was that I was helping with the legal problems. But as the attorney you don't put together the partnerships, you have figured out the legal issues around it, but you don't put it together. You don't think about how things become more efficient and effective. And so that led me to take the risk and move away from law but I definitely do not think I would have my current job if I didn't have that law degree.

Laura 
Oh, that's very interesting. That's cool. I love that story. And I always I just can't help think Ernest goes to camp when I think of Camp counseling.

Scott Breen  
One American Summer was not my experience.

Nic
Okay, that's good.

Scott Breen
Oh it's definitely good. Yes.

Laura 
So the other thing that you focus on and you talk about a lot is the circular economy, which is sort of a newish term, as far as sustainability goes. So what is the circular economy and do you feel like that's a concept that's gaining traction?

Scott Breen  
It's definitely getting traction. When I think of a circular economy I think about it as designing out waste as keeping materials and even molecules in circulation as long as possible, and to do it without any toxics being circulated any other other waste being created. So there's a lot of different ways to loop the material on the molecules and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has a really nice graphic that typically if you're seeing a presentation on the circular economy, that's what's on the screen. And I'd say the key takeaway from that graphic, is that there's like I was saying all these loops, and recycling is just one of many kinds of loops. So with a lot of beverage cans, and steel, food cans and aerosol cans were focused on the recycling loop. But if you think about circular economy more broadly, think about reuse and the sharing economy and material regenerative agriculture and all these things that help make sure that we take a resource from the earth that we're trying to use it efficiently and keep it to have the maximum number of cycles. And the nice thing is with metal, it technically recycles forever. So you know, we get even more efficient with our recycling process. It can get to the point where we have taken that resource, and now we're using it just over and over again.

Nic  
So yeah, becoming renewable, basically. non renewable, renewable, that's really, really cool. And so that kind of led you to leading Circular Economy business delegation tours at the Chamber of Commerce, what was that about?

Scott Breen 
And that goes back, I'm glad I brought up campcounseling earlier. I mean, it was fun to put together and of course it was a learning and stuff but I was also leading the tour and walking around the bus making sure people had snacks so very important duties. You also learned as the camp counselor to end those things with ice cream and then everyone's happy. So.

Laura
Ah, great point.

Nic 
Yeah. All right,

Scott Breen 
But it was great. I mean, we went to a MRF right and we saw that sortation we went to Eileen Fisher where they were taking in clothes and sorting them out and using I remember they were making like pillows and even art from some of the stuff that used to be clothes like the clothes that couldn't be made in the new clothes. So it was it was that was cool to see too. This is in New York.

Nic 
Oh, wow. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. I guess also a part of your job has been over the years. You've also done quite a bit of public speaking. Would you have any advice for people who have to do that on a regular basis? Because it's you know, we talked about it a little bit, you know, sometimes you can still be nervous and do a great job. So what advice would you give?

Scott Breen 
Totally, I mean, a couple pieces of advice. I have certainly am still learning how to do it better. Let me just say that I listened to a book I'm not gonna remember the name of it, but it was an audio book I got from a library for free, which got love law. Libraries American thing ever.

Nic
Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 100%.

Scott Breen
Let's give a  moment for libraries. And the book was about public, this sort of communicating effectively. And one of the tips that they gave him there was, I think they called it like don't tailgate, in the sense of like, you know, people when you're driving and then they follow too closely to you and then accidents happen. So the advice was, and you can see I talk fast, so I need to work on this myself. But don't start getting into what you're going to say next until you're pretty sure you know what to say. And if you're not sure slow down, it's okay to take a beat. Take a minute until you've got your next points ready. Because if you're talking too fast, then you start getting down a road that you weren't prepared to go down and now you're stuck. Because we slow down, your mind can catch up and then you take it the direction you really want to take it. So that'd be one. And then the other piece of advice, I would say is feel like people make their slides to text heavy. That's not super innovative thing to say but more. The tip is that with the slide, you don't want it to be more than really one or two points. You know, I sometimes my colleagues they say Scott, you have too many slides. What are you doing? And I remind them that well, no, it's not because a lot of these slides are going to take me 10 seconds, or 20 seconds. I'm just making one quick point. And it's a nice picture and I'm moving along. So I feel like people get caught up on the number of slides. when really it's more about how many points you're making, and try to distill that down.

Nic  
Oh, yeah, that's super. That's great advice. And as another person who talks quickly, love to hear that so thank you. But yeah, I kind of shifted back to the sustainability side of things. My company is actually looking to develop a sustainability program and they've asked me to kind of look into it. So what advice would you give to small companies looking to improve on sustainability? What are the easy things that they can start?

Scott Breen 
That's a good question. So one of the things I would suggest doing is a materiality assessment, so that you figure out what are your biggest hotspots and you'll see if you pull up a lot of companies sustainability reports, you'll see these materiality assessments where they've visually graphed out the different issues and then say like which ones then maybe the x axis is like important to my business and Y axis is the environmental impact. And then they see what are the things showing up as highest environmental pack in most materials, my business, okay, let's focus on that. So a lot of times companies, they're collecting a lot of data, they're paying high price consultants to put together this thing for them. If you're a smaller company, you can do it a bit more informally and try to think through it by talking in a team meeting or looking over the data that you already have that is available to you, and then let that guide you. And that's a good strategy in general and right Yeah, but it's also good when you're doing sustainability work, to think about where are those biggest impacts? And then thinking about the lowest hanging fruit within those?

Nic 
Yeah, perfect. Awesome. Yeah. And is it Have you found that like, you say, there's differences between recycling plastics and metals, is that kind of this case to some sustainability programs? There's just kind of each company's got its own thing. So everybody's gonna have something a little bit different?

Scott Breen
In terms of the materials they use?

Nic
Or even how they go about doing the program?

Scott Breen  
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, like I was saying, I think this is sort of basic to do that sort of materiality assessment, but it's kind of like when you think about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, right, that there's 17 different goals. And some people they try to figure out how what are we doing that in all 17? Instead of just thinking about the ones that they have the most direct impact on. So some of the programs could differ in terms of what they focus on different things because that's what's most material to them, or they have the most control over. So you might see some differences there. But most if we're just talking environmental sustainability, there's also of course, social and other things, but people are looking at their water they're looking at their energy use. They're looking at their carbon footprint, which could be their direct emissions could be their indirect emissions, it can be different levels of sophistication. So in terms of the different material types and their recyclability, all these companies and such they have different packaging portfolios, but what we try to encourage is that they go beyond is this technically recyclable. So if you look at a lot of companies packaging goals, they're saying we're going to be 100% packaging that is recyclable or compostable by 2030. That's a great first step, but it can't stop that right. And I wrote a article on GreenBiz about moving beyond 100% recyclable goals, because you also have to think about, well, what is this packaging going to be turned into? What is its economic value? Does it support its own recycling? How many times can it be recycled? That is the thing that it gets recycled into is that easy to recycle? And so it's nice working for my industry for many reasons, but one is that on those fronts, we do really well, right. So how many times we recycle, we are talking about metal recycles forever. It's an economic value. It's one of the most valuable recyclable commodities out there. In fact, one of the reports we did a couple years ago concluded that without the revenue from us beverage cans, those MRFs that are starting stream single stream recyclables wouldn't be able to operate. In terms of what is it getting recycled into, 93% of recycled cans, and we're recycling nearly 90,000 aluminum beverage cans a minute in the United States, become new cans. So those are the things that we try to make clear to people and going beyond can I put it in the recycling bin?

Nic 
Awesome. That is great, great information. So thank you very much for that. We alluded to this earlier, but you do also have your own show. So you have your own podcast. So tell us a little bit about that when people can learn on it.

Scott Breen 
Thanks for asking that. So Sustainability Defined and is the name of the podcast and we define sustainability one concept and one bad joke at a time. Each episode, we focus on a different concept. We first introduce it so about the first 15 to 20 minutes we've done a variety of research we put it into flow, a format that we think people can follow, and anyone can understand. So if we're talking about food waste, or sustainable apparel, or climate change communication, the first thing we do is say what's food waste? You know what is sustainable apparel? So we start from square one, we assume the listener knows nothing about it. And then after those 20 minutes, everybody's caught up. Everybody's got some foundational knowledge. And I would be surprised even if you're an expert in the topic, you didn't pick up one golden nugget, right,  but then everybody's caught up. And then we go to the interview where we don't have to ask the interviewer who's maybe does something cool and food waste or whatever. It is. We don't have to waste time with what can you explain food waste. No let's get into what you do and the various dynamics and dive deeper. And so it's it's a nice, you know, 45-50 minute episode we think that gets people cut up and learning something about the topic, but also diving deeper with an expert and then maybe make you laugh once or twice to,

Nic 
Man. We gotta love that guy. Love laughing It's a thing keeps us together.

Laura 
Yeah, we don't have to go back and not ask him about circular economy.

Nic 
Yeah, I mean, yeah. No, no, I think it's great though. It's fantastic. And another totally unfair question. If you had any particularly interesting or notable guests?

Scott Breen  
Yes. Well, we did one that was interesting on female hygiene products were the guests for our introduction, normally my co host Jay and I, we do it, but we had our significant others, because what do we know about this topic? That was interesting.

Laura
It's appreciate.

Scott Breen
And then we start with a company called Dame, which makes like reusable applicators for tampons. So that was an interesting episode and then another episode we did with a notable guest, at least in this realm. We did one on green burial and the person that we had on she calls herself the Green Reaper.

Laura
Oh, nice.

Scott Breen
Yes, so she was super informative, and she actually like ran a funeral home and helps people put those arrangements together. But also, of course, wrote a book on the topic. And it was surprising to me that for instance, cremation, you have to heat the body at a very high temperature and cremation globally, I think the stat was something like is .2 or .3% of our greenhouse gas emissions, which are very small percentage, right? But we're just of all the emissions right? Cremation actually has like a notable percentage, which I hadn't even considered. So there are people that are saying, you know, I don't want cremation because there's an energy use there. I don't want to be buried because there's one use, there's landscaping and all these things that come with that process. And so in Seattle recently, I think it was last year, they got approval for a human composting facility and process so there's some people looking at that option. So it's very interesting.

Nic
Wow,

Laura 
Whoa, okay. Cool.

Nic  
Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Laura 
Yeah, I do know. We haven't had an air specialist on the show, but I know that they do monitor crematories as well as like dry cleaning. And so

Nic 
Yeah, they do actually for emissions. Yeah.

Scott Breen 
Okay. Yeah, it would make sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura 
Well, that's awesome. Your podcast is, is really great. I'm glad that you're what how long have you been doing it now?

Scott Breen  
Gosh, since 2016. Like before everyone had a podcast?

Nic 
Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, gee, my goodness.

Laura  
It was one of the things we talked about when we met what feels like a decade ago. But you've also been posting on LinkedIn. So I've been following you for several years on LinkedIn and I see every day you're posting something. So what's your approach with LinkedIn? And how do you find time to do it is the thing I wonder sometimes when I see what you're up to?

Scott Breen 
Well, first off, I don't do it every day. I don't know how I would find time to do that. But I try to do it. Mondays I caught like a weekly Monday sustainability post. Wednesday, recycling Friday, something I'm up to. And then that way, it gets me engaging on the topic learning something new. Sometimes you get so caught up in your day job and responsibilities that you're not reading enough of the news and advancing or supplementing your knowledge. So I find that these posts they keep me honest and I hope they help others. And consider one of my pet peeves To be honest, is when people email me articles and it's just like the link to the article. Well, did you read it? What do I need to know? So that's what I try to do in my post is I just tell you the highlights because I read it. It's not so much. It'd be a lot harder. Laura, if I was doing something super original, it's more me just sharing the best article I read in the past week on the topic and what that article says so

Laura 
That's great. So we collectively noticed that you have 12 very interesting and diverse certifications on your LinkedIn. So it's

Scott Breen
Really? Okay.

Nic 
We're doing our research.

Laura 
And we're just kind of wondering if there are any that stand out for you that have served you well in your career. And if you had like advice for listeners early in their careers, like what certifications they may want to be looking for.

Scott Breen 
Well, if I'm being honest, I'm sort of surprised there's even that many up there, just like independent certifications, I feel like some of them. I did like a certificate in the organic management of orchards when I was in Bloomington, Indiana, just for fun on the side. Did that serve me well? No, I don't even know if I remember anything from I would say that early in your career. One of the things that I've been telling people is, it seems to me is I hear about job openings that are in particularly the entry level ones. It's all about reporting and disclosure. And so if you can get a certification or probably even better experience in helping companies put their data together, reported to certain entities, then you've set yourself up well, and what I tell people is if you're looking for a job, and you kind of know what job you want, read the job descriptions, particularly students write and then map out well what do I have and what do I not have? And then how do I get the things I don't have, and maybe more to materiality assessment earlier. Do the same thing here. You know, which of these things I don't have, which are the most important and which are the ones I can get most easily and maybe the ones that you can get most easily and most important, okay, go do that and then fill in that gap so that when you apply for that job, ultimately in that interview happens, you have your story and talking point to explain. And even that is a great story, right of like I looked at the job descriptions. I mapped this out I went ahead and did this proactively. And that's why now I can tell you this. Like even that is impressive.

Nic  
Oh, no, that's that's awesome. I'm yeah, I'm right now, I'm telling everybody that too. I'm gonna pretend like it's my idea. Just letting you know.

Scott Breen
That's ok, I'm taking Podcat.

Nic
So there you go. Yeah.

Laura  
You're not physically taking Podcat.

Nic  
She would hunt you down. But, you know, volunteering also seems really important to you. I guess. Maybe that's not too much of a surprise. Can you talk a little bit about what motivates you to give back to the community?

Scott Breen 
I mean, I just I'm a very privileged person. That's just totally the case in terms of just parents and where I grew up and the resources I have available to me and just so many things. So I just almost feel like a duty to help the community and that could be volunteering. But it could also be like I took time early this week to go to Georgetown University Business class, and talk about my experiences and hopefully help them and talk with them afterward and getting emails from them. So I always try to make time to because people helped me too, right when I was early on in my career, and I still rely on people that are more experienced and have more knowledge  than me to help me as well. So yeah, it's just I feel I've been very lucky and privileged. So how could I not right? I don't know.

Laura  
That's great. So you feel it's a responsibility. You have to do it.

Scott Breen 
Yeah. But also it feels good and you want to do it so then I should probably do more doing more. So

Laura 
Awesome. We appreciate that. You also have some some hobbies with keeping fit and stuff do you run?

Scott Breen 
I guess, Yes. That's how I listen to podcasts. Yeah, there you go. And you know, it's funny he on the podcast. I certainly don't run to look better for the podcasts that I have the face for podcasting, so I don't know. But yes, running. I do like to run it's certainly been a thing amid COVID That just get outside my apartment where I'm working and sleeping and all the things but yeah, it's also my time to listen to the podcasts I enjoy and yeah, And do errands people make fun of me because I'm like, I literally run with my compost to the compost drop off. I've been there's been a couple of times where it's a meeting that I don't think I just need to listen to and then that's what I listened to while I run. And then also Scott, what do you think? Oh crap.

Nic
And then I I think... great points. Yeah, right.

Nic 
Going back. So what do you like to do? What's the distance? What are you at? What is there? Is it just the joy of running? Is that all it is?

Scott Breen 
Yeah, it's, I certainly just feel how it's like, it's kind of like in the volunteering thing. I'd be lying if there wasn't a component where I just feel good about doing it and then it makes me feel healthier to do that run and yeah, just something to structure my day around as well.

Nic 
Yeah. And so when you are running with compost, this is a very important question. Does everyone get out of the way because I just assumed What's that smell all I got, you know, and then diving we'd be diving is

Scott Breen 
I mean, it's in like a canvas bag like nobody there. Okay, see, okay. You can only carry so much.

Nic 
Right, right. So we're gonna ask your neighbors what they think we're gonna have them on next, actually,

Scott Breen  
and I'm trying to reduce my food waste period. So hopefully I don't have too many. So

Nic
Perfect. That's pretty cool.

Laura 
That's fantastic. I'm going to ask my boyfriend to run the garbage out to the corner next time. Well, is there anything else that you want to chat about today? We haven't got a chance to ask you?

Scott Breen 
No, I guess the one thing I would add is that one of the things we did last year with the Can Manufacturers Institute is we announced new aluminum beverage can recycling rate targets. So 45% in 2020, and that's better than any other beverage container. Cans are actually the most recycled beverage container in the United States in the world. But we know we need to do more because 45% and cool but that still means more than half are not being recycled. Unacceptable. So we have a target to get to 70% by 2030, 80% by 2040, 90% + by 2050. We have these four pillars of action. We're going to write up a more detailed roadmap. Shortly it should be out by middle this year. But the main thing is that we believe the key way to raise the aluminum can beverage can recycle rate quickly and without too much expenditure is more well designed beverage container deposit systems. So these are systems where you pay a refundable fee of 5 cents 10 cents you get it back when you return the container we have to make that redemption super convenient because we want people to get their money back. We want the material back to make new containers. But that is a big push for us. 10 states US states currently have it though most recent new system was 2002 in Hawaii. Before that it's more like 70s and 80s. So there hasn't been a new one in a while. When you look at those 10 states, the average aluminum beverage can work recycling rate is 77%. And the rest of the country is more like in the low 40s. Right. So it's a stark difference. And so we have wrote some articles on it. Last year. For instance, we wrote an op ed with the circular economy, nonprofit money loop and the advocacy organization US Public Interest Research Group calling for a national deposit system and laying out some of our principles there but this year, we're on the ground and some key states we're engaging with different stakeholders we we are trying to go from the article writing to the change on the ground, so that I'm pretty stoked about that that effort because it's fun to talk with stakeholders and think about how can we best create the system. And we actually had a meeting earlier today with some people that work with what they call canners which are people like in New York State, they have the power system go around collecting cans and other containers for important income that they need. And how do we set up the system that reflects the need to be supportive of their efforts and make it easy for them. So it's an interesting issue, and I would encourage people to learn about it and help us reach these targets be it becoming an advocate for new well designed deposit systems are some of the other things we lay out and if you're interested to learn more about that or any of the other metal can sustainability stuff that Can Manufacturers Institute is up to go to www.cancentral.com/sustainability.

Laura
Awesome. I have pictures of myself and some teenage friends. When I was a teenager depositing our recycled aluminum in Florida trying to get some spending cash for us kiddos.

Scott Breen
People have those stories and I Florida I don't think has a deposit system, but you take them to metal scrap yards we have a cansforcash.com website.

Laura
Somewhere had a machine do you can put it in getting money back and that's what we're doing. And then here in New York State now I'm waiting for a new beer can with my face on it for the different thing that I working on. And there's been a hold and one of the things they said was that there's aluminum shortage so is that shortage of new aluminum? So is there another need for us to have more recycled aluminum?

Scott Breen
So yes, it's so there's an unprecedent demand for aluminum beverage cans. And aluminum in general is used in a lot of various infrastructure. It's used with some of the things we need to power renewable energy. So that like you said, is all the more reason for us to get that aluminum back so that we can increase that recycled content, make more of these aluminum products with higher recycled content so that we have a lower carbon footprint with them.

Nic
Yeah, so we're just saying there's unprecedented demand for aluminum cans. And my first thought was well yeah, pandemic and no, what is it actually genuinely Joking aside what is driving that need?

Scott Breen
So I think some of it was the pandemic true, where people were more at home and then want their beverages and in cans. But I think the other part of it is that people are looking for more sustainable packaging options, particularly ones that aren't plastic.  So I think there's a stat that something around two-thirds of the new beverage containers are sorry. Something like two thirds of the new beverage products launched just recently, were in aluminum beverage cans. And that tells you something about how the companies that make beverage products how they're choosing their packaging.

Nic
That's really cool.

Laura
It is.

Nic
Hey, we've learned a lot today, Laura.

Laura
I know, right. I knew we would. It's been awesome having you on the show today, Scott. So you mentioned where people could find the Can Institute. Where can they get in touch with you if they're interested?

Scott Breen
I'd say LinkedIn is the best way to do it happy to connect with folks just sort of say in the note like heard you on the podcast. Yeah. Great. Let's do it.

Laura
Yeah, and then they get to see your you're not daily, but your weekly posts.

Scott Breen
And the 12 certifications I apparently have.

Laura
He'll be leaving here going to look at those. Anyway, thank you so much. It was great to catch up and hope to stay in touch and have a great 2020.

Nic
Um, it's 2022 Laura.

Laura
Oh, I guess you're going to have to edit that for me. Here's Podcat! That's why I'm distracted. I've been saying 2020 for months.

Nic
For like four years. Yeah, because this is what it felt like it felt like 2020 has lasted forever. No, I think I'm just gonna edit it with the two in, so you'll say 2020 And I'll say two so yeah,

Laura
Whatever works, you know, I'm not gonna listen to it.

[Outro]

Nic
That's our show. Thanks, Scott for stopping by. It was great to learn a little bit more about recycling process and how valuable aluminum is. Really, really cool. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you everybody.

Laura
Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai