Amanda Moore: Big Problems Started as Small Decisions.

Amanda Moore is a communications and marketing professional driven by a passion for connecting people with purpose. She specializes in building authentic brands and strategic communication plans that engage diverse audiences and amplify recycling and the circular economy. With a background in geography, urban planning, and communications, She brings a unique lens to promoting sustainability through thoughtful storytelling and outreach. 

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The planet, we're big fans, and it needs some help. We're going to skip the part where we convince you that humans have caused a tremendous change in the climate since roughly the 1700s. We're also going to skip over a bunch of terrifying statistics and doom and gloom stories.

We know you've heard all of that. We are regular people, you might say climate curious, that want to help and don't know where we can jump in yet. Welcome to Team Climate, a show about what it really looks like to do climate work.

This is real, and this is bigger than all of us, and it's going to take all of us to change it. My name is Jeffrey Brian Potter. I'm a senior product designer in the FinTech space.

My co-host, Kristen Shaw, is the head of growth for a consulting agency and the national marketing chair for a clean tech accelerator. Each episode, we're going to be talking with someone in the field, doing the real work it takes to make change. We hope this inspires you to jump in too, because we're going to need you.

So we are joined by Amanda Moore, and I'm so happy to have her. Welcome, first of all, thank you very much for talking with us today.

How are you today?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk all things sustainability and climate today.

Oh, fantastic. So can you start with talking about what your current job is?

Yeah, absolutely. I work for a materials management and circular economy consultant called RRS, Resource Recycling Systems. We've been around since 1986 from Ann Arbor, Michigan, started by a group of fellows who were really interested in making sure that we were recycling our materials and being better stewards of the items that we purchase and we use in everyday life.

So since then, we've expanded and we work across the country. And I am happy to support our team members from a marketing manager perspective and helping make sure that we're telling the story of RRS, the good work that we do and how we help support our clients in reaching their sustainability and climate goals.

How did you get into something like that?

That is a brilliant question. How did I get into it? My career path has pivoted around a lot, but I think it all ultimately centers around public service.

My undergrad degree was in geography and planning, but I had a few internships in public service and really was fascinated by public service work because it allows us to work together. It is looking at how can we do things that are best for society. I was very fortunate to spend most of my career with the city of Grand Rapids that has always been very front of line on sustainability in Michigan and working to improve sustainability from all different perspectives, from the city agency itself and its operations to the way it designs its roadways, its streets, the way it designs policies and programs to continue and be a model for sustainability efforts and programs.

From there, I worked a lot in the mobility sector and very, as you likely know, mobility and private car ownership can be a huge cost and a huge impact on our climate. And working in mobility is really was a fascinating opportunity to see how can we help drive behavior change in that space so we can reduce the footprint that we all have when we drive single occupancy vehicles and how can we be more efficient in our community with mobility, as well as more accessible and equitable, because that comes along with improving mobility options for the community.

Just because I've been bragging about you too, Kristen, can you tell us about the hand puppets that you made? I don't know the story there.

Yeah, sure. I stumbled into costume designing and puppetry in college. I had a Spanish theater class where we had to write a short kids play and then make puppets and present them for people.

And from there, I kind of fell in love with the creation of these things and ended up making them into large scale costumes, started creating costumes for a fella out in California. I think I made about four costumes for him between 2014 and 2018 or so. And we'll be making his costume next year for him as well.

Like a Halloween or like a-

Yeah, a Halloween costume. Yeah. So it's going to be an interesting one.

It's going to be the biggest, most elaborate thing I've worked on. But it has more of the mechanical puppetry features, which I haven't explored as much. Really?

Yeah. It's a well-loved puppet character from a show that has eyes that can rotate and move around, and also blink. So it'll be fun to try to create that as a one-person costume, because it's actually a two-person costume in the show.

Oh, okay. I think I got it. But I remember seeing you had a like a MetroCard puppet you made for public transit.

We have what's called the WaveCard in Grand Rapids, which is kind of our pass card that gives you daily passes, monthly passes, weekly passes. And when they introduced that, it was just incredible for transit ridership, especially those that we often don't carry cash. So you have to, like these public agencies are having to develop solutions that meet user experience needs in order to increase ridership and to make it convenient.

And a lot of people didn't have cash, didn't have exact cash, couldn't ride the bus, or that kind of created like a negative experience for them, or maybe not even a negative experience, just that like fear of something different that I don't know how to do. With the cards, you tap, you get on. So we were kind of revamping some of the programs around that card when I was with the transit system and created a wave card puppet called Wavy.

And yeah, he is a pretty great little character.

That's so awesome. Do you know any, like, did it have a good impact? Like, did ridership increase or anything like that?

Did he make any appearances?

That would be a little hard to quantify. I would say, overall, we've seen an increase in ridership, but I cannot directly link it to any of my efforts. It's a lot of people that ride.

I think it's more just getting out of the pandemic and people starting to trust transit a little bit more and get back into the work in office mode.

I mean, you didn't just get on buses randomly and like, hey everybody, I'm waving.

I certainly wanted to.

Oh man, that'd be amazing. So back to your current position, was it a traditional hiring process? How did that onboarding look for you?

Yeah, I'd say it was, for me, a very different hiring process, but I think it's probably very traditional of the private sector.

So when I was searching for a new position, I wasn't aware of this company. I wasn't familiar with it, just happened to stumble upon a communications consultant role and looked into it, and it seemed like a lot of the type of work I was doing for city communications and marketing, a lot of behavior change that you see in mobility is transferrable and is what's needed for a lot of recycling practices, is teaching people how to change their behavior, how to recycle different things. So I saw a lot of transferrable skills and topics, and it also appealed to me because they do, that our company works with a ton of public agencies and clients.

So my heart for public service, if you will, I was nervous to get into private sector because that had been so important to me through my career. But in seeing how much we help different communities across the nation with their recycling policies, programs, and building out circular economy and supply chain activities, I just saw what a brilliant impact we were having or that the company was having. And after meeting a few of the people just felt fantastic about it.

To your initial point, in the process, when I submitted my resume and my portfolio, I got a call to do a phone interview. We did a phone interview. I got invited back for an in-person interview.

We did, excuse me, a video interview and I did a video interview with two of the folks there. And they offered me a position and kind of negotiated from there. So I think it was fairly traditional, fairly quick from what I'm accustomed to with city jobs.

Sometimes it was six months from position to first day. Whereas this was like, we want you in the door as soon as possible. So it was a pretty quick process.

That's great. And so you're speaking of some of the people involved. Would you say you had some mentors when you started, and how have they helped you?

Absolutely. I would say that one of the hiring positions was my initial supervisor with RRS, and she became a mentor for me very quickly, not only for the position itself and the work, but also just for the company culture, and kind of adapting to a remote distributed workforce, and helping guide me through how to kind of make changes, and take the approach of getting more involved throughout the company. So she was very helpful in guiding me, in establishing myself within the company, which can be tricky in a remote setting when you can't see people, or see their reactions, or you don't know their personality when they're sending you an email.

Like, you don't know if they're, are they just kind of get to the point? People, do they, you know? So she really helped me kind of navigate a lot of those unknowns that I wasn't accustomed to, because I predominantly worked in person most of my career.

Do you remember any good pieces of advice that you got when you first started?

Good pieces of advice. I think that one of the good pieces of advice that I got, and one of the things that I loved most about this company, especially early on, was how encouraging they were about contributing your ideas and your thoughts. And again, working in public agencies, they didn't always want to know your opinions and thoughts.

They just wanted you to do the things that they approved. So having the ability and encouragement to be able to, say, when you think something could be done better or if we could be improving something or establishing a different process that would improve the organization, and having that be listened to and given the okay, I think that was probably the best advice and also best indication that the culture there was going to be a good fit for me.

I have a question. So I've been in the private sector my whole career, and just over the last year, I've had my first beginning experiences in the public sector with a client. And I would like to know from your point of view, what are the similarities and differences, focusing on the climate but doing it in the private sector versus the public sector, and any advice you have for people transferring either way?

So we'll start with differences. The differences with private and public is private can make, it's easier to make changes. It's easier to make decisions and move forward and execute.

Government is slow, and it's slow intentionally, and it's not a bad thing all the time that it's slow either, because a lot of it comes from having a lot of checks and balances. Sometimes too many. But sometimes they're also there for unknown reason.

Like you might not know the reason, it might seem silly, but there is a reason behind it, and it's a good reason. I think that's where government could be better at helping explain why they do the things that they do and why they have the things the way they have them. But once you know a little bit more on the inside, you're like, okay, that does make sense.

So I think that is both the benefit and disadvantage on both sides, because business can make decisions so quickly, and don't necessarily have to do all of the reviews and the approvals and get everything together. That may be, and this isn't necessarily coming on ourselves, but just in general, you can kind of move too quickly to push something forward before you've done all the research that you need to do. Whereas they can get things done quickly though, because they can implement, execute, make decisions, and go.

Government takes a lot, tends to take more time to do public engagement, community engagement, get information together, they're put plans together. But what they're not great at is execution. And that is, that's where I think there is kind of a swap a little bit in what's better.

I think both have roles and are good at public-private partnership stuff. Like, how do we build it together? How do we, I think that's where, and I shouldn't say they're all good at it.

I worked at a city that was exceptionally good at public-private partnerships, and building out strategies in collaboration with community groups and businesses. I think that's also a benefit that you have in the private company that you can work with producers, you can work with industry people. You go to them with a grand idea, you pitch it to them, and you try to make the world better in that way.

Through appealing to their consumer demands, to their market, trying to appeal to how they make decisions to make sustainable choices and make improvements. Whereas government often has to take more of a rulemaking, policymaking role in that place, because that's what they're looked to be, is the drivers of laws and policies. But there is a sweet spot in the middle where everybody is working together.

And I think that's ultimately what democracy is all about anyways. Is us all coming together and bringing the best that we can, listening to each other and trying to make things better.

Furthermore, a vote for Amanda for the Senate.

What do you find most challenging about it?

Personally, the most challenging thing to me is the remote work. Yeah. For my personality type and how I've led my career, and relationships are a huge thing in my life, both personally and professionally.

What drives me is developing and having relationships with people. And so that was, I think, one of the harder parts of acclimating to this job, is building relationships with people I maybe have never and will never meet, and trying to build trust with each other too. Because you can give as much trust as you can blindly to folks, but you don't really get that commitment and faith in your ideas and moving forward until people trust you can do what you can do.

And I think that's more challenging in a remote space when you're not bumping into people, you're not having those small talks and those chats where you're building that relationship and building that trust with each other. Yeah. Personally, I think that's been my hardest challenge.

But from a work perspective or from the actual, not so much the environment, but the role that I'm in, I think one of the challenging pieces, that's also a beautiful part of our company, is that we really let people bring their passion to work. And so if they have an idea of how there could be a project somewhere, a collaboration, or something that you can do, we can, they support it and move it forward. From a marketing manager perspective, that gets a little tricky, because if everybody's doing different services and different options, it's a little hard to figure out how do we, how do we talk about ourselves when, and we do have so many different skill sets and so much work.

We will very soon have a new website launch that's going to showcase our services a bit better. It's going to tell our story better, and we're excited to be able to bring more of what the heart of our RRS is into the messaging and marketing that we have available.

So despite these challenges, how do you stay focused and stay motivated?

How do I stay focused and motivated? I think ultimately I find motivation in relationships and people and kind of like knowing the ultimate outcomes that we're having. And in my role, which is a unique one at the company, most people, almost every single person at our company is a consultant.

We only have a few, maybe 10 percent or actually less of our company that don't do consulting. And I think ultimately, my whole career has been again, that public service focus is having an ultimate impact. But what motivates me and keeps me driven about it is the relation or are the relationships that I have with my coworkers, with our clients, with the communities, where we're working.

And although as the marketing manager, I don't touch the projects as much, I know that I am supporting our staff that is. So I rely on really working as a two-way communication system with marketing and all of our consultants who are out there pitching client work and responding to requests for proposal, so that I can support them in the best way that is going to help us be able to do more of the good work that we're doing.

I have been saying lately, nothing is real unless it's shared, which is where marketing comes in. Marketing is everything. Getting the message out and repeated over and over, in all the different mediums that people have eyeballs.

I think it comes back to the building trust as well, right? Like you said, with the individual relationships in the climate sector, we have a lot of trust building to do, whether it's trying to build trust for an initial client, or build trust for individuals to actually adopt the plan, change behavior, things like that. I think building trust in the climate sector is a priority across the board that I think marketing is well-equipped to meet that need.

I mean, I'm biased. I'm a marketer, but I see it. When I look at some of the climate challenges and a lot of the solutions that I hear about and see about, whether they go gangbusters successful or they fail, I see that trust building as being a key component.

Absolutely. I think that is so true, especially when we're talking about these public-private partnerships, when we're talking about people coming together, because you can't just do it from the government perspective. You can't do it from a non-profit perspective.

You have to bring producers, you have to bring the waste haulers, you have to bring the facilities in, you have to convince folks, convince producers to be using recyclable content. You have to not just convince them to use it, but also convince them that you have the supply for them, that they are going to require in order to move forward with it. So it is recycling, I would say, in some ways, compared to some of the other work I've done, more in the mobility climate side of things.

I think it's a lot more complicated because there's more people involved and there's more materials than ever before. And being able to sort and recycle and create supply chains where there weren't supply chains before is a pretty incredible task. Whereas on the mobility sector, the behavior change of the individual is one of the hardest pieces.

But similar in both areas, it's the collaboration piece. It's having the policies in place that are going to support it. It's having the producers or the industry folks involved.

And it's doing some public education and rallying people together. And that's the same really in the recycling world too. You have to get the producers involved.

You have to get policies in place. If we really want like highly effective and efficient recycling, you want producers creating things that can be easily recycled. You want the Mercs to have all of the equipment and space and everything they need in order to make it easy.

And you want every communication and peace that's going out to the public to be clear, so they really understand the rules and know what they need to be doing. Which is hard because almost every, you know, there's, they're done, waste and recycling is done at such a local level. And has been for a long time.

It's, it's, there are places that do more regional approaches. But when you have it on the local level and you have such a transient population where people are moving all the time, and then that recycle bin is different, it gets, it gets confusing and people get frustrated. So working together to try to create more systematic cohesion between what's offered in different places is going to be really beneficial in terms of the collection side of it.

So a minute ago, you mentioned, you're really proud of the outcomes that you're a part of, and you're part of supporting. Can you think of any good examples of some of those outcomes?

Absolutely. One of my favorite projects or initiatives that we have at RRS is called NextCycle. NextCycle is an idea that came from the knowledge that we had to really build up a lot of different pieces in order to have good recycling.

And so NextCycle started, I believe it started in Colorado first, and then NextCycle Michigan came on, and now we have NextCycle Washington. NextCycle is a customizable program, but the main piece of it is that it's a business or project accelerator. So similar to other business accelerators, it's an application process where people will apply for their projects.

They'll be selected through that competitive process, and then they'll participate in some trainings and workshops, and have some support to help develop a pitch. And at the end, there's a pitch competition where you can get funds. Each program in each state is a little bit different, but ultimately what that does is in some states, they're focused both on the structural side.

So they do bring governments through, like the Next Cycle Michigan program has a track for public agencies to help them build out programs or establish new initiatives. There's also business accelerator, or the business components of folks who are using materials that are recyclable or adapting technology and innovating technology that will help with processing needs or collection needs. I think that is a really great program because it represents a lot of the components that need to be built out in order to have a really strong circular economy and in a high efficiency recycling program.

It also gets people involved, and it's creating a lot more of the stories that we want to hear and a lot more of the innovation that we have to be trying new things and testing new things in order to progress. And there have been a lot of really amazing projects that have come out of it. One of the teams from last year, Cadea, they're a water-reasonable water station.

And they are partnering with large construction or military bases where they often, in the past, were bringing in tons of bottles of water, because they got to keep their workforce hydrated. And instead, the idea is to put these machines that kind of, they clean the bottles, they fill the bottles, they monitor it, and they can connect it to tracking, like, overall hydration of employees, too. And they've been increasing their impact by forming more relationships with large organizations.

And that's a real, like, specific, targeted thing. But if you think of how many bottles of water for a military base to be operating throughout the year, that's saving tons on plastic, and it's also going to be higher quality water, because it's being filtered right there, and it's not saving the bottle for months.

Oh, that's cool.

So there's a lot of little stories like that. And I think it's those little stories and these efforts of people coming together. They came with their idea.

RRS facilitates the NextCycle program and also provides consulting services to the teams that go through. So it's amazing to see these programs and new businesses become successful and start to build out a lot more. We had another one that participated in Seattle, and they have a tool library that they had created.

And they had opened up a second shop after participating in the program and are a place where people can, when you have that one task to do in your home, that you need that special tool for, that you don't want to have to pay $200 for, you can go to the library and rent it out.

Let's take a quick break.

Transitioning to a greener economy could create 24 million new jobs by 2030, according to the International Labor Organization. And about 30% of roles in the climate space don't require technical expertise. Skills in marketing, sales, policy, business operations, or communications are in high demand.

That means your experience might already be more relevant to you than you think. If you're curious about diving into climate work, here are a few ideas to get started. Research and apply for roles in rapidly growing sectors like renewable energy, EV infrastructure, and carbon markets

These areas are booming with opportunities for fresh talent. Volunteering with climate-focused nonprofits is a great way to build relevant experience, expand your network, and see firsthand what climate work looks like. And remember, networking is key.

Eighty-five percent of jobs are filled through connections. Communities like My Climate Journey, Work on Climate, and Terra.do are fantastic slack communities to meet like-minded individuals and learn from others already in the field. You can find the links in the episode notes.

Oh, very cool.

That's cool.

And that, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

No, and that was through the Next Circle Washington program. But there's a variety of different ideas coming out. And the thing is, I mentioned earlier, we have a super complex, like, material landscape.

There's all different types of waste. There's all different types of things that we throw out from agricultural waste to, for example, in Colorado, huge amounts of, like, marijuana debris remains. Like, after everything, like, the rest of the plants got to go somewhere.

So what's happening to that? And what's the best use of it? And there was a group, a couple of groups working on different things.

One was working on, like, animal bedding to make out of this, to be able to sell. Another one was turning it into a biochar, which can be used as a fuel source. So it is, I think, being creative with these little, these smaller projects, and helping to see how can they scale these systems to be bigger and better.

That I find, and that's probably, like, I love these projects because there's so many people involved, it is a lot of relationship building and community. But it's also cool to see that happening on, like, a bigger level, too. So we also helped to create kind of a partnership group that was the Material Recovery Facility of the Future, I think is what the project was called.

Very Murph would do it. But ultimately, this project was so cool, and it was exciting to see, because a lot of the people who were funding it are producers. So these are the companies that are making the materials and making the products for investing and trying to see how can we make it better.

This was a project to test whether or not flexible packaging, by which I mean plastic bags, plastic wrap, all that kind of stuff, that has the recycle symbol on it, but most of us know we can't put it in our recycle bin at home. They're called tanglers once they get into the recycling facility because they don't have equipment. So those are big no-nos in curbside recycling.

But the vision is, do they have to be though? Is there a different way that we could be collecting these and doing this? So they all funded a test material recovery facility to pilot flexible film packaging.

And they showed that it can be done. Now there's costs associated with it. You have to have, in any recycling facility, as you can imagine.

Well, and I don't know if you know this, or if your listeners know it, but basically, it's like a one-point entry, and then there's all of these different lines where it's sorting by the type of product that it is, or the type of material that it is. So every new material there is, which there's always new materials that come out, new things. For example, cartons, like milk cartons, soup cartons, those can now be recycled in a lot of places, but it's its own line.

It's its own type of thing that has to be recycled in a certain way and its own product. So in adding new technology and operations to those lines, there's an expense to the equipment. There's potentially needing to expand your actual facility in space, and a lot of them don't have room to expand.

So that's where, yes, we prove the concept is possible. And as we're developing or as material recovery facilities in the United States and beyond, our remodeling are going to be creating new facilities. They can look to these types of projects to say, oh, you know what, we actually could do that here, and we could be collecting that much more material.

That's great. Sounds like you really know your stuff. Do you feel like it was a real mountain to climb when you started and like a real learning curve?

And how did you kind of tackle that?

Yeah. I would say there was certainly a learning curve. I've experienced it a lot in my career.

Even working within the city, I had worked in the planning department, transitioned to working in the clerk's office, predominantly on elections, to working in mobility. And I think everything, there's transferable skills, certainly. And I don't know if you guys are board gamers, but it kind of reminds me of that, where it's like, rules are kind of similar, like, oh, this rule is kind of like that game over there.

Okay. And so my brain kind of processes the same way when I start a new job. I'm like, oh, this is actually like a similar type of concept to this thing over here that I learned about.

So I think that I am a very curious person. I like to learn about things. I like to get things right.

That's probably one of my favorite pieces about being a communicator and in a communications position is being able to kind of translate more complex industry jargon and ideas into something that is a little bit more relevant to a general audience. And I'd say, yeah, there was certainly a learning curve. And it was, I always think, like asking a lot of questions, confirming that what you're learning is the right thing.

Those are what I found to be really beneficial, because there was a lot of this that I did not know about and had not thought about before and how complex it is because of how many different types of materials are out there. And that even if this was the wildest thing that I learned, you guys, even if products are like the same recycling number, like that doesn't mean they can be all recycled to get like, there's still differences within the numbers and plastics are crazy complex. And so those are like, there's so much beyond what I actually know, and I don't need to know that deep.

My husband comes home and starts talking to me about real deep science, agricultural science. I'm like, go a little higher for me.

You need to take it down enough. How do they tell the difference between like two things that are a five?

That's a really great question for one of our consultants.

Okay. All right.

I didn't go deeper than that because I didn't need to. But just knowing that plastics are, I think it helps me understand just some more of the complexities of plastics ultimately. And that is, again, where producers are starting to come on board and have been for a number of years in different ways.

If you can recall Sprite or 7Up, one of them used to be in a green bottle.

I think they both were.

Yeah. And they aren't anymore. And the reason is because pigments can't be taken out of plastic.

I don't completely understand the science behind it, but pigments mess up the recycling process. You can't reintroduce it. So, they ended up, that was one thing that those companies did, is they probably fought their marketing departments a little bit, and said, no, we need to streamline this.We need these to be more easily recyclable, so that we're not creating more of a challenge. And I do think that's the beauty of, I know this wasn't anywhere near the question you asked, but there is a lot more policy happening that is creating a situation where recycling's going to be higher performing and better funded and provide for better collaboration. And that is called Extended Producer Responsibility.

They have laws that have passed in Colorado and laws that have passed in Oregon where they are establishing kind of this system. Canada's had it for a long time. Extended Producer Responsibility, they really sometimes don't think about these terms when they choose them.

It's producer funded recycling is what I like to call it. The people who are creating the products are paying for creating the products and the packaging ultimately will be paying for recycling because it's their materials that are then entering the stream. That's always been put on ultimately consumers and taxpayers in the end because most recycling is on millages or property taxes or other things, or you're subscribing to a recycling service as a consumer.

But it's not really the right role or tactic in order to have high performing recycling. And the idea is, and I, Jeff, I know you're going to want to know more details. I don't have them though.

But the idea is using AI and some of the technology to read packaging and kind of assign it to producers. And then ultimately, recycling facilities or the kind of collaborative that oversees this program, bills out the recycling fees, and then the companies will pay them. And the beauty of it is like, you get a company paying for something, they're going to want to make sure it's more efficient.

Right. As we learned in our class that Kristen and I took, everything is going to start coming down to carbon offset calculating, and we're going to need AI to help us do that.

Absolutely. And that's a piece of what we do too. We do life cycle analysis at RRS, and that's a component of evaluating a product's impact ultimately.

And that we can work to help people with their recyclability claims so that when people are going to source materials and information, that they actually have a scorecard of their carbon footprint for that particular product. And you're right, that is becoming a lot more, a lot more on the minds of people as they're doing more sustainable purchasing practices.

Sooner or later, everybody's going to be in the environment game or in the climate game, and we're going to need a lot more skill sets, you know? So I'm thinking about a person that wants to get into your industry or literally into your company, and what I would tell them.

Yeah, you're right. There's going to be so many jobs. It's open in the future, and I think there's a place for you, no matter what you want to go into, really.

I am very passionate about mentoring as well. I've had a lot of interns and working with young people. And one of the biggest pieces of advice that I have for people is get skills.

It's not about getting degrees. It's not about getting A's. It's about really knowing how to do things in a practical way.

And that could be marketing and communication and learning, persuasive communication techniques, and how can you apply those to different settings? How can you apply psychology to behavior change that needs to happen in a lot of the pieces? So engineering, that comes up in designing these MRFs and designing mature recovery facilities.

I know, I'm in the lingo now. Recycling centers or compost facilities, how do you measure to make sure that the compost you're producing is good quality and is breaking things down the way it is? You need scientists and master composters for that.

You need GIS, geographic information system skills, for people who are making maps and doing spatial analysis with data. You need data scientists that understand how to do appropriate survey methodologies, put together quality surveys, distribute them appropriately, and then do a really good analysis of it. You need people that have big ideas that are the initiators and the galvanizers that bring people together and bring ideas together.

So I do think there is place for just about every field, somewhere in the sustainability spectrum. A lot of science is needed. If you're a scientist, if you're from water quality to being a data scientist or what have you, there's just so many opportunities that you can have.

I also think I'm a big proponent for volunteering and testing the waters before you dive into something too. So if you think you're interested in recycling, go visit your local recycling center. A lot of them do tours or education days.

They're happy to answer questions for you. A lot of universities have their own recycling systems. If you are a student at a university and your university doesn't have recycling, that's a place to start and just galvanizing some students together and some teachers to say, hey, we want to make a difference and we want to have some investment here.

I think a big part of it is finding things that you care about and asking a lot of questions and volunteering to help.

That's awesome. I think you're a great person to ask this, which is how do you not make it sound like a bummer? Specifically trying to talk about positivity and motivation and mentoring and all the things that are positive about climate work and not this glacier that's falling apart and that terrible thing and finger wagging and lectures.

How do you try to stay on the bright side of the street?

I was born on the bright side of the street, so it's a little hard. It's a little hard for me to say, but I do, you know, I have, I don't know if you guys have heard of justice sensitivity. It's like an ADHD kind of trait that some folks have.

And I have found that that's something like I have. And it means like you get real emotional about injustice, either to yourself or to others. And I can think back, this is a funny little story from my childhood.

But I remember my dad coming home and he, I loved my dad. He'd come home and he'd be like, Oh, my boss was doing this. He just works me hard and does this.

I called his boss and left.

You didn't.

That was the maddest my dad has ever been at me. I just didn't. I was like, but it was right.

Like I'm right in this. Did it change?

Did it rage or something?

I definitely got punished and had to call and apologize to his boss.

That's amazing.

Yeah. And that is, I would say, as I got older, I learned how to have better judgment on when to advocate and how to approach that and what was going to be effective in work. Persuasive communication.

That's something I should study a little bit and read up on. Good old rhetoric. But that, I think, I have been in places where I've just been so emotionally outraged by these big things that feel untouchable to me and wallowed in it.

Like we had an oil spill in the Kalamazoo River when I was in early college. This was maybe in 2007 or 2008 or so. And I just really felt it.

I felt in my heart, I wanted to do something about it. And like I was reading all the articles about it. I was reading about this company and I got a little obsessed over it.

And it, but it wasn't doing anything, you know, I wasn't like helping anything. I wasn't solving anything. I wasn't contributing.

Like there was nothing I could particularly do with that incident. Like I cannot stop the iceberg from melting. Like that is just not something that I as an individual can feasibly do.

And so I really try to practice what probably a lot of therapists out there say, is to like focus on things that you can change. Like you cannot control other people, you cannot control other situations, like, and there's ways you can cooperate and have impact. And so you have to find those ways, but it is, we're playing a long game when it comes to that though.

And I think understand, just making sure that you have joy in your life in whatever way that takes. If you are feeling upset and getting overly frustrated, like finding your mindfulness breaks, going for a run, going for a walk, you know, rubbing your dog's belly, scratching your cat's ear, whatever it is that centers you, like go there when you're feeling overwhelmed and be in your moment, be in your life of just existing and try to lean on those. The other thing that I'd say is then like find where you fit in that picture.

Maybe you're not going to be, you know, directly impacting icebergs or it doesn't feel that way. But perhaps you are helping to reclaim materials back, limit the amount of virgin materials being used, and every little bit that we do has such impact. And it doesn't feel like it when we're small.

But you have to realize like the impact, like icebergs melting, these climate change issues are big because it's all these individual little decisions being made across the world.

Right.

That make this big thing happen.

A hundred thousand times a day all over the world.

You got to get down to the itty bitty things and impact those. As much as you can.

Absolutely. If your job was a workplace sitcom, who would play you?

I'm going to say Drew Barrymore.

Okay.

I can see that.

Yeah, that's great.

I am, as I've mentioned, I am a people person and I like to have good relationships. So like, I feel like Drew would be good at bringing out like the empathy and regular meetings and whatnot.

Oh, that's such a good pick. Yeah. That's so good.

Yeah. Well, we could talk to you all day, but I want to be respectful of your time. Kristen, did you have any closing questions?

I have like 100,000 questions for Amanda, so I'm going to stop it now.

Okay.

She's already been kind enough to share her time with me in the past to meet with all of my questions. So thank you, Amanda.

Amanda, any parting wisdom or things you wanted to mention?

I guess in consideration of your audience, I just encourage you to explore what other careers are out there. Because I think one of the things that limits young people is just not knowing how big and how many things you could possibly be doing. And it can be hard to put yourself out in front of stuff, but getting involved in your local community, your local government, the university you're attending, getting involved in a more active nonprofit group that's working on these issues in your community, those are places where you're going to make really good connections.

You're going to learn a lot. You're going to see how different fields are connected. And it'll just help you better find your fit of where you want to go and what you want to be doing.

So follow that. And when you hit the bumps in the road, just trust the process and keep going.

Yeah. I think part of the point of this is to get people to go, that's a job? People do that.

Absolutely. There are so many jobs out there. They're like, I would have never known.

You can get your SCUBA certification, and you can be a contract SCUBA diver. The water treatment facilities hire SCUBA divers two times a year to check their intake lines and whatnot, at least in Michigan because we got the big lake, so we got lines going out. And it's just fascinating that there's these different roles that you can have.

And that is why even looking like, this is what I tell just young people in my life. I'm like, look at job advertisements. Even before, try to see what they're requiring, what they're looking for.

Read the description. Is that something that you'd be interested in and want to do? Because it can be hard when you're only exposed to what your parents do, what your teachers do.

You don't necessarily know the depth of what's out there. Surfing a job board in your area just to see what else is out there. Plug sustainability into LinkedIn in your area and just see where jobs come up.

And the point of the sitcom question is, you're exposed to jobs that are on TV.

Yeah.

All the cop shows and all the lawyer shows and like, but there's other jobs.

Absolutely. And that's also why I tend to like, I answered that question earlier with like, develop skills. It's not necessarily about your degree.

Because I'll tell you what, my degree was in geography and urban planning when I was in undergrad. And I can't tell you how many people are like, you're not going to do anything with that. What are you going to do with that?

We already have maps for everything.

I'm not making a new map anymore.

It's unfortunate because when you're young, and you hear those things from an adult, you're like, oh, adults know things. You don't realize that as an adult, you only know some things until you're an adult.

Yeah.

And so those things that people say when they're negative like that, they can impact you and make you think, oh, yeah, I guess I should go and just be a teacher because I'm going to be a teacher at the end of that degree. Which, like, be a teacher. You want to be a teacher.

Like, we need teachers to go out there and do that. But at the same time, like, you can do these other degrees. Like, we have economist, people with economics degrees that are on our team.

We have engineers that are on our team. We have environmental science majors that are on our team.

Wow.

We have geography majors on our team, not even just me. I have, there's more of us in there, having people with communication, oh, communication skills, just pick up some comms, books, read some things on marketing and communications and persuasive comms. Those are also things that I just think are skills we all could really use a little bit more in our daily life.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I feel like people just like, I think a lot of problems raise because people are in an uncomfortable situation, and they don't have the tools to navigate out of it. And just like, I'm going to blow this up.

Personal or professional or otherwise, like, I don't like feeling uncomfortable. I'm going to slam doors and stomp out of the room and stuff.

Yeah, and that's just not having like communication tools, you know?

Yeah. Communication tools. If you're going to be in public service, de-escalation tools.

That's where I say bringing empathy in is important because in a lot of public service jobs, you're encountering people of all different backgrounds and knowledge and who knows what. And when people get upset, like, some people can't control it. Like, they just they don't have that emotional regulation.

And you as like the authority or you as the person, like, you can control that situation a lot better than you think you can by being calm, by mirroring back. And that's true, not only in that, but working with other people if things get contentious, like just developing those interpersonal communication skills. Yeah, it's killer.

It can help you so much.

That sounds like a great place to leave it.

Well, thank you all so much for having me. It was really a pleasure to chat with you, and I was always happy to answer questions or help people along their sustainability and climate journey. Awesome.

I love it. Anything you wanted to plug, mention?

I'm mostly active on LinkedIn, Amanda Mallory Moore. You can get me there. And you are welcome to follow us at Resource Recycling Systems as well.

We're always putting out information about our projects and collaborations that we have, whether it is our next cycle programs and what's happening there, or some of our new partnership programs to help increase recycling and how many materials get recycled.

Well, a real pleasure. Great to see you again. And thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

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