029 - Michael Orbank

In this episode, we’re joined by Michael — a sustainability leader working at the intersection of construction, materials, and the built environment. Michael shares how his career evolved from an early interest in sustainable design to leading efforts that tackle one of the industry’s biggest challenges: reducing embodied carbon in buildings.

We talk about why the materials we use in construction matter, how the industry is beginning to rethink waste and circularity, and where real progress is happening today. From certifications and policy to emerging tools and technologies, this conversation explores how sustainability professionals can drive meaningful change in the built environment.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn. 

Resources mentioned: 

• MIT Energy Efficiency Newsletter
• Carbon Leadership Forum case studies 
• USGBC and associated certifications 
  • LEED GA
  • LEED AP 
  • TRUE
  • WELL

Organizations mentioned: 

• Carbon Leadership Forum 
• Built Environment Plus 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kiersten: Hello, hello Pod people. We are back today with Michael Orbank. He works in construction as the sustainability manager for the Northeast at the STO Building Group. A passionate advocate for circularity and zero waste. Michael has worked throughout the northeast and beyond to understand, categorize, and reduce the immense carbon and environmental justice impacts of traditional C&D waste disposal. A founding member of the Carbon Leadership Forum of Boston, he chairs the reuse and decarbonization group and has contributed significantly to the promotion of circular construction and deconstruction advocacy, as well as pilot efforts throughout New England. Seeing the built environment as one of the most important sectors to combat the climate crisis, Michael hopes to push commercial construction to a cleaner and more sustainable future. Welcome, Michael.

[00:00:46] Michael: Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:00:47] Kiersten: Glad to have you. So the classic question that we start all of our guests with is really what's your story? But having heard a bit of your career story in the past, I would love for you to tell us a bit about where you started and then the steps you took to introduce sustainability into your early roles.

[00:01:04] Michael: Sure. I didn't even start in construction. I know a lot of people have a quite a long journey to get to where they eventually get to. But I started in environmental remediation out of my undergrad and there wasn't much satisfaction with what I was doing. There's a lot of questions on environmental impacts.

If I'm doing soil water sampling for gas stations, what's the future? If that's electric cars, I was told by my boss at the time, don't worry about that. And I don't like that kind of thing. Because, not that I'm worrying about it, but I always wanna be pushing forward. So I went back to school to get a master's degree.

Ended up falling into construction management and then from there started taking the traditional construction path, but that environmental itch kept scratching. So I, I eventually felt the need to do more than just typical construction project management. And then realized that living in the Boston area, there was actually a growing movement on kind of construction sustainability. So from there, I just started asking people around, Hey, you have a role, whether it's a name, sustainability role, or otherwise, how can I do what you're doing? Ended up informationally interviewing probably about, 20- ish professionals in the region and then started I was working at a, construction management firm right outside the city of Boston.

Then ended up using all that information to make a role in sustainability, the first that company had, from there just kept pushing, asking questions and kept growing the role.

[00:02:21] Aparna: Interesting. So you talked to a lot of people. You were able to find this space that combined your interest with environmental, sustainability work and also your background in construction. Can you tell us about, after that first role was created, you've spoken to these people, you found a spot for yourself.

How did that actually play out?

[00:02:38] Michael: Sure. Yeah. So construction is time and money. If you've ever worked with a general contractor, a construction manager, it's all about knowing the schedule, knowing about the lead times, the costs. We wanted to deliver exactly this for our client and de-risk everything and, unless you're a really big player in the sandbox, a lot of time, a lot of risk aversion means that making a new role like this is gonna be highly scrutinized.

And is there gonna be a return on investment? Is this what our competitors are doing? So I started pushing hard and, okay, here's a exactly what our competitors in the market are doing. Here's the analysis of all the different business sectors looking at green building certifications and everything that was done.

And then actually COVID hit which was tough. Everyone had to work from home and only being extremely new in the role, when everyone was on lockdown was a bit hard. But I eventually got into it, really started trying to do a lot of innovation. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I saw others doing things.

Piloting site separation of waste. Being as much into LEED as I could be. Documentation. They only had one LEED job at the time and I didn't really even know what I was doing, but I would ask around and just dive right in. Before long, there was a push of, Hey, we like that you're doing the sustainability stuff, but we actually want you to go back to project management to start building projects some more.

And the ship had left the dock at that point. I felt like I couldn't go back. I was so invested. I had started a green team at the company. And I just, I kept pushing until I reached out to my mentor, got her old job as she was moving up and became, a fully fledged named sustainability professional.

[00:04:06] Kiersten: If I'm understanding correctly, and I wanna recap 'cause I think this is something unique that we haven't yet had on the pod. You were interested in sustainability and you actually pitched to kind of create the sustainability role outside of your project management responsibilities. Is that right?

[00:04:20] Michael: Correct. Yeah. In my informational interviews I asked a very bold question of so what do you do? Name sustainability person, whether it's a director, manager, coordinator ,roughly what's your salary, and how do you bill? Because I knew those questions would be asked to me. So I had this whole big spreadsheet.

I came in with I talked to the CEO and the COO as, as confident as I could as a 24 or 5-year-old professional who I've been working for two or three years of the company. And at the time I was allowed to be assistant project manager and sustainability lead I think was the first role? Simply because I really wanted to do it. But I also saw the writing on the wall, whether it's in Massachusetts or in the building profession on a greater scale. It just, there's a lot of things that you can call 'em sustainability, but I'll just call 'em innovation.

When you start asking the questions, what I found is you fall into these answers that sustainability, or circularity or decarbonization answers that oftentimes the construction industry doesn't like t o acknowledge or just say, we're not gonna think about it. So more of those started popping up and I knew that I couldn't really go back and I had to find a role that, not only I could be comfortable in and stay with just doing sustainability work, but also I could start trying to answer those questions that I kept hitting.

[00:05:31] Kiersten: Yeah, I love that. I just really wanted to call it to because I think that's really unique, right? We've had people ask us, and that's part of why we started the pod, like how do you get into a sustainability role? There are many ways, but you took the way of forging your own path.

And so once you got a little bit of that experience, it sounds like you were able to move up into a fully named sustainability role with that mentorship connection. From there, tell us where have you been since? What were your titles and where are you now?

[00:05:56] Michael: So I currently work as the sustainability manager for the Northeast US at STO Building Group, representing Structure Tone and Pavarini Northeast Brands. The STO building group is a conglomeration of 13 general contractors throughout the US and Europe. So really big. But I'm really in the northeast, other than New York City, I'm your guy. A lot of projects, whether they're LEED projects other green building, ILFI, that's probably about half of my job. And really what I can build towards. And then the other half is, I'm very happy to say innovation. Can I look at decarbonization through circularity, through landfill diversion, through networking and cooperation opportunities to just start figuring out some better ideas simply because I don't like a lot of the answers that construction gives and maybe other sustainability professionals feel this way in the design or engineering or even kind of owner side.

But, if I ask a question like, why are we throwing this out? And the answer is, don't worry about it or just cause or why are you asking that question? That usually doesn't sit very well, especially when you start doing the analysis on it. You start picking apart all the layers and you realize, well, we've always done this.

We're gonna keep doing this. We're not gonna look at the costs of it, whether it's the financial costs, whether it's the carbon costs, whether it's the environmental justice costs or where the land where the waste i s going by landfills or incineration. So I'm lucky enough to have enough of a leash to go outside of the project, work enough and use that to come back and enrich the projects and enrich the employees that I'm working with my colleagues.

Yes, I can help you on you LEED project, but if you have an owner that wants X, Y, Z, I'll help you with that as well. Or I see that the specifications are calling for, enhanced Construction Waste Management Plan. I'm a guy. Let me help you with that. This is what we're piloting here. We can do that as well.

There. 

[00:07:38] Aparna: My last job before working with Kiersten was in construction and project management actually, and I worked for a company here in DC. We did a lot of historic buildings and the waste problem that we're talking about right now that you're highlighting was kind of the fire under my butt to go to grad school and say, how do I make change here?

Because it seems like you're up against a brick wall every single time. So that's really incredible that you were able to find a way to integrate that into your day-to-day and just start asking maybe the right people, the right questions, and essentially just asking enough times that someone was like, let's give him a shot. Let's see what he's gonna do here.

I think it's a really good story, especially for younger folks in their careers, and if you're interested in sustainability, keep talking. So you mentioned something earlier about a mentor whose role you ended up taking at the construction company and someone who had really helped you find your feet in sustainability.

We'd love to hear more about this mentor how both of you fostered that relationship. Do you guys still hang out today? Give us the lowdown.

[00:08:36] Michael: Yeah the mentor I'm speaking to, her name's Jennifer Taranto. She's the Vice President of Sustainability at the STO Building Group. She's currently my boss. But a couple years ago when I was not with STOBG in Stucturetone I would just reach out to her. She was one of the 20 ish individuals that I reached out to.

And a couple of them at the time, now, this was 2018, 2019, they not only had said, okay, here's the answer to your questions, but a couple of 'em said, "Hey, keep in touch this is a good thing you're doing. We need more kind of passionate, curious professionals like yourself."

And that's actually something that if ever I'm reached out to now I try to keep going and keep pushing that forward. Because Hey, if you're gonna take the courage to reach out, and p ush forward your career or have that vulnerable moment. It's one thing to have those questions answered.

It's another thing to be okay. Bye. Like, good luck. I don't wanna talk to you again. So I was really blessed to have a couple individuals who were sustainability directors or managers at the time. Continue to say, "Hey, let's keep the conversation going", including Jennifer. And like I said, when I was at my former position when they said, "Hey, we want you to come back to project management."

I reached out and I said, "Hey, I'm really frustrated. What would you do in this situation?" And she said I would offer you a job if you are willing to take it because I need this role filled. Which once again, I'm very privileged and very blessed to happen. It's not always gonna happen. But if we're talking about people who wanna get into sustainability roles and want to grow from a normal building role to a name sustainability it's all about making those connections and asking those questions because a lot of these roles a couple years ago didn't exist.

And I was lucky enough to just make the connections and be curious and push forward enough that when something did open up, I could fall right into it.

[00:10:13] Kiersten: Absolutely. There are so many strong themes here of you taking action, taking the right steps. So I hope people are listening and recognizing, like you've said, talk to people, have a mentor make the case and do so intelligently. So when you were talking to people, it was not without aim, right? You mentioned some very specific questions you asked that were able to inform the stakeholder conversation you used to create a job.

 If you were allowed to implement a major change, to accelerate energy and sustainability in today's market, what change would you choose to make?

[00:10:44] Michael: So I know the answer and I'll try to keep this concise because I could go on forever about this. Circularity in the built environment is something that is, is becoming of more interest. People are more excited about it. Designers, okay, how can I do this? Spec writers wanna know, okay, how can I change my specs?

There's all this bubbling up interest, but if I had the magic wand, I would create the circular economy we desperately need and aren't moving towards. So there's all this interest. If I go into a space right now and I say, I want to take this, that, this, if I see all these finishes, if I can see this furniture that can be reused, if I can try to pull all this out, there's no place to go and put it. There's a one-off nonprofit here. There is this small little solution here. But, oh, they don't really do too much, or, oh, they aren't really developed, or, oh, there's no, no storage space.

So if I had a magic wand, I would make storage space and a software solution that linked everything. It's fairly sophisticated, but if I want to take this chair, this table, this w all covering and actually have it be put into a new job. There needs to be all these assurances and all these guarantees because we are such a risk adverse industry that I would wave my little magic wand. I would make the software, I would make the storage solution, and I would say, use this right here. Take these materials from Job X, put them in warehouse y, and then have software solution Z. Say, I have this many quantities. I can guarantee it's be there for three months from now so we can actually start closing the loop on a lot of these materials because while there's a lot of interest and a potentially infinite supply, there is extremely little demand and that throughput just isn't where it really needs to be and it's frustrating. I'll say, as someone who wants to push this, but I feel like we're this close in a lot of places. Call it Boston, call it California, call it New York recently. We're this close and we just have to keep trying to push forward to show that it is possible to have everyone else also maybe have their magic wand and start moving one or two things.

So everything just starts aligning.

[00:12:40] Aparna: I feel like I'm looking into a mirror. Honestly, this is something that I've had a conversation with verbatim, the old company, different subcontractors, right? And the argument is always, it's too expensive. Who's gonna pick? You for the storage, how are we gonna keep track of things? And it's like there's a thing called a QR code now where if you can really take us a quick scan, upload it to a system.

I feel like there's a lot of discreet thoughts all around the same topic. And I'm really curious if, I don't know, maybe one of the listeners, but if there's someone who's gonna pick this up and do it, because I know myself, I don't have the like coding expertise to do this, but I think we have the critical thinking expertise here on this call and we know step A, step B, step C, and like what we'd like to see in practice having been on both sides. Good answer. I agree. Plus one. I would love to second that wand wave.

[00:13:25] Michael: Yeah, and I'll just add, there's solutions that are almost there. And I'm not gonna call 'em half baked 'cause that's a, that's not what I wanna call 'em, but let's take a Rheaply - it exists. It is. It's more than half baked. I can put materials on there, but it ends up turning into kind of like a Craig's list and there if there's certain levels of sophistication that needs to happen because I don't know any owner or any designer worth their salt that's gonna say, okay, I can see this kind of grainy photo of all of these materials that says it last checked on two months ago in this location. I need to have more sophistication. So rheaply exists right now. It can evolve.

Building Ease is a software that exists right now. But really the focus is on procurement and not on reuse. So it needs to kind of catch up.

And there's also a I believe Danish software called Palats, P-A-L-A-T-S, which we hosted on the CLF reuse in deconstruction group last year and it looked great, but it's really European based and they're trying to look for help. And they had the QR codes and had that string and almost that product passport. So once again, we're so close, I just need some sort of software solution, some sort of AI solicitor that I get a hundred emails a day to actually listen and understand and work with me please. But once again, like I said, it can be frustrating.

[00:14:38] Kiersten: So funny, usually monopolies don't do much good, but in this case it, it is kind of what we want, right? Like just one monopoly. So everybody knows this is where you go to look for things. If you are on the sourcing side, and then from the kind of donation, reuse, whatever side, like can you just drop it in? I felt that way in my own life because. I get rid of so many things through our Buy nothing group, but there's some things that just don't move. And I know they're not gonna move at a thrift store either, but I can't bring myself to throw 'em away. So , I often find myself wishing I could just have a giant warehouse and like tinker all day and have everybody know that they can give me their scrap stuff and everybody else know they can come and get scraps for, you know, crafts, building, whatever it might be.

But it is funny how reminiscent this is for all of us.

[00:15:20] Aparna: Do you have a Tupperware Tower in this warehouse of yours? Because I would love to have a Tupperware Tower tm.

[00:15:25] Michael: There you go. It's everywhere and someone will find a use for it. 

[00:15:28] Aparna: Exactly, exactly. I never throw away those restaurant Tupperwares. So that's some way that Kirsten and I both practice sustainability in our daily lives. I think some might call us the H word, the hoarders, but we call ourselves innovative and creative. So Michael posing the question to you, how do you practice sustainability in your daily life?

[00:15:46] Michael: Sure. It's tough because I feel like we, if I want to be more circular, if I want to be more material conscious, we do not live in a circular economy or a circular society, we're very linear. The take, make waste I think permeates a lot of what we do. So my wife and I just try to, what exists right now?

What is possible. We recently, so we have a 15 month old and baby clothes is something that is just you want this small piece of fabric that's $15 and it doesn't make sense because if a shirt. Four times the size is only $30. Why is a quarter of the material $15? And it just feels bad because they're in these clothes for a day, seemingly.

So what we've tried to do is really just thrifting has become something that is, is how I get my clothing, how I get this, how I get that. And that has really become something that we've tried to do simply because the textile waste is just egregious. If you wanna go more towards our own waste we have a, composting solution out in here.

It's called the Black Earth Compost. We love it.

 I try to stay away from the Trader Joe's infinity plastic wrap to everything. It can be really good. But 14 layers of plastic later, it feels real bad.

And then really living off those buy nothing pages. I said earlier, I really want a building material marketplace. It's a bit more developed, at least there is a Facebook buy nothing and a through the town that I live, there's a kind of a swap shop at the at the dump that we try to use a lot. But once again, I'll have to say, it's not easy to practice what you preach oftentimes because the system is just not set up that way at all.

It wants to be that, hey, buy it for cheap. There's no manufacturer takeback, there's no extended produce responsibility. Good luck. Figure it out yourself. And while that's slowly starting to change, you gotta do what you can, given the circumstances.

[00:17:31] Aparna: Very much so! And I think that sounds like a very idyllic future of us being able to swap all these resources, textiles, baby clothes, weeks five to 10, 10 to 15. Right. That would be so nice. Listeners, we're gonna let you guys ruminate over all of these things.

Maybe start thinking about what you would wanna swap-a-roo, and we're gonna take a very quick break.

All right, listeners, welcome back from our quick break. Hope you have some time to ruminate and we're excited to get back here with Michael Orbank.

Michael, starting off strong. You are one of the people on the forefront of built environment circularity. So can you define what that is for the listeners?

[00:18:06] Michael: Sure. Circularity is really the, everyone knows the little and recycling bin you have the three little errors that kind of go around. They're making circular motion and the hierarchy is obviously reduce, reuse and recycle. So reducing is always something we would love to do, but reducing in construction and design is the antithesis of oftentimes what we're trying to do.

So what's the next best thing? Reuse. And to be circular is to go against what I called earlier linear, the take, make waste. You can take a straight line from the manufacturer where it's extracted into the building into a landfill most oftentimes or waste to energy, burned. What circularity hopes to do is to beyond recycling, really take those materials after their logical first end of life use and put them back into the system.

Where they don't have to be deconstructed back into parts or really melted down or broken down where recycling is, but completing this cyclical pattern as much as possible until the material either can't be used or needs to be recycled or down cycled. Having that kind of circular path is something that I've been really curious in construction material for the past couple of years and really trying to become an expert on 'cause it's a niche that I see that, I don't understand why it isn't kind of used more often or exploited because there's so many benefits to this niche that people just don't think about.

[00:19:25] Kiersten: Yeah, I found very unsatisfying answers when asking the question, why is the system not this way? I think the most common refrain is, oh, it's complicated. I am curious if you have any misconceptions about sustainability in your industry, because this does kind of speak to one, right? Like it is a misconception that it's too complex to do circularity. It's just we're not set up for it right now. If there's any that you would like to address and, hinting, maybe there's something around waste to energy and its place in or out of the circular system that you might wanna share.

[00:19:55] Michael: Once again, I could go on forever. I'll try to be fairly concise. The two I would bring up is one. I think a lot of our industry thinks we're doing a great job as is. So I work at a lot of LEED projects and LEED V4 and 4.1 has the, hey, make a construction waste manage plan. Get these pieces of paper from these construction demolition waste processors, CD processors that say they're doing a really good job. The problem is there's no scrutiny. So a piece of paper I could reach out and get any number from a processor because they are just used to giving a number and saying, look at what we're doing, but there's no substance to that number. And, oh, what am I gonna do? There's an ethics question there. There's a moral question there.

Another item is you had mentioned waste to energy. Waste to energy is really good in theory. If we have really good, a really good ability, to know exactly what we're taking in- I can't do anything with this either it's ruined or contaminated. I want to turn it into energy to offset fossil fuels. That's great. But we're not Europe in the US. So what we have is not as efficient, not as convenient, and oftentimes has a really bad reception of the public because it isn't developed enough. It's the redheaded stepchild. So what we're doing with waste right now is not it.

And I would say the second misconception is that all of these things, circularity reuse, I would even say manufacture takeback programs are fundamentally so much more expensive. They're gonna be so much more costly. They're gonna be so much more time on the schedule. We haven't planned for this. And the problem with that is, no, you haven't planned for this. And what are construction managers, but professionals who plan? We're trying to plan it all out. The logistics, the execution, all of this, the procurement of it all. So the misconception that, that really boils my blood, which I hope to in my role and my expertise and talking to whoever's on the pod here is: plan for it!

\ You want a solution, get in early enough and say, " No, we're going to do this solution. We're going to use this manufacture takeback program. We're gonna work with Shaw, we're gonna work with Parquette, we're gonna work with any of these number of manufacturers. We'll give it back to them."

So that's exactly what we're doing. Or I'm gonna work with my field team. I'm going to make sure that we're not co-mingling all this waste together. I'm separating as much as possible, the clean gypsum and wallboard. I'm separating these metals, these cardboard, these plastics, because if I can find solutions for them and I can plan it out, I already have two dumpsters a week, five dumpsters a month coming to site. The amount of waste is still the same. If I have any amount of room and I can plan for it, why not separate this out? Why not go to places with lower tipping fees where I know I'm diverting from landfill and I can recycle or can reuse? So the idea that it's fundamentally more expensive and time consuming to be circular, It might be if at the very last moment you say, Hey, could we do this? It's always gonna be more expensive. But if you plan towards it, if you look into the future and say, I want to do X, Y, and Z, you'll be able to do it oftentimes for cheaper simply because it exists. And why didn't you do it before?

[00:22:51] Aparna: Michael, could you define what a tipping fee is for us and the listeners?

[00:22:55] Michael: Sure. So if I have a big 30 yard dumpster full of construction and demolition waste, I bring it to a construction and demolition waste processor. They weigh it so they know that okay, the whole load came in right now at six tons. Okay. And then they dump it all on the ground, and then as the dumpster leaves, they weigh it again to, to tare it. And, okay, it came in at six and a half, the dumpster's leaving is about one ton. I know that I have five and a half tons of waste. The way that you get rid of waste at the US is that you pay per ton. So that tipping fee is a, is a. Cost per ton that the CE processor is charging. Now they're all different, all across the US.

I'll speak to what I know mostly, which is the Mid-Atlantic into New England. But right now, if I want to co-mingle everything, not separate anything out, have a bunch of just dirty, wallboard, broken up glass, broken up, this or that- a co-mingled tipping fee in the New England area is about $180 a ton. There's a plus or minus there. If you go to places like the Midwest, that'll go down a lot. Because there's more landfills, there's more space to just dump it all and not look at it all. So it could go down to say a hundred, maybe a little less than that. So tipping fees are oftentimes a just accepted fact in construction.

It's a line item. I know that I'll generate roughly this amount of waste because I have this many square footage and the projects going this long. I'm estimating that we'll have a hundred dumpster pulls at five tons each. the math goes all the way down.

Tipping fees can help circularity and help sustainability by saying, okay, I said earlier, I'm going to separate that waste. I'm going to have all my clean gypsum wallboard. I'm going to put it all in these hampers and this dumpster's just clean gypsum wallboard. This dumpster is just metals as it goes out. Metal. If I have a 30 yard dumpster of just metal and I take it to a scrap recycler, or a lot of times a senior processor, they're selling that anyways because they wanna make money anyway they can. So instead of $180 a ton for tipping fee for scrap metal, they'll buy it back at $220. So all I have to do is go outta my way to separate it. Clean gypsum wallboard in a lot of places. Instead of that $180 tipping fee, suddenly you see $110 per ton tipping fee. Cardboard oftentimes is a $0 tipping fee. So you really have to look into and reach out to the CDE processors to say, "Hey, if I put in the effort and I can make a partnership with you, can I save money on this?"

And what you realize is you can, because the waste becomes less expensive to get rid of and often at times it. Can be a credit to get rid of. You just have to understand and be savvy enough to have reached out and then to work with your field team to say, okay, how do we get this process as efficient as possible so we're not double, triple handling waste?

Because if we are sending it off to the processor and it's all separated, that's hunky dory. But if we spend four times as long to do it and we're moving stuff around and suddenly the labor bills go up, we're not helping either. It's about planning. It's about knowing what the costs of everything are and executing it properly.

Tipping fees being one of those really big levers you can pull.

[00:25:53] Kiersten: Thank you so much for defining it.

I have to share a realization I had while listening. Like, if you didn't know, it is kind of one of those situations where you're tipping out the dumpster or you're dumping the dumpster, and I just had to share my, oh my gosh, I never thought about the word dumpster. Is it called dumpster? Because you literally dump. Anyway, just a fun aside for folks. A little realization I had while listening, but that was a fantastic explanation in general and thank you for taking it to a 1 0 1 level for even myself to be like, wait, I just realized something.

[00:26:21] Aparna: The words are often like there's, they're self-explanatory, and we never realize it until someone says it slowly or in a different way. You're like, oh, actually,

[00:26:30] Kiersten: Yeah, it's derivative. 

[00:26:31] Aparna: I love that.

Yeah, it's a cool way that anyone can really have a sustainability impact.

You don't have to have sustainability or your job title to properly sort trash and to put something in recycling if it's recyclable. So I think that's a great practical takeaway for anyone who's listening to this and keeping on that chain a little bit.

One of our through lines here is that we believe every job can and should be a green one. Do you have any advice for folks who aren't in overtly sustainability roles on how they can make their everyday work more sustainable outside from recycling and sorting properly?

[00:27:04] Michael: Sure, carbon is huge, you look at the, what sustainability professional are trying to do: ultimately combat the climate crisis and decarbonize. But there's a lot of these items that are simply best practice that are unrealized because the building industry, especially construction is so stuck in while we've done it for this long, we want to keep doing it. I mentioned earlier asking those questions and when there is an answer that is not satisfying to keep pushing. When it comes to waste when it comes to job sites execution of items, it's just, I don't know. I've. Found my role, I found my expertise. I found all of this just by finding a niche that didn't make sense to me and jumping in.

I would say to any sustainability professional or someone who wants to be a sustainability professional to first and foremost start understanding their role. It's hard to just be a sustainability professional and say, Hey, construction industry, I'm gonna tell you what to do because there's nuance, there's little items that you might understand.

There's field execution. If you are a designer there's how things are designed and then how can they become more sustainable. So once you can have some sort of feat in what that role is, then I would start looking into the green aspects of it all, whether it is carbon, whether it is energy, whether it is what I've found to be waste and material circularity. And once you can find that. Reach out to a local networking group. One of the biggest items that happened with me in not only making my role at my former employer was finding a, what used to be U-S-G-B-C of Massachusetts, now Built Environment Plus was finding a community. Because if I was just doing it on my own, I could have made it somewhere, i'm fairly stubborn and curious, but it really took that village that already existed and reaching out and saying, "Hey, I'm not alone here." So I would say to any, anyone listening to this who wants to grow their role into sustainability, if you have a solid enough base on what your non-sustainability role is in your industry, start looking into others who either have a sustainability aspect of it all or that are interested just like you are, and find that community. Because the more that you can bounce items off of people ask questions, other professionals have done it before I think the easier it would be to understand where you can go and what the holes are that you can also jump into in those niches that you can find.

[00:29:20] Aparna: You mentioned BE Plus as a community that you found out in Boston and something else that we learned in your intro was that you were one of the founding members of CLF Boston, which is another place that I volunteer and am on the board of people that are keeping the DC hub active and engaged with the community. So we'd love to hear from you having that CLF experience, having this PE plus experience. How has volunteering and getting involved in the sustainability community through that lens impacted your career?

[00:29:48] Michael: One of the really pivotal moments for me actually was going to a conference at MIT that was called Embodied Carbon in Buildings in 2019. And it was the fledgling Carbon Leadership Forum based out of the University of Washington at the time, having just a couple experts who wanted to come to MIT. And I remember that was roughly around the time that I was reaching out to these other sustainability individuals. And I went to this conference and it was just like, there's a moment in the movie Blues Brothers where Julia, Jake looks up and a beam of light hits him and he goes like up. And it's like a realization moment that kind of felt like that moment for me of where like I had this inkling and this idea and people were talking about not only embodied carbon, but the impacts and what construction can do and what design can do.

 So from those moments, I felt like I needed to be part of this. So when there was a follow-up email of, hey, people in the area, if you're interested, I was like, of course. Yes. I, that was back before I was a homeowner and a father and I could just say yes to everything. Young people say yes to everything. 

So setting up that community and being part of that, and now volunteering a lot of my time. It's been five and a half years now, and I'm still now co-chair of the CLF reuse group. But I feel like I can't let go of it and I don't wanna let go of it. Because there's just so many good things that having these communities build and they continue to get better.

The first Boston reuse group meeting was three people. And that was fine because I wanted to talk, I wanted to have, we had someone brought in a guest lecturer. This past, January 26th was our planning for the year, and we had 43 people on the call.

I'm not saying that's every single meeting, but you grow these communities where people want to be part of, and if you're an extreme extrovert like myself, maybe that's a bit easy, but it's not easy for every single professional because they have time and they have this, but, you make a space and you want other people to be part of it because there's only so much I know and there's only so many things I'm doing and I'm just a CM. A silly GC who wants to fix the world.

But having these knowledge communities, having these networking communities, and if I'm putting in little amount of volunteering sacrifice and seeing other people do the same thing. And then a couple months later, I'm on a project with them. Not only do I have that sense of community, but also I know that, hey, they're in the know now.

So if I wanna push this little initiative, if I wanna do site separation, or if I wanna use this manufacture takeback program, I now have an ally simply because I've invested my time and I've helped grow this network of, this knowledge base. It's been extremely rewarding and something I would suggest everyone who wants to get into sustainability do simply because it's needed, it's necessary.

There isn't a rubric that says this is exactly how you should go about this. Everything's changing really quickly around sustainability, especially circularity. So you need that group, those other volunteers to help you out By putting just a little bit of your time into it.

You it's so satisfying and rewarding.

[00:32:31] Kiersten: It's. 

[00:32:33] Michael: Oh, there you go. There you go.

[00:32:37] Kiersten: we do certainly hope to be a tool, but there, as you said, there are so many ways to get into sustainability from so many angles. It is hard to know where to start. So we aim to give advice, but there's no one right or wrong way to do it. So one piece of advice I, just have to echo one more time too is: young people say yes to everything.

When I moved to Boston, I didn't really know anyone and was starting my sustainability career as well and BE Plus was such a just fantastic community for exposure, immersion, filling your cup, giving back, but also seeing that others were doing the same and you're not alone in caring about these things.

huge, huge thing there.

Jokes aside about making a rubric, we try to get really specific when we can. Right? So are there any certifications or skills that you think are really important if someone wanted to do what you do in this circularity construction project management space?

[00:33:28] Michael: Yeah, so I would say LEED V5 is coming out and that's going to be its own juggernaut and new item. But if you're h aving the LEED green associate is oftentimes just a first step into that and almost a formalization of, I want to know, I wanna know the basics. I want to show that I can get a simplification.

You can try to get your LEED AP but oftentimes, especially if you're in a kind of bottom or newer role it's a bit difficult to do that, but having your LEED GA, I think is great. And then, at least looking into what also exists. If you're interested in material health, I would look at WELL, if you're interested in waste as I am, TRUE through USGBC. And I think the LEED Green associate is one of those first ones to show that you're interested.

[00:34:12] Aparna: That's awesome. Thank you for naming all the specific certifications. It's really cool to hear from someone else in the space to see what you think is important and then say, alright, that's what I'm gonna ask for some company sponsorship this year.

So let's get some more letters behind our names!

You've already had such a legacy. You are a mentor. You've helped start up this volunteering group at CLF. You've obviously met some incredible people like Kiersten and left. Such an impact through these lectures that you're giving and through the spaces that you're just like, gracing with your presence. So I'd love to hear from you, Michael. What kind of a legacy are you hoping to leave behind through your work?

[00:34:46] Michael: Just that difference is possible. Like it's not, I say this often and I try to make it punchy, but like sustainability, especially circularity, it's not harder, it's just different. A lot of these green paths aren't harder. They're different. I mentioned earlier just planning towards items and thinking about things and questioning. If you get an answer that is, don't worry about it, or this is the always the way that's been done, that house of cards needs to be able to stand on itself. And if it can't stand outta scrutiny, then it doesn't deserve to be there.

I just want to have people look back, whether it's my career or I guess the movement of reuse, decarbonization, circularity as we didn't think it was possible, but motivated individuals showed us and pushed back against the juggernaut that is business as usual, and we're able to show that once again, it's not harder, it's just different. And actually it could be easier or it could be, less costly, or it could be better on the schedule simply because someone else showed us. And that's what I strive to do. I want to make what was a couple of years ago, this really expensive pipe dream, add, alt into a no, this is just what we do as best practice, something like manufacturer takeback programs.

For the longest time, were thought of these, Hey, I want to take back this 15,000 square feet of acoustic ceiling tile. I price it out. It's four times as expensive and it's gonna take four times as long. That's what I heard when I first started doing these. Now I want to go, I, this past Friday, I went through and I walked a demo job and I said, okay, I saw that all this carpet tile, all this acoustic seal tile can be taken back. Eliminate the dumpster fees. This is who we need to use to take it out for no extra labor. And this is exactly how we pilot it somewhere else. So I guess I want my legacy to be, it's possible and sustainability and circularity should be best practice.

We just have to realize it.

[00:36:37] Kiersten: We've been a little short on puns, so I have to add, you said acoustic ceiling tile. That sounds hard. All right. All right. To wrap us up, we love to get book recommendations, documentary or other resources from our guests. So are there any favorite books, shows, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, whatever that you would recommend to our listeners.

[00:36:59] Michael: So this is gonna sound really weird. I'm not a huge book person, but I'm a really big technical review study research reader, I guess you could say. There's an MIT energy efficiency newsletter that's been out for the past couple of years. I like LinkedIn, not for the, Hey, this is how you do B2B sales.

But like the people who are posting, Hey, I tried this pilot. This is how I did it. Here's a case study on it. I work with CLF all the time and I read nearly all of the case studies and benchmarks that they've put out. So I know that a lot of times there's designers especially love their books and their sound springs and their new age, all this.

I get that and if I need to, I'll read them. But I'm a huge fan of reading what's new, what's innovative, what's possible, and then integrating all of that.

Then at the same time, if I do need to veg out on the couch recently I've been watching a show called Pluribus on Apple, about what happens when humanity turns into a hive mind? Terrifying. But also pretty cool to see what happens when people put all their stuff through the other side and say, Hey, I wanna work on this goal, and we can do it.

So yeah, so I would say read research if you want to know what's possible, and then please veg out because, you'll get overwhelmed if you don't.

[00:38:07] Kiersten: Absolutely. Yeah. Again, no wrong answers here. We've had folks say, I don't like to read, and we've. Had folks say, I like to read, but only if it's like a fairy story, which we, we both enjoy indulging in occasionally as well. You just need that bit of escapism, I think.

But we will look up that MIT newsletter listeners and have that linked. Can't really link the case studies, but you know what to do. Go to LinkedIn, do some keyword searches, follow some people. Find your own case studies to read and then maybe veg with Pluribus on Apple.

 Thank you for absolutely everything that you shared today, Michael. It was great to reconnect.

[00:38:40] Michael: Yeah, happy to be part of it, and like I said great speaking to you two. And if I inspired a single person to try to kind of push towards sustainability, I suppose circularity job well done.