This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kendon Jung, a Senior Global Futures Scientist and the Manager of Zero Waste Enterprise Design, both at Arizona State University. Kendon is also Chair of the Sustainability and Resiliency Commission for the City of Tempe, Arizona. Kendon talks about how he initially became interested in the field of sustainability, why zero waste matters and the importance of defining circular economy within academia, and the most important thing that individuals can do to lead to a more sustainable and regenerative future.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kendon Jung, a Senior Global Futures Scientist and the Manager of Zero Waste Enterprise Design, both at Arizona State University. Kendon is also Chair of the Sustainability and Resiliency Commission for the City of Tempe, Arizona.
Kendon is a designer of zero waste enterprises and a sustainability scholar. He received his Bachelor's in Sustainable Urban Dynamics from Arizona State University in 2013, and a Master's in Higher and Postsecondary Education in 2016. His vision is to make sustainable futures universally accessible and usable, and empower every individual to achieve their highest potential. Kendon has been on the forefront of desert water policy, global corporate social impact, and urban resiliency in three nationally recognized research centers, and is relentless in his commitment to and pursuit of sustainable solutions for all.
In this episode, Kendon talks about how he initially became interested in the field of sustainability, why zero waste matters and the importance of defining circular economy within academia, and the most important thing that individuals can do to lead to a more sustainable and regenerative future.
“An important piece of building a better future is sustained change. So, it doesn't mean you have to be Captain Planet. It doesn't mean that you have to completely change your entire way of working. What it does mean is picking a small thing that you can work to change your habits around, and continually doing that.” - Kendon Jung
(02:21) Kendon’s background
(08:13) Successful sustainability in Tempe
(18:22) Experience in advancing sustainability outcomes
(24:33) Kendon’s moment of epiphany
(29:52) Evoking emotion to comprise climate action
(35:48) Defining circular economy within ASU
(41:12) How you can lead to a more sustainable and regenerative future
[00:00:00] Phil Dillard: Hello, and welcome to Thruline to the 4th Sector, where we're exploring fourth sector capitalism and impact investing as an invitation to innovation and changing the world. This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kendon Jung, a Senior Global Futures Scientist and the Manager of Zero Waste Enterprise Design, both at Arizona State University.
Kendon is also the Chair of Sustainability and Resiliency Commission for the City of Tempe, Arizona. Kendon is a Designer of Zero Waste Enterprises and a sustainability scholar. He received his Bachelor's in Sustainable Urban Dynamics from Arizona State University in 2013 and a Master's in Higher and Post Secondary Education in 2016.
His vision is to make sustainable futures universally accessible and usable and empower every individual to achieve their highest potential. Kendon has been on the forefront of desert water policy, global corporate social impact, and urban resiliency in three nationally recognized research centers. He is relentless in his commitment to, and pursuit of, sustainable solution for all.
In this episode, Kendon talks about how he initially became interested in the field. Field of sustainability, why zero waste matters, and the importance of defining circular economy within academia, and the most important thing that individuals can do to lead to a more sustainable and regenerative future. Now, please enjoy this interview between Phil Dillard and Kenton Jung.
Phil Dillard: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, here with Kendon Jung, Senior Global Futures Scientist, Global Futures Scientist and Scholars, and Manager at FDM FM Zero Waste. You got a couple great titles, both with the city and with ASU. I love it. Uh, Kendon, welcome. How are you doing today?
[00:01:56] Kendon Jung: Fantastic. Beautiful day in the neighborhood. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:59] Phil Dillard: It is. I'm hoping it's warm and sunny in Arizona. It's a little cold and rainy here in San Francisco, but you know, at least I'm not under a couple feet of snow or negative, uh, windchill. So, uh, let's jump into it.
I'm very curious to learn more about you and I'm really glad to have you with us. You know, we start, we just really try to get to know people. So, I ask the same sort of question just to start out. When people ask you What you do for a living. How do you describe what you do?
[00:02:27] Kendon Jung: Usually I'll say something to the extent of I work in sustainability and a very common follow up question that I get is, like recycling, right?
Like, yeah, uh, you could say that. I also get to trash talk all day. But really, um, my goal is helping to shape an ecosystem that empowers sustainable behaviors. For every person in whatever they're trying to do. So, okay,
[00:02:55] Phil Dillard: other follow up question that probably more experienced people ask. How do you define sustainability?
[00:03:01] Kendon Jung: Sustainability, I think, has a ton of different kinds of definitions depending on who you are. For me, simply put, it is meeting the needs of the present without impacting the needs of the future. And really that goes into thinking seven generations from today. And how you are improving or strengthening the health outcomes of those by what you're doing today.
[00:03:29] Phil Dillard: Super. And I definitely want to get into that and how that works into the day to day life of sustainability at a city level and how you're advancing that practice with some of your academic work. But first, let's talk a little bit about you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got involved in the field?
[00:03:48] Kendon Jung: So my story is I am a child of two parents that were children of teachers at the university. So education and a thirst for learning has been baked into who I am as a person. And my father was an environmental science and math teacher at a high school. My mom was a kindergarten teacher and really focused on outdoor education as a a learning tool.
And my grandparents both ran a summer camp when they weren't teaching at university. So it felt very natural for me to find my place in the sustainability world. And it just so happened that the first school of sustainability at Arizona State was right in my backyard. I literally could by 12 minutes get to school and, and work towards my degree.
So finding my place there felt very natural. As well as how it was embedding systems thinking. I love puzzles, I love playing SimCity, looking at all of the different ways you can connect and build these strong communities. And that kind of started my exploration into these wicked problems. Like climate change that exaggerates extreme flooding or extreme heat and the ability to work on this as a puzzle was just absolutely fascinating and fulfilling and I haven't left since.
That's pretty
[00:05:20] Phil Dillard: cool. So I mean, how did you get started? You get drawn into your like academic interests and then what, how did you get connected to the city in this role?
[00:05:28] Kendon Jung: Absolutely. So my undergrad was in Sustainable Urban Dynamics, which is looking at how systems are built into cities that are symbiotic.
And post graduation, this was right around four years after the 2008 recession. Future jobs for emerging professionals with a bachelor's in sustainability were few and far between. And, uh, it was a very challenging time. hit my lows a couple of times of wondering why I couldn't, uh, land a job in this space.
And it was at that point where I was looking for all of the different ways that I could practice sustainability that wasn't actually a pain gig. So, uh, I was working at Starbucks at the time. I had volunteered to be the green lead at my store. I was volunteering through the Tempe Sister Cities program to build out an environmental education component to their programming.
And it was right around then that Lauren Kuby, who was a staff member at Arizona State University, was running for city council. She came knocking, uh, for signing up or getting signatures for her ballot. And, uh, when she happened upon my parents house, my parents were frustrated. They were like, my kid is still living in my basement.
Uh, he can't land a job in this, uh, space. What do we do? And Lauren Kuby, who is, uh, staff at that college, uh, that I, uh, just graduated from, said, you know, if I am able to Join City Council, one of the goals that I have is to set up a sustainability commission that would incorporate public value into city decision making on sustainability work.
I would love for him to join this space and help bring that value to City Council. And that was my first, I wouldn't call it big boy responsibility, but it was definitely a different way of working. And That was back in 2015 or 16. I'm still on the commission since, and that has taught me a lot about how policy works, how government interacts with private industry, and how the movement from a foundational standpoint can really push a whole generation of thinking, which is really culture shift.
And that has spurred me into all kinds of other things that I really enjoy working on and I found fantastic ways of interconnecting them and, you know, again, that systems thinking, building things together and having a lot of fun doing it. Well, that's really super.
[00:08:14] Phil Dillard: You know, one thing that came to mind while you were speaking is like, if you were to explain people why Tempe is a better city.
Because it thinks of sustainability as part of its strategy for building and growing itself. What would you cite as, as examples or lessons that the different people across the city might have learned to make it a better
[00:08:36] Kendon Jung: place to live? So that's a very big question, but I do think that it speaks to how interconnected Sustainability work attempts to be, and that I like to call it the infilling of a city.
It's not the, you know, uh, expanding of a city, but how do you build more intricate connections between departments, between neighborhoods, between staff or partnered cities that together the collaborative work becomes greater than the sum of its parts. And the big piece that I've learned in doing this type of work.
Is trust building is central that you can only move as fast as the speed of trust and that infilling is the act of creating new trusting connections throughout the city. Now, whether that is working with the city council member that may not necessarily understand how a green stormwater infrastructure is advancing shade canopy, they really just care about.
how pretty their sidewalks are, or working with a staff member to understand how the international green construction code affects the way that they are interacting with businesses. All of these are helping folks to understand what they have locus of control over, to help connect dots into other areas of understanding of climate work, and then to build trust.
But specifically, to build trust in a way that you can rapidly accelerate iterations. Because we needed climate solutions 50 years ago, we are now here with the most recent COP28 work, and it further underscores that trust is central to this, and the infilling and the connections are vastly important.
[00:10:36] Phil Dillard: Well, I want to dig a little deeper into, into all that and ultimately get to like an anecdotal story of like something that you guys worked on that, that brought this to light. But there's a couple areas to kind of explore. I mean, you talked about trust. I want to first Dick talk about like you personally, as this young person coming into, you know, a first job, uh, uh, More or less, you know, your first big boy role, you say, you know, in the city and building trust with individuals to actually trust that you have an idea of what you're talking about, but then the next layer of why trust matters, why does it matter between city council person A and city council person B, or administrator X and business owner Y, right?
Because we want to get to more of like What does that really, really mean? Right? I have an idea of what that might look like, but I'm curious about how that works at FOSA levels. But let's start with you, right? My assumption You had to credentialize yourself. You had to build trust with individuals.
There's probably a lot of people out there who are in a similar situation. They have knowledge, they have a little experience, but they want to get more experience, and they want to build trust with their constituents that they hope to make change with. How did, how did you get successful in doing that?
[00:11:52] Kendon Jung: Absolutely. The part that was really challenging to acknowledge for myself, starting into this work, was I had zero control. As a commissioner, you are a member of the public, you are not paid, you are there on your own extra time. And you have no authority to
tell
[00:12:11] Kendon Jung: anyone in staff or council what they should do.
So the only thing that you have is to find a connection point that matters to that person. And to connect that to, uh, sustainability work or whatever the initiative is, uh, that you're working on at that time. So for me, it was a lot of reading between the lines. Someone may say one thing, but they mean something else.
They're not quite sure what it means, or they know exactly what it means, and they either feel embarrassed to either share that they don't know about this element, or that it is actively pushing against their behaviors, their norms. whatever those elements like might be. An example of this was with one of our city council members who is, like I mentioned earlier, very passionate about a beautiful city and they were hell bent on a particular type of tree that was being used within the downtown area.
And that tree Besides having a significant water use, was destroying the pipes underneath the sidewalks, was not surviving our extreme heat, which if you read any of our stories over in Arizona over the last summer, uh, There was incredible decimation of vegetation. And so working with this person over the last year to help them understand what tools were available to achieve their ultimate goal, which was a beautiful city, and also to help reposition their vision of what beauty means and how that can be achieved through different mechanisms.
So the green stormwater infrastructure work that we've been pushing has really been to create a funding stream for shade canopy, which is part of this council members view of a beautiful city. And then we are working towards understanding how desert plants can be Combined in a different palette combination that is unique from other cities.
And that was part of reading in between the line when speaking with this person because they had a view of what beauty looked like, but they also didn't want to become another city or blend into the metropolitan kind of backdrop. And Then the last piece of this was really using their memory that was created by what they were fixated on.
For example, the particular tree that they were, uh, protective of, the ficus, he describes through stories of, when I first turned 21, and I went to, uh, have my first drink with my father, uh, in this downtown area, that was a special moment for him. And it was less about the look of the tree, And more about where the tree was, how it was placed to build this ambiance that created this fond memory at a particular milestone.
And that helped us from this design standpoint to say, Hey, we can still accomplish this same feeling, this same memorable experience. In a different way, let's explore how these combination of tools of green stormwater infrastructure, of IGCC, of plant pallets, of the way that downtown is laid out. Let's explore how those can be repositioned that further help to create that ambiance.
That you are so fond of using different tools. So
[00:16:01] Phil Dillard: interesting, I think that's a really, really great story. I appreciate you for sharing. If I hear you right, and I go back to my days as a negotiation professor for MBAs, um, you saw his position, but you got to his issues. His position was, I wanted something beautiful, and I love these ficus trees because they're beautiful.
That was his position. But the issue really was creating the ambiance. Creating something that was unique to the city and that gave that feeling that he wanted everyone else to experience. And once you could sync with that person, once you could sync with him on his issue, you could influence him, you could share, he could, he was more open to listening to more.
about what makes something valuable to the city, right? Beauty is only one component. It's like, uh, I like to joke, if you're really focusing on health, the food you desire you can change because your body says, I don't want that bad stuff for me. I want this good stuff for me. Do you have a different definition of what's good, what a good meal looks like?
And I think you gave him a good meal in terms of what he could use as the assets for building the experience that he wanted people to have. Is that a good way to paraphrase
[00:17:16] Kendon Jung: that? Absolutely, and I think this expands into all kinds of spaces where climate and climate adaptation is going to cause us to rethink our habits, to rethink our normal way of operating or going about our daily lives, and I think is a fantastic space for us to activate a growth mindset.
What does this look like from a continual learning standpoint? What does this look like from being flexible and adaptable to change? So that whenever a shock does happen, we are less affected by it because we are already embracing a state of change. And that is Finding those, uh, common values that we have and looking towards, you know, understanding instead of stance, um, what they're actually trying to get at and, and find that, that core nugget that we can all grow on.
Sure.
[00:18:16] Phil Dillard: So the other thing I'm curious about is, a lot of times, We pull from different experiences that aren't related to the work that we're doing that allow us to succeed in, in the thing that we're trying to do now. Is there something in your background or some other experiences that helped you find a way to connect with this person over that, that interest?
[00:18:39] Kendon Jung: I think in most of the positions that I've been, I have not had the ability to force someone to do something. So in my first position, I was a coordinator. Supporting our student leadership initiatives in advancing sustainability outcomes. Now, I'm not sure if you've worked with students a lot, but it is like herding cats.
You might be able to get them to bite on something, but it's really corralling them and trying to get them to see the most common denominator. But they're going to follow whatever it is. Whatever shiny thing it is that they're interested in and your goal as an advisor is to help them see the whole picture and make informed decisions along the way.
I've also been working most recently as a manager of our enterprise design in The Zero Waste Office, which is the Department of Facilities Management. And my full role is advising and guiding how the university achieves a circular economy without having any control of budget, without having control of purchasing, without having control of how buildings are built.
So all of these pieces, like you were mentioning earlier, is practicing negotiation, finding what those common values are that You can share between whoever you're influencing and what your end climate goals are, and really find those spaces. So in those, the negotiation is really key, but what I found is the co design, which is a terminology in the design space where the designer shifts from the creating of spaces to the imagining of futures and that the people you're working with are the actual designers.
They're the ones that are contributing the information you need in order to find the most viable, progressive outcome that can be achieved. And all of those different experiences have taught me different ways of hearing what is not being said at different levels. So what are students really saying that is going unsaid?
What is a senior administrator really saying that is not being said? And to help find through that design exploration, What is behind those words, and then build on that.
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Not extremely familiar with the concept that, well, I should say, uh, experienced with the concept of co design, but it makes a lot of sense. And I think it's, it's similar to other, uh, design and development principles are about. I definitely want to get into how you dug into circular economy for the university and what that's.
How they define that. But I'm curious, just to wrap up the piece that we're really trying to get to know Kenden a little bit. Why does this work? really
[00:22:42] Kendon Jung: matter to you? For me, I think that I'm very driven to take on massive challenges and that being able to understand a web and understand how different pieces interact is incredibly interesting to me.
So like I mentioned earlier, it's a puzzle that's begging to be solved and the ability to contribute to solving these massive pieces are absolutely, uh, like fascinating to me and so much fun to work on. I also think that we are definitely not moving fast enough and to be part of the solution that helps us.
move faster, uh, is also incredibly exciting for me. And I also just get a lot of satisfaction out of, I'm probably not going to pronounce this right, but the Sisyphrus, uh, task, if you're familiar, it's the pushing of the boulder uphill. I like to think of the person not as carrying this giant weight, but enjoying the journey of once they've reached the top of that sense of satisfaction of Doing something that was Otherwise understood as impossible and being able to build trust and, uh, coalition building along the way.
[00:24:06] Phil Dillard: Sure. Well, we're fully aligned there, right? In liking big challenges, knowing that we need to accelerate our movement towards a different economy and a different approach to our engaging in our environ environment. And you know, I was reading recently in a book about psycho cyber. Kinetics that was basically talking about humans having this goal seeking mechanism.
And that once you really activate it and really engage with it, you want to be pushing that boulder up the hill. And when you get to the top of the hill, you need another hill to push another boulder up against. So it seems like we won't be out of, uh, out of hills to climb anytime soon, given the situation that we're in and the trends that we've got, but I'm curious also for the.
The trigger moment at some point for lots of people, there's a loose generalization of a feeling, but then something that triggers, like I remember when I was actually preparing something for one of the classes, bringing an entrepreneurship component into the negotiations course, the first time I saw the description of the fourth sector and the gap that was missing.
And they described that, you know, there is the There's a public sector, there is a private or government sector, there's a non profit sector, but what was missing is something that could be profit driven like corporations, that could be mission driven like non profits, but that moved at the speed of a startup and with a sort of Desire to serve a public good that you, that you get a little bit from the government.
So that fourth sector was a different unique space. And there was an aha moment for me that was like, click, there's something there, I want to explore that. And it's driven me down this path. I'm curious if you had some sort of epiphany moment, a course, a person that inspired you that said, click, there's a point where I know that I need
[00:25:50] Kendon Jung: to do this.
That is an excellent question. I would say it was not a particular moment, but a collection of even smaller moments that built this impetus to do something. The first being when I was biking to class. And my undergrad was sitting at a light in the middle of May, I think it was, waiting for it to change.
And I could feel the asphalt and the heat coming up from the ground, sitting next to a car with their incredibly hot engine, pumping even more heat. And it felt as though, at asphalt level, it was 140 degrees. It was like Oh, dear God. How can we survive if climate science is telling us that this is, is going in the, in a warming direction?
And, you know, fast forward through my degrees, I came to the realization in working with the city that despite everyone liking data and liking logic, that Logic is not going to get us to this, uh, preferred future. Sure, it provides the data to make informed needs, but we are incredibly emotional creatures, and that the ability to design for the emotional response, or to find the solution that has an emotional response, was massive.
And I believe this was, uh, the aha moment with this type of emotional response. Uh, for me, was in passing the first climate action plan, uh, for the city of Tempe. It was the, uh, first in the valley, second in the state. And the amount of conversations that I was having with each of the council members to find that emotional spot where climate advances or solves a particular emotional need that they were having or a reaction to something that was going on in the city is what got the climate action plan passed in the first place.
And that was instrumental and carried into, uh, or at least was, uh, inspired by the work we did on community building. There was many folks in our community that did not trust the government at that time. And the community engagement work that we did with businesses youth, the BIPOC community, and the indigenous population to instill their values into the climate action plan was, uh, then the second big piece for me that was like, people need to see their vision and their themselves in the future that you're trying to create.
So that's about an emotional response and, and building community values and visions into action. And then in my work with Arizona State. The complexity of this massive university, I call it a tiny city, in looking at what people respond to was a further dive into understanding, um, unsaid motives. Not to say that any of the MNOs were nefarious, but rather, in a massive institution trying to scale access to higher education, I think we're now at 160, 000, there is an incredible pressure to do that well, that creating space for sustainability work, which Even though I call it infilling, it's seen as extra work to those that are not familiar with doing sustainability work.
That you have to build trust in a symbiotic relationship with them in order to both advance goals. So it's a different way to position an emotional response. But those have been really instrumental moments in my time over the last 10 years advancing sustainability work. With
[00:29:51] Phil Dillard: that, you covered a great amount of, um Detail in responding.
I love that. I'm very curious. The thing I'm most curious about is like how you get the emotional connection with the people that need to, because each person is different. It reminds me of, um, listening to Tim Grover at Relentless when he talks about, uh, Jordan and Kobe Bryant, like looking at a Adversaries weakness and attacking that weakness.
Now, uh, I'm not saying emotionalism is weakness, but it was like the target of saying, I'm going to find out what resonates for you and I'm going to connect with you on it and use that as a leverage point to try and have you see a different perspective. Can you share any stories of like specific sort of emotions that people showed or, you know, cause what we see is.
Fear travels quickly, but it doesn't motivate people to act unless they see themselves immediately at risk. And they either freeze, or they avoid if they're, well I should say they avoid if they're not immediately at risk. But there are different emotions that could inspire people, you know, uh, pride, joy, who knows what other emotions you've seen, but like, what other things did you see that actually moved people to saying, you know what, we really should do something about this.
[00:31:06] Kendon Jung: Great question. So, the example that I'm going to lean on is in developing the climate action plan, which passed unanimously, was the first in the valley, and, uh, we used future scenarios. To help orient how people saw themselves in those futures. Futures were based on the climate science that our area is going to get much hotter, it's going to get much denser, and the resilience of our region.
is going to be paramount, since we have an incredible amount of resources that are shipped in. So, how do we design a future city that is resilient to extreme heat, that's resilient to extreme drought? What does that future look like to you on your day to day? When going through this, um, scenario building, that was how people envisioned their emotions.
In that future, to say like, what would it mean to be a business owner living in, uh, let's say 2050, where the temperatures are now at 2. 0 Celsius heating, how do I continue to sell my plants? How do I continue to provide fresh vegetables to folks in a grocery store? How do I even get people to get to my store if, uh, for example, um, I'm in a lower income area, people do not have cars, how are they going to get to my grocery store?
That type of, uh, future visioning of How do I continue to operate in that scenario and then come up with what tactics I would use to make that possible was drawing on our community's ideations of like what that looks like. So we had a youth agenda.
[00:33:00] Phil Dillard: That's visioning, and that's logical, and that's sequential of how you got there.
I'm talking about the emotions, right? Like, if you said to somebody, look, you know, it was, I felt like it was 140, it was only 110. But if it goes up 2%, then it goes to, you know, 115, 120. If the temperatures keep going up because of these implications, you think average temperature two degrees Celsius doesn't sound so bad.
But when you increase it in terms of the local implications and somebody goes, you know, I can't stand on the corner for, um, when it's 120 degrees. I can't stand in the corner of the sun. You know, what am I going to do now? What am I going to do when I'm 50? Uh, fear, right? Um, my grandfather, if you say, my aunt, my uncle, my grandfather had a heatstroke because they were sitting in the car for ten minutes, or because their car broke down on the side of the road.
The connection, the empathy. For somebody who says, yeah, I had to go get my elderly parent or because they couldn't take care of themselves because the car broke down. And then I had to take him to the hospital. Empathy could move someone to say, wow, I didn't think of that as such of a problem. But then you see things that you couldn't see, right?
Or it's like when you talk about, go all the way back to Katrina, where people said, well, why didn't those people in the, in the Ninth Ward just leave? I was like, Because they couldn't, because they were poor people without cars who depended on public transportation and they had no means to get out there.
And if you say, wow, I didn't know about that, but somebody else says, yeah, I've had that experience when I didn't have a vehicle, and here's what happened to me, it could also spur that empathy for that person. So. I'm just curious if there's other empathetic points that other emotional points that came up from the scenarios, because scenarios drive your logic, but there's something in the experience that drives your emotion.
Can
[00:34:53] Kendon Jung: you comment on that? Yeah. And that was part of how we designed the workshops with our stakeholder groups. So when we had our business agenda, we are asking our different, for example, the Tempe chamber. has a sustainability committee of, uh, companies and that in engaging with them, they were sharing stories of how they were seeing heat affect them or how, uh, for example, many of the grocery shopping folks, uh, that are trying to carry their groceries back from, um, the grocery store to their house, the visual of this person sweating in the heat trying to get their lettuce there without wilting, that that narrative is what helped drive the transit oriented design guidelines and the need of shade.
Because it was based on these stories, the stories were generated from how people were either, uh, envisioning the future as a way to transition to that preferred state, and how their community that they're directly working with, Is affected right now by those elements and that we did that with youth, uh, which that one was absolutely marvelous and the idea of Uh local food being grown in a space transit, uh oriented development, especially that the youth were like What if our parents, uh in that future state?
have to work three jobs. How am I going to actually get to work, or I should say get to class, without getting a sunburn? And that those types of stories helped to uncover what were design choices that ultimately comprised our climate action plan. Super. I'm
[00:36:40] Phil Dillard: definitely looking forward to digging more into that climate action plan and seeing where others are with them.
Quick question. We have, we have time for one more question before we go to the lightning round and the wrap up. I'm sure we could do this all day and it would be really interesting, but you talked a little bit about defining circular economy at the university. What does it mean to have a circular economy and how do you visualize that?
[00:37:08] Kendon Jung: Yeah, so our sustainability goals, uh, include eight different focuses, the circular economy one being, uh, part of those eight and, uh, from a kind of metric standpoint, our goal is to achieve 90 percent diversion from the landfill. So once it is here, making sure that it gets, uh, into the right container. 30 percent aversion from the landfill, so designing in a way that keeps waste from being generated in the first place.
A lot of reuse, take back programs, etc. And then the one that is far more difficult to, to measure is increasing the recirculation characteristics of the university. So once it's Here at the university, how is it cooked into the way things operate? How are we keeping as much material inside of the university as possible and changing its use, increasing its value, etc.
And part of this goes into also changing the supply chain of what is coming in so that the materials have high value. An example of this is single use plastics. They are incredibly cheap to buy, which is why they're all over the supply chain in general. They're also almost worthless when you are trying to sell them.
So from the recycling standpoint, if a material comes in, It is then put into a recycling container, sent to a material recovery facility, also known as a MRF, that is then sorted into pallets of material and then sold at open market to be remade. A lot of single use plastics, there is no value in selling it, and a lot of Material recovery facilities will actually pay people to take it.
So for us, that's a risk, because it means that single use plastics can theoretically be rejected by an end processor. So how are we re or changing our supply chain to purchase things that will retain its value at end of life? For us, a lot of that is Aluminum work, so aluminum cans versus single use plastic cans, and that choosing products that have more aluminum than single use plastics or other increases the value of our waste.
If you kind of think of it from a mining standpoint, we're going to mine the waste coming out of the university. So that's a little bit at a high level, but for me and the work that I do. It's a lot about culture shift, working with departments to rethink how they're, uh, purchasing for events. Are there commonalities between events that they're hosting for their students, for the community, et cetera, that we can retool simply and achieve a, a version.
space. A great example of this that is also connected to single use plastics is, and hydration, because we have a lot of students that come from the Midwest, and then right around August, September, they're like, Oh, man, it's hot. And then we got a lot of, um, dehydrated students. So, looking at the new student experience to say, Can we purchase a, uh, high quality metal reusable bottle that is part of your onboarding, your welcome to the university, and then, uh, build in refill capabilities into events across campus that are outside.
That has been the biggest gap for us. So, if you're in a building, there's about 638 refill stations across all of our campuses. But if you're outside in an event there, it's kind of hit or miss on whether there's a, a water refill station close by. So finding a mobile solution for refilling bottles and connecting it to a, uh, welcome to a SU refillable bottle.
Part of your orientation is then that infilling of increasing the recirculation characteristics, making a solution that is dynamic and mobile for students that are constantly moving, and that that work is a Like I mentioned earlier, the infilling, how are we creating new points of connection across the university that requires all kinds of different departmental collaborations to pull off.
But I do think that, especially in like scope 3 emissions, if you were to think of scope 3 emissions from a waste standpoint, That infilling is our next, is the next frontier for sustainability work. Sure.
[00:41:50] Phil Dillard: I mean, it's creating a culture where the sustainability of the system is baked into people's habits and they start thinking about how to do that a little bit more.
And then you can actually quantify the difference when people go, I used to do X and now I do Y. Which actually leads into the last question. We only have a couple minutes, but this is our kicker I always try to end with. You talked a lot about what the government. It can do a lot of what about leaders in government and academia can do and administration of big systems.
What's the most important thing that individuals can do to lead to a more sustainable and regenerative
[00:42:25] Kendon Jung: future? This is one of my favorite questions, uh, because in my friend group, um, I am the sustainability guy. And I think that that is a great way to alienate people from taking action because they can't do it perfectly.
And I know that I have my own challenges of like, man, like sometimes I'm just in a rush and I need to grab a plastic bottle because that is the only thing around. So That important piece of building a better future is sustained change. So it doesn't mean you have to be Captain Planet. It doesn't mean that you have to completely change your entire way of working.
What it does mean is picking a small thing that you can work to change your habits around. and continually doing that. For example, what is a small thing that you can do to remember to bring your reusable bag to the grocery store? As soon as you're able to cook that into your habits and routines, It's, it's a second thought.
You, you don't have to think about it because it is now part of your way of working. Let's pick something else. How do we get off of k cups? How do we try and reduce our trips? Maybe that is finding a favorite co worker and carpooling. once a week. Those small changes amount to a significant amount of change at a planet of almost 8 billion people, and that times the number of unsustainable actions that each person is taking on a daily basis.
So start small. Work to build that into your routine and continue to find other areas as you go along. Because that sustained change is what we really need, not the all or nothing.
[00:44:18] Phil Dillard: That's awesome. And it is a great way to end our conversation. Um, I'd like to thank you so much, Kendon, for your time and sharing your insights and wisdom with us. I look forward to seeing what you do in the future and definitely want to stay in touch. And, uh, learn more about the successes you guys have and the things you're learning over time because it's critically important. There's great opportunities for people to replicate the lessons that you've learned in their local communities, in their places of work, in their universities and all around. And really, thank you for sharing your time with us today.
[00:44:51] Kendon Jung: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:44:53] Phil Dillard: And thanks everyone else for joining us for another episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. We'll see you next time. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and join us each week for a new episode. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating and tell a friend. To learn more about the four sector economy, visit ThrulineNetworks.com, that's T H R U L I N E networks. com. Thanks again, and we hope to have you with us in the next episode.