Waste by Design: Multifamily Chutes, EPR, and the Case for Financial Incentives

Gerald Grant:

So municipalities are not paying the bill, therefore taxpayers are not paying the bill of that service. Correct.  

Brian Dolan:

The service of recycling the trash?

Gerald Grant:

Of recycling. Well, no, it's still paying for the trash, but the recycling has come off of the bill. Okay.  

Brian Dolan:

So I, as a homeowner in your area no longer have a recycling bill.  

Gerald Grant:

Well, we never had one anyway, but anyway, it was just in our taxes, baked in. It wasn't a separate line item.  

Brian Dolan:

I don't wanna pay for that service, so this recycling container is now being paid for by multinational thing that purchases plastic bottles.  

Gerald Grant:

Yes. Yeah, by the pros, and the pros are now represented through an organization called Circular Materials, and Circular Materials is responsible for the...  

Brian Dolan:

Circular ...  

Gerald Grant:

Circular Materials. Circular. So they're the responsible entity for the collection of these materials across the province.  

Brian Dolan:

Welcome back to the Waste Nexus podcast. This is a unique episode because I threw Charlie out. No, he was busy, and I said, "Okay, I'm not gonna pull him away from what he was doing." And today, we have our friend Gerald Grant here of Innovate Waste Solutions, and yes, I had to look down to read that so I'd get it right.  Gerald is Canadian, but we allowed him in specially just for this. I have his work visa here sealed in this envelope just for this occasion.  

Gerald Grant:

Border's tight these days.  

Brian Dolan:  

We're starting right off the bat. Right off the bat. We're just going right at it. So, Gerald, wanna introduce yourself in your mind, what you wanna cover, or what you want people to know about you?  

Gerald Grant:

Waste generalist, but with some specific background in the audit side of things. Bit of a behaviorist, I guess that helps too

Brian Dolan:

Getting your hands dirty

Gerald Grant:

Getting my hands dirty on the audit side, not just the, not just the paperwork and invoice audit, but site audits. Actual material audits. So been doing waste audits for about 15, 20 years, on top of a 30-year background working in the corporate space, the small hauler space. So I've done a little bit of everything, in the world of garbage. Been a sales manager, you know, district sales manager for the big players for a couple of years...

Brian Dolan:

Well you started out first at WM?

Gerald Grant:

No, I started out, for a small hauler that, the facilities eventually were actually bought by WM. I ended up having this full circle moment back in 2001. But I worked for this small hauler in Brampton. Which  was terrible. But it was experience. And what they say, experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, right?

Brian Dolan:

Right.

Gerald Grant:

So, yeah, so did that, and then eventually, BFI was actually my first corporate gig. Browning-Ferris, the old Browning-Ferris down in Windsor for a couple of years, and then transferred back to Toronto with BFI until their Canadian assets were bought by Waste Management. I was a Canadian asset, so I went over to Waste Management, was there for five years, built my career up doing the sales management stuff and then had a parting of the ways, 2005. Ended up with, with what? BFI Canada at that time, that was transitioning into Progressive, I think. Yeah ... in that timeline. Yeah. So I was sales manager there for a couple of years, and then went off on my own and started my firm called Spinnaker Recycling.

Brian Dolan:

Okay.

Gerald Grant:

Focusing, and this is another area of expertise, in multi-res. Because in Toronto...

Brian Dolan:

Multi, American multifamily?

Gerald Grant:

Multifamily. Yeah. Multifamily dwellings. Because in Toronto, the city of Toronto had put through a waste levy. So all of a sudden, what had been a no-cost line item for all these operators was a user-pay model.

Brian Dolan:

It was a city-provided service

Gerald Grant:

That's correct ...  

Brian Dolan:

previously free for all.  

Gerald Grant:

Free for all.  

Brian Dolan:  

Anything you want.  

Gerald Grant:  

That's it. Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

We have that in Pittsburgh and it's an interesting little wrinkle. If you are a five-unit or less multifamily, you know, apartment, you get city service.  

Gerald Grant:

Right.  

Brian Dolan:  

And in the, what is this? 2026. So in the 15 years I've been involved in this, I've run into, probably once a year, come across somehow, just either my own study or just whatever, someone calls me for advice, a building a year that calls and says, "Hey, we have 25 units, and the city services us, and we got told we need to have service privately. Can you, can you help us figure that out?" And I just give them a couple vendors to call and let them figure it out, is what I do recently. But it is comical how those things used to be run, that it was just, "Yeah, we'll pick it up. Yep."  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right? And then those things just carry on forever until someone one day goes, "Wait a minute. Why are we doing that?"  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. Well, and it was interesting because the raison d'être of, like, was here's this city, biggest city in Canada, wanting to make a real impact on waste diversion.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah.  

Gerald Grant:  

So how do we do this? Well, I mean, they didn't just step into it. They jumped into it fully with this very, very high cost, you know, in waste terms, high cost, introduction of a waste tax. Recycling's free, organic's free, bulk free, everything else is free, but the waste piece of it is where the expense lies. And all of a sudden there's all these operators saying, "What are we gonna do?" So, I happen to know the president of the apartment association, who said, "I need help with garbage. Can you help me?"  

Brian Dolan:  

Can we figure this out?  

Gerald Grant:  

All of a sudden I'm a multi-res guy  

Brian Dolan:  

Good knowledge and staying at the right place sometimes  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. Right place, right time.  

Brian Dolan:  

Now, more importantly, you said you get your hands dirty a little bit. I read somewhere that you were once a disc jockey.  

Gerald Grant:  

Ah!, Yes, I was a DJ ...  

Brian Dolan:  

So getting your hands dirty-  

Gerald Grant:  

Yes ...  

Brian Dolan:

Tell us about that experience.  

Gerald Grant:  

In high school days, you know, I had a fascination with what would've been called new wave, alt, you know, alt rock music and things like that. And our school had a cafeteria, and we had lunchtime DJs.  

Brian Dolan:  

Nice.  

Gerald Grant:  

And so I started off doing a lunchtime DJ, at the high school, which turned into DJ a few dances, which turned into, well there was these... all these various organizations that wanted us to start DJ-ing parties, and went on to start a company called Pump Up The Volume.  

Brian Dolan:  

Pump Up The Volume. Pump Up The Jam.  

Gerald Grant:  

My old, my old buddy, Mike Lucas and I. Mike built a light show and we bought all this equipment.  

Brian Dolan:  

What era is this?  

Gerald Grant:  

This is '80... '85 until '95.  

Brian Dolan:  

' 85. So crossed over to your professional-  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, I kept doing it ...  

Brian Dolan:  

world and stuff, you still did that?  

Gerald Grant:  

Kept doing the DJing until '95.  

Brian Dolan:  

How'd you give it up?  

Gerald Grant:  

Time and distance. Working in Windsor was too far to come back to Toronto and do stuff.  

Brian Dolan:  

That's so great.  

Gerald Grant:  

But it was fun. A lot of fun ...  

Brian Dolan:  

Do you still retain any of the equipment from that era?  

Gerald Grant:  

No. No, I need to rebuild.  

Brian Dolan:  

Do your kids ever ask you to do the work of DJ-ing for them?  

Gerald Grant:  

No. What they do is ask me for a list of bands, albums, you know, tracks-  

Brian Dolan:  

From the old days ...  

Gerald Grant:  

From the old days, they can, you know, learn about. Which I, which I respect.  

Brian Dolan:  

That's fine. My kids do that too. They say, you know, "Dad, back in the old days..." But guys, I'm 43. Let's not act like there were black and white television when I started out.  

Gerald Grant:  

I was all black and white television when I started out.  

Brian Dolan:  

Maybe I, maybe I teed that one up.  

Gerald Grant:  

But, yeah, DJing was a great, great period. A lot of fun.  

Brian Dolan:  

All right. Back to real work.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. Oh, damn.  

Brian Dolan:  

One of the interesting things that you and I have talked about over the years is, and I pay attention to in how you speak, given your experience of being on the sales side, given your experience of being inside the, you know, the actual waste hauling machine, and then moving over to multi-res, there's an element of designing with the end user in mind that you bring to the table that I don't know that is as... You know, I think it's out there. I think people have it, but that is one of the critical things, I think, that is tricky to implement at scale.  

Gerald Grant:  

It is. It's really hard to.  

Brian Dolan:  

Because the built world exists.  

Gerald Grant:  

Mm-hmm.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right? And so, this building is different than that building. There's an alleyway, and there's a code, and there's a, there's all these things, and ultimately, someone has to stand there and go, "How will this work for someone to go from their apartment, or their office, or whatever down to wherever to drop off whatever in the right method for this particular location and set of regulations here?"  

That's, that's basically the current world you're operating in, right? Is that accurate?  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. It's very accurate. And, it needs to be almost, like, from a waste point of view and, and nobody in the design or development space... Or not, not nobody. Sorry. There are a few people starting to pay attention to these things, but waste design is integral to building operations, right? Like, it's ubiquitous. Every unit... Like, it's one of those things that from a touch point, point of view, it's, it's up there with electrical switches and water taps.  

Like how many touches are there on materials over the course of somebody's day? And nobody looks at it through that lens. We have got all the conveniences and efficiencies for water systems and for electrical and everything else. We don't look at waste in the same way. So you look at it from a multifamily, at that unit, you know, is there space allocated for the proper management of waste? And, you know, be it under-counter or be it... I've talked about the, you know, the old milk door idea. For setting those sort of things up in a multi-res environment. Like, nobody's ever put a lot of effort into that, and so you're driving... The behavior has to be done properly in the suite based on that person's, you know, ability to manage a system.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yep.  

Gerald Grant:  

You're not applying it yourself.  

Brian Dolan:  

And which you can assume is less than ideal.  

Gerald Grant:  

Less than ideal, and so that just trickles down to being a terrible diversion rate for most places because it doesn't start at the beginning.  

Brian Dolan:  

There's a, there's a guy online that I get into an argument every now and then in my own head, I don't know if I'll ever answer him, but he'll say you, "You should put the recycling bin first." And I always say, "Oh, hey, no, you should put the trash bin first”.  

Gerald Grant:  

Correct. It's the catch-all ...  

Brian Dolan:  

Because the trash will go.

Gerald Grant:  

Mm-hmm.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right? And let the, let the person who doesn't understand the rules or is being lazy ... whatever the thing is... Drunk?  

Gerald Grant:  

Right, make the mistake.  

Brian Dolan:  

Let them throw something in the trash. You gotta make it easy for them. The person who wants to go the extra two steps. Literally one, two, to put the right thing in the right place and do the right thing.

Gerald Grant:  

So, one developer of this one, it was actually a student residence building.  

Brian Dolan:  

They're never drunk ...  

Gerald Grant:  

They're never drunk.  

I walked into the chute intake room and they actually did three chutes. Like I was, I'm overly impressed. They did three separate chutes. It's only a four-story building, so it's not that expensive to do it. But they put recycling first, and then garbage, and then organics. I'm like, "Ah." Like just a simple error, and they wonder why they keep getting contamination charges on their recycling.  

Because you invited it. That's exactly what's gonna happen.  

Brian Dolan:  

Well, an interesting piece, have you run into this in your markets where chutes are sort of going away in favor of the doorstep type of valet services?  

Gerald Grant:  

We don't see that in Canada.  

Brian Dolan:  

Not at all?  

Gerald Grant:  

No.  

Brian Dolan:  

Really?  

Gerald Grant:  

No.  

Brian Dolan:  

Is it because labor's expensive or?  

Gerald Grant:  

Labor's expensive, and we don't have the same building types, right? Because there's a lot of walk-ups. Right? And, and that's how a lot of buildings are designed in the States, especially, you know, further south where it's warmer. So you got a lot of breezeway walk-up type stuff, and that, that makes for that.

Brian Dolan:  

Is it cold in Canada?  

Gerald Grant:  

Sometimes. It can be at times. You never know. Anyway, so yeah, it's still chute oriented, but what we're seeing is a few of the folks that are better understanding the fully loaded costs. Right? there's the opportunity costs for taking up the space, right? So it's space you can't sell or rent. There's the construction cost. There's the maintenance cost. There's the chute cleaning. There's the odor management. There's the running electrical. There's blah, blah, blah, everything that goes along with it for the life of the building. And that's, that kind of assumption is 100-year-old... You want 100 years out of this building.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right. Even if you're running on a 30-year schedule, it's still a meaningful number.  

Gerald Grant:  

It's a meaningful number. So, there is a bit of a movement for some of these folks to go to what I like to call a waste lounge or a diversion lounge. So, you walk in, and it's a well-appointed space. It's like this room. It's nicely decorated, well-painted, good signage. Odor management is all in one place. Yeah. You know, you've got all this, and so it's driving behavior. It's funneling behavior into one spot, versus the alternative, which is a chute intake room on every floor.

Brian Dolan:  

So, is that room on the ground floor?  

Gerald Grant:  

It's on the ground floor.  

Brian Dolan:  

So, the tenant brings their material to the ground floor. So, it's a hybrid in a way, where we're still bringing the stuff down through a human. We're eliminating the chute to eliminate that cost, overhead, all those things. But now we've shifted that into a larger square footage on the ground floor. That's interesting 'cause the ground floor space, in my experience of being involved in design, is very highly fought over by the amenity set, right?  

Gerald Grant:  

Agreed.  

Brian Dolan:  

We’re doing a dog wash. We're doing a bike parking.  What is going on in this space that matters to our tenant that we can monetize, amenitize, get more higher rent?  

Gerald Grant:  

But I'm, but I'm seeing a lot more sort of mezzanine, fifth-floor amenity spaces, right? So if you can push that up the building envelope, then you've got more room to do these things.  

Brian Dolan:  

Have you seen ground-floor retail? A lot of cities say, "You know, you gotta have ground-floor retail”, and they sit empty for years. Are you seeing this as an opportunity to sort of replace that?  

Gerald Grant:  

You could, I suppose. I think the ground-floor retail in most of the places that I deal with, is good. They become amenities, et cetera. But it's still something else that you have to...

Brian Dolan:  

Spaces that they can actually be at work.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. But you have still have to plan around it, and that's the other piece is that, okay, now we're not only just planning the, the residential waste platform, we have to now plan the commercial waste platform,  

Brian Dolan:  

Who's going in ...  

Gerald Grant:  

Which, and you don't know who's going in there. Oh, we might have a restaurant.  

Brian Dolan:  

This was one of the times the guy goes, "We're talking to Starbucks." I said, "Okay." Yeah. " Well, Starbucks has a set of rules that they wanna follow... And they're gonna produce a lot of volume." What else are you talking to? "Oh, we're also talking to a dog groomer." Okay, well those are two entirely different use cases. And what else? "We may think about a restaurant."  Okay. So you have no idea.  

Gerald Grant:  

That's it. And those can turn, so planning for it is, is really challenging. Yep. But anyway, but at least to simplify the piece of this, whether commercial or residential, doesn't really matter, is end user engagement. Like, if you've only got, instead of a 30-story building, now you've got 30 engagement points. And let's just say you only have one chute with a tri-sorter, which is, I'm sorry, in my opinion, terrible.  

Brian Dolan:  

Tough equipment, yeah.  

Gerald Grant:  

Tough equipment to manage. You've only got 30 points of engagement to manage if you could actually engage people. Yeah. Right?  

Brian Dolan:  

30 points of failure.  

Gerald Grant:  

Versus one, and all of a sudden you're funneling behavior. All of a sudden you can not only funnel behavior, but you can engage that much more readily in that space.  

Brian Dolan:  

How do you operate?  

Gerald Grant:  

We don't have to. This is more your world, man. We get into QR code stuff, you can start talking to, you know, communicating with people about their behaviors and, and incenting, I don't wanna say punishing, but incenting, around how they engage with the system, right? Are we going to start... Now let's just say you got a deposit return bottle bill environment. Is there somewhere for people to engage with that kind of behavior? You know, Ontario, there's-  

Brian Dolan:  

And get it ...  

Gerald Grant:  

And get it and be able to, and want to be involved because there's actually a monetary gain.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah. Right.  

Gerald Grant:  

So those are the sort of things that I, when I'm talking with a developer or architect about these things.

Brian Dolan:  

You have someone who's implemented this so far?  

Gerald Grant:  

No, because it's not there, but you need to plan for it.  

Brian Dolan:  

Newly built. Yeah. Right?  

Gerald Grant:  

So make sure you've got a little bit of extra space for your waste management platform, so you can do things.  

Brian Dolan:  

That is one of my sort of, burrs in my saddle over time, is people come into the world and say, "Well, you know, we're gonna do this thing this way." And then you go, "Okay, well, what about all the stuff we've built for 100 years that's already operating this way? What are we gonna do with that?" "Oh, well, that's gotta change." "Okay, well, who's gonna pay for that?"  

Gerald Grant:  

Right.  

Brian Dolan:  

Which could bring us to a topic I think is interesting to hear about, 'cause I'm not as close to this as you are, 'cause I think you live there. But isn't Toronto going through an EPR, extended EPR implementation?  

Gerald Grant:  

Right across the province.  

Brian Dolan:  

Whole province.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. All of the single family and now multi-res is being managed. The recycling stream, the Blue Box program. Anybody residential is now going through a third party. It used to be 50% managed between the producers and the municipalities, where the producers had to pay half the bill. Now the producers are paying the whole bill, but with their own infrastructure from collection through processing through distribution.

Brian Dolan:  

So, let's say I'm the uninitiated, which, you know, if you know me, maybe you could say is true. But, walk us through just from the basics of what is the EPR, extended EPR. What does that mean?  

Gerald Grant:  

So municipalities are not paying the bill, therefore taxpayers are not paying the bill of that service, correct.

Brian Dolan:  

The service of recycling and trash...

Gerald Grant:  

The recycling. Well, no, still paying for the trash, but the recycling has come off the bill.  

Brian Dolan:  

I, as a homeowner in your area, no longer have a recycling bill.

Gerald Grant:  

Well, we never had one anyway. But anyway, it was just in our taxes. It was baked in. It wasn't a separate line item.  

Brian Dolan:  

And now this thing, I don't wanna pay for that service, so this recycling container is now being paid for by a multinational thing that purchases plastic bottles.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, by the PROs, and the PROs are now represented through an organization called Circular Materials. And Circular Materials is responsible for the-  

Brian Dolan:  

Circular ...  

Gerald Grant:  

Circular Materials. So they're the responsible entity for the collection of these materials across the province.  

Brian Dolan:  

Okay. And that's a pseudo-private organization  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.

Brian Dolan:  

But really relies on the fact that it, it has a government fiat to exist. Yeah. Right?  

Gerald Grant:  

True enough.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right. So, okay, so that exists though, and that's gonna pick up the service element of recycling materials, and processing, and selling. Okay, that whole operation on the back end.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yes.  

Brian Dolan:  

When does it go live?  

Gerald Grant:  

Oh, it is live.  

Brian Dolan:  

Oh, it is live.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, it's going. And then, I mean, overall it hasn't affected me personally. There's been some areas which have been affected more than others. We're going through some changes. You know, where in the past if you had a 96-gallon roll cart for your recycling, and you're a family of five like mine, you know, I can overflow that in a two-week cycle, right?  

Brian Dolan:  

You have all the kids signing up.  

Gerald Grant:  

Exactly. So the reality of being able to bag that material in the past as your, as your overage, you know. Capacity is a big thing, you know, my five Cs.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yep.  

Gerald Grant:  

Now you have to get a second tote. Well, I don't really wanna have a second tote 'cause I don't need it all the time. Right. So now I've got four totes, and these are big. Like, they take up a big footprint. So that's a change which a lot of people are not happy with.  

Brian Dolan:  

And, and they don't want it loose.  

Gerald Grant:  

Because it's containerized, so they don't wanna put bodies on collection.  

Brian Dolan:  

Right. And they don't want it bagged, 'cause that creates a problem downstream.  

Gerald Grant:  

Right.  

Brian Dolan:  

Which is all reasonable.  

Gerald Grant:  

It's all reasonable!

Brian Dolan:  

But this goes back to my point of, this is the goal. Right. The built world exists. Yeah. How do these two things work together?  

Gerald Grant:  

Right.  

Brian Dolan:  

So in that context, how have they defined success in this space? Is there a "We wanna go from 50% to 55%," or how...

Gerald Grant:  

It's difficult to answer the question right now, because it's muddied by some requests that I believe have been fulfilled now, that if we cannot get to those points, we wanna be able to use things like EFW as an alternative while we get better at it.  

Brian Dolan:  

EFW being...

Gerald Grant:  

Energy from waste. So we can take the offs of the Blue Box program and have them go through some sort of thermal process.  

Brian Dolan:  

And energy from waste is an interesting thing because as I understand the world, in certain parts of Europe, Japan they love it. They're like, "Yeah, this is what we do." Right? Other parts of the world, US especially, I don't know what Canada's like entirely, but we're like, "This sounds like a terrible idea. We're not sure. Maybe. Wait, it's a great idea. No, what?" And we, we can't seem to make up our minds over here.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. It's very... Where they've hybridized the systems, right? Like I look at Copenhagen, right? Gorgeous city, where they've built a year-round ski hill.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah, they have a ski hill. Very interesting, yeah.  

Gerald Grant:  

A ski hill on the trash. Yeah. That’s the best example, right? Where you've got a multipurpose usage of a space that is actually an incinerator.  

Brian Dolan:  

That has, has another purpose.  

Gerald Grant:  

But they also have fully engaged waste diversion, so it is truly residual that's going there 'cause they've got incredibly, well-engaged-  

Brian Dolan:  

But even if it's not residual, the thing that I find interesting is that there are people who say, "Well, that stuff's bad." They just have, "That's bad." Like, one of my favorite questions to ask somebody, don't give this away, don't tell the world this, but if I'm at a cocktail party and someone's like, "Oh, you're in trash," I don't know, depending on, you know, whether I've had a wobble pop or not, I'll ask them a question of, "Well, do you think that landfills are bad? And if so, why?" Right? 'Cause a lot of people have an opinion about whether something's good or bad, but they don't have the information as to why. Right?

Gerald Grant:  

Right.

Brian Dolan:  

I look at landfills as future mines.  

Gerald Grant:  

Sure. Agreed.  

Brian Dolan:  

I look at a big plastic tub, that's a future mine, right?  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

And I look at the waste-to-energy type of environment as a productive use of an unproductive item.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

Now, there, the thing I get back a lot of times, "Okay, what about the emissions?" I say, "Okay, that sounds all solvable to me. I don't know all the science." I don't know all that, but that sounds solvable to me." Right? 'Cause I live in Pittsburgh, where my grandfather used to change his shirt at lunch because the white shirt would turn dark gray by lunch. And he was working in an office building. That's how sooty and gross it was.  

Gerald Grant:  

Right.  

Brian Dolan:  

So I think that you know, I have the context of how bad things once were. Right? And how they really are much cleaner now. And look at it and go, "These things all sound solvable, and what's our..."  

To my point to you when we had breakfast this morning, what's our end goal here? What are we trying to accomplish, and how do we measure that?  And so the EPR thing's very interesting because I think there's validity to the direction it's aiming for. Hey, what do we do with this stuff, and who's responsible for it?  How do you measure success?  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  And I'll tangent a little bit. I mean, anybody that follows me on LinkedIn, you know I'm always on the Circularity piece. The circularity piece and driven predominantly across a very, very broadening swath of Western nations is bottle bill EPR, that's tied to a DRS, a deposit return system.  

Brian Dolan:  

Which have been shown to be, to my knowledge, actual programs that generate items that come back to where you want them to go.  

Cause you're putting a financial incentive in place.  

Gerald Grant:  

Absolutely. And it's, and it's, the whole problem with the-  

Brian Dolan:  

Just have to keep the Nevadans out of California. With the trucks, right? I read that, I've read those stories.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, because it's in one place and not the other, so you can be fraudulent by going across the border. I used to... I didn't do it, but I know, having lived on the Michigan-Ohio border for a couple of years, how-  

Brian Dolan:  

Michigan has it, Ohio doesn't  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, how easy it was for people. So why isn't it universal? Doesn't make sense that this is something that's at the state level or the province level. This is something that needs to be holistic. It needs to be across the country, or across North America, or whatever. Global. I don't know why we have this, you know, factioning of different systems.  

It makes no sense to me. These things need to be holistic. I get into that engagement piece because we're focusing on the producer. We're not focusing on the user. We've given the user a blue box. Okay, super, but we're not incenting them to use the blue box.  

Brian Dolan:  

Well, to them, nothing's changed, it's the same blue box they had the day before the program. So there's nothing really different.  

Gerald Grant:  

So we need to, and I'm trying to think where it was.  I was just reading up on somewhere where that the reuse piece that is just not there in any kind of disposal or blue box program, right? That the reuse piece doesn't exist. But as soon as you go deposit return, then you can support a reuse model as well.  

True circularity. Glass bottles all of a sudden have a... There's a reason for reusing glass bottles again, like we did when I was a kid. I'm sorry. Why aren't we heading back in that? Sometimes the old is good.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah. Sometimes the new's better. I don't actually want all my soda to be out of glass bottles, and I don't want all my soda to be out of plastic bottles. There are times and places I want one or the other, right?  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, yeah. Sure.  

Brian Dolan:  

I think the thing that I find most interesting is, I call it the zero-one mentality, I might be able to do this sometimes where like “well, this can never be”. You said the word never. I don't buy that. Yeah.. I'm very much a free market type of person. That way I go, "Let's come up with ways in which there's zeros, there's ones, and there's options in between." And so to your point about, okay, the blue box is the same, well, what changed the signal to that person that there's some value to this thing, right? How did this, how do you come up with a way that puts the value to them?  

Gerald Grant:  

Well, especially when it wasn't on our tax bill as a line item.  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah. There's no difference to that.  

Gerald Grant:  

It didn't disappear. Like, our taxes haven't gone down, by the way.  

Brian Dolan:  

Hey to me, in today's era, it's very simple to say, "Okay. If you take a picture of everything you put in the thing and then we validate it with something that goes in the, in the truck, okay, now we can give you back a dollar."  

You know how much people will go through hoops of hoops to get a dollar. Just for the fun of like making a game, right? You make it a thing. "Okay, I'm competing, I'm winning." And there's all kinds of that out there, and we don't put that into this.  

Gerald Grant:  

So circulate it back to the multifamily. Go back to multifamily. There is a space which has become, been so difficult to engage because there is nothing to motivate people to do things.

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah, I'm one of 300 users. It’s not my problem.  

Gerald Grant:  

Who cares, right? That's for the landlord to manage or the property manager. No, all of a sudden it's a thing. It's gotta be a thing.  

Brian Dolan:  

Behavior change is very hard.  

Gerald Grant:  

And, having, let's say, sorted thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of, you know, items. I'll give you this one. I, when you, when you get into unit count stuff, which we've done for a good number of audits now, you get into unit count stuff, and when you can tell an entity 3 million containers, right? When that's the big number ... extrapolated number from the sample. Yeah. It's 3 million containers a year in your waste stream. Then you can kinda go, "Wait a second. That's a lot."  

Brian Dolan:  

Yeah. Can we cut it in half?  

Gerald Grant:  

Can we cut it in half? Right. Understanding this stuff and understanding that if we really want to drive that, drive circularity and reduction and reuse and all that- you've gotta get everybody working towards that same goal, and understanding that they've got a fiscal responsibility.  

Brian Dolan:  

Well, and that's the place that I find that he comes back to a lot of times is how do you put a financial incentive in front of somebody that makes it they go, "Oh." So to me, I would love it if every property owner, property business had to contract for their own.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

'Cause then it's like, "Oh, I have to pay for this?" And you, when I look, when I study markets where it's a franchise market, or you have a number of supplier, or the city supplies it, there's a difference in behavior and cost structures I see in those different markets, right?  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

And I think you can imply based upon what I'm saying, that there's better, more competitive, lower pricing. They still find a way to make money. Those companies are still making money in markets where there's more competition. And that's my two cents on the whole thing. Okay, it's convenient for the government to say, "We're gonna provide this service," or "They're gonna provide this service." But to your point of, okay, what's the outcome? Does the outcome really change if, if no one's tied to the actual cost?  

Like I said, we went to breakfast this morning. We both ordered what we thought were reasonable things 'cause we both are paying for the bill in a sense, right? Well, if someone else is paying, maybe you get the nicer sausage or whatever the thing is at lunch. You go, "Oh, they have this." Maybe you get the extra glass of wine at dinner. There's that element that's human nature that I feel gets lost in some of this planning. If you don't put the bill in someone's hand, they're not really gonna care what it costs and how it impacts the bill. Yeah.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. So, so true.  

Brian Dolan:  

So to bring this home in a way, the thing that I'm most interested in in life is Pioneer Compactor. No, I'm just kidding. We're not gonna do a pitch. I just was teasing you.  

What I like to do at the end of these is a little bit of what I call lightning round, where I just ask questions that maybe are non-topic, but you have to answer with some amount of brevity.

Gerald Grant:  

Okay.

Brian Dolan:  

Be ready.  

Gerald Grant:  

That's good for me.  

Brian Dolan:  

We can challenge you. So the first question I use this a number of times is: Is the Pope Catholic?  

Gerald Grant:  

Far as I know.  

Brian Dolan:  

Okay. Do you know what college he went to?  

Gerald Grant:  

No clue.  

Brian Dolan:  

He went to Villanova, where I went. I bring this up in every podcast.  

Gerald Grant:  

Okay, I like that. All right.  

Brian Dolan:  

So the follow-up question. If you had to go back and you had one record, or was it a CD? It would've been a record in the '80s.  

Gerald Grant:  

I was an early CD adopter as well.  

Brian Dolan:  

You were early CD, okay. If you had one record or CD that you were gonna put on one time, like you get invited to whatever the event is, and you get to spin one track, what is it?  

Gerald Grant:  

One track or the entire CD?  

Brian Dolan:  

Well, you get one track, let's be honest.  

Gerald Grant:  

Oh, that's tough. That's really, really tough.  

Brian Dolan:  

Well, you can pick the CD it's on and then pick the track later.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, I know. But those are two different things. Oh my goodness. So I'm a bit of a geek, and I guess to keep people happy, and they would understand who the artist... Gary Numan's Cars.  

Brian Dolan:  

Okay. Okay ...  

Gerald Grant:  

Would be the song 'cause it kinda defines my, a lot of my music background.  

Brian Dolan:  

Answered as a truly successful disc jockey who's picking for the audience we have here.  

Gerald Grant:  

Oh, no, that's totally different.  

Brian Dolan:  

But I'm telling you, you're picking out what the audience would wanna hear.  

Gerald Grant:  

Well, I'm doing a little bit of both.  

Brian Dolan:  

That's a good mix. All right.  

Gerald Grant:  

That's where I'd have to go

Brian Dolan:  

If you were to pick a public company that you wanted to run, what would it be?  

Gerald Grant:  

Geez. Public company... So, and if it would be fun, I mean, I think, I think the most fun would be, like... and the problem is radio stations aren't radio stations anymore, really. They're conglomerates. But if it was to be like a Corus Entertainment in Canada, right? Which is one of those companies that has all the radio stations. That would be fun.  

Brian Dolan:  

Cause that's, that's where you're-  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah. It would, it would definitely push the button.  

Brian Dolan:  

Trash pays the bills, music fills you up.  

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah.  

Brian Dolan:  

All right. I got you. I got you. I'm with you.  

Gerald Grant:  

Concerts, you know, I still love going to concerts all that stuff.

Brian Dolan:  

My kids are starting to get into it finally, concerts. Yes. Let's go. Here we go. I'm gonna bring my earplugs.  

Gerald Grant:

Good idea. The last one I went to, I forgot to bring them.

Brian Dolan:  

A little trick that if you see me do this, if there's ever pink or blue or some earplugs in, it's me chewing gum and putting it in my ears. Gum works.  

Gerald Grant:

Okay.  

Brian Dolan:  

It's weird. People look funny. Especially if you pull it out later, and they're like, "What?"  

Gerald Grant:

As long as I don't chew it again.

Brian Dolan:  

Don't chew it again, that's a little gross. But, but it does in a pinch if you're getting deafened. If you're stuck you can do that.  

Gerald Grant:  

I'll keep that in mind.  

Brian Dolan:  

So, thanks for joining us for today's podcast episode. You can look Gerald up online. He and I occasionally banter in our comments on our various posts, and he will be at our Waste Nexus this fall.  

Gerald Grant:  

As soon as I'm invited, I'll be there, man.  

Brian Dolan:  

I know you applied. I gotta maybe go in and accept it.  

Gerald Grant:  

I will definitely, definitely be there.  

Brian Dolan:  

And we'll see if we can get you back, uh, through the...

Gerald Grant:  

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Or it should work both ways. Usually they like to have me come back. Usually, but maybe they'll listen to this and think differently.  

Brian Dolan:  

Oh, no, I think they'll like what they listen to today. But that's this September, and if you want to apply to that online, feel free. I receive all those, and I'm the one who goes through them, and that event is pretty interesting. It's a lot of high-level CEO, business owner type people. We limit it to 30 people so that we have a pretty tight, intimate gathering, and a lot of interesting conversations that are much more honest than it sometimes feel people can be at much larger events. So, that's pretty unique.  

That's Waste Nexus, and somewhere on here there'll be a link. Look for it, and thanks very much for joining us. Hopefully Charlie's leading the next one.  

Gerald Grant:  

Missed you, Charlie. Thanks, Brian.

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