Breaking Ground: Circularity Through Partnerships
How can the construction industry shift from a “take, make, waste” cycle to a circular economy? In celebration of Zero Waste Week, host Jennifer Taranto, VP of Sustainability at STO Building Group is joined by Tim Conway, VP of Sustainability at Shaw Industries, and Avery McKitrick Sustainability Coordinator to explore how takeback programs and supplier partnerships are transforming waste management on job sites.
HOST
Jennifer Taranto
Vice President of SustainabilitySTO Building Group
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GUEST
Tim Conway
Vice President of SustainabilityShaw Industries
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GUEST
Avery McKitrick
Sustainability CoordinatorStructure Tone Southwest
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Jennifer Taranto (00:21)
Hi and welcome to Building Conversations. I’m your host, Jennifer Taronto, Vice President of Sustainability at STO Building Group. Today we’re exploring how takeback programs and supplier partnerships are driving circularity in construction. Joining me are Avery McKitrick, Sustainability Coordinator at Structure Tone Southwest and Tim Conway, Vice President of Sustainability at Shaw Industries.
Together, we’ll dig into the lessons learned from pilot projects, the real challenges and barriers teams are facing, and the opportunities ahead as we work to scale these programs across the industry. So let’s dive in. Well, thank you both for joining us. Tim, I’m going to start with you, and we’re going to just jump right into the questions. Can you tell us, I think maybe talk to us about what takeback programs are, and then maybe why they’re important to manufacturers and how do they work in the context of commercial construction?
Tim Conway (01:13)
Yeah so, I think about from the point of a manufacturer, I think about three things. A takeback program, circular economy work has to be profitable. It has to be practical and it has to have a purpose. Right? So profitable. Over 20 years ago, we designed a product for disassembly. We designed the end in mind when we designed the product. And when we get it back, we saw that it was a profitable raw material versus purchasing virgin raw material.
But then it had to be practical. Once we came up with the product, the easy part was behind us. We had to create a process that was easy for the supply chain in the reverse distribution of that material. And it had to have purpose. There has to be some reward at the end, not only for Shaw, but for the general contractors and the owners as well. So we started on this process trying to find a way to make it profitable, create a process, and then create this reward at the end that is really working now with our partners like Structure Tone.
Jennifer Taranto (02:13)
Yeah, and I would say, you know, we have been trying to make use of takeback programs for the better part of a decade or more. And they’re really gaining traction in the last couple of years in a way that is remarkable and lovely to see. You know how are they gaining traction and what role do manufacturers like Shaw play in making that a success?
Tim Conway (02:42)
Yeah, talked about profitable, practical purpose. I forgot about the other P. It’s about partnerships, right? So let’s talk about this partnership around construction and design. This industry that we’re so proud to be a part of is responsible for about 160 million tons of landfill consumption a year, right? We take, we make, we waste. Then we’ve celebrated the fact that we get to do that over and over again on every project, right? That’s out of whack. It doesn’t make environmental sense. Certainly doesn’t make economic sense.
So at Shaw, we’re proud we’ve recycled more carpet than anyone in the world, nearly a billion pounds. We’re nowhere near where we need to be, but I said partnership, right? We have a good idea as carpet manufacturers, commercial carpet manufacturers, working with the architects, working with the designers, working with the owners, but I realized we don’t know anybody that’s actually executing the demo of these buildings, which led me to these partnerships with Structure Tone. So the reason to answer your question, how is this becoming more successful and gaining more traction? Because we’ve built those relationships with the right people in the project supply chain, right? Structure Tone has been a big part of our success as this is gaining traction. So we’re gaining this traction because of the partnerships.
Jennifer Taranto (03:56)
Yeah, for sure. Avery, what do you think the success is? How are these gaining traction?
Avery McKitrick (04:03)
Yeah, think that I mean exactly what Tim said is the building industry produces just the sheer volume of waste that far exceeds what any individual household might produce. So when you think about building waste, you’re thinking about it in terms of tons, what do we do with all of this? And in a typical, in a non-circular economy, as they call it, all that waste would go to the landfill. So increasingly, municipalities have diversion goals, public universities, local governments.
And then these clients have diversion goals. And so, they’ve created these goals that we have to figure out ways to meet while the infrastructure catches up. And takeback programs are one of the ways that we can kind of close that gap between the goal and between where we’re at right now. So takeback programs are, in my opinion, it’s even a little bit better than like a commingled recycling stream that you might take to a materials recovery facility because the manufacturer takes back that product that they’ve produced or maybe even products from other manufacturers, similar products. And it really contributes to ensuring that none of those raw materials are going to waste, i.e., the circular economy.
Jennifer Taranto (05:18)
Yeah, so I mean, it sounds really simple, but we know in practice that it historically hasn’t been. I would love to live in a world where, you know, everything I buy I can just give back to the manufacturer at the end of the day. And I think that, you know, through extended producer responsibility regulations that we’re going to start to see more of that over time. But Avery, you want to tell us about some of the challenges that we’ve had along the way, maybe some of the bumps in the road and what’s a real barrier versus a perceived barrier?
Avery McKitrick (05:54)
Well, I think the top two challenges are one volume. For some of these manufacturer takeback programs, the volume exceeds what the project will produce. And so those projects just can’t utilize certain takeback programs. That’s changing. But it hasn’t always been that way. And then another problem is cost. And so sometimes there’s an associated freight cost. There’s a labor cost to palletize these materials, you have to sort them and separate them and deconstruct them rather than gutting. So we can save money though, for example, by reducing our costs towards tipping fees for landfills. So while some takeback programs aren’t necessarily going to be 100% free, we can offset those costs. So I don’t think the cost is as high as some people perceive it to be. Tim, I don’t know if you have anything to add on that?
Tim Conway (06:53)
It’s really refreshing to hear your explanation, Avery. And we’ve got some traction and have some projects under our belt. So I’ve been trying to crack this code for 15 years, right? And at Circular Economy, getting our material back to Shaw and Carpet tile. And I’m proud to say I’ve gone from okay to pretty good. The last time I checked, Jennifer, the budget’s undefeated. And we have these aspirational goals that, we’ll pick up the material for free, but then it gets to go out to bid and we get these prices back that are just outrageous.
And I think people are scared to maybe lose money on this. So I get this feeling, like, hey, we’d love to do this, but it’s going to cost too much. My first question back to that, it costs too much compared to what? It costs too much compared to that place called away. So I asked the questions to the GCs, how much was your dumpster rental? $700, $800. How much were your tipping fees? What was the transportation cost?
What was the labor to get it from the 14th floor of the building out to the parking lot to throw that away? So I think where we’re gaining traction on this is I think that we’re getting the word hard confused with the word different. And if we can do things a little bit differently and compare this comparison of these takeback programs to what the traditional cost to take it to the place called away is we’re finding in some markets, there’s a cost savings, but in most markets throughout the United States, it’s a low cost, no cost comparison. So it’s getting better, but cost and perception has been the barrier.
Jennifer Taranto (08:26)
Yeah, I would totally agree with that. That matches my personal experience when trying to implement these programs. I think the other thing that’s not lost, though, Tim, is that the takeback programs themselves have changed. So Avery talked about the reduction in quantities. There was a time when we were asked to provide entire tractor trailer loads of the material back, which just is unfeasible in some cases. And can you tell us other changes that have been made in the takeback programs over the years?
Tim Conway (08:58)
Yeah, all of the bumps and bruises I’ve got along the way. So we’ve been at this for since 1999. The first PVC free, fully recyclable carpet tile in the industry the end of its time in service, we pick it up at no charge. So proud of it. In 1999, in the bottom of every carpet tile we’ve ever manufactured, it says to recycle, call 1-800-509-SHAW. Then when people stopped using the phone, we added shawrecycles.com.
That phone didn’t ring. Right? So we had to work backwards. We had to go out and ask Structure Tone, what do you need from us? And they said, well, the minimums are too high. Our minimums were five hundred yards. We’ve lowered our minimums down to one hundred yards. There’s no project too small. The secret to the biggest change we made is we’ve leveraged our distribution network.
At any given time, Shaw is one of the largest independently held fleet of trucks in the United States. We own thirty-four distribution centers throughout the United States, and we’re trying to use that same model of getting your carpet delivered on time every time, using those same trucks and those distribution networks to get the material back. So we’re fast, we’re flexible. We’ve also hired dedicated recycling specialists in markets. So we have employees that are in markets doing not every single day calling on billion owners, calling on GCs, educating them, saying, we want this back. So is it perfect where we’re at yet? No, but we are not going to stop trying. And we’re going to continue to learn and work backwards from the project’s pace in space to make this easier. We lowered our minimums down to one hundred yards. That’s only five hundred pounds of carpet. We lowered the minimums because we’re finding that once GCs do this with us once, they come back. We’re going to gain more pounds because we’re gaining more participation. As I said at the beginning, making things practical.
Jennifer Taranto (10:58)
Yeah, we have also seen that when we have worked with some of our demo subs, that after they’ve done it once or twice, they also see the efficiencies in it and they see the cost savings in it. It makes them more competitive come bid time. And I really see this as a low hanging fruit in order to be able to become business as usual. We’ve been kind of talking like theoretically pie in the sky. I want to kind of move to reality and say, Avery, give us an example of where we’ve utilized the takeback program and what was responsible for its success.
Avery McKitrick (11:37)
So a recent takeback program that we’ve been working on is with a corporate campus we’re working on in Arkansas. And we’re really excited to work with Shaw for that takeback program and double excited because it’s a ground up project so there’s no demo scope. And we worked with Shaw at the time, it was one of the first times that Shaw had done this to take the scraps of that carpet tile. So as they were installing and cutting the scraps, they collect in these big, I can describe it as like a giant bag of a Swedish retailer, you may know. And they’re collected, they’re palletized, and they’re shipped off for recycling. And I rely a lot on my Structure Tone Southwest and Layton colleagues who spend full time down in Arkansas to ensure that that program is running smoothly. And so I’m so grateful for their help and cooperation, but not only that, but our trade partner, our flooring subcontractor, we brought this idea to them, not really knowing what kind of response we would get. Would they be open to it? Would they have hesitations? And they were like, yeah, sounds easy. Sounds like we can totally do that. And so we really just, we’re rocking and rolling and you know, Tim was an excellent partner in that and solving these barriers and answering questions about takeback programs. So it really was the effort of everybody that made this happen. Like I couldn’t have done this on my own, even as the sustainability coordinator, but we were so grateful to have sustainability minded colleagues, subcontractors, Tim with Shaw working on that project as well. We’re excited to, that’s ongoing, so we’ll have reports back very soon for our total tonnage.
Tim Conway (13:34)
Yeah, Avery, that’s that fourth P, the partnerships. So you came up with this idea, right? We’re going for a LEED V5. We need some construction waste management partners on this. I think we can do this. We’ve done it a couple of times before, but all we have to do is ask the question. I don’t know if we’re waiting for permission to ask customers, is it okay if we reduce your landfill consumption? Is it okay if we reduce your carbon impact? It’s not going to cost you any more.
But once you ask the question, everybody’s like, yeah, we can do that. But we had to get everybody in the same room talking the same thing. So that project you’re talking about, we’re halfway done. I checked yesterday; we’ve collected about 16,000 pounds of waste. What a great story, purpose, back to that client. But I think about in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, we continue to have success in corporate and higher education and health care.
In fact, I think last year we recycled more carpet tile than any city in United States in Omaha, Nebraska. Last time I checked that’s not a hotbed of lead certified project or sustainability, Jenn, but we have the right people and the right partners in those places.
Jennifer Taranto (14:51)
I think that’s refreshing to hear when we often hear about the East Coast and the West Coast and how sustainably minded, they are and how tough it is to achieve sustainability goals in other parts of the United States. So, absolutely refreshing. Hats off to Omaha. They’re definitely doing something right there. So we’ve been talking a lot about carpet up to this point, but Avery, there’ve got to be other products or materials that are really suited for takeback programs or recycling through manufacturer partnerships. Want to talk about some of the other things we look for?
Avery McKitrick (15:22)
Yeah, other than carpet tile, which we’ve been discussing, ceiling tile is another big one. Furniture is one that has a lot of takeback programs. Porcelain tile, porcelain is highly recyclable. Other flooring products, I’ve seen a lot for like rubber flooring products. Those are the big categories that I’m aware of. From a sustainability perspective, it’s essential to utilize takeback programs, especially for like these high embodied carbon items, meaning that they take a lot of carbon to produce. So it’s especially important that we utilize those takeback programs, in my opinion, for things like ceiling tile, for carpet tile, things that will have a big carbon impact, but they’re recycled.
Jennifer Taranto (16:22)
Yeah. So Tim, curious about this and other product materials, do product manufacturers across different building material types collaborate on what’s new in takeback programs and how to recycle your products?
Tim Conway (16:33)
I’m constantly sharing best practices with other manufacturers. Ceiling tile you’ve mentioned and I’ve worked, I mean working with other manufacturers with a built environment and I’m sharing how we’re doing it; we’re sharing it how they’re doing it. And also different product categories that we manufacture. We’re now getting into the resilient flooring circular economy. Practices that we manufacture, we came out, our carpet tile is called EcoWorks carpet tile. We came out with the new PVC free EcoWorks resilient carpet tile.
And it’s the same chemistry as our carpet tile. So the beauty of this product, when we get it back, it can be recycled back into itself. It can be recycled into carpet tile. It’s the same story, different product category, but we’re looking to find solutions across our platforms.
Jennifer Taranto (17:17)
That’s amazing. That really is better living through chemistry. In a way, I usually don’t use that phrase.
Tim Conway (17:24)
It’s designing with the end in mind, right? We have to design materials to be disassembly or recycled, so we have profitability at the end.
Jennifer Taranto (17:34)
Yeah. So that’s a great segue to my next question, thinking about things with the end in mind. How early in the design and procurement process do we need to start thinking about circularity and takeback programs in order to really make them feasible, Avery?
Avery McKitrick (17:50)
I’m going to go way before that. When materials are being specked, we should spec materials with takeback programs because when that project reaches the end of its life and it’s demoed, then those products can be taken back. LEED version 4 already gives you a building product disclosure and optimization credit for using materials with extended producer responsibility programs, takeback programs.
So I think it really starts there is working with the architect for non-spec materials, you know, looking at what you can do that has a takeback program. I think that’s kind of step one. And then step two, at the end of that project’s life, as early as possible as you can determine what can be utilized through a takeback program. How are you going to deconstruct this building to make sure it’s palletized to make sure your demo company, maybe preferably they would have experience in deconstruction. They would be able to kind of ensure that those materials get back to where you’re trying to get them. But really as early as possible, if you are, but it’s never too late, right? For this corporate campus we’re talking about in Arkansas, one of the buildings was almost complete. Six were in progress and we kind of just decided in the middle of installing the carpet tile in this building to do it. And we can see that that’s been successful. So it’s never too late, but the earlier is always better.
Jennifer Taranto (19:29)
Yeah, I would say, Tim, I know we’ve worked with you in the past. You guys have helped us write specification language in order to make sure that it’s incorporated.
Tim Conway (19:40)
Avery, I’m going to reiterate, we can’t get this embedded into a project early enough. Earlier, I said we had to get ahead of that place called away. Right? The gravity of the status of how we’ve executed projects in landfill consumption has been too easy. And I think people want to do the right thing. But my aha moment was it seemed like we were all trying to do the right thing at the wrong time. All the right actions, worst time, because we only thought about recycling when it was time to throw it away.
So what we ask design professionals, what we ask pre-construction, what we ask building owners, can you, before anything gets bid out, even before materials get selected, can you just take a smartphone photo of the carpet tile, the top and back, and send it to this telephone number? We want to see if there’s an opportunity to reduce your project’s landfill consumption. Then we’ve developed a CSI spec with our friend Anne Hicks-Harney from Long Green Specs. And we’ve got a carpet tile reclamation specification that is intentionally overwritten. We ask them to put it into Division 9, if the flooring contractor does the work, and Division 1 for the demo contractor. Because Avery correct me if I’m wrong, when it becomes part of the bid, it becomes part of the project. And just those two tasks, identify early and specify the practice, our program is seeing great trajectory right now.
Jennifer Taranto (21:01)
Yeah, I would agree with that. For those of you that are listening and this is the, you’ve listened to all of the episodes, you would have heard Andrea Love from Payette in our previous episodes say that you we started out by including language to say like where these things are feasible. And often when you have those aspirational-type goals, they don’t become reality. But when you have the text like Tim is talking about and you have the telephone number and you can reach out and make it tangible and easily accessible. It makes a ton of difference in making sure that it happens. And so, Tim, I’m going to ask you, how are clients responding to takeback programs? Are they driving demand? Are they still kind of listening and learning and thinking about what the benefits might be to them?
Tim Conway (21:53)
What came first, the chicken or the egg kind of question, right? So I think a lot of clients think that this is already happening, right? It’s not, right? So I think hard pressed not to find a higher education system or a health care system, maybe a corporate company that doesn’t have some kind of recycling goals. Hard pressed to find a lot of them that might not have some type of climate or carbon goals. Maybe they didn’t know they could achieve results through a manufacturer and a general contractor.
So some of the normal clients we see that are driven by this, these are baked into their RFPs, but what I love is delivering those unexpected results to a project with someone that maybe wasn’t expecting that. Right? So at the end of a project, we’re able to deliver, Avery, you talked about embodied carbon. We’re able to provide data and a cool certificate that says, because of Shaw Industries and Structure Tone, we just diverted your landfill consumption by 23,000 pounds. Those pounds make their recycling goals. And then we can also say in the act of recycling that reduced that carbon footprint by about 108,000 pounds of CO2. Maybe they didn’t know they could achieve those goals through a general contractor and a manufacturer, but when we deliver those results, purpose, that’s where we get traction.
That’s where we start to get that demand coming from our corporate, our higher education, and our health care customers. I’d say some of them, fortunately, are kind of becoming addicted to it.
Jennifer Taranto (23:27)
It’s a good addiction, I’ll say. Avery, any perspective on client driving, learning, what’s your thoughts?
Avery McKitrick (23:37)
Well, I think Tim hit it on the head was it’s really just about education. A lot of people still don’t know that takeback programs are a possibility. They know about recycling; takeback programs are kind of new. And so I found that I really don’t have clients that are just not interested. Maybe they want to know more about the cost implications. You know, they want a little bit more information, but like Tim said, people have goals. And even if you don’t have a waste, if your client doesn’t have a waste goal, it’s good to, it feels good to be able to do that.
It’s really, it’s something that people like to share on their website. It’s something that people like to share internally. And I don’t think that just because takeback programs are not being brought up in pre-construction meetings and so forth means that people aren’t interested. Sometimes you just have to be the person to raise your hand and say, I saw a bunch of Shaw Carpet, are we going to do a takeback program for that? And then that’s your opportunity to go in and educate the client and tell them all about what a wonderful partnership this could be.
Jennifer Taranto (24:41)
That’s absolutely 100 % correct. I want to turn the lens to look into the future. And Tim, I’m going to let you go first, how do you see takeback programs evolving in construction? And what do we need to do to make them really scale and become that business as usual that I daydream about and spread them across more projects in more regions? So what does utopia look like in Shaw land?
Tim Conway (25:10)
Well, I wish I had a magic wand to make that all a reality. I don’t. I said I’ve gotten from OK to pretty good at this. I think there’s certain EPR regulations that are happening around us. This is either going to happen to us, or it’s going to happen because of us.
Avery, you talked about what we do in our households. And I try to do the right thing. Jenn, you try to do the right thing. Think of the opportunity that we have in our professional lives to drive those changes one hundred times to what we do at home. I think the future is happening because I think we as professionals are translating maybe our personal values into our professional lives. And the more people we get in these partnerships, the more these become a reality. I said, we’re going to the only way that this is going to grow our pounds is to grow our participation. So, I love the trajectory of the programs that we have. I love the programs within the floor and industry, within the within ceiling tile, the work that’s happening in glass drywall. This is going to take us forever, so I’m glad we’ve gotten started. But if we don’t, our forever isn’t going to look very good.
Jennifer Taranto (26:29)
I agree 100%. Avery, I’ll turn the question to you. What does the utopia look like at Structure Tone land?
Avery McKitrick (26:40)
I think it’s a complete reimagining of the demolition process. I think if we can look at demolition instead of how can we, like I said, gut the whole thing, throw it all away, get it out as fast as possible. I’d love to see more subcontractors who specialize in deconstruction so that we can partner and do takeback programs and do recycling and do partner with these nonprofits who will take these building materials which are still not at the end of their useful life.
I think that reimagining is really going to drive the demand for more of these programs, for more options, for more cost-effective options, for all different projects will be able to participate in takeback programs if we can start on the general contractor side rethinking about the demolition process of a building. And I think using those lessons that we’ve learned and the programs that are available now or in the future, regardless of project sustainability goals, LEED, WELL, things like that, and just kind of integrating it into what we do.
Jennifer Taranto (27:49)
Yeah, I agree with that. The one other layer I would say, you know, in the partnerships and where I hope we also see things change a little bit in the future is with our trade partners and finding more opportunities for them to create a business line for like being aggregators of the materials. Because, Tim, while I appreciate that you will take one hundred yards of carpet, it is not the most efficient thing to do. So if we can have more trade partners regionally aggregating materials so that they can go out in bulk, that would be like my secondary win in order to create this utopia we’ve just described.
Thank you, guys, very much for this conversation. It’s been delightful and illuminating and I really appreciate you joining me today.
Tim Conway (28:37)
Jen, thanks for everything you guys do. Appreciate the partnership.