01 Zero Waste Philadelphia w/ Nic Esposito

Mira Rubin: Welcome to Sustainability Now: Technologies and Paradigms to Shape a World That Works. I'm your host Mira Rubin and I am delighted to be kicking off our very first episode with our special guest Nic Esposito. Welcome Nic, we’re really glad to have you here.

Nic Esposito: Thank you so much for having me it's great to be here Mira.

Mira: Nic you are the Zero Waste and Litter Director for the city of Philadelphia. How about if we start off with you just telling us what that means?

Nic: Sure, this is an initiative that came out of the Mayor's office in Philadelphia and the Managing Director's office. Basically it was started by an executive order by Mayor Kenney back in December 2016. It came out of two places when he was candidate Kenny on the campaign trail like many Mayors before him and many politicians. He heard a lot about the litter problems that Philadelphia has faced for generations. A lot of times people consider Philly to be one of the heavily dirtiest and littered cities in the United States. He knew something needed to be done about that and something different than the way it was done before. A lot more of a collaborative process really getting many different departments and stakeholders to really understand what role they can play and how they can make a difference. Then at the same time we had the Green Works Plan I admire Mayor Kenney for doing this in many ways that he was able to carry on what Mayor Nutter had created, this beautiful plan that set this sustainability framework for the city of Philadelphia and just continued it on into his administration. The Green Works Plan called for reductions in waste moving towards zero waste goals. When the Mayor sat down with the Managing Director and they started talking about this they didn't look at these as two separate issues. They looked at if you can really upgrade our waste management practices you're going to improve the litter conditions. You really get people to think about the litter conditions and how they really want to clean up their city, getting them to buy into these new waste management systems. It's just this feedback loop that wanted to be created and that's really what went into the executive order. Basically, what was created was a cabinet that brings it together, apartments, private stakeholders other agencies outside of city government that get together and come up with a coordinated plan to basically put us on a path to zero waste by 2035 and we're going to have a litter free future now. We put an action plan out. We had six months to create it and we did. Very happy that we hit our deadline in the summer of 2017 and now we're in the process of implementing that one as well.

Mira: What kind of responsibilities do you have as Director of this initiative?

Nic: When people ask me that I give two examples. One, my community organizing background, and I think this is probably one of the biggest community organizing games that I could get right now. Really that's my job is to keep everyone at the table working together, understand their stake in it. You're dealing with community members obviously there's community organizing there, but even within the departments you're dealing with departments that have budgets and they’re tasked with very important things that are the base of their operation. Sanitation picks up our trash.Licensing and Inspections makes sure buildings are safe for people, but there's so much that comes in there with waste and trash and litter obviously that I need to be able to work with those people and those different departments to keep them at the table and make sure that we are coordinating and moving forward together. The other thing I say is thankfully, for my job, there's a lot of things already in place, this isn't a new concept. People have been wanting to do this work for a while so I always joke that it's almost like someone just, we dumped out all the puzzle pieces on the table and now we're all putting this puzzle together to get that clear picture of what our goal is.

Mira: Wow, it's a really lofty goal zero waste so I don't think that we said that the mandate is to be zero waste to landfill by 2035?

Nic: Yes, that's correct.

Mira: That's huge [laughs]

Nic: That's huge, but also the litter thing is huge and litter is a little different because waste sometimes you aren't really are able to confront. You put it on your bin and it goes away somewhere which I'm sure we'll talk about the intricacies around that little bit. The litter it's something that confronts us every day. I live in a neighborhood that's redeveloping very rapidly. I feel like I live in a construction zone which is dirty in it's own right, but also litter that is accumulating, you see it every day. That's an overwhelming thing to people. They think, how are we going to do zero waste when the city looks the way that it does and it feels overwhelming, but again, having that puzzle put together we really feel like we're making the right moves to really make some changes.

Mira: One of the things that probably needs to change is the way that people perceive their trash or their consumption or their litter...any of those things, yes?

Nic: Yes that's very true.

Mira: How are you guys helping to educate the public?

Nic: We do a few different outreach pieces, the first is a website that we created called CleanPHL.org and what this website basically came out of is coming from community meetings and community members saying we don't want to have to go to five city websites to find out five different things about litter. I would go out and people would ask me questions that, these are civically engaged people that really want to do good and they couldn't find this information. That's a problem. There's a user problem where there are really cool places in city government or thinking through our design and our issues through with that lens. Look at our residences, users and how are they using our service so CleanPHL brings that all together and makes those resources as accessible as possible. So on the litter side there's a lot of ways to clean up litter and all the information that we don't want, but another big thing on the website is we did an entire city wide litter index. We had six departments go out, 37 staff members they took 43,000 data points of our streets, our schools, our parks, our waterways, our train stations to get a clear sketch of what litter literally looks like. Every block is now assigned a score and then every small neighborhood is assigned a score. You can search your score and then also find the resources that you have or you don't have on your block that we feel what keeps blocks clean and that's ways that we're trying to engage the public on in that.

Mira: Is that litter map on CleanPHL.org?

Nic: Yes when you first go to the website you'll see the entire map of the city so you can see what the city looks like. Again that's another big thing we're not just doing this in certain neighborhoods, this is for the entire city of Philadelphia. All of our neighborhoods need to get across the board the same resources, the same treatments to get us a real litter free future.

Mira: How are you reaching the members of the community? I understand that you have these resources that people can go to, but without knowing about them they don't have a step to find them? How do you popularize people's awareness around this?

Nic: Litter is the great entry point because people really want to clean up litter so we go out to communities we are asked to go all the time because people want to clean their neighborhoods up. To have these very unique and very sophisticated resources people are responding very well to that and using them. That's one way that we're being able to go out with communications and engagements subcommittee of the Cabinet. The Cabinet has five subcommittees one of them is communications and engagement. We have all the collaborating agencies on the same social media messages. The same website messages and we're all sharing how to message this out. Using unified again five different departments making five different fliers about the same issue. They're all using the same flier that we created together. The other side and this gets a little more to the waste and you can find a lot of this on CleanPHL is the PhilaCycle program. Again we have an existing program in Philadelphia through the Recycled Bank it's a national organization and they have the recycling rewards where you got rewarded for putting your single stream recycling then outside. You can get different discounts and gift cards and things like that from their site. We were going to take that program a couple it with a few other things we are doing in the city and create PhilaCycle, a Phila-centric program that rewards people the same way that the program worked before. But it's a way that we also get engaged not just homeowners who put a blue bin out, but people in the neighborhoods that actually really start thinking about their waste. We have trainings every quarter to make Philacycle captains and these captains are trained in volunteering at our zero waste events. Learning how to do zero waste cleanups in their neighborhood and we have stock presentations basically where they can go out into their neighborhoods and present to their community members about zero waste and entire litter efforts and things of that nature. Basically we're trying to create an on the ground army of people that are in the neighborhoods constantly getting out on a peer to peer, neighbor to neighbor outreach.

Mira: Well, you just made mention of these zero waste events and I saw on the website that the 2017 Philadelphia Marathon achieved zero waste. How about if you tell us about that because that's a monumental accomplishment.

Nic: Yes, I think that event is 50,000 people over two days it's a huge event that we are able achieve zero waste. The history behind that is in 2011 the city reps office was responsible for putting on the marathon. There was a great person named Carla Lewis who worked in that department and she was just passionate of zero waste and gave us the first framework of how to do zero waste events. After that happened she started working more with sustainability to fine tuning the programs. We had a program called Waste Watchers they got people to go out stand behind bins and actually tell people, this is recyclable, that's compostable, that's trash. As it grew, parks and rec ended up taking over the event. I was actually working at parks and rec at the time and I was Sustainability Manager when this whole initiative started and we are trying to really take that model and move it to other events. We're having a tough time doing it, replicating the event. With the cabinet coming together, it gave us the extra leverage, creating the PhilaCycle program, kind of absorb waste watchers into that. Now, we're able to ramp it up where seven years later, six years later to 2017, marathon is still a zero waste event. We're continuing doing that. This spring, we're consulting on six zero waste events. If we can do that every season to the fall, that's 18 zero waste events that we did when we used to just do one. This is really exciting because now it's going to start growing and building and our hope is that we have 100s of zero waste events out of the thousands of events that happen. We never had mandated recycling at events. Now that it's all mandated through the permits. So we're really excited about this.

Mira: I think that's awesome that recycling has become a condition of getting the permit. That's really a big step. I just pulled a couple statistics. There were 17 tons of waste that were generated from that event and none of it went to the landfills. It got recycled, it got composted.

Nic: About 10% of it. About 10% of the 17 tons went to -- that's what got us to the 90% diversion, which we do follow. It's the national standard for zero waste. There's some waste that you're just not going to be able to keep out of the landfill just the way that packaging happens. 90% threshold is what we go for.

Mira: That's amazing. It's very impressive.

Nic: Thank you.

Mira: Let's talk about what people can actually do to support your initiative, but also just to be more responsible consumers. What do we need to do to reduce waste?

Nic: I think, again, taking a really long look at the entire disposable culture that's been created. In our plan we gave a statistic that since the 1960s we're putting out three times the amount of trash curbside. Why is that? It's because the price of globalization, everything that's been going on, about how cheap products are that we're able to buy this idea that instead of washing dishes, we have disposable cups and plates. You're seeing dishwashers being taken out of schools and they're getting disposable trays now with food that's already been packed on it. There's a cultural shift there and we need to think of obviously there's reasons why some of those things happened with budgets or with trying to get more food out to people. Whatever it may be. We want to ensure that we're serving people the same way that we are and we need to, especially city government, but that we're doing correct with the waste that's being put out. With consumers, it's just an explosion of abundance I guess you can call it. It's caused something that's been a really big challenge for us to keep up with that's going to our landfills. When we talk to people, we have a whole list on CleanPHL.org of zero waste tips that basically talk about ways that you can make a difference in your daily life. Trying to buy things that are reusable. Durable products that last, that aren't throw away. Really reducing your amount of packaging. Buying in bulk. Trying to think about not buying single packaged things, but maybe a collection of them in one box. Things of that nature. Just trying to be more aware of it. You got to take steps towards this and I think the biggest step is just getting people to reconnect back to sanitation. That you just don't put everything in a bin, it gets put out, and then it just magically disappears somewhere. It has to go somewhere. Something has to happen with it. We're real excited about food waste as a big thing. We're trying to inspire people to think about composting, whether it's in their backyards or installing a garbage disposal or maybe there's a couple of services. We're trying to build that out even if it's on the municipal side of food waste. That really connects people to that apple core that you ate, you put it in your compost, you know what's happening to it. These are ways that we're really trying just to awaken people to what's going on.

Mira: Some of the statistics, I just have to go back to the marathon because I think that there were things that were handled as waste that a lot of us wouldn't normally think of. Compost — there were 2.14 tons of compost sent to Fairmount Park Organics Recycling Center. I didn't know that there was a Fairmount Park Organics Recycling Center. Just seeing some these statistics is amazing. Over five and a half tons of recyclables that were brought to the Republic Transfer Station and metals, extra metals, 0.7 tons. That's almost a ton of metals. That's hard to imagine. It's just crazy. One of the things that I thought was amazing and wonderful is that there were 2.5 tons of unconsumed food and drink that got donated to Philabundance. For anybody that doesn't know about Philabundance, can you just give us a little bit of a background on them?

Nic: Sure. Philabundance is one of a few very large-scale food recovery operations in the city of Philadelphia. They've been a huge partner in the work that we've been doing. And again, we talk about our diversion rate, how we're trying got keep material out of the landfill. A lot of times when you start talking about these things, what gets overlooked out of the three R's is reduce, which we could talk about, but also the reuse. Thinking, how do we take something that's perfectly good and not let it go to the landfill. Especially in a city with a 25% poverty rate. It's crazy that we're throwing food or furniture or any kinds of goods in a landfill that can be used again. Those are things that we think through. Philabundance basically works with very large operators that takes them through, takes them to the warehouse and re-distribute them back out to food cupboards. There are also smaller operations in the city that are doing this as well. We have a whole food recovery network that we work with. Just a stat on Philabundance. I think in 2016 or '17, they kept 17 million pounds of food out of the landfill and that's huge.

Mira: That's awesome. Are they also recovering food from supermarkets and restaurants?

Nic: Definitely restaurants. I think on larger restaurants. They try to work with larger partners. A lot of it comes from the food distribution center down in South Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia where there's food that's coming in on the docks and then it's being put out. There's a lot of waste that goes on there. They're very successful down there. Again, we have smaller programs that are able to do food recovery and we're trying to connect with them a lot more. Just get people's culture to say if you have leftover food it should be donated and not thrown away.

Mira: The same with clothes. It was really interesting to hear there were three and a half tons of clothing donated and it was to a group called Chosen 300. What is that?

Nic: Chosen 300 is a service organization that mostly serves with a lot of homeless populations and things of that nature. They're a great partner. There's other, obviously, examples of things like this, like the Goodwill and there's a lot of thrift stores that have similar missions in the city of Philadelphia. I always tell people, sometimes they don't think about this, but every time you pack a bag up with clothes that you don't want anymore or furniture or especially, I have two kids right now. We're constantly, clothes, toys, baby gear. To throw any of that out when it's usable is crazy. You have these options that we take it right to the thrift store. Every time you do that, that's a zero waste technique that you're using. You might be doing it out of the goodness of your heart, you want to serve lower income people, whatever it may be, but you're keeping stuff out of the landfill as well. That's a huge benefit.

Mira: Well I think that's a really important point actually because when we think about recycling, not too many people think about clothes. We have become such a throw away society. What you're looking to do is one of the things that is part of our mission is to shift paradigms. You're really looking to create a whole new mindset. It has to happen. Let's talk about you. How did you find your way to this position?

Nic: [laughs] A little windy of a path so I'll give you the quick version. I started off in college as an English major. I always joke about English majors. We can do anything with our English major except get jobs in the field of English. [laughter] It's very nebulous what you're going to go out and do. I do credit it with giving me very good research skills. A lot of curiosity and just trying to really think what am I going to do as well. After I graduated, I joined the National Civilian Community Corps, the AmeriCorps, and was stationed out in California. Basically, it's a program that meets unmet needs. It does a lot of disaster relief, things of that nature. This was in 2006. This was right after hurricane Katrina. All of us were being sent to the Gulf Coast to go help out after the storm. I rebuilt houses. In that time, I got the service bug and I realized just how soul satisfying and important it was to be in service to your fellow people. Also, at the same time, it was just happenstance, Michael Pollan had just written The Omnivore's Dilemma and the Creoles were very land-based society that kind of, shifted a lot of their economy to oil and got away from it and they were, there was a lot of conversations around especially they're rebuilding, well, how do we rebuild in these areas? What do we think of for our state? And kind of just fell into urban agriculture and even rural agriculture. Living in the cities and the country around Louisiana and Mississippi. Our team really got interested in this and got into urban agriculture, which got me back into Philadelphia, and there’s an incredible urban ag scene here, and it's funny because I credit a lot of what I do in my mindset of having a farming background now because farmers are some of the best people you can think of about waste. There's no waste if you run a farm correctly and farmers are just, they're known for their ingenuity can make something out of anything, you're on the farm. I got that in my mind that led to a job with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society doing horticulture public horticulture, which led to get me in department of Parks and recreation and kind of the turning point that where I really got here was I took all this knowledge, all this excitement about landscapes and how to better community through horticulture and agriculture. I was working with our grounds maintenance people and getting them really excited about planting and pruning and mulching and all this great stuff that they should be doing and they returned to me and say, "Nic, we love what you're teaching us, but we can apply it, because most of our day is spent picking up trash in our parks.” I did a study, I was like, what does that really look like? And I found that 60% of a parks and rec maintenance worker’s day is picking up trash because people that are our parks and don't treat them correctly. This really weighed on me when this opportunity came up to start contributing to his cabinet. Then ultimately though he directed and you're taking all of that kind of life experience, the service, their consciousness about sustainability and waste and just to want an advocate for our municipal workers and our residents who just want to live in cleaner, better places. It all kind of culminated into this.

Mira: Well, you mentioned service and you said that that really gave you a sense of purpose and meaning or at least that's what I heard. I don't know if those were your exact words. I really, because that's part of what we're up to, I really would like to hear a little bit more about that journey for you, what it's meant and how you got there.

Nic: I consider myself a lifelong public server no matter what I'm doing. I'm happy to be in city government. I hope to stay here, but I'm whatever I do, I always be in service to my fellow human being and we do that. My wife and I also run Emerald Street Community Farm, which is an urban farm project that my wife started 10 years ago, that I came into eight years ago. We'd been co-managing ever since, basically the way the farm works is that we grow food with our community is completely free. Anyone can come, they can work as much as they want, work as little as they could take as much food or as little food and again, it's just that kind of idea of really working this into your lifestyle. I think that's something that I learned from the AmeriCorps NCCC is really intense program. You're working on a team, you're traveling, you're being shipped out, one minute here in Sacramento, the next minute you're in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, you're living each and your day is basically spent working and then going back and being with your team and it became a lifestyle. Began this lifestyle of service basically and that's something that stuck with me and what I continue to try to do every day in my life. It's really what we bring to the work. Philly public servants, municipal workers and city government could get a better rap, but the people I work with are just incredible. They're dedicated people, they're up against major challenges, but there are some of the most creative dedicated people that I know in the wake up every day going to work for one and a half million people is pretty big privilege.

Mira: Wow, that's awesome. You also a sort of slid in the Philly urban farming community or movement, and another thing that is flying under my radar up until recently. Can you tell us about that?

Nic: Philadelphia has had in urban agriculture aspect to it since William Penn founded the city. When you look at the plans from 1681 that he drew up, he made allotments for gardens and agriculture within the city that was built into the DNA of the city. Throughout that we've had many different pieces, there is a lot of farmland that was around Philly before it was incorporated in 1856. Late 1800, you had a lot of lot reclamation because the city was redeveloping. It was a manufacturing hub and started losing some and that's been Philly’s history for the last 120 years. Philly has been working on how to sustain lots and there's been so many programs, the neighborhood gardens association started in the '50s coming out of the victory gardens that were very popular here in World War II, all the way to the '70s where you had activists, a lot of African American activists who were really trying to work to stabilize their communities to create agriculture. In 2006, a lot of people were getting excited on this is also a time that Philly was redeveloping and it was attracting a lot of people from around the country, who came with a lot of good ideals and wanting to better commute or to grow food in a community. What I think has been really impressive and really interesting that, it doesn't always work out this way, but a lot of people who do come here learn a lot about the existing communities that had been here, primarily African American communities who've been doing a lot of really good work and now a lot of the lens that urbanised people go through right now is through a social justice and especially racial equity. There's a lot of issues around gentrification and African American communities being affected by something you would think that coming in, especially as an outsider, primarily white, you're doing something really good. Starting a garden in the neighborhood and really getting people to look at some of the other aspects, who controls the conversation around how land is used and things of that nature. We have a lot of really great African American led, urban farm organizations that are working really hard in the city. You try to get that into the conversation and again, it's not just about growing food, it's about the history of the city, equity in the city, and how we move forward as one.

Mira: If people want to learn more about how to get involved with the urban farming movement here in Philadelphia area or even in their own cities, do you have some recommendations of where they could go to get more information?

Nic: In Philadelphia primarily, we have the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and their City Harvest Program, they had a lot of information about the gardens that they serve. Emerald Street, which I co-manage is one of those gardens you grow food that is made available to donate into the back of the community, so there's a good network. They're also Philadelphia has a very strong food policy advisory council. It's run out of the office of sustainability and does a lot of great work around food issues again, from everything from hunger relief to urban farm in vacant land policy to those equity issues that I was discussing before, so those are two really great pieces in Philly. Nationally, the best place you could probably start is with your sustainability office if you have one and if not, try your parks and recreation system. A lot of times our urban agriculture is wrapped into the parks and recreation department. Our parks and recreation has Farm Philly, which is also a great program that teaches how to, resource and support community gardening and agriculture on our public park property so those would be some tips.

Mira: Okay, well again just for folks that are listening, will make sure to post links to these different organizations insights. Let's get back to litter, recycling and trash. I've checked out your website and saw that you have amazing resources. Again, we're going to link to those, and it was actually quite an education for me to read through the things that you can and cannot recycle. I thought that maybe we could provide our audience with some tips that they, that are actionable and also ways that they can get involved maybe become CleanPHL-type ambassadors. I'd like to go over that. Maybe we can talk about that first and then go into some recycling tips.

Nic: Sure. Again, it's, if you're in the Philadelphia area, please check out our recycle page and try to join to get educated on how to educate yourself and your neighbors and community and better the situation around recycling and stuff. The biggest step that you can take, also for people to search their addresses, see what resources they don't have. Through the letter index, we ran some studies and we found that blocks with block captains are across the board cleaner blocks and then neighborhoods that have park's friends groups, have not only of cleaner parks, but also have cleaner neighborhoods around those parks. It's just kind of it's a culminating thing, we would just want to make sure that people know as much as they have. Also, we give information about their community organizations that are in the area and how to join them because there's a lot of great community organizations. The managing director, Michael DiBerardinis, who's my boss has a stated goal with the mayor's office as well, making Philadelphia the most civically engaged city in the United States. This is our piece of the pie to be able to do that, to connect people to their ways to engage. I'll tell you in a big way to get people on the hook is through litter because people hate litter. It's a way for them to get involved. To get into recycling, the link that I sent over shows recycle by city. It's a really great quiz that's based on your city about what goes in your single stream recycling. We have a lot of challenges in people putting the wrong things in there single stream recycle.

Mira: I can understand that. I went to the list and I thought, "Oh my heavens. I've been doing this all wrong." I'm trying to be conscious about it. I thought we could just go through some of them like shredded paper. Shredded paper you can recycle, but it has to be in a bag that's closed, stapled and it says marked as shredded paper.

Nic: Yes. That will sometimes go to specialty recyclers. Even with our single stream, we tell people, "Don't put the bag in your single stream." There's a lot of people or places with shredding events will shred paper. The reason you can't recycle shredded paper just in putting it in your blue bin is that--I also and encourage everybody-- I think I put the link over about the virtual material recovery facility which is what we call recycling facility.

Mira: Let me just tell people again that all these links are going to be available available at sustainabilitynow.global. Go ahead.[laughs].

Nic: I hope now that everybody takes the virtual tour and sees because recycling facilities are incredible. It's all based on physics and geometry. How they separate off the different materials. The problem with shredded paper is the first entry point in any bits of material is kind of conveyor belt that has some slots in it that things can fall through, very small pieces. That's feared when glass is crushed, all that crushed grass falls through. That's again for people also to know, it's not like a milkman picking up your milk and taking the bottles back. That's not really how recycling works especially with glass because a lot of it breaks or a lot of glass just gets crushed than used as fills and aggregates and reuse in other things. It's back to being sand basically. But when that glass is crushed, if there's smaller pieces like smaller shredded paper, that shredded paper falls through as well. Ultimately, it's just going to get thrown away. If you're doing that, it’s not really recycled. We actually use shredded paper in our compost. In our farm, we have a composter. We use a lot of shredded paper there. As composting gets online, there's other applications for it. They've got compost paper as one of those very funny complex prospects.

Mira: Yes. Another weird one, I'm showing my ignorance here – but I’m now educated, was greasy pizza boxes. Not recyclable.

Nic: Yes. Again it goes back to compostable. You would be able to compost them but food contamination is the reason that they are not recyclable. And also damp. That's why we were trying to get more bins with lids on top of them, because we want our recycling to be loose and dry. You can't send recycling in bags to their facility because people have to open up those bags then and dump the recycling. We like recycling to be loose. When it's wet or there's grease on it, you can't processit. You can't pull that paper in back on it to another product. It's contaminated at that point.

Mira: Wow. Let's see. There was another one that was surprising to me. With the laundry detergent or cleaning supplies that have the pumps that's recyclable and you should leave the pumps and the tops on these things. I had no idea.

Nic: Yes. There are certain facilities. I think a lot of them are based down on the south that process those materials. They want everything to back up together and then they sort it out. But it all gets baled into one bale and they get down to certain markets in the south to be turned back into tied bottles.

Mira: It's wild. How about aluminum foil? It says that we can recycle aluminum foil, but what about the food waste?

Nic: As long as it is clean. Yes. If you can take the time to clean your aluminum foil, aluminum is a very valuable commodity. There's a lot of value in it. We love recovering it. Aluminum cans are huge. Yes. People can take the time to scrap off a little bit of food waste. That's the way that we can see it. Like a pie tin or broiling pan as long as it's clean, that could go in too and make a valuable material.

Mira: The other thing that was surprising to me was that paper towels, tissues and napkins are not supposed to go into recycle. I guess that's because they're soiled?

Nic: Soiled and also because that's one big rule about it. Also its hard to extract the value out of because the paper is made to disintegrate very easily in water. If you have a paper that has a bit more of a constitution to it like a paper plate or any kind of paper, you are able to pulp it easier. That's my understanding of it. But again, I'm fine putting tissues in a compost, but tissues, napkins. I've got to put napkins, paper towels if I wipe out my pen. My cast iron skill that I have in my house. I just put that in the compost.

Mira: Do you have a recommendation around composting for folks that are just getting started?

Nic: We have a link for backyard composting on CleanPHL.org. Composting does take a lot of attention. You do want to keep up on it. You want to make sure you are getting the right mixtures of materials. Does it create odor? You build the bin right so it's not attracting vermin. You are able to be a good neighbor while you do it and you do it successfully. You have something good at the end. A nice good product. Then you got somebody to use it. Hopefully if you are getting into compost, you are also gardening.

Mira: Good. Is there any kind of take-away you'd like to leave people with for today? Anything that we could wrap up with?

Nic: Well, I really thank everyone who has the interest in this. Thank you so much for hearing this great interview that we are doing. This interest in waste management and sanitation. I really feel that this is one utility, something that we need a city service or a societal service that we really do take for granted. You put it in the bin, it goes somewhere. I don't want to know about it. Just like that with water issues, energy issues. These are major human services that we need to think about. I've been in countries around the world that don't have sanitation systems set up. I think major takeaway is just getting interested in it, knowing what your roles and responsibilities, resources are and the support that you can get from your own municipality. That's what we are trying to do here in Philadelphia. We hope that our successful show. Definitely on the litter side — way before 2035. I'm very excited, wherever I'll be by 2035 to see that Philadelphia is not using landfills anymore and we are doing really good in the things that are waste.

Mira: That's awesome. It's exciting. Is there a book or a couple of books that you could recommend to people to dig deeper into this topic?

Nic: There is a book called Litterology which is really interesting. It talks about why people litter, how it happens.

Mira: Well Nic thank you so much for being with us. Much appreciated and we're looking forward to getting your message out and seeing Philadelphia be zero waste and litter by 2035. That's wonderful. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm your host Mira Rubin and until next time, live your best life, love the world around you and together we can save the world.