Sustainability Policy for Small and Medium Businesses – What is it and why do you need it?

Having been part of small/ medium businesses in one form or another for a significant part of my working career, I understand why ‘Sustainability’ might not be the obvious business principle to adopt.  With limited resources at its disposal, just continuing essential operations can often keep one’s hands full.  For those small/ medium-sized organisations that are going through a growth phase, planning for, and adjusting to, scaling up makes all but the most essential operations take a back seat.  In such scenarios, Sustainability concerns can be hard to fit in.

There do exist small/ medium organisations whose products/ services are of an undifferentiated nature (e.g. traders/ vendors of generic machine components like nuts and bolts).  However, a large bulk of small/ medium businesses cater to customers or clients with specific requirements.  The clients/ customers can be individuals and many (e.g. for an independent hotel), or they can be other enterprises and few (e.g. a vendor supplying parts to a larger manufacturing company).  In either case, the relationship with the client/ customer is a valued one, and indeed most small/ medium organisations understand the value of these relationships and consciously nurture them.  Whether the clients/ customers are many distributed individuals or a few large enterprises, they are likely to have already identified their sustainability needs, and likely to be demanding the same of their product/ service providers.  This is apparent from the retail customers who influence the neighbourhood grocery store to discourage use of plastic bags, to the large manufacturer who now has a well-defined sustainability roadmap and is now trying to drive sustainability down the value chain.

As with other business/ management values, the best time to integrate sustainability values in an organisation is when it is small in size.   Small/ medium organisations can save on their bottom line and add to their topline by undertaking well thought-out interventions.  And, lets face it: sooner or later, all organisations, big or small, will have to undertake committed actions towards making their businesses socially, environmentally sustainable, in addition to being economically profitable.  However, even if the top management/ founders in a small/ medium business are personally driven by considerations of sustainability, or by an understanding of its strategic importance in the long-term success of their business, most often initiatives end up being one-off and disconnected.  This is where a Sustainability Policy fits in.

A Policy is a set of basic principles and associated guidelines.  It directs the actions of an organisation towards the achievement of its long terms goals.  It is enforceable and is backed by an organisation structure.  A well-formulated Sustainability Policy integrates the, sometimes contradictory, social, environmental and economic considerations facing an organisation.  It also directs standalone initiatives into a coherent roadmap towards the achievement of a long-term vision.

Considerations for formulating the Sustainability Policy:

Before sitting down to formulate the Sustainability Policy, small/ medium organizations should lay the groundwork:

1.     The ‘Significant Aspects’ facing an organisation – these aspects can be social, economical or environmental and are a function of:

·       The location of a business – its geography, political and legal scenario.  If an environmental legislation is expected to impact how the organization disposes of its waste, it is important to have a recognition and an understanding of it

·       The kind of business that an organisation is engaged in – its customers, competitors and supply chain.  If the large garment retailers have already taken significant steps to make their retail operations more sustainable, it is but obvious that soon the initiative will be driven down the value chain to their suppliers.  If maintaining customer focus is vital for the organisation, a thorough study of the customer’s sustainability focus, strategy and roadmap should be undertaken.  In the case of small/ medium businesses that have a few large customers, this requires some focused research and analysis, but is fairly easy to do through material that is available in the public domain.  Most large companies now have well formulated Sustainability roadmaps, and many of them have defined their approach to integrating their supply chain clearly.  For small/ medium businesses that directly interface with the end user/ retail customers, other mechanisms like informal interviews, or formal survey can be undertaken to understand the customer perception and preferences.

·       Especially for small and medium organisations, it makes sense to first look at low-hanging fruit and the areas that will make the largest impact.  Investment-heavy areas can be looked at next

2.     The internal values of the organisation - An organisation’s values underpin all its actions. E.g. a small/ medium business can be driven by the values of Quality or Continuous Innovation.  If these values have not been clearly defined and understood, it is important to do the exercise before embarking on formulation of a Sustainability Policy.

3.     Evolution of Sustainability within the organisation - Sustainability is an ever-evolving process, not something that is addressed once.  Especially for small and medium businesses that might not initially be able to completely think through their long-term sustainability strategy and roadmap, it is important to make the beginning, engage in periodic reflections and discussions, and take measures to fine-tune/ modify their sustainability strategy, roadmap and policy as required.

4.     Measure, track, analyse – Sustainability aspects, whether social, economical, and environmental, have been broken down into widely accepted frameworks and metrics.  These protocols can be as extensive as the one defined by the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Framework, or the World Resources Institute’s GHG Protocol.  At its simplest, it can just be a simple footprintng to resources like energy, water, waste and materials. In order to internally monitor progress, and to externally communicate such progress, it is essential for small and medium businesses to adopt the suitable metric(s) from the earliest stages of a sustainability journey, and to integrate benchmarking, target setting, monitoring, analysis and reporting of sustainability related data into Sustainability Policy.  

Components of Sustainability Policy

11.  The Sustainability Vision - The Sustainability vision, like all vision statements, should be a concise statement that states its ideal outcome or an ideal state.

2.   The Significant/ Material Aspects of Sustainability - the issues in Sustainability that the organisation has identified as being the most important.

3.   Action Plan: While discrete projects are not part of the Sustainability Policy, provisions need to be made in the policy for the following:
a.    Defining the boundaries of influence/ sphere of control of the organisation
b.    Identifying the tools that will be used to tackle the Significant Aspects identified earlier
c.    Committing to an organisational structure - line of control and distribution of responsibility - that will put the Sustainability Action Plan into effect
d.    Periodic review of the Sustainability Policy.

4.  Reporting and Communication – defining the process to communicate the Sustainability Policy to important stakeholders, getting and integrating their feedback.

It helps to engage a sustainability specialist while formulating a sustainability policy – not just for their domain expertise, but also because an informed, neutral, ‘outsider’s perspective adds value to the process and facilitates internal negotiations.  However for a small/ medium business, it is not as important to formulate the ‘perfect policy’, as it is to undertake and showcase a firm commitment to sustainability.

Game changer in Solid waste management:

Innumerable technologies have surfaced in order to combat the solid waste menace. However, none of them seem to be working well as they do not incentivise enough nor motivate. The impacts of municipal solid waste on the environment as well as on human health are manifold.

Municipality landfills emit methane gas into the atmosphere. This poses a problem as this particular gas has 24 times the potential to trap heat in the atmosphere as compared to Co₂ (carbon dioxide), adding to already existing climate change. Toxic chemicals from the mixed waste seep into land and pollute the ground water which naturally poses potential risks to human health.

Usually in the solid waste management hierarchy, land filling is the least preferred method as compared to the 3 R (reduce, reuse and recycle) approaches. In India, the present scenario most often still opt for land filling.

Solid waste management policies in India are at par with global waste management policies but implementation here is not at the same scale. The only way to encourage the people working in MSW sites is to attach a more favourable monitory value to the other options. Making use of municipal waste to manufacture briquettes is the need of the hour. Briquettes are an inexpensive energy source which can be used in brick kilns (cooking) and in various industrial machinery (such as steam boilers). Briquettes although a slow evolving idea, is a real game changer since it comes with strong scientific backing and financial underpinning.

Composition of Municipal Solid Waste

Social Dimension:

There are other alternatives likes composting and anaerobic digestion ( to generate methane - biogas) from municipal solid waste but in accordance with decentralization aspects, briquette production wins the race. Briquettes can be manufactured and sold easily in small quantity which provides  livelihood opportunities for those below the poverty line. Briquettes can be used for household water heating and cooking purposes.

For Example:-

Assume a family of 4 will heat 30 liters a day for bathing and washing (over 30 days).

(The Energy required to heat water from 20°C to 40°C (Normally used for bath) is 1.8 MJ.)

The energy value from all the fuel type is derived by using the formula

q =mass x specific heat x delta T = m x spc heat x ∂T (temperature)

The Cost of heating the water (30 liters) over a month using:

Electricity = Rs. 275

Fuel wood = Rs. 140

Briquette = Rs. 100

LPG = Rs. 600

Economic Dimension:

Currently briquette manufacturing uses ground nut husk, coffee husk and other biomass as inputs. The market for this has evolved very systematically. In municipal solid waste,  paper, plastic, organic waste (Need to be dried before process) which accounts for nearly 80%  of the waste composition can be used for briquette manufacturing. Certain materials such as metals, stones and textile cannot.  Taking the example of Bangalore, in a day, out of the 5000 tonnes of municipal solid waste nearly 2500 tonnes can be used to produce briquettes. Briquettes are priced at a wholesale rate of Rs. 5 per kilogram.

Bangalore’s solid waste as a whole can fetch up to nearly Rs 1 crore a day, if they are converted into briquettes. With the steep rise in price of fossil fuel, heat intensive industries which earlier used furnace oil have already begun switching to over to briquettes.

Potential industries (for briquette use).

• Gasifier System applications
• Refractory Industries
• Chemical Industries
• Vegetable Plants
• Leather Industries
•  Milk Plant
• Rubber Industries
• Textile Units
• Dyeing Units
• Brick making units
• Ceramic Industries
• Solvent Extraction Plant
• Steam generation for various industrial applications
• Distilleries
• Food Processing Industries
• Lamination Industries
• Any Industrial Thermal Applications

A briquetting machine which has the capacity of making 1 tonne per hour costs Rs. 20 lakhs

Vendors for Briquette Manufacturing Machines.

• Advance Hydrautech 
• Hedon

Points to remember about Briquettes:

• Briquettes are cheaper than COAL, OIL or LIGNITE
• Once used cannot be replaced.
• There is no sulfur in briquettes.
• Biomass briquettes have a higher practical thermal value and much lower ash content (2-10% as compared to 20-40 % in coal).
• There is no fly ash when burning briquettes.
• Briquettes have a consistent quality, have high burning efficiency and are ideally sized for complete combustion.
• Combustion is more uniform compared to coal and boiler response to changes in steam requirements is faster due to higher quantity of volatile matter in briquettes.
• Unlike coal, lignite or oil, briquettes are produced from renewable source of energy, biomass.
• Briquettes have high specific density (1200 kg/m3) compared to 60 to 180 kg/m3 of loose biomass.
• Loading/unloading and transportation costs are much less and storage requirement is drastically reduced.
• Briquettes are clean to handle and can be packed in bags for ease of handling and storage.
• Briquettes are usually produced near the consumption centers and supplies do not depend on erratic transport from long distances

The journey of CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Sustainability Responsibility.

Regulations and principles hard-coded in the Companies Bill 2012 encourages businesses to group social, environmental and economic responsibility.

Co-authored by: Mo Polamar and Joya Chakravarty

The Companies Bill, 2013 finally received Presidential assent on August 29, 2013, landmark legislation has clauses on mergers, auditors, appointment of company directors. The act also called as the 2% bill allows for National Company Law Tribunal National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to fast-track company law cases and to enables the process of corporate structuring. This bill replaces a 6-decade-old archaic bill.

According to the law companies having a net worth of Rs.500 crore or more, or a turnover of Rs.1, 000 crore or more or a net profit of Rs.5 crore or more, during any financial year must spend 2% or more of its net profit on activities that are defined as Corporate Social Responsibility.

If the corporates take to the “2 percent clause” enthusiastically, and with responsibility we are looking at a world that is headed towards equity and justice. Primarily, the Bill seeks to direct profit to social and environmental causes bringing about inclusive development, It is high time.

Corporate Sustainability Responsibility.

It is hard to speak about social responsibility without referring to the environment as well. Since Climate Change is an accepted phenomenon coupling social and environmental responsibility becomes inevitable. This can be viewed as a fortunate development because environmental issues need urgent attention and this provision allows for it. Corporates must seize this opportunity and deal with social and environmental issues at once. The first step to this is to replace “social” with “sustainability” in the acronym CSR. The accepted definition for sustainability is that it is an intersection between economic considerations, social commitments and environmental responsibility.

“Shared value” instead of a “Giver/ Receiver” relationship.

Many companies look at CSR as a specialized activity and a diversion to their core activity. It is unfortunate that it is viewed in this manner because it creates a “Giver/ Receiver” sentiment allowing a hierarchy to form and therefore corruption of values.

This bill not so subtly leads the corporate to view social responsibility as a “Shared value” proposition. This means the bill intends to create a closed loop with social development and economic growth.

Profit center instead of a Cost center

For a successful implementation of this provision in a corporate the first and important step is to dare to view CSR as a profit center. Social benefit is a rather difficult concept to convert to numbers but when coupled with the environment, numbers can be allowed to appear and this is how.

There is embedded economy in every part of the business cycle. Efficient procurement, lean and green logistics and responsible manufacturing lead to increase in profit margin. By adapting to emerging waste management technologies additional revenues can be found adding to revenue growth. The above responsibility can be diverted to the existing CSR division, which must build capacity to handle itself as a profit center. There are a number of case studies that support this above approach. 

Need for Industry federations.

In order to efficiently practice Sustainability it is advised to form a chapter in the existing industry federations. The chapter’s focus will be to keep an informed watch for relevant developments in the external and internal landscape and to funnel the learning through appropriate mediums.

This chapter will raise awareness in a continued basis about sustainability to all corporate within the federations thereby creating a shared service to drive costs, to bring in efficiency and commonality in the practice. The result of a aware federation will automatically and simply lead to other collaborations that will eventually lead to resource conservation and therefore increase in operating margin.

This approach will allow corporates to choose their timing of entry thereby creating a coalition of willing and avoids the rocky and uncertain path of building consensus between everyone.

Market response

The BSE-GREENEX is an index that is been live for more than a year and when one tracks the index there emerges a trend. The market organically rewards companies that are practicing sustainability. Investors are bound to start looking at the green market indices in the various stock exchanges - if they haven’t started doing so already, in the near future.

Simple and straight interpretation of the bill.

1. The bill was made for India, as a response to the realities of the Indian conditions only.

2. There are 800,000 registered companies India. Only 2% of these companies amounting to 16,000 will fall under the ambit of the current bill.

3. The annual money estimated to be channelized as a result of the bill is less than 1/5th of a typical dept. in the govt. of India - the rural development dept. of GOI has an annual budget of rs  70 -80 thousand crores. 

4. So, it is not about the quantum of money being channelized into social and environmental activities as a result of the bill, it is about leveraging the efficiency of the corporate sector in getting the maximum "bang for the buck".

5. The bill drives the companies towards building effective partnerships with NGO's for monitoring and implementation.

6. The 'mandatory' tag on the bill is misleading - since it is the 'reporting', and not the 'spending; that is mandatory, 'Comply or explain' might be a better epithet.

companies can decide to opt out of the CSR spending as long as they give a reason for doing so.  The govt. will not check the credibility of the explanation, but it would be made available to the stakeholders of the company and the society at large through publication in various public domains.  The bill enjoins upon companies to set up a CSR committee, CSR policy, and publication of the CSR policy in public domain and list of proposed activities linked to the policy

7. The above activities cannot just be one-off, standalone activities, put part of specific projects that extend over a period of time with definite budget allocation and monitoring mechanisms in place.

8. The rules for the clause 135 - expected to be no more than 12 - 14 - are under the process of being drafted.

Materiality in Global Reporting Initiative (GRI G4), and the ISO 31000 Guidelines for Risk Management.

Reporting standards worldwide are working towards convergence.  There is an interesting relationship between the 'Materiality' focus of the recently released GRI G4 Guidelines, and the ISO 31000 Standard for Risk Management.

Materiality is defined as the tolerable error in statistical sampling.  In Accounting, Materiality is that threshold amount which, if known, would change the decision of the decision maker. e.g. if a transaction amount were to change by 10% from $100 to $110, would this effect a decision?

In Auditing,  The term audit risk refers to the probability of the statements not giving a true and fair view after the audit is completed.

In Financial Auditing, Risk and Materiality must be considered together.  The more material an item the greater the audit risk.  This means, an account or transaction of large dollar size represents a significant threat to the audit if it is misstated.

Materiality in GRI may also be thought of as a 'threshold'.  But unlike financial reports, the focus is much broader - encompassing economic, social and environmental impacts.  Also, the 'decision maker' here is a much wider groups of stakeholders who impact, and are in turn impacted by, the organization.  Thus, the threshold for being a 'Material' issues in GRI should ensure inclusion of all economic, social and environmental opportunities and risks that are regarded as significant by its stakeholders

Risk in ISO 31000 is the effect of uncertainty on the ability of an organisation to meet its objectives.  It is a combination of the Causes for the occurrence of some Events, the Likelihood of such occurrence, and the Consequences of such occurrence.  Risk Management is the deliberate set of actions that an organisation takes on acknowledging these effects of uncertainty.  

Risk and Materiality seem to be joined at the hip, irrespective of the framework through which one is trying to assess organisation health. Both the GRI and the ISO 31000 standards have been put together by panel of highly qualified international experts.  However one wants to name it, following the essential tenets of these guidelines in their spirit to identify Material issues, and applying the principles of Risk Management on such issues will let organisations leverage the full potential of these frameworks, instead of merely reducing them to reporting and compliance necessities.

How and Why Monsanto is spinning the Climate Corporations founder David Friedberg

Goliath gobbles David and David suffers from the Stockholm syndrome.

author - Mo Polamar

Monsanto's billion dollar purchase of the Climate Corporation met with much criticism and accusation. In an effort to appease his employees, David wrote a letter explaining the purchase and quell suspicion. But David Friedberg of Climate Corporation did not write this letter published by the Newyorker. Why?

This letter is written by an expert at spin. This person is obviously the best in the business and that is why it is brazenly self evident. I am aware that by writing this I am a victim to the strategy where the issue in question will take a back seat and the mode of communication is intended to divert us. Below is an analysis of the letter that Mr. Friedberg wrote to his staff.

Evil:
This is a polarizing word that was first used by the Jr. Bush campaign to decisive effect. In using this word multiple times the reader is supposed to experience a certain disdain leading to gradual loss of association of the word to the topic in discussion called Monsanto.

Why Google:
The rest of us that survived this “Evil” onslaught were reminded of Google’s vision statement and thereby side tracking our rational faculty. I witnessed by mind entangled about Google’s nature of business which is far away from the reason I started reading this article.

Billion:
Why was the sale worth Billion or is it important to understand the value? Again! the intention is to spin you and keep you in the world of disbelief with a simple word, “Billion”!

What must it be worth for Monsanto:
A Billion is just a number to Monsanto in the business of dominance of global agri produce but for Climate Corporation it is a number that is so vast that I am afraid to even get into the mind of the Mr. Friedberg. Monsanto gets 2 birds here with the accounting error of a Billion dollars. one, it picks up a respected climate research organisation and the scientists that come with it and two, it is a strategic investment to make if one has a vision and we know Monsanto has one hell of a vision.

“Dear David, I wish I was your Dad”
I wish David blogged the research and the reasoning that his quasi hippie father bought into. I wonder why the mother has no role to play. The theme of making ones father happy is a eastern one and for David to adapt that line is certainly un american and forced. The assumption that I would like to come to is that there are many peers of his dad in Climate corporation that David wants to retain by placing an emotional and personal argument. It is deliberately indirect for it leads one to a space of reflection and in this space of reflection and imagination a few danglers in form of millions of dollars will hang loose like candy. I wonder why everyone of us must research and find the truth when David can simply communicate it. Instead of this long winding missive he could have replaced them with facts that he found comfort it and rationale that he invented to accept the Billion.

As said earlier he did not write this letter.

Biblical:
This purchase of an angel by Satan (I use this loosely) is one that can have biblical proportions embedded in it. Is satan tired of his demonic ways and wants to change and so buys an Angel, perhaps. Or is satan sending a message that the exodus from the angel world is begun. This exchange of demons to the angel world and vice versa is a perpetual occurrence. As far as I am concerned, since David took a convoluted path to explain a decision I will conclude that either he is got something to hide or he is in sway to the wonderful delusion that money creates. Either way, I do not want to be in David’s place. I will defer my appointment with satan till he chooses to make one, with me.

Some Interesting Tweets by Sustainability Experts

1. Net metering—an emerging idea to encourage people to start using renewable energy.
http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/netmetering.shtml
http://www.sunlightelectric.com/netmetering.php

This great concept does have some teething problems between renewable power generating customers and the utility companies (tweeted by Bill McKibben)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-07/battery-stored-solar-power-sparks-backlash-from-utilities.html

2. A Massachusetts coal fired electricity production plant is closing down. One of the reasons stated is the surplus natural gas. Great news!!!!! (tweeted by Bill McKibben)
http://www.sfgate.com/business/energy/article/Largest-coal-fired-plant-in-NE-to-close-by-2017-4876159.php

3. The current fossil fuel divestment campaign is spreading in US and Europe. It is persuading investors to disinvest from fossil fuel sector. (tweeted by Bill McKibben)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/08/campaign-against-fossil-fuel-growing

4. Sustainability Trends Are Driving Commercial Real Estate Value. (tweeted by Simon Mainwaring )
http://nreionline.com/green-real-estate-investment/8-reasons-sustainability-trends-are-driving-commercial-real-estate-valu#slide-0-field_images-94401

5. A small town in the southeast of Austria generates renewable energies by pioneering technology. The process uses steam to separate carbon and hydrogen from scrap timber. The molecules are then recombined to make a form of natural gas. (tweeted by Gil Friend )
http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/projects/stories/details_new.cfm?sto=1702&lan=7&pay=AT&the=68&region=ALL&obj=ALL&per=2&defL=EN

6. Lack of water affects energy generation. Enormous amounts of water are required to cool the steam created during generation of electricity in a thermoelectric plants.(tweeted by Neil Hawkins)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/business/energy-environment/in-a-hot-thirsty-energy-business-water-is-prized.html?ref=energy-environment&_r=0

7. IPCC report shows states that it is very critical to work towards climate change and Global warming. Report also shows that by addressing the problem we can create opportunities. (tweeted by David Suzuki)
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2013/10/ipcc-report-shows-action-on-climate-change-is-critical/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidsuzuki%2Fscience-matters+%28

8. Chevrolet, GMC and few others to come up with bi-fuel versions of vehicles in near future. (tweeted by Julie Urlaub)
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/10/07/green-fleet-roundup-chevy-gmc-tesla-subaru-kia-ford/

9. The Investment Carbon Screener in the Bloomberg Terminal calculates the carbon footprint of equity investments. (tweeted by Gil Friend )
http://www.southpolecarbon.com/solutions/finance_solutions/carbon_screener

10. Cities those are moving towards urban sustainability. (tweeted by Alice Korngold)
http://downtoearth.danone.com/2013/10/10/10-most-innovative-cities-in-urban-sustainability/

Trash Trail - Climate Miles' trip to understand the Urban Reality of Waste

Whenever a newby joins the Climate Miles Pvt. Team , he/she is asked to go for the 

DD-Trash Trail.

The "Trash Trail" is an interesting journey which I must mention, changes your life. We all know about the waste problem in Bangalore & other cities in the country, yet no one truly knows the reality of it all unless they have been on this trip at-least once. 

Honestly, the truth of it all is a bit too overwhelming for anyone to WANT to go a second time! The images below will highlight a few stops during the trail.

This first image was taken at one of the biggest Landfills in Bangalore. Bangalore city generates more than 3500 tonnes of waste - a DAY! A large portion of this comes into this particular Landfill in giant garbage trucks.

The" Leachate" (liquid), which escapes out of the mixed waste, collects to form a huge lethal pool. The sight of it doesnt come close to the overwhelming smell of the area. 

When you move around the periphery of this pool, you can actually see the plant life wilt away. There are also many families living around this area, surrounding the landfill. 

The only good news here is that unauthorized people are not allowed to enter, so we can be sure that locals are not entering this toxic zone to get scraps of dry waste to sell and make some money. In other cities like New Delhi, you can often see many women & children walking around looking for old paper, tetrapak, wires, plastic bottles & caps etc.

The next stop is a recycling facility where old plastic bottles we all use and throw are pulverized and made into small pellets. These pellets are then melted and made into colourful plastic buckets. Plastic however, can only be recycled a few times depending on the type and quality. 

To know more on how many times plastic (and other dry waste) can be recycled  link

There are a few more stops during the Trash trail, however I will allow you all to go and see for yourself. These images do not do justice to the actual experience. Hope all of you consider going and for those who have been, do encourage others. 

The trail is conducted by Daily Dump every month , usually on the second Saturday. You can also do group bookings.

This trip can educate and inform each one of us, and we can together actively strive to be more aware and proactive about out lifestyle choices, consumption and managing our own waste. Not to go "Good" or to "Save the Planet" but for ourselves.

Look forward to hearing about your experience at the Trash Trail.