Community is no more or less than what we make it. It´s an amalgam of our tastes, our habits, and our intentions – where we go, how we get there, what we buy, and yes, what we throw “away.” That notion of “away” is a bizarre kind of mythology in our culture, a receptacle for all the largesse of our lifestyle, and one that might be out of mind, but is still very present in the community – even if few are called to take responsibility for it.
Republic Services´ Stephen Macintosh is a man both willing and quite able to shoulder a large measure of that responsibility. As general manager of the sixteen-acre, fifty-thousand square-foot Del Norte materials recovery facility and transfer station, if it´s discarded virtually anywhere in Oxnard or Port Hueneme, it comes to him, to the tune of about a thousand tons a day. Measurement of any flow that numbers into the daily thousands of tons is major, but Macintosh takes it in stride. “Running the business is challenging fun,” he says, “I enjoy the operation.”
“The best part,” he continues, “is the community stuff; being connected in the ways we are is just so rewarding. That´s the new corporate model, not just to be profitable, but also to be a good community partner: to be regarded by the community as a valuable participant.”
Such commitment to the ethic extends beyond lip service – at the recent Oxnard Chamber of Commerce´s annual Business Awards fete, Macintosh was honored as “Man Of the Year,” a distinction he passes off in humility, but is richly deserved. Along with his duties at Del Norte – which involves oversight of our daily avalanche of waste, supervision of fifty staff, upwards of a dozen weekly meetings and some 100-200 emails per day – he finds time to sit on the boards of such esteemed organizations as Food Share, the Boys and Girls Club of Oxnard, El Concilio Family Services Agency (Oxnard´s oldest non-profit), and supports and or sponsors a diverse array of organizations from the Boy Scouts to the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis, the Santa to the Sea run, and many more.
The winding road to Del Norte
A graduate of UCSD, Macintosh´s degree was in linguistics. “My father expected that would lead someplace like the CIA,” he laughs, but instead the young graduate´s affection for people landed him in teaching. He spent three years in bilingual education in Salinas, and a two-year stint teaching south of the border, a strategy meant to immerse him in Spanish language fluency. Watching him move among his largely latino staff at Del Norte, one can conclude it was time well spent.
After graduate study at Indiana University´s School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), where he focused on water, hazardous material and solid waste, he landed at the County of Santa Barbara before being recruited to launch Santa Barbara city´s environmental services program (the municipality´s first solid waste specialist to focus on recycling). His tenure with the city landed him in alliance with Republic Services subsidiaries, and they knew a good thing when they saw it, even if Macintosh was initially less than sure. “I always thought I´d have to compromise my integrity to work in the private sector,” he explains, “and I never wanted to become that guy. I´ve always wanted my work to benefit society.”
In Republic he found a good match for that ethic, and it wasn´t long before his expanding oversight led him to take on the Del Norte facility, where he realized that “job one” was establishing productive partnerships with not just the city, but also a wide array of residents groups and organizations across the region.
“Becoming a part of this community has been awesome,” he notes. “People here are hungry for community, and they´re willing to connect and work together.”
A Team Called Green
Macintosh takes those partnerships seriously, thinking well outside the box to make new strides in the effort. From the sponsorship of Totally Local VC´s Dinner At The… series to the innovative Community Among Friends breakfast series, to his newest brain-childThe Green Team, under his stewardship the business of waste management looks like a whole new ball game.
“The cool thing that´s happening right now is definitely the Green Team,” Macintosh notes. “Last year our friend Mike Barber paid me a visit. He had a half marathon event coming up, and wanted it to be certified “green,” which meant it produced essentially zero waste. We came up with the idea of the team, manning stations along the route with recycling, compost and trash containers every mile or so.”
“Mike was thrilled, he continues, “because he met his objectives – the race truly generated almost no waste – and we realized we were on to something, so we didn´t let the GT go – we kept it alive, and we have more volunteers than ever. Next, we´ll be canvassing neighborhoods about their green waste; we´ve contracted with the City Of Oxnard to receive it, and so far it´s highly contaminated. It´s about 10% trash, and there are palm fronds in there, which we can´t use, so we´ll be going door to door, talking to people, trying to raise awareness.”
“The consumption, waste and recycling of resources is one of the major issues in our society that will determine whether we´re going to be here for the long haul,” he concludes, “and we believe the Green Team´s going to help us bring that awareness to another level.”
One man´s trash, another man´s treasure
Awareness is a powerful key, Macintosh explains, as we move into a future that must send fewer tons to the landfill and more to recycling markets. The difference – as different as night from day – is represented by Del Norte´s two halves. Which side is filled – MRF or transfer – depends on which bin consumers use to for their waste: what goes into the “trash” bin lands in the transfer station, where large front-end loaders push it into transfer trailers bound for the landfill. Waste that has been pre-sorted by residents for recycling lands on the MRF side, where it´s sorted twice more before being sent on to secondary markets that re-use the recyclables in the manufacture of new products. The distinction bears repetition – if the consumer deems it trash, it´s going into the ground.
“We should be sending a bare fraction of our waste to the landfill,” Macintosh explains. “What´s recoverable, recyclable or compostible is actually about ninety percent of what´s produced, we know this from ongoing waste characterization studies, and the numbers are very clear.” In a waste characterization study, he explains, a load bound for landfill is intercepted, and a team sorts, separates and weighs the material. “At the end of the day,” he explains, “you know the relative proportions of everything going to the landfill – for example, we might see that six percent was plastic bottles, eight percent was good recyclable branches and leaves, 32% was food, et cetera.” With a nod to the mountains of trash under the scoops of the transfer station´s loaders he concludes, “Suffice it to say, we have lots of room for improvement.”
The lesson at hand is that the consumer must take greater responsibility for understanding what´s really trash, and what should be recycled. “The cool thing about my company,” he enthuses, “is that the push has really gotten intense in support of recycling and composting. It IS happening – one of our primary efforts has become the challenge of sending less to the landfill and more into secondary markets for re-manufacturing.”
Community Is the Key
Along with the waste of the transfer station and the ongoing recovery of recyclable material, Del Norte has programs that reclaim diverse items like batteries, televisions and electronics, motor oil, paint and toxic fluids, fluorescent tubes, pallets, and of course, green waste – the latter being a development Macintosh finds particularly exciting, in a growing partnership with Farm Share.
“For every ton that we send from the green waste project over to Farm Share,” he explains, “they send two dollars to Food Share. With the Oxnard Green Waste contract – we had 22,000 tons come through here for the year – that amounts to $44,000 that Food Share didn´t have before. For every dollar they get, they can buy five dollars worth of food – so we´re really talking about the green waste contract with Oxnard being worth $220,000 per year in food for the community.” In the time since the alliance with Farm Share began, green waste recycling has resulted in over three-quarters of a million dollars in food going to needy Ventura County families.
It´s an innovation that further completes a loop of alliance that begins with every person in the community, which travels through agencies of city, county, and public sector, and comes out the other side to benefit the same community that begins the chain.
When it comes down to it, of the many imperatives that are accomplished and supported by Macintosh and his team at Del Norte, virtually none occur but in some manner of partnership or alliance with other groups, agencies, or organizations – which is to say, virtually every single expression of their good work is, fundamentally, an ongoing expression of community.
When the fact is offered to Macintosh, he shrugs in low-key good nature. “There´s so much potential, and so much need,” he observes. “I just consider myself fortunate to be able to do it.”
He considers a moment, as if weighing the thought, before simply concluding: “It´s very rewarding work. I love what I do.”
No comments:
Post a Comment