Oct 28, 2022 Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on 2022-10-28 1:00 PM

Okay, you guys ready to get started? Alright, thank you for joining us today. It's like Friday October 28th. This is the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee and we do just barely have a quorum so no one get up to go to the restroom please. We are in the City Council Work Session Room and on our agenda today, there's a couple of notes. We are going to be moving item D up under item A. So that's really the only change on the agenda that we'll have. So we will get started with A, consider approval of the September 23rd 2022 minutes. Does everybody have a chance to look up those? Any notes? All good? Second? I'll brand second on that for the minutes and all in favor? All right. Let's go ahead and move to item D. Receive a report and hold a discussion regarding an annual summary of recycling education and outreach for fiscal year 2021 through 2022. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Julie Amador. I serve as one of two Waste Reductions Programs coordinators alongside with Kim Jennings, my partner in crime who takes care of DISD. So today we're going to be talking about the annual summary for this fiscal year. So today's focus will be talking a little bit about some of the education that I focus on which is multifamily and residential specific recycling education. We also will be talking about our shoot lathe and locking bar program that we piloted this past year. Kim will be also hitting on the Denton Sustainable Schools program specifically and end of year outreach and highlights. So residential recycling education, some of you may know, so I do a lot of the social media for and marketing for solid waste and recycling. So these are a few examples of what we do but I want to talk a little bit about some of the education that we do and have always kind of done. So as far as audits go we brought on two cart tagging interns. So we have people that are out in the field opening up lids, looking at them and saying you know if this container is good to collect, if this person needs a little bit more education at the cart and we create all of that information as well. So we create the cart tag so that they're updated and current and that residents know what is and what isn't accepted in our recycling program. Also as far as audits we have drivers that are out in the field and they are our eyes and ears. So when they see a cart and it's overflowing with styrofoam or yard waste or you know construction and demolition, they'll mark it a cart as do not collect. So that's another way that we're able to educate residents at the curb. And this fiscal year we had over 12,800 tags by just the cart tagging interns and the drivers. So for community events this past year of COVID put a lot of things on hold so we were able to do a lot more education by attending events like Red Bud which had been previously postponed, Great American Cleanup, Twilight Tunes we even got to be at which was really cool. For some of the community events just on recycling we were able to do outreach at 81 events and do outreach to over 5,000 residents just on recycling education. For targeted messaging so we've always more or less included information in the bill stuffers like the citizen connection or a resident update. The citizen connection actually goes out to over 73,000 residents so we're able to include information about items that were seen in the recycling stream like plastic film, bagging the recyclables and just kind of reminding residents what does go in their curbside cart. For HOA meetings and that's another way that I do outreach to residential customers but I'll just kind of tag along and say you know this specific residential route is having higher contamination can you just remind your residents please don't put these following items in your cart or if you'd like or if you'll allow me can I go ahead and attend your next HOA meeting that you guys are going to have. And those are some of the things that we've you know been doing in the past. Something that is new under targeted messaging is next door so we took that on this past fiscal year and next door messaging so what I will receive from Solid Waste we get the highest contaminated residential routes and we'll actually break them up in by neighborhood and next door and we'll post directly in there and say hey you know if you live in Wheeler Ridge for example can you please stop placing hangers in your recycling cart. So we do targeted messaging based on what we're seeing in the recycling stream not only do we get that information from Pratt which is our materials recovery facility but we're also getting that information from car tagging interns, our drivers and then anything far in between. So that's another way that we do education. For mailers that's something that we took on recently and just in the past six months we've been able to reach out to over 10,000 homes. So this is a do not bag recyclables mailer that we have. All of the graphics in that are from the recycling partnership so we even the graphics that we use there's a reason behind it because they actually are more recognizable to residents and we also have them in English and Spanish for for mailers like that whenever we're reaching out to specific homes. Facebook ads as well so we're on different social media we're on Facebook Instagram Twitter and next door. Facebook specifically we actually have Facebook ads just remind me if you know if you don't follow our pages already hopefully it's able to end up on your feed some one way or another and we do that through the Facebook ads and it's just reminding residents again same message don't bag your recyclables no plastic film etc. So residential recycling education we talked a little bit about that with different community events going on will actually be this Saturday a day of the dead so that'll be exciting especially since it's been postponed for a bit but the first picture is at Redbud we got to piggyback at Twilight Toons which was a really great event I remember going to Twilight Toons when I was an undergrad every time so it was really nice to be able to be up there in front and then same thing I went to UNT and we were able to do education at the Mean Green Flame we also had a table at the Sustainability Fair as well so multifamily recycling education that's kind of my bread and butter and my multifamilies are kind of got a bad rap so we do our audits and basically what happens is we'll get the highest contaminated commercial customers and we'll break them down by property type so if it's a multifamily they go to me if they're a commercial business or other they'll go to someone else in solid waste and then if they're DISD campus they go to chem genetics and when we're doing our audits we're going out to the container we're making sure that the container is labeled properly that people are able to kind of see that this is a recycling container it's not a trash container and then you know the items that are programmatic and go into our container there and so with the audits we're also seeing if the containers are too contaminated so if there's a lot of illegal dumping that customer will be contacted we'll let them know hey this container is not going to get collected as is would you like to enter the containers trash or would you like to have someone remove the contamination sometimes it could be something like a bed frame that you can just remove other times the containers fill to the top with construction demolition debris and there's no way that you know our maintenance guy is going to be able to pull all that all that out of there so audits is one way that we find out a little bit more information about how we can specifically educate multifamily customers because that way we actually know what's going in the recycling stream not only from our audits but from Pratt and then also our drivers as well so move-in packets is something that I do we provide you know we provide apartment complexes that are on the highest contaminated routes with information to include in their movement packets along with that we'll ask them you know how are you contacting your residents are you doing newsletters text messages flyers and how can we kind of work off of that how can we include some recycling information that's one thing that we've done it also includes like that little reusable bag that has a handle on the bottom so they can empty it directly into their containers they don't have to bag their recyclables or anything like that and so that's how we're able to do some targeted education specifically to multifamily not only that but we'll also be able to get information from what they're seeing at Pratt and be able to kind of target that to those specific multifamilies that are on that route and so dumpster decals where we have decals on all of the dumpsters on the highest contaminated routes just reminding residents you know this is not a donation bin this is a recycling container it's not a trash container and it also shows them what items are accepted in our program as well and trash valley so there's some apartment complexes that their residents are not the ones who take it to the actual container trash valley takes care of it for them so it's also reaching out to trash valley and getting in contact with them reminding them you know bulky styrofoam wood clothing donations that's not accepted in our program it may be accepted at maybe other properties outside of the outside of the city however it's not accepted in our specific program so just reminding them what's accepted in our program so that they're not putting that in there it's also reminding them specifically sometimes with the configuration of the apartment complexes some trash valleys will favor a particular container over another so it's reminding them please don't use the overflow it don't miss any overflow trash in your recycling container you know you want to make sure that material is clean and we don't want to we want to make sure that we don't have to collect that as trash so multifamily events that picture over there on the right was one of the multifamily events that I did at an apartment complex that is actually predominantly college students but we actually had some older folks that had been retired and were empty what is it empty nest or empty nesters and so that was a great opportunity for me to do some education at the cop for college students but also other folks that are living in the apartment complex and may not be familiar with our recycling program those folks were actually from Seattle so their recycling program is completely different than what we have so it's just a good reminder and another way to educate the residents that are living there and then the shoot lid unlocking bar program we'll talk a little bit about that so you may have seen some of the containers in Denton with this brand new shoot lid unlocking bar so these little slits act as a physical control so that a lot of that debris and material that's big and bulky can't get in there a lot of trash you have to really try and make an effort to place that item in there if you want to but we did a solid waste and recycling did a multifamily pilot where we took the two highest contaminated commercial routes and we put a shoot lid unlocking bar on all of the multifamilies on those routes we tracked the progress of the contamination during that time and we were able to see whether or not this was a great physical control to put on these containers that people were using them if they were able to be used properly so I had to you know be in contact with the multifamily properties made sure they locked them down so this picture is an older picture of our shoot lids and locking bars the other ones are a little bit different however on these sides of these you can actually place a lock on there which makes sure that the shoot lid stays in place and the locking bar stays on top also with Denton ISD so Denton ISD some properties off of or some campuses off of 380 had a lot of illegal dumping and along with that it made it difficult for the collection of those containers as trash etc so with Denton ISD they were also outfitted with some shoot lids and locking bars and they were able to see great success through that as well we've seen such success with the shoot lid and locking bars that Pratt has offered to start sponsoring them for our commercial businesses in the new year just really great not only that we've spoken at a few conferences and other cities are wanting to do what we're doing with our shoot lids and locking bars they're asking for our powerpoints they're asking for our vendors because they want to know how they can implement it there's even a Murph that's down in Austin who reached out to us and wants to know exactly what we're doing because they want to sponsor that for their cities so we thought that was really cool just us little old Denton inspiring some people down in Austin so and a little bit more information about the multifamily pilot so we had those shoot lids and locking bars in place and we tracked them for two months so the starting contamination when all of those multifamilies were ran on their own route the contamination rate was 64% so that means that 64% of the material was considered trash and diverted so through this graph you can see that we can start at the bottom which is gross tons so gross tons decreased during that time which means those physical controls allowed for less material to be placed into the containers that is a good thing because that means that a lot of that material may not have been programmatic may not have been part of our program and therefore considered trash so this container right here you can kind of see the before that is a multifamily that's over by UNT it needs to get filled all the way to the top with donation items it would be filled with canned food with clothing with pots and pans I used to find someone always digging in there looking for what they could add to their collection so when that shoot lid and locking bar got placed you can see the after picture where it's not even full all the way the container actually has more programmatic material it is not perfect but it is a lot better than how it was before so because of the physical controls we did have less tons in our recycling containers but you can see at the top that we increase the net time so the if there was an increase in the material that was actually getting recycled which is what we wanted and overall we were able to decrease contamination so at the beginning of the pilot it was those multifamily families were running at 64% at the end of the multifamily pilot they were running at 39% and before you leave I think this is a good spot for us to ask any questions about multifamily before the ISD questions come up do you have any about what we've seen so far Brian go ahead I'm so proud of you guys this is an amazing really holistic program I'm like I can just like see you getting so happy about all the data you guys have um which I'm sure speaks a lot to how much effort you put into it I'm just curious with the multifamilies particularly looking at the move in with that period for August do you think that those lock and bars will have the same effect whenever people are attempting to put in a lot more non-typical material in bins or is that what is your projection for that period so um the chute lids and locking bars have a place for you to place a lock on them we've noticed that if the lock is on the container it works so before that you know these containers didn't have anything any kind of physical control on them so we're really hoping is that if these multifamilies get a chute lid and locking bar in place they put a physical lock on there and they maintain it during move in and move out because that'll keep a lot of the debris out of it there are some multifamilies that you know they get their locks stolen you know an employee removes a lock for whatever reason and you'll see them get overflowing with with mattresses with construction demolition the illegal dumping returns but when it's actually locked that's when it works best so we've been able to see a lot of improvement in that from that material not even entering the recycling stream if it's in place if it's locked down it works if it's not then that's what makes it difficult I'm one comment I'm just curious yes there are a lot of multifamily units coming do we have an estimation of data like how much each complex I guess depending on such average adds to the landfill in tons and I'm just I mean are we looking at that trying to make sure that we do a lot of diversion I mean there's hundreds and hundreds of units coming I think that our comprehensive solid waste management strategy is going to bring a lot of opportunities for us to divert more material especially from commercial businesses even possibly looking at a way to have some kind of ordinance where we require commercial businesses to divert I mean that may come from that is going to come from the comprehensive solid waste management strategy so I'm sure that we were already looking at that and that's something that we're anticipating because because of the growth of them because yeah you're right all of the city all of the multifamilies that I'm going to you a lot of them are doing you know 700 500 plus units they're having four recycling containers on site they're having four trash containers on site so it's ensuring that if they're you know building a new multifamily that there they have proper location for for both for a recycling and a trash container thank you and Fran just one more thing on your question about move-in move-out there's a usually a huge push to get additional containers during move-in move-out so large cardboard things like that go into those and then if not then we can divert them to North Lakes we can send them to the landfill to recycle those cardboard parts cardboard items thank you so much hand it over to my partner so y'all ever see good afternoon community rivers y'all ever see a movie stepbrothers yes okay yeah well this is like to Lisa and I got bunk beds back at the office so we used to actually share an office but now we got our own so but as you can see like recycling education is so important because there's so many different types of people that live here in Denton and so many different ways that we need to communicate this important message in the DFW area there's not a single city that has the exact same recycling program with how you bag it what they take anywhere in DFW so recycling can oftentimes be a mystery or let you listen mention people are moving from Seattle out of state or even from a different city and they come into it's into our system and we have to make sure that they understand what they can and can't recycle even if they think they're the best at it because there's always going to be the one thing that they don't know that has changed or that we can or cannot accept so I am what my name is Kim Jennings and I am the second waste reductions programs coordinator and I mirror to Lisa in her recycling education and outreach efforts but I focus on the DISD school campuses and the Denton sustainable schools program so I focus mostly with most of the kids which I love kids because they're great and in my opinion they are the gateway to change any type of organizational change that you want to see you have to start with the kids and I know I say this at every single meeting but like our future is bright these kids are excited about the environment they're excited about recycling and they're excited about what they can do to make a difference and I couldn't be happier about having an opportunity to work with them in this capacity today I want to speak a little bit about the background of the recycling education in Denton for the schools audits and contamination some of the outreach resources and collaboration that we have and some singly challenges that we have with the dense label schools program so fun fun and more fun some background on the dense single schools program so we as you all know we had coded my position was actually vacant for for about two years the program wasn't doing much with everything shut down weren't able to get to the schools like we wanted and the first week yes the first week that I was here solid waste ran a route with nothing but the IC campuses on it it's a commercial their commercial accounts so they're usually mixed in with others so they just did one they collected nine tons for some campuses and a 90% contamination rate so it really just goes to show you that if you leave something untouched you don't educate you don't reach out you don't check you're gonna report you so there was a lot of illegal dumping there was sort of a free-for-all during during coded but since we've had restrictions lifted and were able to actually get back into the schools and make those connections we've seen great success in trying to get that contamination along with some physical controls so the dense single schools program it follows it focuses on recycling we have like if you want to say like solar system why we've got recycling at the heart of it because it's what those kids can actually do and they have it at home they have it at school and it's one of the best ways that we can reach out to them for them to make a difference in their own community but it mirrors so the same worse so we cover you know transportation electricity environmental issues everything but we kind of try to circle and tie it back around to to recycling so I know I said this but we meet these kids where they are we're not just going into the schools we're also going into like rec centers after school programs going to going to churches this is at MLK Center so we do recycling relays the kids love love love the the big trucks and they like they like touching things like they see a big pile of trash every time every time we can be a prep big pile of anything because we're like when can I jump in this like they want an experience so if we can take recycling and bring it down to their level bring it where they're at based on their age what excites them what interests them make it valuable for them to take home they're going to they're going to be happy they're going to remember something and then they're going to teach their friends and their parents and then that message is going to go from the ground up and go as high as we need it so that we can have that change also we go out to to their campuses kids love trucks love love love this was a one of the touch of trucks events so we go where the fun is we go where the kids are we go where we're invited and they always so like during COVID and I know you'll probably hear this story but I'll tell you this one my favorite ones I always like to be like the favorite of anything so y'all think like I'm a favorite but so during COVID like the kids are at home right and the excitement that they have is like the trash truck or the mailman trash truck is awesome it's loud he's always there there's like movement there's clanging and so they would get excited every time they would see this and so a kid do not the kids are excited about a trash truck they will go to the trash truck for the fire truck they think it's amazing so I see that there's value and not only bringing the recycling education but the tools that we use so when we go to some of these career days our drivers are there and they're there you know talk they're speaking with the students they're showing them that we have technology that we use they have an iPad for a smart routing system so these kids are seeing that hey like these you know these workers aren't just like dealing with trash they have to know technology they have to know how to drive look at all these buttons like this is this is high-tech this is more than just you know recycling or taking out the trash of the curb so Julissa mentioned on this we had a 90% contamination rate so this is LeBron this is just one example of what we would see you know it's a school depending on the placement of where the container is where the school is actually located this one had always a lot of construction material and it wasn't like the school was under construction areas around it were under construction so you would see a lot of stuff from community illegal dumping and then with the success of the multi-family pilot we decided let's try we did not shoot far we did lock all of the all of the containers up we just picked some of the select ones that were in the ETJ and then a few that were on the interior that that were really contaminated on a consistent basis this is the same unless we put that lid and a locking bar in there because you can't fit a pallet you can't fit and can't fit wood in there you can't put proper materials in there so outreach resources and collaboration so we talked about we talked about Pratt so these two pictures we work we work with practice set up recycling tours so it could be home school groups it could be UNT TWU it could be any outside organization anyone that wants to do a tour and come and see where your materials that are from your home what actually happens to them like right in front of your very eyes we encourage you to set the tour with us and you can come view Pratt and they're a great partner this is just an example we can do this as y'all want to but I always do with the little kids we do like recycle dance parties so we bring us some music we get some lights going they dance around we try to have them take recycling from different perspectives so like we'll first introduce you know like read a book just like read a book sit down read a book with them and they kind of like pull some information like why is this important why is this important to you and then show them you know take them to the viewing area where they can actually see the sorting equipment moving they can actually smell it it's very it's very loud and there's lots of things going on the sounds so you can hit this from so many different angles depending on which group you have you can hit it from you know the recycling perspective you can talk about commodities you can talk about jobs talk about safety talk about community you talk about partnerships you can talk about so many things to connect it back to recycling and what they can do so a lot of times like you'll have kids well I'm not really that interested you know I don't really want to do like you know a green job but I'll tell you what I want to be a businessman I want to be a lawyer tell you you know what great amazing you know why because organizations need people that have marketing skills that have business skills that have an awareness of a lot there's so many ways that you can tie their life back to recycling back to making a difference by just showing them in real life what jobs are out there what opportunities are there so this was you know talking about meeting students and people where they are this is this is guys guys to high school students their environmental science and statistics statistics class and we went out and you know we talked about recycling for about a good hour and a half and then we actually went out and looked at their bins they want to know what's in there they're highly interested and so it's just a good way if you don't know what you have how can you ever improve if you just assume that you're doing it right while you know while out doing these audits a lot of times I run into DISD like cafeteria or janitorial stuff and a lot of times they're just like taking a box out or taking a load out and I'm like I always like you know applaud them like hey great job that good job on the box like how's your day going if there's a lock bar and chute lid I have some pain we think about these lids a lot of times they're like well it's kind of a pain because you know it's locked but we don't have all this extra stuff in there and it's not completely overflowing so I can actually use it so it's just a really good time to organically meet with members of the community and just sort of just try them up see how their day is going it makes a difference when they know that there's someone out there that cares and that's watching and that's applauding when they're doing it right too. So we have recycling audits and sustainability challenges with the sustainable schools program so the schools so continuously like we're always out doing audits whether it's the drivers flagging their containers that are on their campus or whether it's when I'm actually physically going to their campus and performing the audits myself the schools are actually doing their own audits and we have a recycling audit challenge it's a form that they fill out I go to the school I train the students that are there that are performing the audit I work with this with the teachers the staff show them how to do the audit we have a whole thing that we go through and then the kids go out and they do one and we're quantifying the amount of audits as one of the challenges that they can earn environmental awards for we also have sustainability challenges which is the same an example of sustainability challenges would be anything like here they are planting a garden so just things that they can do that tie back to the environment but we have one specifically targeted just for recycling because it was so important that we get that message across that they understand what they can and can't do and it's fun because like these students they're doing it regularly they're like okay like every Friday we're going to do our audits and so they're going to go you know they're going to go look and see what are what's under the end have some education and outreach highlights I Jalisha touched on this we were invited to speak at Texwana the Lone Star chapter of the Solid Waste Association of North America and then a few weeks ago we went to the state of Texas Alliance for Recycling we were asked to present in their education track there and that was really interesting because you have a lot of local governments that go there and I love hearing about what other local governments are doing and like Jalisha said like every single time afterwards they pull us aside they're like hey what about this and this if you tried this or you know give us your presentation we want to implement some of these things so it's really cool to to like kind of see what everyone else is doing and then take some of their ideas and just share all of that speaking of sharing we were also awarded the exceptional recycling partnership award and that was with Pratt Industries I can't we can't speak enough about how closely we work with Pratt with solid waste and recycling department with sustainability department we are in their education room so we coordinate with them hey can we borrow your room they want to do upgrades to the room they are very helpful in working with us with that we have meetings with them to determine like what types of items are we seeing we're seeing sharps we're seeing diapers so that we can kind of target which neighborhoods or which areas that Julie's going to do for her mailers so they're instrumental and having us providing us more detailed information of how we can track and who we can reach out to and communicate which message it's just sending out the same message to like random people is completely ineffective you really have to segment your population and speak to them on what is important to them and what's valuable and how they're specifically contributing so that you can create that change that you want and we also received outstanding public outreach honorable mention next year we're going to take it down but again they plan was highly deserving of your work and Zach allegedly is smiling and that picture is his happiness yes our partner with Pratt so it's you know it's just there it's a great partnership that we have and we're always always talking with each other here are just for those of you who really like numbers some outreach metrics numbers and for you get really excited when you see that 324,906 in Denton's only what 151,000 that doesn't mean we've met every single person more than once so just as an example our targeted next door our targeted mailers and our bill stuffers those could be the same person so if you have an account you're gonna get you're gonna get targeted if you are on one of the highest contaminated routes for that month you're gonna get targeted there so you may receive you may receive a message three or four or five or six times whereas another person may only receive one and they may be seeing might be receiving you know different types of messages which is which is intentional but we really try to do a lot of different ways to reach out whether it's through the audits with our residential cart tagging which is incredible because that's just with two interns that they're able to make it interesting so like kind of like tying it all together so Jalisa and I could be a bit like national night out right so we have our recycling table and we're talking with people we have activities for the kids to do so the parents come and they have to stay and talk to them because they can't leave because the kids are like you know and this lady comes by and she's like oh I know you like oh hi and she's like you target you tap my part I'm like okay so then we have this organic conversation about why her cart was tag and what was in it and she was a little upset because she kept getting tagged and I was like what we put in there and so we had this whole conversation and then her she brought her friends over just like these people have tagged my cart so then we got to reach all of them and tie it all together took a picture with her so now like she thinks it's up she thinks it's okay it is okay but just meeting people and having that one-on-one explanation when you see them that it's not just a sticker it's not just someone slapping your hand that there's a reason like they're fine with it so I was being able to go out in the community and see some of these spaces over and over or have them at you know ask questions that just you know randomly calling a number like a real life person is super super helpful so with the Denton ISD for this 2021-22 fiscal year I did 1,165 audits on the DIC campuses commercial did 546 multifamily had almost 400 our community engagement we tried to work with the community whether it's through social media or doing live events you see the numbers there and then again our targeted messaging that we try we're always looking for new opportunities and new outlets and new partnerships so that we can expand our reach and meet people in different ways however you know we can best do it but yeah we've been busy and we look forward to you know going out to more events and increasing our reach and being creative and how we target and how we message and moving forward as more and more restrictions and I'll see each other now are lifted and just working with them with the recycling I will take any questions that you have for me questions about all the DSD schools involved in this or just select few so all of the DSD campuses have have recycling on on the campus they are not required to be a part of the dense in the schools program we hope that they all will it's a it's a it's a program that they have the opportunity to be a part of that it is not not a requirement how many are in the program so currently right now we have seven that are registered yes and how many schools are there right now I believe there are 43 campuses yes do you think I think we talked a little bit about this last meeting of going before the school district's trustees and presenting this to them to see if get a wider expanse in it within the district yes I know if that's plausible yes I agree and you know when I've been speaking with you know some some of the campuses because like they'll have interest and I'm okay so you know what you know what's preventing you from doing it like well our staff is stretched to them we don't have enough time we don't want to be it cannot commit to it at this time and so we're trying to make it to where it's it is easy and it isn't a huge time commitment but those are just some of the some of the concerns a lot of the schools in the past that didn't have green teams no longer have green teams a lot of their extracurricular stuff like that has has unfortunately been more restrictive just since coded but we're hoping that plus when the program was dormant for a while we hope that we're going to continue to grow and get interest with it we just this is an interesting one so again get an ISD virtual academy we're working with them so that will be fun to try to because everything they do is virtual to do a spin on it like that so you know just trying to be creative and you know show that there's there's value in the program we hope they participate but it is an often program thank you question you know just congratulations you guys y'all make me so excited like even just hearing you talk it's just a lot of energy and congratulations on the awards and the really really amazing programs I have a question in our couple of shirts so on the green teams I know at one point a while ago like the principals used to kind of give incentives to the teachers like you know you can have gene passes or you know and I know at one point we used to give awards like for competitions like monetary awards to teachers for their classrooms and I don't know if that helped I know we don't do that anymore I don't know if that was something that helped maybe we could think about with our fun and then on when you said read a book and with your energy and excitement it popped into my head out you may already do this but partnership with the library yes do you do recycling days like the yes yes ma'am we have November I have to look my calendar but in November yes we have a recycling program over at South Branch and then we have some in the spring lined up for South Branch and North Branch and recycling thing yeah we're gonna bring in that parachutes yeah that'll be so much fun they're gonna love it yes ma'am and Zach is great at Pratt and just a comment like I'm sure the better the more successful we are the more successful they are so it's a really great partnership it there was a it was interesting so at STAR like even when they feed you their speakers going so you cannot leave like you are you are learning about recycling all the time and Pratt had a presentation we did not share our presentations ahead of time and it was Denton Denton Denton Denton throughout the presentation talking about like what Denton does and it was really incredible to hear that because I didn't even know he was going to say that in our presentations we heard each other on a lot of aspects so y'all should have been proud I was proud I wanted to like we were fist bumping each other like it was cool to be a bit well I love your energy about recycling and it's infectious and I want to congratulate you on on that and I have a just one last question budget like on the mailers and is that part of the the sustainability budget or is that your own separate so we have a transfer from solid waste that covers their recycling public outreach so they have their own substantial money yeah we're going to be trying some new marketing advertising we will have a new movie theater app coming out here on holidays we're trying billboard to see what we can reach that way so we're going to try some different things at different time frames and see how that reach may look and then Kim has one piece that wasn't confirmed whatever this presentation was put together but I don't know she wants to do a soft announcement about the new exciting okay so so so so we are working on doing a formalized promotional push out of this but you want to know go to go to our website where waste wizard is when you go to where the waste wizard I think that recycle calm you can go and has like game play the game and there is a ready set recycle game that is like Denton specific as Denton theme all the way through and so you can sort items and you'll tell you like it needs to go to home chemical collection the landfill doesn't need to be recycled it's a trash as a yard waste and so it's different levels and then once you complete all the levels well actually once you complete one level you get to build a park and so that's fun like yes and I play it and it's fun and our customer service over it's always recycling they've been like kind of pushing it it just it just launched and they said that they really like it we're getting a lot of good feedback on it but it's great for kids my nephew so he played it he sort of like where you like 193 items he just kept playing like he wouldn't end the game because he was like I want to see how many things I can put in this park okay you go for it so it's cool because it has this denting and so you'll see well that's great for the waste reductions and that is a certificate at the end that's fantastic thank you everybody yeah yeah first let me just congratulate you know for the job that you were doing numbers numbers guys great in terms of training right direction if it goes to one of the challenges I agree with you the next generation is needs to be our major focus from the area of challenges it's impossible well let me say this every second grade teacher lives in my house with me my daughter and so I have approached her from give me the reality of what's happening in the schools as it relates to this and we really don't have time to focus so my question would be can we look at possibly connecting this to steam curriculum science technology engineering math perspective can we if we can get it into curriculum because that's what she's telling this is where our focus has to be what the district is saying the kids need to learn is there a possibility or any conversations can we get to the curriculum managers for the district and see how we might tie this in from a steam perspective that's what's driving education so we've been in contact I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with the organizing called eco rise they work with a lot of municipalities they have a full-blown curriculum that covers many aspects of sustainability but they also have a recycling specific it is teak's specific it has all the things that you need for it and we're working with them to see if this is a partnership that we can possibly look into moving forward when we provide curriculum that crosses your eyes without your teeth and is able to be used in the school so it's not something additional it becomes something that's useful and portrays the correct messaging so we are looking at from the curriculum base if that's how we can attack it because we haven't tried I'm not sure if we tried that I have not tried that yet so I'm like I don't I like trying new things we can see if this is going to be something that will work but we are working we're looking we're researching that as a possibility and they do what's encouraging is they do work with other municipalities similar to our size like San Antonio and Austin with that curriculum so I think it's something we might could could be a potential bonus for us and they've been successful with that curriculum in Texas it's been approved in Texas so it should be an easier sell to get it into the classrooms. I would like to see that number of seven of forty three participating and it's almost going to be we've got it incorporated into the required learning in order to get you teachers to buy in. Thank you very much. Thank you all right we will move on to item B back up to our order here receive a report hold a discussion and provide staff direction regarding the fiscal year 2022 2023 sustainability framework fund work plan. Let's see. So Kaplan Burnett Sustainability Manager and today just wanted to bring back what we've talked about the last few meetings for the sustainability framework plan work plan for 2022-23 we incorporated that into a new framework fund work plan document that is part of your backup to review and then we will be considering a recommendation to City Council of this work plan. As we discussed in our previous meetings we wanted to identify priorities they're broken up by focus area in the work plan we have multiple projects in each focus area so that if we have something that may not unfold as expected we can reallocate funds to another project that's under that same focus area so there are funded and unfunded items in each of the focus areas in that work plan. The funding amounts identified in our planner estimates and the projects are preferred options that we will implement according to the camera guidelines and that the funds may be adjusted among priorities as opportunities arise is probably the key piece that we will have flexibility within that work plan. And I do have a document here I don't have it pulled up on the screen but if there were any questions about the document. I didn't have any. Did y'all have any questions about the document? We kind of pretty much discussed it. There's no changes from our last discussion. No we just put it into the the document that could go to council for review and approval. And added the flexibility. Added the flexibility. Sounds good. So do we need to vote on that or? This one is an action item. This one is an action item to recommend to city council recommend the work plan to city council. We'll go ahead and do that just in case just because it's fun. Do I have a motion to recommend? I so move. All right so we will move on to item C. Receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff feedback on the expanded 2019 inventory of community and government operations greenhouse gas emissions report. That's JT. All right good afternoon committee members. James Douglas, goodbye JT, conservation programs coordinator. So here today to present the updated 2019 inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. Some of you may know that we previously had a 2019 inventory. So we took advantage of an opportunity and a regional push for collaboration. And we've spent the last year expanding our data, refining our methods to create the more comprehensive document that you see here today. So we are going to get started with that. So a quick preview before we get started. So we're going to talk a little bit about why do a greenhouse gas inventory in the first place in our background. We'll talk about how does it fit into the larger picture of greenhouse gas management. We'll look at the regional effort a little bit more closely and I'll go into the details of the benefits and the final products of what that'll look like. From there we'll talk about the document itself. We'll go through the overview, the methodology, and of course the results. From there we'll talk about some next steps and what the inventory process is going to look like looking forward. So as I said before we dive into the report itself a little bit of why do an inventory in the first place. So Earth's climate is regulated by naturally occurring greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat or more accurately energy in Earth's atmosphere and that process is known as the greenhouse effect, hence the name. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC in their sixth assessment stated that human activities have caused an increase in atmospheric carbon and with that increase of course there's an increase in that heat trapping potential as well. This along with all of the subsequent impacts are what we collectively refer to as climate change. With that in mind local governments have started to take steps to address this and it's not just for the direct impacts of that but it's also for the co-benefits things like air quality and public health and that of course includes Denton. So on April 19th 2022 the Denton City Council with the recommendation of this body passed an ordinance outlining the importance of climate action setting that science-based target that we talked about and then also authorizing the creation of the climate action plan. When we talk about climate action I always like to highlight sort of the two sides of that mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation being reducing carbon emissions to slow the progression of climate change. Adaptation being making communities more resilient to changes that are already occurring and ones that are going to occur in the near future. Our conversation today is going to be purely in the mitigation category with the climate action plan coming about in the next year. They will be covering both mitigation adaptation and also equity within both of those but just kind of setting the stage for today that we'll be talking just in that mitigation category. All right so with that in mind I kind of want to talk about what is a greenhouse gas inventory at its most basic level. So most basic it's a snapshot a one-year time period. Basically the community's carbon footprint in that time period. What's important about the inventory itself is when you get multiple multiple years multiple snapshots you start to see a trend and that trend is really what we care about. So the trend itself can help us track what's going on from year to year and help us better make decisions in the future. So as you can imagine to develop a trend like that you need multiple inventories. That's why the graphic here that you see on the screen is a cycle. This is the ICLE local governments for sustainability five climate milestones. ICLE has been our partner in developing our greenhouse gas management program to what it is today for pretty much the last 10 years. And like I said as you can see this is a cycle with milestone one being the inventory itself. Milestone two establish a target which of course we have done and milestone three which is to develop the climate action plan which is where we are at currently. The reason that it's a cycle is because it's a constant feedback. You want to know you want to be able to check back in with an inventory to see how your progress is going. Is your climate action plan still relevant? What action items are working? Which ones are not or which ones may need more resources? And then you continue the cycle again make those changes as needed. Just a quick reminder of what our science-based target is. So that is 46.3 percent by 2030 and net zero by 2050. As promised I wanted to talk a little bit more about the regional effort here. So this effort was really born out of a partnership between the North Central Texas Council of Governments and CTCOG and the Rives Coalition which is the regional integration of sustainability efforts of which Catherine is the chair this year. And so for the COG this initiative was really born out of their air quality and transportation division because of the very large overlap between air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions in terms of sources. So for that group it was really something that they wanted to pursue. As you can see the participating cities are there on the right hand side. Now prior to this initiative only three cities in North Texas have completed a greenhouse gas inventory in the past and that was Dallas, Denham, and Plano. So with this it really brought more cities into the fold to create an inventory for the year 2019. So we were all sort of on that level playing field. In addition to that the COG is creating a 2019 inventory for the 16 county region as a whole whether that be within those participating cities or not it's that it's that entire geographic region. So some of the benefits from that are the regional collaboration and training. We all got to go through that training together. Everybody got on the same page. A lot of data sharing and methodology review which was really helpful at the regional level. Can't speak enough about the partnership there in terms of putting some data sets together that we wouldn't have been able to have access to otherwise. Things like really in-depth transportation models through their transportation group have been really helpful in putting together our inventory. So this process is still ongoing. I would expect the regional one to be completed in the winter and we will follow up of course with a staff report when that does occur. So getting into the document itself and the document is attached in the backup so as I go through this I may reference it at some points. So we talked about this as a part of the whole climate action process as a snapshot a check-in of everything that's going on. We through this expanded scope with the CAWG have 18 new data points that have been incorporated into the inventory that we historically did not include. And this also allows us to compare not just to the CAWG inventory but to the other cities in the region as well. A really good example of one of the improvements as I mentioned is the transportation modeling. So that used to be sort of loosely based on Denton County as a whole. We were really able to geographically scale that down to the city of Denton maintaining our geographic boundary and more accurately modeling how many vehicle miles traveled were within that city boundary. So that's just kind of one example there. So there are several methodologies as a whole that are out there for calculating the carbon footprint for your community. The one that we have always historically used and continue to use is the ICLEI U.S. Community Protocols for Accounting and Reporting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Now this protocol to have a technically complete inventory you only need five basic data points and those are outlined in the document. We of course go we have historically gone above and beyond that and even more so now with the with the 18 new data points that we have. All of these are outlined in the methodology in terms of how to calculate them but to have a technically complete one it's just the five basic ones there. Another one that you may be familiar with is the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions. It's abbreviated GPC. ICLEI also had a hand in the creation of these protocols but these are for larger cities and then this is global as well so it's not United States specific. We have always completed a community version of the inventory and also one for municipal operations just to highlight things that we have a little bit more operational control over. This graphic here I like because it shows that the municipal emissions are also included within that community within that community footprint. It's just that when we do the municipal inventory we want to take a little bit of a different lens on that and to give you an example of that. When we talk about the electricity consumption at city buildings when we look at that as a community as a whole those are going to be listed under the commercial accounts and so it's going to be listed as commercial energy. Now from our operational standpoint we might want to take a little bit closer look at that so when we divide it up in the municipal inventory we divide those up into buildings and facilities but we also divide it up into whatever department that might be taking place in. Whatever department has that building might be slightly different hours slightly different operations and so those are the types of things that we'd like to learn by calling it out in just a slightly different lens. So a little bit more on the methodology side of things we take a look at both sources and activities and this is a really kind of important part of the methodology as a whole. So we don't just look at the emissions that are emitted within the geographic scope of DIN. We also look at the activities and so this is any activity that results in the production of greenhouse gas emissions whether those emissions are within the geographic boundary or not. The activity takes place within the city of Denton and so that's a really important distinction that we really include both. To kind of better outline that there are three different emission scopes. Scope one the activity and the emission takes place within Denton that's something like a vehicle tailpipe. The emissions are created and produced right there in Denton. Scope two this is going to be preliminary or primarily electricity emissions from electricity consumption. So the electricity may be consumed in Denton but the the emissions used to produce that electricity may or may not occur in Denton so that's really that scope two and then scope three is even one step further removed from that process. Influenced by things that happen within the city of Denton but again emissions are very likely elsewhere. So these are the data categories at a very high level for both community and government operations and so you can kind of see the breakdown there what's important to both. With the government operations category you'll see some things that that make sense for what we might might care about might be looking at buildings and facilities street lights things of that nature and then on the community side you'll see all of the typical ones that we would want to look at there. Before we get into results just a couple of notes here so you'll see all of our values there and the unit used there is metric tons of co2e so what is that so we take a look at three different greenhouse gases when we do our inventory we look at carbon dioxide we look at methane and we look at nitrous oxide now all of these have different potency when it comes to climate change different global warming potentials and so essentially what we want to do is we want to normalize all of those to one value and that value is co2 so this is the co2 equivalence which is the little e so if some methane is produced we want to we want to know what is the equivalent of that methane in co2 so that we can compare apples to apples so that's the value that you'll see throughout the report. Yes I just have a quick the dashboard for the say the deck emissions is in regular tons yes and is there at any point can can the deck emissions be converted to metric tons or so that there's a an evenness across the board? We have to do a lot of conversions for basically every piece of data that we get and so when we get it we're able to convert it for ourselves and this is the one that we'll continue to use we're not going to have a whole lot of control over how we receive that data. Okay thanks. Of course so with that in mind you know we can kind of take a look at the results here at a high level we see that transportation and mobile sources make up the largest block of our community emissions at just over 50 percent following that up is going to be our energy components now energy is both electricity and natural gas consumption those are both lumped into energy so it's you know it's good to remember which one we're talking about electricity and energy are not interchangeable words for this document so those are second following that up we have the landfill as well as upstream activities and process and fugitive emissions with the solid waste side i do want to mention that the main component of this of course is going to be the methane generation that occurs at the landfill now this is a scope one commission and so what we're required to report is the generation of methane what happens to that methane after that is not included in this report so this is just the methane generation so the city of denton landfill us being a full service city is going to you know take that methane and we don't want that going directly to the atmosphere because methane is more potent and so they're going to make sure that it is either utilized in a really effective way or taken down to components that are less harmful than methane and so just kind of want to point out that that value there is strictly that generation that occurs so those are the community inventory results i will point you to the document itself tables three four and five have a little bit more of a breakdown of what goes into each one of those categories and so i'm happy to answer any questions that you might have on those specifics i'll quickly go over the government operations so as i said the lens that we're looking through here is going to be a little bit different and i can kind of give a quick example of that so when we're looking at for example the solid waste component here for our municipality so we own and operate the landfill so we're going to count those methane emissions just the same as we did in the community inventory but we're also going to take a look at things like our municipal operations so the solid waste that we generate at our facilities what does that look like over time and so that's something that we also want to keep track of so that we're you know leading by example making sure that our practices are headed in the right direction for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions as well you'll see the two major components here are the electrical power production and solid waste denton is a full service city so our our pie chart here if you will is going to look a little bit different than a lot of communities so we provide solid waste services we provide electricity water wastewater services all to our residents and so because those are all within the scope of municipal operations for us all of the emissions associated with that we are going to take a look at in our municipal component other cities are going to look at those they're just going to be completely within their community portion of their inventory and of course ours are too it's just something that we have a little bit more operational control over so we're going to take a look at that here all right so i will just kind of talk about some next steps here so this is of course a draft document so we will take your feedback as well as the feedback of some of our departments and basically just finalize the document for you and we'll come back with that final document very likely next month just to get a final check on that you'll notice in the document itself that there are a couple of data points mainly in the off-road transportation category that we are still waiting on final qa qc from from the cog when those data points are added we will notify you when they're added to the document as well and we wanted to include a space for them so you can see exactly where there's those components are going to be added to we don't anticipate that any of the three of those will significantly impact of course they will add to the total but not in a significant way that's going to shift that high chart or anything like that in any way we will update you on the regional findings of course with the cog when that comes out we will take this back and we are going to update our internal methodology to make sure that every future inventory is produced along these same lines and make sure that that is just streamlined and standardized for every every single one that comes after this these results will be compared and incorporated through our climate action process so you can also expect a an inventory for the same year for 2019 to be produced through the climate action planning process i will say that that one is going to be a little bit more geographic in nature and so it's going to be really interesting to compare the results that we have here that are more activity based to some of the geographic results and it's it's only going to add to what we already have here so that's something to look forward to there and then the the plan that we have currently is to produce a greenhouse gas inventory every two years in the off years what we'll do is we'll produce an analysis called the contribution analysis which will essentially do a deep dive comparing the results of two previous inventories so in this case you have a small sample of that in the document itself where we compare 2018 to 2019 in those off years we'll basically do exactly that and we'll see not just what changed but what are the triggers between those things what's causing that change and so that's really going to be our deep dive for us those two paired together are going to be really helpful in the decision making process and so that's something that we would really like to incorporate and we'll make sure that those are kind of offsetting each other in two different years i know that was a lot all at once um but i would be very happy to take any questions that you might have like brian i did have two but um one was how frequently the inventories would be released so i just wonder every two years what was like the the impetus for that sample term like for a two year period um so basically it's enough time for things to change um is one and also it gives us time to go back and so we're not in the constant cycle of producing an inventory we end it you know we're right on to the next one let's collect data there's also a lag that occurs between so for example the most recent inventory that we will probably be able to reduce even just starting in february of next year will be 2021 so there's almost an entire 12 month lag on data availability when we're in that lag period we can go back and do a deeper dive through the contribution analysis and see you know with the most recent inventory that we produced what's really causing those different things and get into the kind of minor details of the data so kind of the second part of that even within so this is table four in the backup um looking at the 2018 to 2019 comparison when you see a year-over-year shift i'm just taking as an example like dme and co-serve had reductions in this year-to-year comparison but encore for whatever reason showed up a pretty significant increase in their reported emissions so when you're looking at that time frame what's like the story with the case like this and how might future climate action plan address something or even within the same sector we're seeing the splits yeah so that's a great question so this is really where the contribution analysis kind of comes in handy so with dme we know that they increase their renewable energy percentage between 2018 and 2019 and so we can account for that decrease with that the emission factor how much emissions per megawatt hour generated went down we know that with different things there are other influences so it can be the number of customers going up and down it could be the efficiency of those buildings it can be a lot of different things and so what the contribution analysis does is it adds additional data so it says you know how many customers were there what was the usage per customer and we can sort of find those intricacies in there and that better helps us in the climate action planning process to say you know here's what's working well we made we implemented this program we saw a change in that specific area it just gives us a little bit more detail so just one follow-up then since we are using 2019 as our information source for the this current climate action plans how might and again keeping in mind that covid was a period that's difficult to quantify knowing that even a year-to-year change like that can be so significant and here we are three years later i'm just wondering as far as like source quality like are there going to be a little bit of flexibility or some play in there and our current plan that we're developing that accounts for for these year-to-year shifts plus the covid i'm just curious how you think that plays out yeah so you're talking about in sort of the future years of how we how we incorporate that as we move forward definitely and i think it's going to be really helpful having a year or two you know what i mean out where we're going to see some trends so the cog has already done some transportation analyses on the year 2020 now if we keep on our process we'll do 2021 next but there of course still going to be some impacts there but i'm confident that we're already getting information about how some of those things how covid impacted some of those areas that we'll be able to assign some attribution to that and kind of see that moving forward i really don't know if my question is is for this i i have concerns it's a big question mark what's going to happen with the deck in in terms of their of their emissions because when you you look at the reports over the since 2018 it's it's not it's pretty discouraging when you're looking over the past since 2018 they released almost 800,000 tons of co2 equivalents and i i that's like the gorilla in the room with this and i i don't i'm not giving any direction here i'm just expressing however we can figure out a way to work with dma to somehow i'll just say that that will be uh you know all all encompassing will be touched on in the climate action plan yeah so those emissions that have it will be accounted for on this in within that utility group right yes okay i think that's one okay um so i'm just curious because we also shifted our public transportation operations over the last year with our partnership with dcta i'm just curious how that operation factors in is that under a community emission or does that hit our city operations yes so that will just be community emissions now it's that's a complicated question so our transportation model accounts for these things so it accounts for what types of vehicles on them are on the road are they buses are they vans what are they and it's debt specific now what we can do is we can incorporate supplemental information to that so we can say and this would be more for the contribution analysis piece so if we see changes in that and we can ask the question of why why did we see that change that's where that supplemental information starts to really help us out and starts to take shape and so the more specific that we can get get with that information so if we get say you know mileage information from the transportation authority that helps us out that helps us you know account for some of those changes it's it's really a contribution analysis piece okay and just as a comment in that future contribution analysis i would really like to see highlighted if we understand where the the shift and that sort of operational standpoint comes from i would really like to dig in the comparison from our previous transportation model that we're currently using it just because it's under like our guiding principles as a framework committee to push for those more sustainable practices i think having the data that might support our recommendation for one model would be really helpful i have just one comment and thought and just a question so on my comment is that i'm really glad it's kind of going regional that way i mean in the past we have a habit of kind of shifting blame but with it regional and everything being there in the data we can say you know hey this is what's happening this is actually who's fault and this is how we can we can prevent it or make it better so i think that's great that we're all participating next i'm curious like on the solid waste part i know that we accept trash from other cities how does that account in in our inventory of course so um again a little bit complicated um so as the owner and operator of the city of denton landfill we have to account for the methane generation that takes place at our facility regardless of where that solid waste comes from we have another component that we have in the inventory that is for information only again for the contribution analysis so if we see a decrease and then we also see a corresponding decrease in the waste that is generated only by our community we can attribute that and we can say you know this is part of the reason why it went down so we are keeping track of sort of that ratio of inside generate waste generated inside our facility or inside our bounds and outside our bounds and so that kind of gets incorporated into that so for example if a community did not have a landfill and they were generating solid waste and sending it out to another facility they would need to do a different type of calculation for that so they would need to do how much methane could that solid waste ever produce now that we've sent it out what's sort of the lifetime emissions of those that waste that we've sent out to another community and so in that way it does get slightly double counted but keeping our sort of sphere of the inventory itself that's how we do so there is like just a section of information where we keep that division of outside versus inside so that we can account for it right so under the protocols themselves we have a very specific sort of number that we have to report but we're curious what impacts that number and so we want to keep track of those other things as well all right thank you so much appreciate it all the work so we will move on to our matrix i think right we covered them all staff reports and matrix do you want to go over anything kathryn just if you have any questions about the matrix or okay anybody have any questions about the matrix okay those are things that we discussed in the past to put on the agenda so then we will move on to concluding information and we can does anybody have anything to add to the to the matrix or future discussions i i have one that's something um we discussed briefly in one of our last presentations the tree canopy and um i was copied on on an email about the the percentages and how they kind of go up and down and up and down and if we could just have a presentation on clarification um an update on our canopy goals on our tree canopy goals and i know that hayward has done a staff report that'll go out this friday oh okay i think it's this friday um today today is friday okay so the measurements and then the progress and explain that so i guess we'll look at the report i mean the friday report and then we may forward that to you as a committee after it comes out to make sure that it's at the top of your email and then if you have any questions about that then we can have the presentation on this question okay that sounds great it clarifies the data source years and what how it was calculated and the differences between each of the employees okay sounds good i'll wait then it seems a good dream i bet all right well i believe that is all for today um thank you everyone for your time and have a great weekend and we will adjourn at 2 20 thank you