Wednesday 23rd October 2024
One of the best parts of this trip is the links and connections that I've made as I've gone along. Bethany from SVdP introduced me to the amazing Neil Seldman and I was lucky enough to grab a zoom call with him before I started my travels. He sent me loads of great information and contacts and of them was Timonie Hood of the EPA who invited me to join a Bay Area Deconstruction Working Group (BADWG) remotely before I arrived and then in person while I was there.
The Bay Area Deconstruction Workgroup is a group of Northern California deconstruction and reuse leaders from government, private, and nonprofit sectors working to improve policies and practices advancing safe building materials recovery and reuse.
Organised by Stop Waste, this was the second of 4 meetings focussing on different areas. Stop Waste is a public agency and "...helps Alameda County’s businesses, residents, and schools waste less, recycle properly, and use water, energy, and other resources efficiently. We’re a public agency governed by the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, the Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board, and the Energy Council"
I don't mind admitting that at the time of the first meeting, I didn't think deconstrucion was in my field of interest, but by the time I got to the second meeting in person in Oakland I realised that just because we don't really deconstruct houses in Scotland, the reuse policy, process, challanges and opportunities are exactly the same as for non 'construction' waste as we would call it.
Helpfully there is a full meeting recording of the first meeting focussing on infrastructure on the Stop Waste website if you want to catch up.
The second meeting focussed on finance. The recording isn't up yet but I will link when it is. I have to say that it was one of the best meeting's I've been to in a long time in terms of content, enthusiasm and the volume of notes I took!
Timonie Hood of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and I doing some 'research' in San Fransisco's charity shops after the deconstruction meeting
There were presentations from ...
Maura McKnight, Business Council on Climate Change (BC3)
“a membership-driven non-profit dedicated to incubating, scaling, and sharing world-leading solutions to address climate change”.
They are 75% funded from membership fees and 25% fees for services such as solar batteries. Maura gave a fascinating presentation on equity investment and corporate philanthropy. Some brief notes:
· 67% of donations to organisations are from individuals not corporations.
· Of all donations, the highest (24%) go to religious organisations and only 2% to those with a climate focus.
· Sponsorship easiest, grants harder, investment even harder.
· While the ESG teams are most aligned, they are least likely to help. Philanthropy teams are more able to help and are interested in stories and impact. Impact investment teams are interest in the returns – what will speed up decarbonisation and what are the benefits to them for investing.
· Some organisations will use philanthropy for innovation and ideas that pose more risk and therefore wouldn’t be funded by their R&D teams. They will test ideas with small investments or grants to see what works and then support with more R&D money if successful.
· Do research on the philanthropy and sustainability pillars of an organisation, make sure you hit them. However, Salesforce for example (a huge multinational based in San Fransisco) only recently added ‘climate’ to their list and they are leaders in this field.
Max Wechsler, Pacific Reclaimed (previously of Urban Ore) spoke on public-private partnerships and the salvage service fee. See previous post on Urban Ore for more on that.
Krista Kuehnackl, San Mateo County and James Dawes, Placemakers
Talking about the impact of receiving Local government grants. Placemakers were awarded $300k over 3 years from San Mateo County to develop their activity. The money was given in three parts – some upfront for cashflow, next instalment to install new infrastructure and the final when they confirmed they were open 5 days per week (it was previously appointment only) as per the contract.
The impact of the grant was huge, the business went from an income of $50000 in 2019 to $600000 in 2024, only possible from the grant. Again, it was noted that the increase in local benefits here is substantial through local jobs, payroll and sales taxes to the city.
Stephanie Phillips, City of San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation spoke about local government infrastructure and utilising unconventional funding. San Antonio has a city ordinance to support deconstruction over demolition. Sources of funding to support the sector are very wide-ranging including grants from state and federal, a city general fund, and workforce development funding. Investment was attracted by using a wide range of tactics across several funding themes: Historical preservation, waste reduction, affordable housing, environmental, workforce development, economic development, student support services, immigration, and site revitalisation. This helped to move $$ from one city department to another.
Following the meeting, Timonie and I got to chat some more about reuse while checking out a few places in San Fransisco.
Salvation Army stores are here too...
I've pretty much run out of space for pictures on this blog now, but there are more pictures and videos in this album on my flickr page
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