Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Banyan's podcast, Tire Tracks. I've got with me Kirk Sander of the NWRA. That is the National Right Waste and Recycling Association. Kirk, thank you for being here today.

Patrick, it's great to be here and always great to be with a fellow Northeast Ohioan.

Yes. We were just talking that Northeast Ohio is the smallest place in the country. Meaning that, no matter where you go, you will run into three or four people that you have in common. At least one of them, scarily more close than you ever thought possible. Kirk also tells me, he went down to my alma mater, OU in Band Camp. We found out that you don't march with the French horn. What is it? What's the other horn that you do instead?

The mellophone.

Mellophone. Which is, again, I'm sure I will learn other things on this podcast. But the first one is going to be the mellophone, because I've never heard that before.

Yes. I mean, it's going to be an interesting walkthrough. I mean, the introduction of me, but then also, where are we going with the association. Our current interim CEO and I, we have a lot of times where we just start riffing on stuff. The next thing you know is we come up with a great idea. That's where I like being in the office and talking with people. And so yes.

You tell me this. Kirk, first off, I want to go into, you are a very interesting character. Not just because you knew Athens, Ohio, which just – you give it a plus one in my head from that. But I mean – so just in looking at this bio, you've got OSHA in your background, you've got the White House, you've got some NASA in there. Give me an elevator pitch. Who is Kirk Sander? 

Yes. I've always liked politics and science. I've always wanted to know from – that's the two things I like, and realize that there was a disconnect between politicians and scientist. Probably the best example. If you know me, you've probably heard this story. College, I missed a geology club meeting because I was in the Student Senate. The President was like, "Why do you miss the geology club meeting?" I was like, "Well, I was at the Student Senate meeting?" "So why did you miss it?" Fast forward three months, when the geology club budget got cut because of – it just got cut.

That wasn't you going, "Screw the geology club"?

No.

Okay. 

[Inaudible 0:02:51] restored, I was like, "Absolutely." I was like, "This is why I was missing those meetings." He was like, "Oh, okay." Fast forward. I'm working on a master's degree, spent a month in Yemen doing field research on the paleoclimatology of Southern Arabia. I had an opportunity to get involved in the '04 election in Florida. Florida is not a high-stakes political ground at all.

No. No.

From there, sort of realized there was two ways to become a science advisor. Either go get someone elected, or get a PhD, and I chose the route of getting someone elected, and started getting into retail politics. Then, you're sitting in campaign office and people are like, "Oh, I'm political science, I'm communications, I'm this, I'm that." "Geology." They're like, "What are you doing here?" Then, fast forward, just turned out, someone I met on the Obama '08 campaign became the White House liaison at NASA. I said, "I'd love to come work at NASA." He goes, "You're a scientist. We need to bolster that on the political side." That's how I got to NASA. 

I've sort of always had this niche of trying to bridge policy, and science, and how to come together, and was able to serve at NASA interior the White House. Then, ended up at OSHA, where David Michaels and I – David Michaels is the best boss I've ever worked for. He's amazing. 

Do you get him the mug, "Best boss."

Oh, I should send it to him every year. How working with him of his passion of making sure workers came home safe every day, and was there for three years, and then that's what springboarded me to come to NWRA, after the administration. Really, the passion and the engagement from our members, National Waste and Recycling Association represents the commercial waste haulers in the country. Think on a big scale, WM, Republic, GFL, Waste Connections, the big four.

I should say, some big names there. Yes.

Then, Rumpke in Southern Ohio. Kimble in Northern Ohio. And then a lot of independent haulers throughout the country and regional haulers, what their passion is on picking up the waste every day. I mean, the crazy thing is when COVID started, the waste industry was not considered an essential industry. 

Which is so strange to me, because I don't know. I was political science as well, and one of the things that I think anyone that's looked at history, when the trash piles up, there's literally death, is generally what happens. Just every time in history when you didn't have a good way to get rid of trash, people start dying.

Did you just read our letter we sent to –

No, I did not.

Because that was the letter, it was like, "As history has shown." At first, we took it as an insult. But then when we started thinking about it, we took it as a compliment that your job is so well, that in good times, they didn't think about us not doing – they didn't think about us putting us on the list.

It worked so well, because you didn't notice that it was an issue, because it was moving so seamlessly and smoothly in the background, which I think is something that COVID really opened people's eyes for all logistics as well as that as well. Because you go, "Eh, it gets here. Whenever it gets here, it gets here." Then all of a sudden, it goes, "Wait, I didn't get the – I didn't get my Christmas cards." Simple stuff like that. I mean, I got married in that time and it was a great excuse for me to wait to send my invites out, and just saying, it was stuck in the mail, because everything was. I was just lazy and it took us a while. But it really worked out timing wise.

The truth comes out now.

Everybody who actually knows me knows dang well that that's true. Unfortunately, I don't have that excuse for my thank you cards that are still sitting on my desk half done. This is my thank you for coming to my wedding. Right now, I'm just going to use this platform. But no, that has to say a lot for not only your organization member driven, but also for, yes, that has to be more of a badge of honor. Is, we do such a good job, they didn't notice we're doing it. I think it's a Futurama reference to when Bender plays God, and it's like, if you're doing it right, people will wonder if you're ever there at all. If they never deal with, they put their trash bin out, it gets picked up, and they bring it back in. If nothing goes wrong, there's nothing to say, or argue, or comments about.

Right. The piece is, people don't realize everything that goes into that pickup. I mean, people just think, you put at the end of your driveway, and then it gets picked up. If it doesn't get picked, up, there's an issue. But then, what does that mean where the truck comes, that it gets picked up. If it's an automatic side load, it has that nice arm that comes up and picks it up. 

My kids love watching that happen. To be honest, it is so cool. It is like the claw game, but so much better. To your point, please go into some detail about the side arm picking it up. What does happen in this whole process. Because I'm like most of the world, that I'm only seeing, they'll come down the street, or maybe I'm stuck behind one, and I'm already late because I left five minutes later than I should have. Now I'm like, just like with the school bus, "Why are you here?" "Oh, you're here at the same time every week. This is my fault."

Right, I know. We talk about how it's also in the postal service, or probably the only two industries that go up and down every road in the country at least once a week. So, how do we make it safer? I mean, right now we're the seventh deadliest industry in the country.

Really?

Yes. 

Is that due to – because I worked at UPS for a little bit too. There was always a statement that, you might be a big brown truck, but somehow, you are invisible to people. Is that from just being on the side of the road, or are there other inherent risks?

I mean, there are other inherent risks. I mean, think about everything everybody puts in their trash. 

That was, yes. 

But for the most part, over 60% of our fatalities are transportation related. You would be amazed – I mean, on our LinkedIn, we have a picture. Luckily, our worker was fine. He was off to the side, but it is a medium-sized SUV, just plows into the back of the truck. No brakes, nothing, and crashes. We put lights on, we put reflective material on, we put – I mean, we're lit up like a Christmas tree.

Quite literally, yes. 

Flashers. What do we see? WM just got an exemption to put on flashing light bars. When their brake engages, another bar goes on. See what happens on those. But a lot of it is, we think a lot has to deal with distraction. People wanting to be on their phones, because we were trending downwards. 

I mean, a lot of people weren't on the road for the past few years too. 

We stayed consistent. 

Okay.

Correlation isn't causation, but looking at the rise of smartphones seems to where we plateaued. We need to look into it more. Part of the reason we're seven is, other industries got worse. Our rates stayed the same, but other industries jumped us. Slight winds.

Is that why you got pulled into the NWRA with your OSHA background, because of the safety?

Yes. The way I was told was, we need someone who understands OSHA, understands the federal government to get us in, so we understand what the issues are, what we're doing, and translate that, so that we can better understand what we do. It has been a goal for the industry to get off the top 10 for a number of years now. So trying to figure out how do we engage. The other piece is, how do we figure out where the fatalities are? Looking through the forest data at FMCSA, it's hard. If you look at a lot of the incident reports, crash reports, some of them are 14 pages. On page seven or eight is garbage truck?

Well, if you're a police officer trying to fill out all this paperwork, if you just check class eight truck, are you going to go all the way to page seven or eight to check garbage truck? I mean, the amount of – and even in the press, where I'll get garbage truck runs over something, then I pull it up, it's a dump truck. Because class eight and nine trucks covers so many trucks, it's hard to tease that out.

Is that something you guys run into a lot, where from a logistic – not logistical, but from a class, and size, and the equipment you're using. Do you get a lot of regulations and situations where it would be for like semis or heavy-duty trucks apply to it, even though that it – I mean, I don't know about most of – any of the waste management trucks, but they're not doing the same kind of highway miles and everything. It's usually at much slower speeds. But I would assume that based on actuals and all those regulations, it's probably fairly similar to where you guys are mapped or folded in on that. 

Yes. Probably the best example was the electronic logging devices.

Did you guys get mapped and roped to that one?

We did, but we requested an exemption. Because part of it was, there was not an ELD. When we stop at a residential route, when we stopped to service a can, it stops your drive time. That's duty time. But we're doing that, we're stopping for 20 seconds, 30 seconds to service the can, then we're driving 30 seconds, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off.

Someone would have to be physically pressing a button on and off, on and off.

Or the ELD, or most of the ELDs only went to off duty after 15 minutes. And so, you would go to none drive time. We petitioned FMCSA for an exemption, and were granted a members-only exemption for our members for short haul. So if they were within 150 air miles, and returned back to their facility, and stayed under – I believe it was 14 hours. I'd have to look at the exemption. We had a number of hours. They didn't have to have an ELD. But we had to go through the whole exemption process for short haul, and then the regulation ended up catching up, realizing –

When it wasn't –

It doesn't make sense for short haul drivers to have an ELD.

Are there cases where being grouped up is actually a benefit or it's really just something where you've got to go and say – hold your hand up and say, "Hey, we're not the same as those"?

It's becoming more, and I think that's where I see my role, is really raising my hand and saying, "Hey, look at us." One of the first things I did was join our roads, our safety at FMCSA, which is talking about how do you engage, how do you reach out to the public about having safe interactions with big trucks? One of the things I said was, "Hey, all of FMCSA's imagery is just over the road trucks and buses, but you regulate so much more. Why don't you have school buses? Why don't you have UPS trucks, have beer trucks?

Diversity and representation from the equipment level right now. I like this.

Right. Because we do that stuff, and but we're still regulated by you. But if everybody's only seeing large semis, and buses, that's all they're going to think about. How do you write those regulations, so that they affect what you want for the long-haul folks? But also, how do you do it for – I mean, our joke is, Amazon drops everything off, then we pick up all the boxes.

Very true.

Right. So just as much as – or the beer distributors, they drop off the beer and the drinks, we pick up all the bottles and cans, and recycle them. What does that mean for regulations? What does that mean – I mean, I go talk to like advocacy groups. I mean, a number of road safety groups. There are a lot of people who always say like, "Oh, you drive those big trucks." I'm like, "Right, we do. But we're also vulnerable road users, and when we get out to service a can, to move it, we're just as at risk as you are." "Oh." I was like, "So let's figure out a way to work together, because the issue is not – I mean, I'm an active cyclist, I know you can – I think it's in South Dakota, you can ride on the highway, or at least at one point, you could. Maybe you can't anymore, but you could go on the interstate, and so – you're not doing that in DC, you're not doing that in Cleveland.

You might want to do that in DC, you might get around faster.

Well, I mean, I will say, my commute home, I can do it in 15 minutes on my bike. It takes me 25 minutes in the car.

Yep. Right. I wasn't there long, but I remember the roundabouts as a kid, and just being like, "Are we going to be there soon?" and they'd be like, "I don't know, honey."

Right. So recognizing that we're a vulnerable road user, and driving big trucks is a way to really bridge that gap on how do we talk about the safety. 

You guys live in a boat in quite a few worlds, as it were. You've got the heavy-duty equipment, you've got the vulnerability, like you say, on the road there. But then, probably, I mean, the knowledge base from your workers has to be pretty kind of diverse too. It's not just manual labor where you press a button. You probably from a mechanical standpoint have to have some knowledge on the machine itself, on the limitations. That's something that you probably have to consider a lot, and probably some diversity in your membership too on what the role is, and where you guys are protected, where regulation is over, it's too much, and where you may or may not fit in certain lobbyist groups too.

It might come as a shock, but I believe we're the first 5th and 10th largest commercial fleets. Our members are the first 5th and 10th largest fleets.

That is a shock, because you when you see a garbage truck, you don't see a bunch – you've got one, maybe two going through the city that day, depending on the city you're at. But if I was to think of them all lined up now that you're saying it, I'm like, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense." But without peeling back the layers, I wouldn't think about it.

Yes. One of the trade publications goes through, because the other thing is, there's lots of different DOT numbers. They pull together all the DOT numbers, and based on fleet, I mean, WM has the largest commercial vehicle fleet in the country.

That's crazy. And you brought up another point, I mean, it was even a joke with Amazon drops off the boxes, but you guys drops it off, and you guys pick up the boxes. With you guys being a large commercial fleet, and being within waste and recycling, one of the things that to me pulls a lot of these together is carbon footprint right now that's a big thing, both on regulation, on reporting. Where do you play in as an organization right now? I would assume that you guys are – I don't want to know if – I don't know if I'm on the forefront of being green. What does that look like as far as a principal initiative, or it's – whatever the regulation says.

Yes. I mean, I would say, we like recycling before recycling was cool.

There you go.

That's what our members do. One of the biggest things is, we know how to recycle this stuff. So having that understanding is, I think something innate to all of our companies. Where we are on that is, because the way our trucks operate, we just don't want unintended consequences. We still want to do our job. I mean, one of the issues with EVs is the added weight. As the battery weight goes up, does that mean that – we have less mass to carry. There's less capacity to haul, so what does that mean for roadways and hauling capacity? Does that mean we're having to make more trips? Where does that go? Hydrogen – there's a couple of companies that are – EVs are probably more – I mean, we're seeing –

Applicable.

Well, no. We're seeing more – I'd say, they're further in development. We're seeing EVs on the road right now. A lot of the bigger company, a lot of the big manufacturers already have trucks on the road in our industry. You're starting to see more hydrogen, more talk about hydrogen. DOE just made a big hydrogen announcement, so we'll see how that plays. But the thing is, we do a lot in CNG. 

What's CNG?

Compressed natural gas.

Okay, thank you.

A lot of that is scrubbed off of our landfills. It's coming off the landfills instead of flaring. It goes right into the trucks.

More of a whole buffalo kind of system there. 

Yes. It really enables – we're looking at ways to have a fleet mixture. We're active. We have an MOU with R2C2. It's the Resource Recovery Coalition of California. I think it's R2C2. We have an MOU –

Sounds like a Star Wars reference, but I like it.

They're keeping us up to date on what's happening in California with carb, because that then goes to other states.

Is that the first state that – within the industry that you're representing here, is this the first push that people are asking for kind of the reporting of what the footprint is? Or is that something that some of the companies of your members inherently are doing, because it's part of the process?

Carbs more, what's the type of engines that are going to be able to be sold in California. It's a larger – it's not more of the ESG reporting. It's the type of engine that will be able to be used in the emissions for California is the way I understand it.

Got you. That could have some big implications as you're talking about the largest commercial fleets already existing. If you'd have to make a drastic change or modify 30% of it, because it falls outside of this California regulatory push out.

Right. So we're monitoring on that. We just want our members – we just want to make sure that we can do it. How do we do that? Work with us and we'll have those discussions.

Yes, what are you talking about, some of the – this is a question too. I was thinking about – you and I talked to a lot of people in logistics as well and this is always a key one. Are your members or some of the companies, organizations, they're within? Are you guys in the midst of an employee shortage as well? Are you guys looking for new drivers? What does that look like? And amongst the regulations that might come from the California and the carbon thing, there's also got to be people wearing a lot of hats too, in the industry.

We need drivers. I mean, I don't have – I currently don't have a CDL. I think I want to go get one, so I have a better understanding. I was talking to my safety committee, and they said, "Don't tell us if you get it."

Because they'll put you to work. 

Yes. They were like, "We'll start calling you to come pick up shifts on and driving the truck?" I was like, "Really?" They're like, "Yes. I mean, one of our members who runs a waste company, he actually let his CDL lapse, because he was like, "If I didn't do it –"

I wouldn't have gotten a break.

Right. "I would have never been able to run the waste company."

That's crazy.

That's how crazy it is. NWRA, we worked with ETA and Department of Labor, Economic Trading Administration on putting an apprenticeship for waste haul waste drivers.

How would that differ for – I mean, would that differ from any standard CDL? Where's the differences there for you guys or it's just more industry specific?

It's more industry specific, and more so, it puts us out there in the Department of Labor, workforce environment, that there is an apprenticeship for waste and recycling drivers. So our member companies can sign up to say, "Hey, we will take apprenticeship, apprentices on this to train you as a driver." It’s more of a way to advertise that this is a potential career. Our national companies have engaged on it, a couple of the regional companies have. It’s more of the way – it sets up parameters on what you need to know to train, and it's basically what they do anyways. But it allows us to – when a high school student sees a list of potential jobs, that's on the list of potential jobs, because it's a registered apprenticeship program.

Okay. I got you. I mean, you guys – I did a podcast episode with Women in Trucking. You guys should get together on that too, see if there's some opportunities for more women to be involved in the waste and recycling.

With automation, I mean, I've been on Ellen show before, her trucking show on Saturday mornings.

Very nice.

She's been a judge –

So I'm not bringing up anything new. I'm not a mastermind here. They're like, "Yes. We do that. Shut up, Patrick."

Ellen's been a judge for a Driver of the Year.

Okay. So there's already some back and forth there. Awesome.

We very much know Women in Trucking, and women's council works well with them. Ellen and I talk frequently on issues. I mean, getting to technology, that's one of the things. People think garbage man, and big guy that can throw garbage bags everywhere. I mean, getting back to that arm, I mean, that's all automated. One of our members, Republic, has a facility in Louisiana with over 60 female drivers. 

Proof that you can do it. Yes.

Seeing more and more women drivers get into the industry. We had our first woman driver of the year a couple of years – with COVID, my time is –

Yes. Trust me man. I went from no kids to four. So yes, it's a blur for me too. I know exactly what that's like.

We're getting more and more women in the industry. As you find out, it's not throwing bags 25 yards or something crazy like that. I mean, I hope they're not doing it for their musculoskeletal issues. But as we get more automation, as we have cart tippers, as we containerize, those open up. I mean, other member – I don't know if he's retired, but they had a 70-year-old driver, and his kids were like, "Dad, when are you going to retire?" He's like, "My boots are as clean when I leave as when I got here." He goes, " have to say kids. Sorry for giving you all the crap for playing video games, because I just sit there with a joystick."

Don't let my kid hear that, but that's awesome. No, it's very true, because so much of the automation has gone to make it easier. I think that – not to take away from those that are still doing the manual work on side of it. Probably, a lot more of it is, the work is closer to a truck driver anywhere than maybe the garbage guys or the sanitation workers evolved where it was very manual heavy. I got to pick this up. I got to lug it out. That's got to be nice for grabbing more people into the fold, grabbing new drivers and saying, "Hey, we're using technology every day for that.

I think it's also safer. If you stay in the truck, it's safer.

Yes. The airbags do not follow with you outside of the truck. I'm sure you've got some real weird prototypes for that, a bubble suit or something that didn't work out. But, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Amazon keeps coming up, because I read a recent article from CNBC, where they're pushing on their suppliers just like Walmart and Apple, and their vendors to have carbon plans in place, and work on reducing it, or else, they might not look at it.

One of the things we're doing at Banyan, we partnered with patch.io to have that available as reporting. That's one way to see – where that supplier carbon is coming from, so that way, Amazon can report accordingly. But are they doing anything? Is there a system in place for your organizations to say, "Hey, we picked up 38 Amazon boxes at this stop"? Does that go back into any calculation somewhere? Or is that kind of data not available right now? Or nobody – no, I don't want to say nobody cares, but no one's asking for that. 

I am probably not the best person to answer that.

Sorry, my brain just starts going.

I mean, Anne Germain, she's doing a lot with phase – what is it? Phase one, phase two, and phase three admissions. Being there's a lot landfill issues when it gets into the trucking issues, then she's like, "Hey, Kirk, I got to pull you in. He's doing a lot on those. I mean, I just had a call with a company who they have a label that they can put on. So you could figure out like, if coke labeled all their bottles, you would know how many coke bottles got pulled out of a sort line? Right now, on recycling facilities, just sees a PET bottle and pulls it out, we're agnostic too if it's Coke, if it's Pepsi, if it's Dr. Pepper. So we can pull those out. It's just a matter of, then, do the brands want to know that data? If they do, is it economically feasible for us to put that extra technology in, so that they know how many coke bottles got pulled out of the line versus – okay, we got a thousand PET bottles this hour.

That seems to be within a lot of the, kind of the green regulation and the carbon talks is that, feasibility versus cost and application. Sure. Somebody could do something like that. A, do you want to? B, why? And C, how much is it going to cost versus what you're getting out of that? I think those are very important questions to be asked right now. I think, unless I'm mistaken, right now, the regulations coming down are more private from the different organizations. Is there anything big from the government itself coming down for this kind of information, and this data outside of what it has been? Or is it – is this like, a lot of other things, we're looking towards private organizations, or maybe California to do something first, and then the federal government will start taking a look.

Again, I'd say this is probably more Anne's domain.

Sorry, I apologize, Kirk.

No.

I still want your opinion. Domain or not?

I mean, I'd say, there are a lot of standards groups and pseudo standards groups that are putting out things. It's sort of what's going to stick. You can see more on the federal side, things happening, states. But getting into specifics on it. I mean, I'm a 30,000-foot observer on this, not into the details too much on it.

No, that's okay. That's okay. I apologize. It's just one of those things that – once my brain starts going, then I start asking questions. Back to things you can't answer. Tell me, what are some things that the NWRA is really hot working on right now or something, maybe that you guys are proud of that you've been able to do? What's the hot button?

I mean, hot buttons, lithium-ion batteries. I mean, it's literally hot, because they're just – 

In the trash itself, or in the recycling thing you're seeing that?

From the recycling side, I mean, when you take a lithium-ion battery, and if it breaks, it starts to fire. 

Oh, I didn't know this.

It's happening quite often. Just YouTube lithium-ion battery fire, and you'll be amazed. They are in all kinds of stuff. We [inaudible 0:33:53] got a medical device promotional pamphlet that looks just like paper, but it turned out it had a lithium battery in it. They got like an entire dumpster load up. They drove over one, caused a fire. One went through the baler, caused a fire. They're like, "What's going on?" They pulled one out, and they videotape them dropping a rock on it. Within two seconds, it's up in flames.

Are you just looking to educate or are you trying to put something in place that stops how you dispose of these things?

The other thing is, if you look at a lithium-ion battery, it has the chasing arrows saying, "You're going to recycle it." But the thing next to it says, "Do not put it in your container." Because you're supposed to take them somewhere that recycles batteries.

Specifically, yes. 

But people just see the chasing arrows –

Let's say, to the general public, that just means recycle bin.

Right. We're rolling out a number of education materials in the next month on lithium-ion batteries. Our members can use them, put, they can stuff them in their bills, they can put them on social media, [inaudible 0:35:14]. Part of it is also, where do they go? What do we do with them? Because we're having fires. I mean, there was a truck fire in the Pittsburgh area last week. I'm willing to put money. That was probably a lithium-ion battery. There's a gentleman, Ryan Fogelman, out of – getting back to those Ohio Connections. He's out at Dublin, who works for a company, Fire Rover and tries to track all the fires. Companies are just, I mean it's, what are we doing to try to protect our companies on this? Every day something else is happening on it.

Got you. So this is something you guys are just in the midst of right now, don't necessarily have an answer to or because it's a little bit outside of your control within the membership. But it's something – what would in an ideal world, what are you guys pushing for?

We don't want them in the recycling stream. But trying to figure out what to do with them, that's the big issue. But also think about this. Think about how many – I mean, when I travel, I think I can't count it up. I carry 11 lithium-ion batteries with me. What's interesting is, when you check to fly, they always ask you, "Do you have any lithium-ion batteries in your check bag?

No.

I've started asking the gate agents. Do you know why you say that? They were like, "I have no idea." I'm like, "You have no idea? How are we going to educate the public about this issue?" And so they say, "So why do we say it?" I said, "If they crack or they start a fire – if they crack, I mean, think about how much those bags get jostled around.

I was just thinking about this last time I traveled as we're speaking right now, how easy this would be to go array very quickly, especially in a situation like an airplane.

Right. I now carry my electric toothbrush with me on my carry on, because it's a lithium-ion battery. So, yeah. I mean, all the things you think about, and then, you add in all the yard stuff that's going for lithium batteries, all your tools.

I have the full electric set. I know. Okay. It's crazy.

What does that do? How do you properly dispose of it when you're done with it, so that it doesn't – I mean, e-bikes. There was an e-bike fire in New York City where three people died because of the fire.

These are things that you wouldn't think of. You know what I mean? I wouldn't anyways. You see it, it's electric. You don't think of these consequences, until all of a sudden, it's literally right in your face, and there's people on fire. That's crazy. When we said hot button, I didn't realize I was leading you to quite literally a hot button there. But wow, choice of words. All right. Nice.

I was like, "All right, you're setting me up perfect for this." The other is, it's not as exciting and not – it's more nuts and bolts, is – we're about ready to announce a data project where we're going to be partnering with an academic researcher to look back 10 years, and try to figure out any trends of fatalities and injuries in the industry. And really, comprehensive of what type of road, where was the sun, what was the time.

See if you can pinpoint some real dangerous situations to avoid, is it what it sounds like?

We've never really had that data to look back at, and see what we can tease out from that.

That's awesome. Here at Banyan, one of our big pushes is data, and being able to do – what you do with it is different from client A to client B. Yes, that makes a lot of sense, because you could have all that data, but how and why are you looking at is going to be really important. Ten years back, that's going to be a lot of data. What kind of a project hour you're looking at to get this done?

I jokingly said, I think I'm funding someone's PhD.

That might be more accurate than jokingly. Yes.

Then the other thing, less so from the safety side, but PFAS.

What's PFAS

Poly and perfluoralkaline substances, I believe. It's all the waterproofing stuff. Sorry, alkyl substances. That's what – what does that do? You're hearing a lot about it in firefighting foam. Again, that is all Anne's jurisdiction.

But still, that's – yes, that's some relevant stuff right there, and you hear about it pretty regularly. We're coming to an end here, but I always like to – I've learned a lot, and more importantly, I've now had to think a lot more about these different things than I ever would. It's like going back to some of my old jobs, where you walk into a place, and it's not like we're near in a retail store, and you're like, "Hey, look. Everything's in this box together." And you realize that there's a different manufacturer for every little piece, and then somebody puts the box together. And then, somebody shifts it there, and then someone's got to pick up all the waste. 

One of the reasons I love the podcast is, A, you get to talk to different organizations, different sides of it. For me, it puts a more – I'm putting little pieces together on a big puzzle. I'm terrible at puzzles, so I may never put it all the way together. But I appreciate your side of it, and where you're looking at for your members, and what you guys are seeing that's different than some of the LTL centric, or the parcel centric conversations I have. And yet, where you're roped in to the same similar situations, whether that's regulations, or the employee shortage, or the driver shortage more specifically. 

But here, I get kind of draw to an end, and I've said my parts to pretend to be smart. With this medium? What's the message you either have for your members or to anyone listening from the NWRA or just from Kirk Sanders? What do you got to say to the world or all 14 people listening. I mean, I would say part of it is, thank you waste driver, because of what they're doing. I mean, modern civilization doesn't work without the waste industry. What does that mean for everything else that happens in your life? I mean, if it wasn't for wastewater treatment plant, and the waste and recycling industry, a lot of what we do doesn't happen. I think, taking those drivers because they do an amazing job, and do it day in and day out.

That's a really great kind of shout out and an ending point there, because we almost started with was that, history has shown, if trash and sewage doesn't get picked up, things are going bad and people are going to die. For every day that that doesn't happen, we need to be really thankful and appreciative of those people that that's their job day in and day out. Kirk, it has been great talking to you. Thank you for your thoughts and opinions, even when you said that you weren't the best guy for it. I still appreciate you finding some thought in there. Was great to hear about kind of your – from geology, to NASA, to the White House, and hearing about the NWRA.

Thank you for everybody who listened to another episode of Banyan Tire Tracks. We hope you continue to listen and keep watching as we – I have a lot of fun making these, and hope you get some value out of them. Thank you everybody, and Kirk, thanks again for being with us. Really appreciate it. 

Thank you, Patrick.

Have a great one.