Environmental Services Division - Regular Meeting

Good. Good.

All right. We're called to order. I'll do a quick roll call. We have Member Barnes.

And Member Blair. Member S Blair.

Member S Blair. Thank you. And Vice Chair LaChelle. And absent are Member Chandler, Member Grow, and Member Sea Blair. Is there any public comment for items not

And Joe is online.

Excellent. So add him to the. Is there any public comment? Anybody online?

If there's any public comment, please raise your hand.

I don't know why he has his hand up.

Ignore

it. I'm looking at Barbara. Barbara, do you have any public comment to make?

No. Okay.

All right. Any changes to the agenda? All right. Agenda's approved unanimously. Any changes or corrections to the minutes

from April? All

right. They're approved unanimously. And with that, Rivewell, you guys are up.

Alright. Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. Let me get my screen sharing set up. But while I do that, was anyone at the event that I did in your wonderful community a few it was on Earth Day, I think, actually. Just wondering if there's any awareness of what I do and that type of thing or if we're starting fresh.

Well, we knew you you were doing it, but we wanted you here because we weren't able to attend. All the

other Okay. There was a county council person who was in attendance there. So

And she's in the room

with us.

I'm in the audience.

Okay. Fantastic. Right. Well, let's get this fired up here. Can people see my screen okay?

Yes. Fantastic.

I always love to just start at the the sort of founding story of how I stumbled upon this this project that has turned into something far greater than I ever imagined. This picture these are my my son here when he was six years old, and we're up here in Seattle far far away from you. And we were really motivated to have a lot of not a lot of waste and live sustainably. And, you know, I think realizing how hard that can be given recycling rule changes and, availability of drop offs and all that type of stuff, we had a lot of things that had accumulated in our home in this basement room. And so they had light bulbs and batteries and plastic bags as you see here and Styrofoam and holiday lights all sort of set aside.

And so what I ended up doing kind of on a whim in 2018 was I started a project with Owen, my oldest son, who is six, where every weekend we picked one thing that we were determined to find a good home for. And so it was a lot of internet research and phone calls to discover where the heck in the Seattle area can we take light bulbs so they don't go to the landfill? Where the heck can we take plastics, etcetera? And that was just our goal to just clear through this room, but do it in a way that everything didn't didn't go to waste. We discovered places.

They were far away. They had, you know, limited availability, and so we decided to make it a a kind of a neighborhood wide project. And so what we would do is make posts like you see in these pictures, and we gave our project a little name, and I'll sometimes hold stuff up here. But we would hold we wear shirts like this, and we called our project Owens list after him. What And we would do is we would offer to pick up from our neighbors on the way to each of these partners.

So they got steadily bigger and bigger and bigger as people kind of learned what we were doing. I think an important feature that we had incorporated was we showed everyone where everything went. And we would take a picture of where everything was dropped off. We would give people a sentence or two on what they did with the stuff, and then they could understand what the fate of their material that they left out for us was. And so those pickups got bigger and bigger and bigger.

If people can see this magazine here that I'm holding up, it got a lot of press coverage. We ended up doing a thousand pickups in our neighborhood. We did it across 30 categories as we learned about more and more opportunities that other people had been collecting in their homes. And the community that formed around this, ended up growing to 4,000 people in just a matter of six months or so. So it really took off in a in a really unexpected and and powerful way, and it it frankly gave me a lot of opportunity to reflect and kinda take notice on whether there really was an unmet need around how recycling could work in a transparent kinda trusted way.

I think the timing of of all this was was really important, and and this group, kind of being aware of sustainability, probably remembers that picture on the bottom there, that article. 2018 was when the whole world in recycling in America at least was kind of turned upside down because China who took most of the recycling prior to that stopped taking things any longer. And so I think what this led to was a lot more awareness and curiosity amongst the public of, well, actually, where does recycling go? How does it work? Where what is it getting turned into?

And I think that led to a lot of the growth of of our little project called Owens List. At the same time, ocean plastic and landfills also were in the news more. And so seeing that and seeing the 4,000 people that joined this little project, the four of us in that picture there, we all decided to go all in, and we quit our jobs. And we said, hey, let's turn this little project that grew up on weekends into something much greater. Because it felt like the time was right to do it, and we had a lot of people who had already demonstrated that they cared about the problem that we were focused on.

And what's it what is that problem? I think it's really a recognition that it has become so easy to buy things, and how we get rid of things has not kept up. And so, you know, just to illustrate, we could all get our, you know, phones out and place an order on on Amazon or something like that, and it might show up in a couple hours in a package like this. This package though is not recyclable in in in almost anywhere. And so what we decided to do as a team in Ridwall was how can we learn from kind of the consumption side, bring it to the reverse side, so there's more balance and more harmony in how people are buying, consuming, getting rid of stuff, and less waste going to the landfill.

We have two versions of of how Ridwell works, I'm gonna in in a bit, I'm gonna dive into the one on the on the right there. But our original version is a pickup service, and it's a very sort of full service product where we have bins like that, that white white box that you see. It's kind of like a milk box style bin. And people can give us over 15 things, and every two weeks, we can pick it up, we can bring it to our warehouse, and we can get it to our vast network of partners. And so that's available in eight metro areas.

The closest to you is is Denver, the Denver, Colorado area. We also have Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Texas, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. So there's eight markets today for the left side of this. The new development is we now have a mail in product, and again, I'm gonna show a demo of this in a little bit. But what that's doing is bringing some of what Ridwell does, which is transparent, easy to use, effective recycling and reuse to everyone across the country.

And it's been amazing to see the reaction from people throughout New Mexico as we've introduced this to to more and more people. I think a couple things that sort of illustrate the scale that we're at really. We have members who are the people who use Ridwell in one or the two forms. We have a 100 over a 170,000 households who do that. And they then have things picked up from them, whether it's picked up by a Ridwell employee or picked up by the postal carrier on their mail route.

That then goes to one of our 10 warehouses. And so these are throughout the country in different strategic areas. And those warehouses have people that are screening, consolidating, making sure that there's no contamination in the material that leaves Ridwell. And so we've really worked hard to build processes at the warehouse level to create the highest quality material that our partners ever see from anyone they get stuff from. So it goes from left to middle, and then downstream, that's the really important part. Right? We have over 300 reuse and recycling partners we work with. The reason that number is so large is because there's very niche providers. You know, when I was in person, I demoed a group that took bike tire tubes. We have another one that takes bread tags.

We have another one that takes wine corks. We have another one that takes eyeglasses. So a lot of breadth, but then also there's a lot of local elements as well. So we have people that take, you know, donations of things that people in the community need, whether that's winter coats or back to school supplies as well. So we're really trying to kind of be local and then broad in what we take. So it goes sort of left to right in that in that fashion. I think another element that that I'm super proud of is, you know, just how affordable our product can be relative to the other alternatives. It's not free. I wish it was, but there's just a lot of complexity in doing what we do. However, our pickup service is 18 to $20 a month for pickups every two weeks.

So again, 15 items that can't go in traditional recycling. The closest alternatives in other states are, you know, 35, $43. So ours ours, given the scale and given the density of how we operate, is able to be at a much, much lower price for people. Similarly, the mail in service is ordinarily, you know, you start with this a box, which I'll show you in a little bit, but the bags are about 9 to $12 a bag, kind of at at scale. Alternatives are much smaller, and they're much much more expensive.

So being able to kind of do this in a in a in a method to scale gives us benefit to do this in an affordable price. And so that's a big key focus of ours, to really be accessible to as much of the population as we can with what we've been developing. I had to update this even since we were in person there in New Mexico. We just crossed 43,000,000 pounds. So what we're doing is is working.

It's having an impact. And all this material is stuff that would otherwise be either sitting in someone's home, taking up clutter, or would be in a landfill. And so it's super, amazing to see from, you know, a couple batteries we picked up, you know, in 2018 to now. A wide variety of people coast to coast has been a part of what we've been after, and I think there's no reason this number can't 10x or more as we continue to operate here. We're proud of some of the elements that are included in that number, but yet are maybe not massive.

Just to illustrate a few of them, on the left is, example of one of the elementary schools we worked with. We worked with thousands of schools. I didn't mention this earlier. My mom was a public school teacher for many, many years. My wife Erin runs this program, and so we've again, it's important for us to provide a service at no cost to people at schools so that they can actually learn about what we do and learn that there's an alternative to landfills for many of the things that they probably throw out today. In the middle is one of our reuse drives. People think of us as recycling, but we do almost as much reuse. And that's important because if you can use something in its current form, that is almost always better than recycling. It. And so this particular partner collects kids books in Portland, Oregon.

And so for two weeks, if you have Ridwell, you can collect your kids books. They get aggregated, consolidated, and provided to this partner who will, make sure they're used in the community. So we do a lot of that reuse. And on the right, that's some fun stuff that we've done to actually create products out of material that would have been waste. So you can see there's tote bags made of outerwear, there's denim turned into pouches, there's skis turned into earrings, there's wine corks turned into coasters.

I mentioned bike tires earlier, but my wallet here, if you can see that, that is made of bike tire tubes. And so we are really constantly pushing the envelope to actually show people that things they buy could be crafted in America by things that would be be waste. And it was really fun on some of my recent trips where people have clued us in to people who are doing work like this. And so we've already contacted people, I think, locally throughout New Mexico who've said, hey, I I have the capability to turn x into y, and we've said, great. Could we be a source for the material that you could use to do that?

So with that, I'd love to just kinda turn it over to a quick demo of mail in, and this is the product that is really growing quickly in in New Mexico, including where you all are at. And so how does this work? You know, it begins with a box like this that I showed you on on the last one. In the box, we provide bags that have prepaid shipping labels in them. So this particular bag, just to give you a little sense of size, you know, this is 14 inches tall by I think 10 inches wide, something like that, or maybe even more.

It's got a shipping label on the back. And this shipping label goes to the closest warehouse. That's a really important part of doing this cost effectively. Whenever one of these is created, we look to see where is the person physically located, and how can we shrink that distance as much as possible. So this, if you're in New Mexico, would go to Denver. But if you're in Florida, it goes to Atlanta, where you have a warehouse over there. So the first bag, plastic film, and I'll just show some examples real quick here. So it's, you know, produce bags like this. It is bread bags. It is lots of kind of takeout bags.

I know you all are talking about kind of plastic bag ordinance. So a lot of this stuff is that, but yet even with a plastic bag ban, it still shows up in packaging like this type of thing, or bubble wrap or air pillows or newspaper bags or, you know, a goodie bag from the dentist office or ziplock, bags. Right? So this this category is is is pretty ubiquitous once you know what it is. It also is in fact, this product here, this Amazon, you know, mailer that I, showed you.

And so how does that work? What you do is you stuff all that in that purple bag and all of the material that I demonstrated to you, that is about five percent of what fits in that bag. So you really can get a lot of this in here because it packs down, and so this will expand like a pillow. Once you have that full, it reaches the Ridwell warehouse, and our team creates a a bale, and that's me standing by a bale. Actually, bales. And those bales then turn into this piece here. I don't know if this comes through in the video, but this is a piece of Trex. And so this is a a lumber product that is used for decks, patio furniture made of sawdust, and recycled plastic film from Redwell and other other providers. And so this is used to be, again, in outdoor settings. So that's plastic film.

The second one, same idea, different color bag. And so this one is a blue bag right here. And this one we actually changed the name. You see it's different in the text than it is in the picture. This one's called multilayer plastic, and I will illustrate a few examples of that here.

So that is things like, this potato chip bag, as you can see here. That is things like this snack bar or this snack bar. It is this brown sugar, pouch. It is this package of nuts from Trader Joe's. A couple differences.

This stuff, just to tell from the first group, this has a lot more crinkle noise to it. It also, doesn't stretch, and I cannot get my thumb through. And so that's an example of why it's this one and not the last one. A few other examples just to show, it is things like this produce netting bag here from this one happens to be Whole Foods, but other providers do this type of stuff. It's pet food bags, like this is a bird seed bag.

It is six pack rings like this. It is this coffee bag like this. All those get stuffed in that bag, get consolidated, our team creates bales, and they get turned into this piece right here, which is similar in in function to a French drain. And so this is called hydro blocks. This goes underneath the ground, and if there's a lot of rain in that area, it helps it drain more efficiently.

And so areas that often have, you know, flooding and and standing water would not be that way because they have a kind of a a base layer of hydro blocks underneath it. And so Home Depot and landscapers sell that stuff. So that's multilayer plastic. We've since added three other bags to what Mail in offers. Again, the pickup service has a lot more breadth that we can do, but we have found a way to offer solutions for prescription pill bottles, bottle caps and lids, corks.

We're working on many more things as well, unusable clothing, metal bottle caps, things like that. So we're we're looking to add a lot more breadth to this as well, because our pickup service, we can do a lot of things. We have the partners lined up. The warehouses collect a lot of material, and so let's find a way for everyone nationally to have access to that as well. The box contains a few things to kinda get this easy, make this hopefully easy for people to to use.

And so what I'm holding here is a little clip hook. And so you see here, we would clip that like this, and then you could fill your bag. Also in the the box is a little fridge guide that has pictures of what goes in the kind of main two bags. And on the back, it says how did this product work end to end? And so just to kind of illustrate that, you would fill this bag up.

When it's full, you often can even get a lot more in, so you would just kind of stump it down, and then you would peel the sticker off, seal it like that, and then you're left with a much larger pillow shaped bag full of plastic film in this case. You have two ways to get it to us. You can drop it off at a post office if that's easy for you, but we also have an integration with the postal service where if they drop mail where you live, they can pick this up from your door. And so when they're dropping off mail, they know to pick this up from you. Those bags are sent to the warehouse at Ridwell. The Ridwell team scans it in with a barcode. They open the bags. They consolidate material. They create bales, and those bales ultimately go to a partner. We show people what that looks like.

And so when our team has your stuff, you will get a text message telling you that. And so unlike many forms of recycling when it is just set out there and that's the end of the journey that you're aware of, in our case, we actually show you where it goes. We go a step further. About a month later, you'll also get notified. We'll tell you where your things went. And so did they go to Trex, for example, on the plastic film? We'll tell you that. This is a new development, and I'm super thrilled about about this one. This is an app that we created in order to kinda help people know what bag does this go in. And so just to kinda give you a quick demo of of of this one.

I like to use this example because it has some quality similar to the first one. It's similar to a ziplock bag in some sense because it's got a zipper, but it actually goes in a different bag. So what I can do is I'm gonna grab this. I'm gonna snap a quick photo. And what it does is it's it's understanding what I have in my my hand there, and it's really thinking through discovering where it could go. It just came back and said multilayer plastic, and it gives you a sentence or two about why. It says, this looks like a clear cashew snack pack with printed branding and heat sealed edges, the kind of slightly stiff crinkly plastic used for single serve nut packaging. And then it says you can give it to Ridwell. And so it's telling you the type of things, there. So that is what Sortwell is.

That's important for two main reasons. One, the better stuff people put things in the right bag, the lower cost Ridwell can operate because we're not having to kind of sort things on our end. Secondly, the better material that Ridwell like is able to create, the better partners that we can send everyone's stuff to. And so that's really important to really tap into the best partners that we can have access to. Didn't mention this earlier, but all of our partners are in The US with a few of them in Canada.

So none of our stuff goes overseas. If you want to work with a domestic recycler, you have to have really good stuff, and this is a key way to do that. One aside is the app. I have actually a future version on on here, and this is kind of a new new development since even the event when I was there. We now have the way to incorporate local recycling rules into it.

And so I did this with multilayer plastic, but if I were, you know, sitting where you are and I had a tub of laundry detergent and I did it that way, we would incorporate your local recycling guidelines to tell you what it is and could it go in your recycling bin locally, or could it go to someone like Ridwell? And so that's a a development. We haven't yet released that version publicly, but we're getting close. And I mention that because I think there's a lot of partnership opportunities there with with local government to really work with them to make sure that we're a useful resource on the education side. So that is a product called SortWell that we're incredibly excited about.

In terms of partnerships, I know there was an ask to really think through this, and I think we have worked with different municipalities, and I'll just talk to some of these as I go kind of left to right, but really open. I think we're a small, nimble organization who is excited to try new things, as I think many governments are. Customer education, I think, is our bread and butter. That's what makes all of this work. So whether that's training events for the community, or whether it's in person or virtual, we're happy to explore those.

Whether it's the app that is and that app that app costs no money. Right? And so is that an app that we could then incorporate into your go to kind of outreach plans to make sure that your residents are using your recycling correctly and are understanding that there are also alternatives for the things that can't go in And so that's the education piece, lots of things we can do there. On the data sharing, this is something we've done with many different municipalities. Every time someone gives us a bag, either that we pick up from their porch, or the postal service gives to us, we know where it was originated from.

And so for your zero waste objectives, for example, we'd be happy to share your residents gave us £500 last year, a thousand pounds, whatever the number would be. We're tracking that on a user basis that ties back to a municipality of the originator of it. So the data sharing piece, happy to do that, well as show exactly where it goes. We do this with a bunch of municipalities. This mail in product that I mentioned is fairly new.

We have done some kind of bulk rates as we've explored it. Not yet with municipalities, but with companies and with organizations who say, hey, I'd love to give this to my whole organization, or let's get a 100 going at once, or a thousand or something like that. We're able to give a little bit of a cost discount to do that in order to kind of get it introduced into new areas. I hope that we can actually open the pickup service in your region, and there's a lot more we can do if we we're able to do that. So working with governments on where should we site a facility? Let's bring jobs. Let's bring a facility to your area. So there's even more we can kinda do together. And then finally, if we do have a warehouse, we have worked with multiple cities around them sponsoring Ridwell to pick up things that don't go interest in recycling. So we've done Styrofoam pickups.

We've done plastic film pickups. We've also had cities who provided kind of vouchers for their residents to lower the cost. So lots of possibilities once we have a physical presence. So think of this as sort of a spectrum from kind of left to

right on kind of

the basics of customer education and data all the way to usage and impact that we could hopefully work together depending on what your goals are. New Mexico is one we're excited about. So this picture actually, I'll be honest, it's from Albuquerque. We we forgot to get a picture in Los Alamos, but every event we had was like this, including the one, you know, where you live. So looking at on a per capita basis, you know, New Mexico is eighth nationally in how many people are using rigmarolein.

And you see that vertical line there, that was when we just came there for a few days. And so imagine if we could spend more time there. Imagine if we can get the word out in even more ways. What this will do is it will help us grow to a density level where we can open a local warehouse, where we can offer doorstep pickup, where we can do things like Styrofoam and paint and electronics and batteries and stuff like that. So our our goals are really to to keep partnering with people through your state and and region, and hopefully get to a position where we're able to to offer a lot more like we do in those eight metro areas, that I mentioned.

We'd love to learn what you're interested in. You know, this is kind of cold outreach of sorts. I'm not sure, like, what you're looking for. So love just to kind of get the conversation started now that you've learned a little bit about what we are and and how we operate. You have a wonderful community. We loved our time down there. People were so nice and generous. So let me that's all kind of I had on on on my end. But love just to kinda turn it over to you and see if there's any questions and if there's kinda thought starters that you wanted to explore around how we may be able to partner to kinda help you achieve some of your zero waste goals.

Thank you, mister Messer. Questions or comments?

Have several comments. Go ahead. Okay. I can you guys take bailing twine?

Baling twine. Metal or plastic?

Plastic.

I'd have to ask our team about that. Or actually, I could actually ask our app if I had some in front of us. I don't wanna stir you aside. I'm sure someone on our team would know. I don't know, but we can get back to you on that. I'll get back to on that one.

Okay. That is like a need that maybe not a need, but we have a lot of bailing twine in the community, and it's difficult to recycle. So you can't

take it. What's I would I would guess, yes, but I don't I you know, we don't take anything unless our partner can confirm that they can process it. Let me jot that down. How is it where is what is it used for?

To, like

Hay bales.

Like hay bales. Yeah.

To keep them. Hay bales. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. For, like, our Yep.

We have a lot of horses.

Exactly. Yeah. Horses? Okay. Let me follow-up with that. I'll I'll get you an answer by tomorrow morning.

Okay.

Probably, yes. Again, I think it's I think it's a 75% chance, but I definitely I don't want steer you astray just because we're that's the kind of how we operate is we want to be super transparent about that.

Okay.

I guess I mostly have comments.

Sure.

I just want to say I really appreciate you being transparent about the cost of stuff. Because I have looked at purchasing a terror cycle for my own house, and it just it's not feasible. It doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

And we just did an event in collaboration with local the run, like a big running race. And I said, oh, we should try to get teracycling next year so we could we had a lot of plastics, obviously. But this is another option.

Partner with us. Yeah. We'd love to do that.

Does anyone remember what how much

Just to mean, I sometimes do this in my talks and in person, I update it a little bit. But, yeah, this little bag here, they actually raised the price just in the last four forty eight hours. This is now $49 for this little bag. And our bags are, you know, five times the size and are, you know, 9 to $12. So I I appreciate you saying that. We worked really hard on it. We would rather have much, much lower margin, but do it over a much longer period of time Yeah. Because that means there's more impact. Right? And so it's a different philosophy that I'm I'm I'm really happy that you commented on because we worked hard to do that.

Yeah. And another thing too, I guess, I'll say is, like, I I use the trashy bag, which for those who don't know, you you can put, like, old clothing in and stuff like that. But and then I don't and then they recycle it. But one of my biggest gripes with that is that I get constant emails that are like, oh, you've sent us a bag. Here's a $10 coupon for, like, a a

super Other stuff.

Clothes. And I'm like, no. That's not the point. Like, I don't wanna buy more. So

yeah.

Well, so stay tuned. We we will have a alternative to that that will not hound you to buy things

Cool.

Pretty soon.

Great. That sounds good.

Okay. And then I guess my my other question, which you kind of already answered was, yeah, is this something that we could scale up at a community level? And it sounds like that is possible, but you need a significant amount of people to participate.

Well, think there's sort of think of it in phases. You know, there's already 500 people in New Mexico using Ridwell Mail In, and I don't know, 30 of them are probably in Los Alamos just given the event that we had. We'd love to think of ways to scale it locally. Like, do you is there an interest in partnering on, you know, a book order or something like that, or even just getting the word out. That is in service of a lot more partnerships, right, where we, you know, we're trying to get, you know, 1,500 ish people using the service such that then we can invest in a warehouse and bring the bigger service where there's more possibilities. Right? That's where we can serve small businesses. We can do more stuff. So, you know, our strategy is to have mail in be the first touch, but then as we see that being adopted, use that to then catapult to have the bigger version.

So do you do when you guys send this stuff to, like, the Trex and the HydroBlocks companies, like, do you do you try to keep them local, I guess? Like, you know, if we if we say we produce, I don't know, x number amount of trash and it goes into x number amount of Trex, like, could the county buy that back at a discounted rate?

Absolutely. And actually Trex well, yeah, I'd love to explore that. Trex is in Nevada. So the the sort of journey of plastic film from Los Alamos to Denver, if it's doing mail in or from Los Alamos to a local warehouse to Nevada is a pretty short loop. And so, yeah, we local is is is a key part of our calculus in who we're deciding to partner with. It's a matter of, first, environmental efficacy is number one. What do they do with it? How does that compare to an alternative? Local is, frankly, a close second.

Awesome. Well, thank you.

You're welcome.

Questions, if you don't mind? Thank you very much for your presentation.

Was Sorry?

Thank you for your present the presentation. I wasn't able to attend the previous ones. So can you hear me?

Okay. Wonderful.

I can. Yep. Yep.

That's that's not usually a problem for people. So I'm I'm curious that why do you have any insight as to why the expensive TerraCycle is so much higher than yours? Why why are these other companies charging so much more?

Yeah. I have a couple of thoughts. One, we have 10 facilities nationwide, and so we are routing your material to the closest one of those. To my knowledge, it all theirs all go to one place. Right?

So there's more of a shipping cost. I think secondly, you know, they often can take more things than we can because they do sort of waste energy sometimes, or they do chemical recycling or things like we do narrower stuff. If we there's categories that we've wanted to do, but it would have to be at that price point, and we've just chosen not to because, you know, our philosophy is large impact to large amounts of people, and so they do a wide variety of things. It travels long distances, and so there's a role for that, But I think it's just a different philosophy. I'd say the final one is we built Ridwell Mail On on the shoulders of our pickup service that has a 130,000 users already.

So all the warehouses and the partnerships were already built up. Really, what you're paying for in mail in is the transportation from your doorstep to the warehouse. The rest of it is is already sort of accounted for in our our day to day operations. So I think it's just a philosophy difference. It's a logistics difference, and it's a partner difference as well. Okay. Alright.

And yeah. So so talking about efficacy and all the shipping and so forth, I guess my overall question is do you do any kind of overall life cycle analysis of the impacts of what you're doing in terms of reducing fossil fuel use, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, in terms of Yeah. Maybe water use to know that what you're doing is actually better than the alternatives of putting in the landfill?

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Very thoughtful question. We start with doing that at the partner evaluation stage. Right? So, you know, this piece of HydroBlocks, how does that compare to putting all that multilayer plastic in the ground? And then how does this compare to a virgin plastic PVC pipe, which is what French drains were made of in an alternative? So that's part of it. The second part of it is getting it from you to us to them.

How does that part of it add to that story or subtract? And, again, that's where the 10 warehouses are really critical. That's where, you know, with our pickup service, we have six electric vehicles in our fleet, and we're looking to electrify more. There is a sort of third party end to end life cycle view that we are undertaking that process, but we're pretty confident in it because we chose our partners such that that end of it, which is often the largest, is one that's very, very positive. So even though the transportation will will will sort of take away from of that in some respects, you know, we're we're pretty confident it'll come out in a good way, but stay tuned for, like, the audited version in the next few months.

I'm glad to hear you're doing that. Thank you. And Yeah. Do do you provide any education? I mean, you educate people how how to use Ridwell and where their stuff goes, but do you do any education around to encourage true material circularity? Know reuse instead of instead of dispose reduce the amount of stuff that you buy, you know, really things that could reduce this whole problem?

A 100%. Yeah. We so there's a lot more we can do with a pickup service than we can with this one. Again, I mentioned almost as much as what we do in pickups is reuse as as opposed to recycling. We worked with bigger brands on certain things. We had a reusable cup thing with Starbucks where, you know, rather than take a single use cup, you take a reusable cup, and we actually facilitate the the circularity of it locally. I think with mail in, there's a little more limitations, but we do point out what are things that you could switch to. And we hear very frequent feedback that the act of actually putting things in different bags makes you so much more aware of what's the single use plastic I'm using. Right? And actually the app is gonna be a very key part of that.

Because what we'll start to do is understand what are the things people are getting rid of. Can we then also highlight alternatives to them? As they're scanning that Trader Joe's nut bag that I did, can we then say, hey, local bulk store, a Burke co op in New Mexico that sells them in bulk. Do you wanna try those? So, yes, we very much believe in that hierarchy. What we're doing is building the logistics rails, the education, and the technology to kind of make all that easy to use. Because oftentimes, switching to reuse or reduce comes with a lot of behavior change that people are not willing to do. Let's get the community, and then let's make it really easy.

Okay. That's great. But it sounds like you're working to put yourself out of business, so I'm I'm okay with that.

No. I mean, if we could switch to reuse and reuse exclusively, like, that's even better. Yeah. But I honestly, if we could get billions of pounds safe from the landfill and then we go away, fine. That's a win. I'll take.

Thank you for the presentation.

Yeah. I should probably just leave there maybe one more question that we can answer? And then I'm happy to do follow-up by email or anything else too.

Yes. Super quick question. I appreciate you coming here. So you said I think you already said this, but you can quantify us as a community in Los Alamos. You can quantify that that footprint or the, you know, the quantity recycled again so we can calculate it into our zero waste goals?

100%. Yep. Everything that we received, we know who it came from, and we know what it was. And then we there is a little bit of averaging, like we know over some course of time, usually a month basis, plastic film bags via mail in were 3.2 pounds. And so we could know, hey, Los Alamos sent us 58 bags that month, and they were 3.2 each on average, and so therefore, that's what that number is. But there's auditing capabilities. We can say exactly who it was. We can show you the journey each way. So, yes, we've got the capability.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you, Ryan.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And again, sorry I had to chat, but, I'd love to continue the conversation. Why don't you, you know, chat amongst yourself what partnership opportunities could be, and hopefully, can find something to start with.

Thank you so much.

Alright. Bye. Have a great evening.

Thank you. Bye.

Any thoughts?

I mean, if they could take bailing twine,

you're still trying to figure that out.

That way, least the reader doesn't have to halt Arizona.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, they get so much. It might not make sense.

I mean, I could see from an education standpoint that that could be a way we could bridge some of our gaps in terms of because there are elements like right now with glass recycle, we have to send up to Colorado. Granted, glasses doesn't factor into it, but there's just so many things that we do have a gap where we can't truly recycle it. And now we can bridge that gap. So that might play into our zero waste goals. So and again, as a community, we can't show favoritism to any particular program, but it might be but from a cost cost effective perspective, it might be something we can cycle out from an education perspective.

I don't

think it's showing favoritism if they're doing what you need.

No, you're right. And again, from a cost effective perspective, they're bridging that gap, they're doing it most cost effective compared to, like, a TerraCycle.

So you

could still you could ITB it or RFP it. Yeah. Services. And then you go about procurement. You've secured it through the right means. Yeah. And then so

I mean, and then, you know, from a community standpoint, could we have, again, to bridge those gaps, could we have, you know, they have the the mail in bags, but could we have community drop off locations where somewhere to dismiss, they have an area where you can drop off plastic bags? Because as Sue brought up, the plastic bags that are used there already, we know where they're going to. They're going to Nevada to be recycled. So how cool would it be to go over at the

Drop off or something.

Yeah. Our EcoStation drop off locations, we have those so we can pick up the double walled and everything else. And again, it factors that makes it super easy from a zero waste perspective to quantify that. And we're also, again, there's less stuff going then to Yeah. To trash. So there's a net benefit there. But then the county would

have to

pick up the cost of shipping then. But again, it reduces stuff going to landfill, which means less load there. You could do a trial and then see how it goes. From a perspective, that might be you could do a cost benefit analysis pretty quick and easy, I think. Just do an estimate. A better community will drop off x amount of it and then see how it goes.

I suspect because I think and I'm making some assumptions. But I do think people in the community are fairly good about recycling things. And I think if people had an option of like, what do I like, the cashew bag, like, that those are things that stress me out. I'm like, we have to eat. It's like, what are we supposed to do? Mhmm. And that's kinda what counselor Hand was talking about. I was like, everything is in plastic. And it's like, for me, I'm like, we're not buying single yogurts. We're gonna buy a big tug of tub of yogurt, there's only one thing to recycle. But like yeah. So I I I would imagine people like I don't know. Maybe not everyone would.

If it's easy, they'll do it.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It could help cut down our recycling contamination as well. Yes.

It could help cut

down on the wish cycling part.

Yes. Where

we throw things in because they really want it to be recycled even though it can't be. But if Ridwell provided them and

It's cool. Just another option. That's good. How do you what is your take on factoring into our Zero Waste goals? Is there an element there,

or is

it just kind of get one more thing that

No. I just think it's a little pricey. Right. It's like a it's almost half a floor thing.

But it's a cheaper pricey. It's a cheaper price.

Well, our full our full trash, like, our combo rate right now is they're offering one service. It's pretty pricey. So I'm just curious what that would look like if they provided it at scale.

Exactly. And

they'd a discount for all the more people.

And that's again where I think like as a and we're seeing the cost at that level. But if you have the economy as a scale and you have a bigger quantity of it with pickup locations and they're always getting collected at eco station, if you aggregate there, I wonder if that would reduce the cost. Because I bet they find discounts to make it happen.

For composting, was there a discussion of I can't remember how it's been presented. But is it baked into the cot? Or is it you've got to pay an extra $3 if you want compost Yeah.

It's it's part of the services that would be provided.

Was there consideration for, like, making it subscription almost? So because that is something or something like that.

Just depends on how much more it is per month. Like, could you imagine adding $9 per month to someone's monthly bill? That would be pretty pricey.

Yeah. Do

you have a feeling for

what we would actually send to Ridwell? Because we already recycle quite a lot. Our municipal Barco takes a lot of stuff.

A lot of

the things that he mentioned, like light bulbs and all that stuff, already collect. So

I feel like it's either the

food. Yeah. Is that the only thing that they would really be taking for us is

the plastic He's got they took 15 materials, but he only focused really on

styrofoam, the plastics, wine corks,

plastic bags, the food grade bags, bottle caps, which we take already in the program.

Seems like there's a lot of overlap with what you

guys They take multilayer plastic, plastic film, plastic caps, plastic

clamshells, pill bottles, bread tags. So we take the pill bottles, plastic clams.

Don't take Styrofoam of any kind.

I would take them.

Yes. Maybe you Styrofoam.

It's a big thing that

Yeah.

Household items. Which we have a

Styrofoam is, like, big and bulky most of the time. You're getting it around a TV, those bags are small. Yeah. Very easy. I don't know how they would collect that.

Can you

talk about special collection?

I think that is a special collection.

Again, be one of those ones you just

know different

than baling twine that you aggregate, and you're just going to have to have a place that you stockpile. And then when it gets worth it, that's when they come collect. Right?

It's hard with that, though, because it's so fly away.

No. It is. Like, you have to I mean, again, it comes back to having a Compressor. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have that. We're almost gonna have one, and then we didn't have one. Right?

Right. The baler.

Yeah, the baler. That's where that's super handy.

And then you can't really compress it.

The styrofoam. Yeah. And it flows into confetti.

So if we were to aggregate things for them to collect, like for instance, styrofoam, that kind of thing, would it be possible to collect that stuff? Could the Ego Station be a point, the place where that stuff comes before Ridwell comes and collects it? Or is that not a thing that we could do at the

I'm not sure. They're going through their NME D permitting right now. There's already a lot of scrutiny on the programs that we do have in the footprint right now.

From an NME D or DOE perspective?

NME D. Okay.

Things like Styrofoam, you'd have to have it go somewhere for them pick up and keep it in their houses and stuff. So it could be something that you could drop off another category of things we could drop off at the Eco Station. But it would be Ridwell that would be taking care of it.

Yeah. I think in theory, it sounds like a great idea, but I guess the cost is the most shocking to me.

The star phone would be a nightmare just because with the winds, if you get up here.

Yeah, it

would take special minutes. If it's going to blow around somewhere, I don't know. There's got

to be some sort of liquid you could put it in.

Do you have any of DOT issues potentially?

I'm just thinking.

Yeah. Anyway, I just

If you wait it, put it in something and sort of dissolve it, then you've got a fluid that you've to move. Yeah. But it stops it from blowing around everywhere. So very interesting.

But this is a way to bring costs down if we instead of did it doing it as an individual house pickup thing or mail in thing, if we if we started collecting that stuff on-site station for pickup and take, maybe that would be much more affordable. I don't know.

Those are like, that's where the procurement process comes in. They can quote provide quotes for mail in versus collection.

Do they have stuff on a statewide price agreement?

Haven't checked. They don't have anything on the website.

That might be something to try to launch with some of the others. If you could get them on a statewide price agreement, and then you could even get better both discounts.

We're not big enough yet. Colorado, you can do, but we're not. Until we get more established here and have something like Albuquerque, that's probably when you can probably really take advantage of that, right?

Well, statewide, you just have the state launch it. And they say, hey, give me your prices. And they price it out with different specs or whatever. And then you can pull it straight off of there the procurement's already done. Yeah. And any of the sister agencies or whatever can use that standing agreement. Mhmm. There are caps to the amount that go on. So you'd have to work with

what the

caps are gonna be for how much money you get spent via different mechanisms through different companies. But it always gives you the optionality then in case, like, one flakes out or goes away that you could pivot really easily Yeah. Because you've got the standing procurements. I've been spending way too much time in that lately.

All right.

You're going have public comment on that?

Yeah. I think Ms. Kalis is here for legal voters reporting.

Oh, well, I was hoping to comment on your public comment.

Not public, though.

Isn't she?

You can comment.

Okay. So I guess I was at the presentation, and this is what the box looks like in the

bag that I said to get.

I can answer some of your questions. So I signed up for the program just because I wanted to try it out. And this is what you end up with first, is you end up with a box like this. And it has the clips, and it has the two bags in it. It has all the information in it.

And I guess I took that out of my house, and the bags are hanging in my closet. But you can go on several different programs. You can have the bags delivered on a on a repetitive basis, like every month, or you can do it to where when you mail one in, they they then will send you another bag. When they get the bag, it's it's really nifty on the phone. So I get all these little texts from them of, you know, oh, we received your bag.

We're sending you another bag. Sorted your bag. It's now going to the facility. You know? I mean, so it's kinda neat the way it does track everything that you're sending.

You get your new bags, you know, in a little container like this, And and so I'm I'm just filling them up, and I'm getting notifications on my phone about that. But when when I was in the presentation, some of those questions came up about bulk because we had somebody in the audience that was a business owner and he said, you know, those little bags don't cut it for me. You know, I've got major, you know, things to recycle, huge amounts. How can I recycle my stuff? And he said we would have, we would arrange some sort of a pickup program for you.

And he did mention that in the presentation that he does work with other businesses and and will do a pickup for bulk items. Now, you know, pricey, basically, I can fill up one of those bags. You get two of them. And I'm filling up those bags. There's just two people in our household.

I fill it up about two pounds, all scrunched up of the different kinds of plastics in a bag and I schedule a pickup by the postal service, they come and take it away. Okay? I think a lot of that cost is just to transport it from your house. So, you know, the post office picks it up and delivers it. So you don't even have to take it to the post office.

So, you know, if you're mailing anything that's two pounds, how much are you going to pay for that? You know, so it's postal service costs, I think. But, you know, they have a lot of sorting costs, etcetera, on the other end. There's a lot of labor involved in trying to recycle things. And I think it has to be a whole mentality of people in the community that it's kind of the cost of living in a world of plastic, you know.

And everything you are even more aware of how much plastic you are using when you have something like this to recycle it. I mean, we're we're just amazed at all the packages that come to your house that are in plastic bags. You know, all the wrapping and interior stuff, the bubble wrap, everything, all that can be recycled. And, you know, that's where I think we're making a much bigger impact in our community for zero waste. And I think there are people in our community already.

I know several people signed up for the program on an individual basis. If we were able to get it on a community wide basis, I think it would be something where you could negotiate for bulk and possibly get the price down or maybe do it on an individual basis to where they pay for that particular service. A resident would pay for that kind of service. But the discussions that I've already had with county management is that this would have to be a competitive procurement, no problem. You know, I just think that something like this could really be popular in our community.

I think there are a lot of very conscientious people in our community that would want to do something like this. It's just, you know, what how can we bring a service like this to them considering we're really promoting zero waste in our community? And are we really zero waste if we know all this stuff is recyclable and we're letting people still throw it in the trash. Because it's a lot. You know? All you have to do, go to the grocery store and count how many things are in plastic. It's all recyclable. You know? So What would we be procuring?

I mean, what would You're procuring the service. Service. And so that would but then how would that roll out to the community?

It's the same way that you're doing it now. You have recycling now. Right. But it just doesn't recycle everything. Right.

So this would be for every household, you think?

It could be. I mean, it's offered to every household with the blue bins that we have now. Right. You know? But they only take certain things. Right? Yeah. So you could find another program that takes more things. Okay. You know?

And increase the amount that we're actually reusing or recycling. And they did talk about clothing recycling too. So, and you know, at the end of the meeting, I want to make another public comment about another type of local recycling program that you might be interested in knowing about if you don't already. Thank you.

Anyone else? All right. That's nothing. Okay.

So tonight, I wanted to present to you on bill financing. And this is a the idea of on bill financing, it's called tariff on bill financing. So we just struck the word tariff from it. And this was brought to us by the Climate Investment Center. And they they pitched the idea of starting an on bill financing program within the county.

A few of our counselors have been interested in this, and we've been working on developing a presentation for a little while in concert with the Climate Investment Center and the Coalition of Sustainable Communities and Department of Utilities. So I am and Abby are planning to present to deep BPU in June. So I'd really like you all to, like, poke holes through this presentation and help me strengthen it and tee it up for you. So that's what I'm gonna present tonight. And you have the presentation in front of you in the loose packet.

It's also in your agenda packet, but the font, like, was corrupt. Oh. You'll see some of the pages. It It overlaps, and it's hard to read.

It's better.

Okay.

Tonight, So I'm going to present the concept of what is on bill financing, discuss the benefits for Department of Public Utilities and the customers, the community. And then I will be requesting BPU's guidance for next steps. So on bill financing allows customers to finance energy upgrades through their utility bill rather than through their own personal line of credit, which is typically required by traditional loans. And it's a program that's currently utilized by it's in 30 other United States. And so it's not a new program.

It's been around for a really long time. So some of the key characteristics is that it can solve one of the biggest barriers to electrification, which is the upfront cost of moving from natural gas to electricity. The payment would appear as a line item on your utility bill, rather, which is really you know, it's a familiar payment mechanism to all of our community members because we only have one utility. And then the financing is tied to the meter and to the property. So that's why I say it's not to your, like, personal line of credit, but it's tied up in the home, mortgage, or the property.

Right? And the projects that we would focus on would promote energy efficiency and electrification, which is a county goal right now. Typical eligible upgrades that we would focus on would be heat pumps, like the mini splits that provide both heating and cooling, insulation and air sealing, electrical panel upgrades since a lot of our homes have the older electrical panels, and then possibly energy efficient water heating. Some of the benefits of on bill financing is, as I mentioned, in strategic alignment with our county goals. So we have big goals to have become a carbon free power provider and also to transition from natural gas to electrification by 2070.

And then it also helps customers to invest in the upgrades that it would improve their home energy efficiency and resiliency. So some of the bigger incentives for the customers is that we, as a county and as a utility, are prohibited by the anti donation clause to provide traditional incentives that would encourage energy efficient retrofits. However, this program, it would provide a source of a source of funding while also remaining in compliance with that law that clause. Typical home or the typical loans are zero to 5% interest rates. And then, like I mentioned, there's no increase to the individual property owner's debt to income ratio.

So there's no personal debt acquired as part of this tied to the home. So this tool really provides it fills the gap. Right? It fills our currently needs where many households cannot afford to easily finance large energy upgrades. So for example, heat pump installations often exceed 15,000 to $20,000 Many households are cash flow constrained.

They don't have the money to front that. So this really just helps to overcome that barrier of the upfront costs. Customers can pay through these upgrades through their utility bill, low interest loans, and then there's no personal debt acquired. I've said that a few times because I'm trying to drive the point home. So why does this why does this matter?

Why does the financing matter? So we have some hurdles within our own community. 86% of our households rely on natural gas for heating. And that the natural gas accounts for 32% of our county's greenhouse gas emissions. Although some argue that it's more because of the fugitive emissions from the Permian Basin. But we don't need to get into that. And then many homes were built in the fifties through the seventies and have really poor insulation, single pane windows, and aging furnaces. We all know that as well, so this would just really help to move the needle. So how would we do this? So this was really fantastic news that we got about a week ago.

The Climate Investment Center has agreed to provide initial capital funding for the program. And then to possibly administer the program, the county could seek additional grant funding for the program. A program administrator could be the Climate Investment Center or a potential third party. And the administrator would be really be responsible for, like, vetting contractors, project qualification, even though we wouldn't necessarily, like, be basing it off of your credit rate or something. They would still be verifying that you've been, like, a good customer and paying your bills every month and have good payment history and things like that.

They process applications, and then they would do the loan servicing and the inspections to make sure the money was utilized as for its purpose. So DPU, really what our role would be as a utility would be to provide the billing mechanism. Since we have a billing infrastructure in place, we could just help coordinate that line item within your bill. And we, the DPU, would not act as the in any shape or form. So what would the process look like?

A customer would submit an application through the program administrator. They would complete eligibility and collaborate, and then also make sure that we're working with qualified contractors. Make sure that if the mini splits or the panel or whatever you requested funding for was completed and we would verify that, then the program administrator would then disperse the funding to subcontractor. So that would be like a direct payment. And then the loan repayment would begin through the utility bill.

And then as part of this, we would also provide some education about maximizing energy efficiency benefits and how to do that in your own home. So the repayment mechanism. So the loan would be repaid through a charge on the utility bill. Typically, it's through the life of the item you requested. So tenure, I think some of these items have a ten year lifespan, like mini splits, for example.

So the funding would be based on a term of ten years. Other programs that have bond bill financing, they've seen a really low default rate. So mostly homeowners in general are paying their bills and things like that. So one of the initial goals of this program was to design the program so the energy savings would offset the loan payment. But when you actually put pencil to paper, that's really hard to do, especially moving from gas to electric.

So we will we will keep that in mind. It's just it may be challenging. And then what happens, for example, if you sell your house? Right? Everybody has that question. So the obligation would need to be settled up at the time of the sale of the property. You wouldn't just keep transferring the loan

you want.

So there's almost gonna be, like, a contractor lien on the property.

Yeah. You have you have to pay it off.

Or the house would be Yeah.

First claim on anything you get out of the house.

So here's an example. Do I say it's hard to design it so the offsets, the energy offset would be more or less than the, you know, the actual loan payment. So this is an example we did for mini splits, switching from heating your home with, you know, traditional natural gas. And then we assumed that this property had, like, window units, window cooling units, so we did try to account for that. So the monthly, like, obviously, moving away from natural gas, if you look at the bottom couple of lines.

So your interest rate, we assumed a 4% interest rate. We assumed a seven year repayment term. And so that monthly bill would be a $194 and change, right, to add mini splits to your home. The gas savings is only, like, $33, so that reduces your gas bill. But then Your electricity bill goes up because now you're using it for both heating and cooling.

Because that's the monthly bill. Yeah. You maybe maybe you could add the over the payment of the seven years. Oh, sure. That way. That's not very much,

but over that, it might be Oh, like the total amount? Yeah. So the total amount is the 14,000. So that's what's financed.

No. I mean, the monthly gas, like, over the seven years, that's how much you'd save in gas.

Yeah. But the net like, what you're paying every month is still gonna be $274 more a month because you're paying for the cost of the equipment and now the increased cost to your electricity. And what we did try to account for here were some of the, like, the rape rebates that would be available to homeowners. So we did stack those.

And these also be there's also tax credits available

for some of Yeah. You can see on the They're

all Oh, there it is. Right on the thing. Yeah. Just look.

Is that Fed I'm sorry.

I think my question is

Here is federal.

And it's available. It must be available. It's unqualified.

What about that 25? So you have to be careful about trying to

stack these.

Is that federal tax credit still applicable? Or did it Which one?

One that's above the

ERA? C.

There's the ERA here rebate, and then above that term tax

I would need to double check that. We don't we don't administer that.

Isn't that a

tax credit. I think that one has a term on it. Because Trump shut down a bunch of these things. Was Wind down provisions. Available. Here but it's income.

State tax credits.

There are some. They're There's a litany of qualifications and everything. Like we have a whole team that's dedicated just to tax.

You said here is federal?

Here is federally administered from the DOE. Okay. But we're implementing at the state level. So we're like their partner.

Oh, Okay.

They give

you guys the money and then you

They give us the money. We have to put it out there. Yeah.

Well, might be worth including some of the state things, even if they're income qualified. You could put an asterisk by and say, depending on income or is the income qualified. But also, people that might want to do this sort of thing are the people who might be income qualified.

Yeah. Exactly. We didn't say, though, is that this would be, like, a for everyone program.

Because the

county currently has an affordable housing program, so that is tailored to the low income.

And there's, like, a utility there as well.

So this would be to any income level, and that's what makes this different. But to your I'm just saying that

you could include that and just flag it as something that's income qualified. But people who are income qualified might be interested in this program because they don't have the cash to put out this.

You did two examples. You did one like Sue's talking, like someone who would qualify. And then you could take the median household income and tailor one to that. Sure.

So the other thing you have to be aware of is when you start stacking some of these in, like, your program, you have to go through specific contractors. And there's almost, like, a queuing and everything that goes on. And so just realize, like, implementation, we tried to get some people up here to do work. And they weren't interested because when you start weaving in these programs, there's capped rates at what those people can receive. And they said, you know what? We're making better money without going through all your paperwork.

Yeah.

Right. We're not interested. We had a ton of contractors back out because the ones that are worth their salt already had their line of business. And the ones that wanted to be involved were having so many difficulties and problems. Like, the complaints and stuff we got were crazy. So

And that was where I was going to ask eventually was just like, if you get to a point where like because most people not most people, plenty of people are reactive, not proactive in trying to implement. Like, oh, pump went down or whatever, right? Or like something goes down and you're like, well, I need to now I need to act on it to get it implemented. Yeah, or water heater or whatever it is. Now get your water heater pre installed. Exactly. What's the delta between the time that I put in that to the time it can get implemented? And again, that's for the reactive crowd, not the proactive crowd. But I was just wondering what that time frame was. That might be a question you might get in there.

It's just again, that's where active communication with people. But plenty of people are waiting for their 30 year old equipment to die, and then they're going to make the plunge, right?

And another thing we had problems with was branding. Certain people would want certain brands, but they weren't packaged with the discounts to go in here and get implemented or installed because everything on these programs becomes very systematic and robotic.

So like for the federal rebates

Somebody wanted

certain brands or

What Mitsubishi?

Somebody wanted like Daikon. Mhmm. Or somebody wanted Mitsubishi. And they're like, all we have for this package is this. And take it or leave it. And that made a lot of people grumpy too. So

I mean,

it's fun. It's fun.

Okay. Well, that's good to know.

You really have to quantify how much dry powder that Center for Climate Investment who's?

The Climate Investment Center?

Climate Investment Center. How much dry powder they have access to in order to pull this off? So how much money they really have? Because this snowballs really fast on their costing and everything and then also, like, the payment terms that they have to get out there. Because all of a sudden, you've got the green banks that are trying to do it, but you almost have to implement, like, a level of, for lack of better term, loan sharks in order to get the money and front it.

You can't technically front it when it's federal dollars, but nobody wants to wait, like, the ninety days to a hundred and eighty days to get paid. So you get this branch of people in there that are, like, basically putting the money out there to get these contractors paid that then get reimbursed by the government. And so you've got a lot of layers that that weave into this as well. I'm working on trying to unwind some of that.

Good luck. Yeah. I mean, I think we recognize that we would need some sort of like revolving loan fund

to make

this happen like sustainably over time. But this would be pilot at least one way to get it started and off the ground.

So the revolving loan fund, are you familiar with the ESCO program? The state of New Mexico started a long time ago. And you just energy service companies and the whole premise of it was we're going to implement energy savings contracts for the state in public buildings. And the savings from what they do is going to pay for the program.

Right.

So they implemented this a number of years back and threw in, like, $20,000,000 to it. GSD, general services division, took 70% of that money, threw it into buildings and projects and everything. That revolving loan has never been repaid and is not on track to be repaid to where, like, it could keep continuing funding things. So the original estimates that they had of, like, seven to fifteen years were not happening. And they were turning out to be more like twenty to thirty.

So just realize, like, the timelines that a lot of people gave on these and, like, where they're at. The the math does it math sometimes. So it's it's tricky. Because that's one of the things that we're trying to do is to look back across those programs and really quantify it, like which ones actually did pay out, which you see with lighting. Lighting is a huge one. Right? Low expense, like great energy savings, those pencil really well. But some of the other ones that you would think will actually do make an impact on stuff, they don't pencil as well. And so you have to combine different programs together to make it work. And that's some of the stuff that we're working with.

So if and I just know this because in the previous job, we had an issue where we got an energy savings performance contract for

t eight

light bulbs, which are no longer a thing. They got replaced by LEDs. We weren't able to upgrade. So could you is there built in? Like, what if there's a fancy new heat pump that comes out and it's 20 times more efficient? Could you upgrade it? And, like, still keep the loan? Like

you know

what I mean?

Because you still have to

pay off your old loan and then Mhmm. Yeah. So if you just I don't know.

They'd have to pay off their old loan.

Well, it's secured with a contractor lien. And so that's the other thing that they're probably not saying is, like, they're gonna be running title on stuff to see what sort of equity you have in the house before they're actually making some of this. And that's not actually gonna help your renter class as easily as what you would maybe think it would. That's why these guys are giving it such low rates is they're basically securitizing everything with equity people have in their houses and making sure that they're first in line to get paid when anything transacts off of that.

That's a good question to ask, maybe instead of assuming that. But I mean, it sounds like that might be. I'm not sure we'd have to ask.

I bet they are. Because this is Beth Beloff? Mhmm. Some of that occurred? Yeah. Probably.

So what was your point? Like, that they would be putting a contractor lien on the actual home?

Essentially, what this is doing is it's putting a a like a contractor lien. Right? If you have somebody come out and work on your house, the reason a lot of these people go to your house to do work is because you can't move the property. And they can file a lien. There's a process that's recognized and everything. And when that house closes or transacts, those items that are still out there pending or anything, they get paid out first before anybody gets their money in disbursements. So that that's what's actually giving you the security on this. That's what's buying down your interest rate. So a lot of people don't recognize that when they do these transactions. Like, the more risky the loan, the higher the interest rate. But when you're securitizing it like this. So

So you're asking more like how you securitizing the loan?

I mean, you want to know who's ultimately underwriting it. Because the Center for Climate, they're acting like a broker. They're not actually the people underwriting it. They're getting money, collecting it, aggregating it, and then packaging it out. But whoever's underwriting is going to have those requirements on it that they're putting to be able to determine what the risk level is from these different projects.

And so some of that's gonna be baked into what they think the life of the asset is that they're putting on it. Mhmm. Heat pump, we expect it to work for twenty years, thirty years, whatever it is. So you're financing for it. That'll be under that.

Yeah. They're not going to finance twenty or thirty years. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Can you talk to Dan Osborne about it? Mhmm. Okay.

About what do you mean about?

I thought we were doing something else somewhere where the cost of something would be recovered when the health is sold. It might have to do with some of the affordable housing.

It is.

Gets really complicated. And then what Shannon said, that's terrifying. That's absolutely terrifying because you're starting to talk about time frames that exceed for older houses.

You mean like if a better technology came up?

Yeah, yeah, over time. It would be nice if in order to encourage conversion where they would actually say, you don't pay anything now. You just get that, the cost of it tacked onto your as a contractor lead. And and the the governmental entity recovers it at the the next conveyance of the home. But that could that's could be

really bad.

Mhmm. Because people don't really sell their homes that often either, right? Especially not in this town. Right.

What happens if people default? So this extra charge goes on their bill. They get charged every month this extra amount.

What

happens if they can't pay that extra amount?

That's the thing. If it's on the actual property, they can go into foreclosure type things to

pay that. Hypothetically, they would vet it properly. So that would rarely have ever happened.

Well, that's Okay. People lose their jobs.

I mean, the other thing is if the housing market goes upside down. Right? Like if there's a bubble and all of a sudden the equity in your house goes upside down and you've got to shell out, then all of a sudden you have this pending. And even if you were to sell a home, like you'd have to pay that out in order to close that. Or the people would have to assume that liability in closing. So it it can really complicate your financial markets. Mhmm.

Yeah. What happens if your house burns down?

That's a good question.

That would probably go off of insurance, again, for like a total loss. Right. But you would have to have the property insured if you were able to do this to make sure that you've had adequate coverage.

I have to add

it or something.

Really good questions. Any more? All this slide? Yeah. I mean, to me, this is a whole new ballgame. Right? Like, in theory, it's like, oh, that's just great. Let's help

Upgrade their plans. It is exciting.

Like, it's also like, oh, this new ones.

Doesn't have any cash.

This is

complex and then trying to explain that to people where they understand it. Because people look at it and, like, the way that this is almost written up is it's like, oh, it's just a line item on there. Like, nobody thinks about the ramifications of what's still pending out there. And then also for, I guess, BPU and department here, like, if you become because I think earlier you said that was kind of like a coordinating entity. Mhmm. You're all of a sudden gonna have to be tied back to, like, watching this pay down amount.

That would be the administrator. Right? But we're we're collecting the payment.

But, like, you're you're tied into it all of a sudden. Yeah. So you're gonna have to keep tracking that because you're the face that people are gonna come to to gripe.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

These people on the back end. So, like, you're gonna really have to make sure that you

She's transferring it to DPU. Customer care is gonna get it.

Oh, those are still No. Those are all really good concerns, I think.

I That so is would there be a fee for DPU to be the organizing entity then? That

would So role is pretty minimal. With payment. Right?

So you're just processing the payment and sending it to

them. But if you're not able to collect, you have to look at how they term that. All of a sudden, like if you're having to make up shortfalls, people don't pay you to register with this entity that's going through.

There's a

lot of minutiae paperwork. Get some good lawyers.

Find out how other communities do this. We are not special slips that have these problems. If there's 30 other states that are doing this, then solve all this stuff.

That's all part of program design. Yeah. Well, it's still not our money. I mean, we're collecting it, but it's not our money. Yeah. So the only thing they're defaulting on really is, like, not paying your utility bill. Right? Because they're still gonna pay for the their electricity, water, gas, whatever.

But this isn't a utility charge. Even though it's on the utility bill, it's not a utility charge. And so now all of a sudden, you've gotten into. Collections work.

It's not our funding. Your question is who takes care of collections?

That's what I would say is, like, you'll have to get that squared because all of a sudden, you become the collections arm. And if somebody's delinquent, they might be leaning on you to act as a collections agent, which is not

And that's happened to the county. I mean, we the county writes off debt all the time. Like, people who don't play their solid waste bill, we'll write that off after it's, like, five years. So this isn't

But if that becomes a no quantity But this stop paying it.

No. But in general, people pay their bills. And in general, we've heard that this is that it has a really low default rate. Those are good points to consider, and I think we should be prepared for that. There

places that are doing it.

Yeah. And I've done

it for a long time.

Okay. So here's examples among the programs. Michigan, it's been around for around six years. So they've put caps on their loans. Right? So a minimum of five and a maximum of 30. Terms are ten years. And then they have a really low interest rate, which is fantastic. Like, we would to me, that's what moves a program is, like, a really low interest rate. Right?

Products that people want. And then there's Massachusetts. So they've only been around for three years, 0% on bill, 0% interest rate. And then they built their program so the monthly charge is less than the estimated money saved from the energy efficient upgrades. They want it to be offset by your utility savings.

And it might work there depending on their electric rate, like, they're paying a really high rate. Or a lot of these places, we receive federal funding, and so they're able to offer some of the really low interest rates. Or they're also able to offer incentives through utility. They're not able to do that. Right? So that's why they vary so much. So moving on to the Florida. That one's been around a really long time since I was born. Interest rate's 5% for more than 25% energy efficiency. So they also do, like, solar.

Those are things we could consider. We basically could build the program how we would want, and, of course, it has to make financial sense as well. And then their terms are seven years for most measures and up to ten years for solar. And then Fort Collins. So it integrates into their existing billing system, utilizes I forget what that means. To handle the loan administration and credit checks. And then the cap it's capitalized through a mix of internal reserves. So they're actually using internal, like, probably general funds, which we can't do. Mhmm. And then the bank loan and then also grants.

So that's what we would wanna do is at least do the green bank funding, the capital money, and then stacking it with grants. Obviously, having low interest rates.

Would we be the first in New Mexico then?

I think so.

So one of the things about this program is it might target might be a very small audience. So it would be an incremental improvement in transition. And that alone might make it work. It'd be interesting seeing what the participation rate is in these other places.

Yeah.

And the first couple yeah, if it ramped up or

Yeah.

Tallahassee offers it for solar PV. I'm wondering also about batteries, because that is a potential place for would be able the time of use rates and so forth, that might be a situation where people could actually save some money on their utility because they could store the energy when it's cheap and use it when it's expensive. It also helps reduce our peak loads, helps our old time use thing work better, and provides some protection against ten hour outages like we just experienced. So that might be

a thing.

And I think some of the utilities boards and utilities people are thinking about whether or not batteries would help some of these issues. But again, with time of use rates, it's money.

Is this the yeah, listen on the front page. That pumps, insulation, air sealing, electrical upgrades, efficient water heating. Is PV in there and batteries?

I think it's up to DPU, like, what they think is going to be most impactful, what they want to

support. Okay.

And also, Joe's point, what makes most financial sense.

Yeah, for sure.

So about water efficient appliances, like water use dishwashers and washing machines?

That would be like where the minimum would come in. Like, we going to actually finance? $100 Yeah,

that's true. Oh, yeah. But

truths. What would be our minimum, I guess, would be

the most.

Yeah, because

it's for big, some things, it looks like.

So what are some of our barriers? Like, so the Climate Investment Center would be an initial partner. Like, those are related to that. But say, for example, like, what would be a longer term partner? A longer term funding mechanism.

So it looks like Traverse City is using 1,800,000 from USDA.

See what I mean? They're getting, like, these big grants.

So I don't know what the population is of Traverse City. But these are groups reaching out to USDA. So we're considered a rural community, aren't we? Yes. So there might be stuff with that So I did the rural electrification or power modification programs. I think

ultimately we'd have to self fund. And we have precedent for that with the affordable housing fund now.

They're they're about the same size.

Well, that's right. You're a Michigener, aren't you?

Yeah. No. I'm from

There's a school there.

There's a

school there. Yeah. I mean, it well, I guess it depends on what you're calculating.

20,000.

Within the city, within the metro, it's, like, a 150,000.

But Dissipation. So it's successful and worth everyone's time. Contractors too. So the focus areas, like we said, we think, like, the heat pump heat pump technologies are good. Like, they're a good way to break into moving the needle for electrification because they offer both heating and cooling for your homes.

It would also probably go hand in hand with the electrical panel upgrades that a lot of homes would need to get there. So staff recommendations would be to develop a program and pursue grant funding to stand up the program. Program components could include energy audits. We've heard mixed feedback about those, how they could potentially be a barrier to a home or to a, yeah, homeowner, like, doing any upgrades. But we wanted to leave it in there just so it's broad.

Heat pumps for heating and cooling, heat pump water heaters, insulation and air sealing, energy efficient windows and doors, wiring and electrical panel upgrades where needed. Again, it's a could, so it could also include other things like solar and batteries if that's something they want to pursue. What did you

say about energy audits being a barrier?

So other programs who required it as part of the program, it was just more of a barrier.

Official official odd is not cheap.

Right. And then to your point of, like, the reactive versus

Yeah.

It takes time. Mhmm. So

And we we were talking about some of this where it's like, we've got some nice things identified here. But, like, with the insulation and air sealing, are you counting, like, building envelope into that? Because some of the some of the building envelopes are so bad that it's like you're putting a Band Aid on a gaping wound.

Yeah. And that, like, that would be my house. Right? We have windows desperately. Like, before I would do anything, that would be what I did. There's definitely an educational con.

So maybe it would be almost I mean, we could consider it in terms of, like, a high level energy efficiency audit or energy audit, not like a in-depth.

But I think I think you might shut some people down too. Like, if they come out and do an energy audit across the house and they realize how much cost is bay.

Like, flip side is they also know what to target then too. Maybe they they necessarily know

what target.

Like, okay. Whereas my RLOS right behind you? My windows are the biggest one, first and foremost. So I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed and they're just

Oh, absolutely. They're like, oh, cool. I have to do the whole house. Like, that's my house.

That's like any house here.

Yeah. I have a 57 house. It's like, okay. It's like paper mache in the wall. So, you know.

No, know. I was putting my shoe on the other day. And my head went through my external siding. And I was

like, Oh, I'm sorry. Wow.

I have a 73 near Shannon. And my wife and I talk about putting money in it to bring it up. And it's like, no. There's a point of

dimension Once for you start, it's hard to stop.

It's everything. It's literally everything to fix the envelope. The envelope doesn't exist.

That's then on the energy audits.

I'm all about it.

I think that I'm

really interested to sorry.

No. You go. I interrupted you.

No. I'm just I think I'm all about it. I think it's too teary. You're giving people a breakdown of what's bang for the buck. So I think that's super good because there are so many different things that come into, like, what what can give you, like, thermal better thermal barrier and and thus energy. So I think just educating people and letting them know what's up so they can kind of evaluate on, Okay, what do I really want to target?

I think you give them it gives you a little bit of power. Okay, so say you offer a free energy audit or whatever. And they come back and they're like, you need new windows. You need new you need a heat pump, blah blah blah. But you could here are things that you could do immediately.

You could

add sealing sealant things around your door. I think that would be really helpful. Because I think you have to introduce people to this kind of stuff.

I think, yeah.

Like, you do it, like, almost step by step. It's like, okay. We did this. Now let's try and do the next thing.

Mhmm. I

mean, you almost have to qualify it too because there's a big difference between, like, an energy audit and an investment grade audit. And when we're talking about moving money, you're almost moving into the realm of, like, investment grade audit across stuff. So how you're quantifying it, how you're doing it the same way. And I think if you want to be impactful with it, you almost need to show them what you think is going to happen with electricity prices and why they would want to do that to try to protect from some of that. But then that doesn't always necessarily the most favorable impression of, like

Right. You're like

your sources of energy. Yeah. So it's like, why are we doing this? Because these are more expensive, but they're better in this aspect.

Well, it's good though. Right? Because it saves them money and it also reduces energy costs because you're not using as much natural gas. You're just doing, like,

air Insulation.

Sealing and cooling. But you might have wanted the air conditioning units, and you can't get those because your house is a big mess.

You might go, I want first and foremost, I want comfort in my house. Yes. I don't have air conditioning, so let's just start there. Start with comfort, then we'll work our way out. So the very first thing I do is put mini splits in the sucker. Then I'll work on windows to try to keep it actually in the house.

But like, again,

that's usually kind of people are quantifying it that

way. Too, for sure.

Yeah. Efficiency wise, the swamp coolers are hard. They are. Until you couple it, the water used

to say. But I don't you live up here, right? Yeah. I don't think having lived in White Rock now, like growing up in White Rock and moving back, is

not cutting in

White Rock in the summer. Because White Rock is at least

10 degrees warmer.

At least five to 10 degrees warmer.

Yeah.

Especially for people who live on, like, North Mesa where there's a lot of trees and stuff.

It's hot.

So I'm going to wrap up, and then you could do your final question. So it's a proven financing model used nationwide. It helps overcome upfront costs. It supports electrification. And helps spur the transition away from natural gas, which is So we recommend the BQ take the following actions, stand up the program. We would come into some sort of MOU, Climate Investment Center, and the Coalition of Sustainable Communities to explore program design and secure a capital allocation, apply for supporting grants, and start developing the program. And that's that.

So I would go back off that recommendations. Uh-huh. I wouldn't necessarily name who your partner is yet. I did more research on, like, who else might be out there. Just I mean, if you're gonna partner with somebody, you wanna know, like, we listed four different ones off. We want to know how they're financing it. And if they're financing it through a government agency or through operational set aside or whatever that is, like I think you would want to understand those mechanisms before you said, We wanna go with climate investment center. I would just say, hey. We wanna look into this, understand the financing mechanisms that these other programs are using because I guarantee they're probably not all the same. Mhmm.

And then I would leave yourself that optionality. Like don't preclude them, but I wouldn't name them in how you're having to go forward.

There's a lot of state versus federal level green loans, right? Green loan entities essentially?

Essentially.

So you can go surf the market and see if maybe there's a better deal for us at

a higher level. Because, I mean, the other thing is, like, layer you add on adds on additional cost. So are they the best packager? Are they the best? Like, I don't know. I don't know enough about them.

Well, for we wouldn't pursue this without them. Like, this is all new. Like, we're not going to go out there on our own and develop this.

I mean, this almost gets into anti dynation then. You're selecting somebody ahead of time and saying

this is the that you want They're not giving them money.

They're not giving you money. They're making a pool available. Like, this is like saying, like, it'd be no different than if you said, like, I'm choosing Wells Fargo. And I'd be like, wait a minute. There's some other banks out there. Like, before we grab one person and say this is our partner, we should understand the mechanisms of the market. Because even even with a charitable organization, like in a donation, you shouldn't grab one at the expense of like, rising tide lifts all boats. But, if we're specifically grabbing one and saying this is our entity before we give anybody else a chance, I don't know.

Are there other municipalities in the state that are using this program already? Like,

in Okay.

So nobody's jumping into this. Maybe the first Okay.

They'd probably chosen you because you're the county with the highest amount of money. They're the reason that I would choose Los Alamos over some of the other ones to start this.

One just shift in perspective or added language you might have. It's really hard and you tried but failed to make the case for this being something that would financially benefit people. But there are many, many, many benefits that come from each of these upgrades that have to do with greater comfort, greater safety, greater batteries in there, greater resilience to outages. Electrical panel upgrades allow you it could be great for safety. Electrical safety. Replace some of these jury rigged things here in some people's homes. And so on. That's why we bought our heat pumps. It wasn't to save money. It was to have better comfort to

have car

was 70 years old and because we wanted air conditioning. We didn't seal our house up and put on stucco and new windows because we wanted to save money. We did it to be more comfortable. And so this gives people the opportunity to improve their lives, not just save money. You can't because we're not going to save money.

It's going be Well, especially when more you get into something that costs 17,000 to $20,000

They can't they can't do it.

People my age are Right. Gonna be to have just be able to chuck that down Yeah. And everything else.

Also a recognition that you have to have. Like, if they can't afford it or if they can't get it, there's a reason why. And, like, packaging that into something that's gonna blow up on them later is not necessarily doing them a favor. So we have to understand the financing mechanisms of what all is being underwritten and how.

The 4% loan compared to putting it on a credit card or something like that is initially.

I mean, this is

I would totally

jump in not to do

some upgrades. But necessarily would enact that stuff that might put your house at risk?

No, I understand that. Absolutely. That's the thing. You're spot on there. So knowing exactly what's the repercussions of not covering a utility payment is a big deal. Absolutely. What's the end of the date?

And just for the county stuff, we talked about the county writing some stuff off of bad debt and paying that off.