Garry Cooper and Dean Stanberry explore the implementation of a circular economy in facility management, focusing on inventory management, technology, and the practical steps needed to transition toward sustainable operations.
Today Garry Cooper, CEO and Co-Founder of Rheaply sits down with Dean Stanberry, the immediate past chair of IFMA's Global Board of Directors, to discuss the concept and implementation of a circular economy in facility management. They emphasize the importance of knowing and managing inventories to enable circular practices, the role of technology and data, and practical steps for organizations to begin their journey toward more sustainable operations.
Resources from the episode:
Garry Cooper: [00:00:00] Know what you have is the first step because how can I make anything physical circulate? If we're not even aware of our own inventories within our own buildings and then from that kind of foundational database, if you will, you can build other things.
You can do other things with that.
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org to get started. Today, Garry Cooper, CEO and co founder of Reaply sits down with Dean Stanberry, the immediate past chair of IFMA's global board of directors, to discuss the concept and implementation of a circular economy in facility management. They emphasize the importance of knowing and managing inventories, the role of technology and data, [00:01:00] and practical steps organizations can take to begin their journey towards a more sustainable future.
Now, let's get into it.
Garry Cooper: I'm very excited to be here. So my name is Garry Cooper. I'm the CEO and co founder of Rheaply. Rheaply is a Chicago based Climate technology company trying to help build technology to scale the circular economy, especially in the real estate and facilities management world. I'm super excited to be here with my new friend, Dean.
Dean.
Dean Stanberry: Thank you Gary. I am Dean Stanberry. I'm the immediate past chair of IFMA's global board of directors, and I think I'm here today because last year I led a working group that we produced this report called Evolution is Never Finished. And it was about all the emerging trends and circular economy was the first, alphabetically first trend that we had in the report.
So, happy to be here and talk about this topic because it's near and [00:02:00] dear to my heart.
Garry Cooper: Absolutely. Same.
Dean Stanberry: Okay. So, What do you want to share today on circular economy?
Garry Cooper: Well, maybe one thing to start would be just the term. And we were talking about before we came here of, you know, in some places in the world, circular economy is still needing to be defined.
How do you think about just that term, and also, how do you think about Where we are in the understanding about circular principles within the facility management real estate world
Dean Stanberry: You know, I think the principles of circular economy are certainly easy enough to grasp to understand But when you think about it, you know It has the word economy in it and it really is a major shift in how the economy functions So going from our current linear economy To adopt a circular economy is is a long term thing because there's a lot that has to change.
You know, going all the way back to how you know, functionally design [00:03:00] products. And that gets into what pricing there is and their lifespan and how they're maintained over their life. So there's a lot of nuances that come into it, but you know, if you explain to somebody the principles of circular economy, they go, I get it.
And then they go, and now how do we get there? And then we staring at our shoes.
Garry Cooper: Yeah. And that's actually, that last part is one of the things that we've been trying to circle, literally, pun intended on at Ripley is how do we make something that's conceptually right? and sound go from theory to practice to impact.
And what we found at Ripley is that technology, data, community ecosystems, like the whole kind of value chain is on one platform and in a technology is super critical. From taking the concepts of circularity principles, especially in the real estate world into something that's returning an [00:04:00] investment that's creating impact.
Can you talk a little bit about what you think either the role of data or technology is whether it be software or hardware, in circularity when it comes to the real estate world?
Dean Stanberry: Well, I actually spent 22 years in IT before I took a right turn into real estate and facilities. So, You know, I have a lot more background, I think, in technology than most.
But you know, we have shifted from being buildings, being inanimate objects to being intelligent and interactive,
Garry Cooper: right?
Dean Stanberry: And that all is part of digital transformation,
Garry Cooper: right?
Dean Stanberry: And I, you know, people have heard me say this before. The commercial real estate industry slept through the first 30 years of digital transformation, woke up about five years ago.
And now we have all of this technology and all these new sensors and all these new things we need to track. We have lots of tools coming out. But in my mind and apologies to the exhibitors who sell products I said the technologies the systems [00:05:00] are somewhat irrelevant in the sense that they're the digital tin can where we store data.
The data is where the value is. And it. Data analytics is how you unlock that value and that's something that we do not have we don't have a great competency in commercial real estate, a wide competency in data analytics, data governance yet. So, we need to understand what are the most important things to track.
Where are we going to track it, and then how do we prove it's trustworthy?
Garry Cooper: One of the, one of the quotes that we hold dear at Ripley is Kate Brandt, who is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Alphabet. She, I think famously once said, waste is a data problem. And when I think about what you were saying about, we have all these tools, we can bring all these technology, But the real product, the real value is data.
But if our industry is coming out of their slumber from a data perspective, no wonder why there's so much [00:06:00] waste. One kind of term that we sometimes use, but it's very much used in the space around circular workplaces. And it kind of means something to some people, other people that kind of go, I know what circular means, I know what workplace means.
From your kind of lens, when you think about circularity in buildings, when you think about circular workplaces. What are some of the thoughts, bullets that come to your mind?
Dean Stanberry: Well, as an operations guy, you know, I tend to go back to what are the things that we need and use every day to operate buildings.
I mentioned earlier that, you know, we talk about embodied carbon and operational carbon. Most people associate embodied carbon with construction. architecture, engineering, construction, which is true, that's all, almost all embodied carbon. But I said, but you understand that we have embodied carbon in operations and [00:07:00] operations goes on much longer than the construction project.
So I give the examples of you know, an air filter. Doesn't incur any operational carbon because it doesn't use energy or whatever, but it took embodied carbon to produce it,
Garry Cooper: to get
Dean Stanberry: it there and to install it in the machine. We use paper products. Every building has, whether it's the restroom products, paper products paper plates, printer paper, all of those kinds of things.
Paper is actually one of the most in carbon intensive from an embodied carbon perspective. And so how do we track that in addition to the normal operational carbon, which is typically associated with energy consumption? How much energy do I consume to Operate this building. So, you know, in, in the workplace I think they're still trying to define what does a circular workplace mean, but a lot of that is for people that are now living and operating and working [00:08:00] and buildings, what is their role in that circular economy?
How do you create that workspace?
Garry Cooper: Yep.
Dean Stanberry: That is honoring the principles Yep. Of circularity. Yep. You know, you're not taking the batteries outta your mouth. And throwing 'em in the garbage. . Yeah. You know, that you have a means of doing something and you're participating in the circular economy.
Yep. Not watching it from the sidelines.
Garry Cooper: Totally.
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Garry Cooper: One thing that I especially here even last night at dinner, but in general is, you know, going from, again, theory and [00:09:00] concept to like, Oh, we have a circular workplace or, Oh, we have a circular set of buildings, feels multi phasic multi year.
And what I try to do is say, but how do you get started? Right, whether you know, I was sitting at dinner with a person who led, you know, 30 buildings for a public library system, sitting with a person who leads a lot of buildings for a healthcare system, and what we found in the dinner conversation is maybe some of their starting places are actually really similar.
And so I was wondering in the networks that you have, the people that you mentor and oversee, what are some of the ways that you see people get started on the journey of becoming more circular workplace?
Dean Stanberry: You know, I, I I was certified in like quality improvement and process management principles decades ago, but it's something I've carried with me.
And what I learned in quality improvement is that, You actually have to have a [00:10:00] documented process to determine if you can improve it. Right? So if you're not following a process, how do you improve, you know, randomness? So I always kind of take it back to the basic blocking and tackling. So first question is, what do you have, what do you have today?
And then what do you think you're, or want to improve about it? So that you can start setting some sort of a goal or an objective. And from there, now you can understand, I know what I have, I know where I want to go, you know, what are some of the steps to get there. And so, tactically speaking, it may be a long term journey.
Garry Cooper: That's right.
Dean Stanberry: But, What you want to do is say what can I do today? That's right. Or this fiscal year. That's right. And demonstrate those results. That's right. And I go up or down. You know, did I meet my objective? Did I not? If I didn't what held me back? And don't beat yourself up just because you didn't meet something.
Right. You know, you're making progress as long as you're making progress and not going backwards, you know, then celebrate the [00:11:00] successes.
Garry Cooper: Totally. And as I think about one of the kind of keystones that we hear a lot about Rheaply, and it's funny, we say the first block in the journey is knowing what you have.
Because how can the world, can you make anything circulate? We didn't script that part right. It's literally on our website. Know what you have is the first step because how can I make anything physical circulate? If we're not even aware of our own inventories within our own buildings and then from that kind of foundational database, if you will, you can build other things.
You can do other things with that, but there's a lot of just like first principles what's in this building, what's in the storage, you know, what's in the, you know, And so, it's just like really interesting how that matches up with what we hear a lot as well.
Dean Stanberry: Well, I know furniture is near and dear to your heart.
So let's talk about that because what you need also is practical examples. How can I demonstrate success? And that's a great example because [00:12:00] we have a lot of it. And at the end of life of a building or just a renovation of a building, and you're going to go put some new stuff in, where does it all go?
Garry Cooper: Where does it all go?
Dean Stanberry: You know. Overnight, some people come in and it magically disappears and we don't exactly know where it ended up because often we're not specifying you know, what happens to this stuff. So, we all know it goes to length. That's right. And
Garry Cooper: About 12 million tons, 12 million pounds of it.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, so, One of my colleagues here Diane Kimiko green, she started an initiative around that, which is helping people understand what options do you have that landfill is really the last resort, not the first choice. Absolutely.
Garry Cooper: And one of the things that we've seen is. You know, there's been an obviously an evolution of how workplaces are being staffed right now.
So we obviously were mostly in office. COVID happens, we're out of office. COVID, post COVID, there's hybrids and remote models. And now we've been hearing this word [00:13:00] about flexibility, flex models. Whereas, maybe some days we come in three, four, five. Five days a week. But those engineers, they have to come into our office every day of the week until this project is done.
And then they can go back to being remote or hybrid. And so what we've heard some of our most trusted customers say is I need to have things inventory. I don't know about all my furniture because one day I can have a demand. And the next day I can have 500 percent of that demand. And the next day I can have minus 300 percent of that demand and I need to be able to move my assets within my building infrastructure around.
And so just the operational components are forcing. In our case, a lot of real estate leaders to, to do things they wouldn't have done 30 years ago.
Dean Stanberry: That's an interesting point. And personal observation. So why don't we have inventories of furniture? It's more of a financial consideration on accrual based accounting.[00:14:00]
Most of it's not capitalized. That's right. So it's not a track asset. That's right. And so nobody said we need to track this. They don't think about. This is actually part of delivering our business goals and objectives. It's part of our revenue generating stream. It's how we deliver some of this stuff.
And if you started thinking along those lines and say, this is part of, you know, how we deliver, then you would probably change your perspective and say, maybe we do need to inventory this stuff. You know, What do you take it down to you to take it down to the number two pencil? Maybe not.
Garry Cooper: Right.
Dean Stanberry: But yeah, the big chunks, it's got upholstery on it. Yeah. We're going to inventory that.
Garry Cooper: It's so interesting that what is a CapEx asset could determine circularity in some ways, because like, are we tracking it? Are we managing it not to replace? But to use as much as possible to manage it like a piece of value that we can, as I said, flex [00:15:00] around whenever we need to, and then be on the hook on the end of life and kind of figuring out where that goes versus treating it as though it's a piece of paper.
Yeah. And
Dean Stanberry: different companies. Again, there is no quote specification for capital thresholds. Every company is different. They set their own objectives, say 3, 000, 5, 000, 10, 000.
Garry Cooper: Yep.
Dean Stanberry: You know, one, one entity that I work with, it's 3. 6 million. How you come up with that number, I don't know. Yeah.
Garry Cooper: One of the things that you said, and so we're obviously starting to explore the European markets and other markets.
Is the level of, or the role of policy and regulation in encouraging and sometimes forcing circularity. Can you talk a little bit about the levers, if you will, of where you think maybe policy or regulation or compliance fit into the whole world of circularity, [00:16:00] especially in the building space.
Dean Stanberry: Well, all of this is about behavior, right?
I mean, the, there's no software tools that are going to fix this problem. Right. So it comes down to people, it's policies, standards, processes, and procedures. And it's shocking these days that how many companies don't have policies. And to me, a policy tells you what must be done, not how to do it.
But also, many companies will have a policy, but there's virtually nothing about what are the consequences for not meeting the policy. Um, And then standards are, what standards are we following? Is there an industry or an international standard that we want to comply with? That we're using as our guidepost?
Right. Processes and procedures are really just those things that you write down to say in our organization or in this department, this is the process, which is higher level. The procedure may vary from one building to another based on what's there. But that's the very detailed [00:17:00] pieces. But if you have nothing, then it's just free form.
It's all, it's a free for all and you're operating on tribal knowledge and we all know how well that goes. Thank you.
Garry Cooper: Anything as we close up that you want to convey to the audience about this kind of space and circularity and real estate and workplace?
Dean Stanberry: Well, as we put into our Emerging Trends Report, you know, this is one of those trends that hasn't been part of the core competencies of facility management.
And one of the reasons we were looking at it is these are things that are now going to, that are affecting the facility management profession today. And it's going to only get, you know, become more impactful, if you will, or more need to know. So we're trying to build the awareness. We use the terms awareness, knowledge, and application.
First, you have to be aware of it, and so this is, you're not telling, be an expert be aware. Then, you might get to the point where I need to learn more, I need to understand how it works. And then the last stage is when you actually apply it in practice. [00:18:00]
Garry Cooper: Right.
Dean Stanberry: And so we're, I think we're very much in the awareness stage with circular economy.
Some people are in knowledge and application, but generally speaking, that's where we are. But it's up to the individual and organizations. You know, you have to decide, are you going to put this on your goals to learn about,
Garry Cooper: right,
Dean Stanberry: build that awareness of circularity this year as your company now looking at it and you know, you better learn because it's going to come your way there, whether you like it or not.
Do you want
to be prepared? Do you want to be surprised?
Garry Cooper: I love that. That's a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Dean. All right. Thank you.
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