Q&A with Josh Radoff

Josh Radoff is a co-founder and principal of YRG Sustainability, a sustainability consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado, with offices in Chicago and New York and clients around the globe. YRG serves as consultants to architecture and engineering firms involved in green building projects, works directly with businesses and organizations on ways to achieve their sustainability goals, and conducts classes in public, private and academic settings. Radoff is a member of SCA Tissue’s newly formed Tork® Green Hygiene Council. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s in electrical engineering and a master’s in sustainable energy.

Q: How did YRG get started and how has it evolved?
A: Lauren Yarmuth and I started YRG about 3 years ago. We had been doing similar work at another firm and decided to create a company that reflected our values and approach to serving clients. We started with green building projects with a core focus on new buildings. That quickly brought in existing building, operations and maintenance, and corporate sustainability projects. For the building-related projects, we are focused largely on commercial buildings with some multi-family residential projects and very few single-family homes.

Q: What kind of projects have you been involved in?
A: Our clients have included some big corporate clients with names you might recognize such as Citibank, Timberland and Pepsi, along with a lot of developer clients. We then expanded to include new neighborhood projects and new city-scale projects where there is a master planning element. From there we got into the design and construction of individual buildings and then the operation and maintenance of those buildings. So there have been lots of different project types.

Q: What other types of consulting do you do?
A: We have started working with various companies on their own organizational sustainability. If you have a building, for example, you’re interested in energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste management, green cleaning and procurement. All those areas are the same things that corporations need to deal with as they implement their sustainability initiatives. So we have started working with corporate clients, too. And that leads into matters that are more at the heart of corporate sustainability such as reporting and transparency. Our work ranges from new construction green building and existing buildings’ operations and maintenance to corporate sustainability.

Q: Is being located in Boulder, Colorado a plus, given its reputation for being environmentally progressive?
A: Boulder is our largest office with a staff of 10, including me. We also have smaller offices — three to six persons — in New York and Chicago. However, the ratio of work to people interested in our work is actually highest in New York and lowest in Boulder. There are a lot of interested souls who want to work on these types of projects here in Boulder while the overall demand is smaller when compared to places like New York or, for that matter, California. So yes, sustainability is sort of in the water here in Boulder and some of our projects are located here in Colorado. But the majority of our projects are in the Northeast, distributed around the country or international.

Q: How do members of the Tork® Green Hygiene Council interact with SCA Tissue as far as offering advice and insight on environmental and hygiene issues?
A: Our participation early on was for promotional events. Recently, however, we had the chance to visit the Neenah and Menasha facilities where they took us on a tour of the mill and converting plant. I felt for the first time like we were beginning to contribute to the direction of SCA’s outreach campaign to its vendors and customers. We were helping them figure out what information is important to hear, what information is actually meaningful and substantial and then how do you message it. Everyone on the council seems eager to have more of that kind of input.

Q: What role can companies like SCA Tissue play in the sustainability movement?
A: There are two levels to it. At one level, there are minimum standards of sustainability that are starting to be very clear to various industries. In the paper industry, for example, issues include sourcing of materials — recycled content or from a sustainably harvested forest — and manufacturing — for example: does the process use bleach or other chemicals? Those issues are represented through product standards such as Green Seal™ or EcoLogo™. I think the bigger opportunity is for companies to emerge as Meta leaders in the sustainability, where they go beyond their own industry or field. Interface, Inc., is a great example. Ray Anderson, Interface CEO, has become a leader not just in the carpet manufacturing field but a leader in sustainability overall. I think that same opportunity exists for a company like SCA Tissue.

Q: Has the recession had a negative impact on your sustainable building projects?
A: Overall, the number of projects got scaled back. But to the extent that there was still economic activity going, I think we saw a larger percentage of that activity having some sustainability aspect to it. Now that we see things sort of waking up, it feels like there’s a boom about to take place. So I think sustainable building weathered the recession pretty well even though it had to experience a little dormancy, just like the rest of the economy.

Q: Beyond green and then sustainability what is the next level of environmental achievement you see developing?
A: Last year for the first time we had people asking us how to get to a net zero impact by developing a net zero energy home or building, or having a net zero waste footprint in their offices. They’re starting to move away from incremental reductions and toward more absolute goals, keeping their eyes on the long-term prize.

Q: As consultants, do you emphasize cost savings or has the focus shifted more toward an interest in doing the right thing for the planet?
A: There has been a shift. I almost never make the case for energy savings as cost savings. The question is generally not as much about bottom line as it is about the whole concept of leader/laggard positioning. When it comes to the environment, you want to avoid being a laggard because people will take their business somewhere else. And you want to position yourself as a leader so that people will bring their business to you. At that point, it becomes more of a top line issue that is more difficult to measure than the strict energy savings or cost savings. The issue becomes how does the whole market shift around you given the positioning that you’ve done. We still have to be savvy about the costs of things and be able to justify recommendations. For example, if we’re comparing putting up solar panels vs. better windows, we need to make the case why one is better than the other.

Q: Are you working on any particularly interesting projects at the moment?
A: We just started work on a senior housing project for the Denver Housing Authority. Senior housing doesn’t sound very glamorous, but there is something very exciting about this project it in terms of what they are trying to achieve. It could be the first of its kind in the nation in terms of a building with integrated renewable energy, best in class efficiency and approaching as best we can what we call a living building. Living building is a concept where the building acts sort of like a tree. For example, water leaves the site cleaner than it came in and the building produces more energy than it uses. As the sustainability consultants, we are advising the design and construction team on everything from concept through systems to measuring the performance and then ultimately certification. We’re very excited about it.