Circular Cities and Limiting Waste

Hello and welcome to In Case You Missed It, GovTech's weekly government technology news roundup, where we take a look at some of the biggest GovTech news from the past week and give you our thoughts on what it means to government, citizens, and the market. I'm Joe Morris. I'm joined by Jed Persgrove. Dustin Haisler's out today, but Today we're going to be joined by a special guest, Gary Cooper, co-founder and CEO of Reaply. Though there were a lot of news stories that caught our eye this week, we're going to skip ahead straight to our interview because we're excited about our guest. Gary holds a PhD in neuroscience, a patent, and is a board member of multiple Chicago-based organizations, and is the co-founder and CEO of Reaply, a startup that helps organizations waste less by Smart Asset Management. And frankly, I could go on about his experience and expertise, but we're here to hear more about him and from him. So let's bring in Gary Cooper. Welcome, Gary.

Hello, good to meet you all, and hello out there.

So we're excited to hear you and learn more about, uh, about your organization and its inception story. So maybe you could, uh, kick us— kick off the conversation, uh, telling us a little bit more about, uh, the inception of Ripley.

Yeah, it's probably one of those traditional founder stories where you see something, you say, can there be a better way? But about 7 years ago, I was at Northwestern University finishing up my PhD in neuroscience, and I happened to be in a really large laboratory, and I noticed that we had a lot of resources. So physical things, microscopes, chemicals, PPE, that we weren't using. And then I would go to lunch with friends who were in other labs, literally across the hallway, and they would say things like, man, I really need this equipment or this chemical or that PPE. And just trying to connect the dots, I was like, wait, why aren't we sharing the stuff that we're not using with people literally on the same floor doing the same kind of research who can make better use of it? So when I started asking that question, there was really no answer. And so I, I got a cart, put stuff we no longer needed on this cart, pushed it around the floor, and just started redistributing the things that we weren't using. And that worked. And kind of 2 or 3 years later, I realized, how can that work at scale? So that was kind of the birth problem statement of Replit, if you will. We were trying to build technology to help large— in large organizations, employees to share physical things so that they don't throw them away and so that people don't buy things that they shouldn't have to buy.

Gary, thanks a lot for sharing that story. You know, there's a relevant term here that I think we need to define. What is a, quote, circular city, and how do you get cities to understand this concept?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question, and I think actually in some ways it's somewhat evolving. But the canonical definition of a circular city follows from what a circular economy is, and the cities are just really great urban centers to kind of effectuate circularity. So really, it is a city or an urban center that has a regenerative economy. That is an economy where you are not throwing away things, that the things that we've used go into a cycle of reuse. recycle or refurbishment and then put back into the economy. So there's no value leakage. And so that's kind of the really kind of driving force behind a circular city, which is again a part of the larger idea of a circular economy. Can we make our whole global economy more regenerative? And we think yes. And I think— Most people think yes. So then the question that we've always had at Reaply is the how. How do you do that at scale? How do you do that in every city? And I think it's been proven that we need technology to actually scale the how. And so that's what we're trying to build at Reaply.

That's amazing. And I appreciate the practical example of you at university and pushing the cart to others.

Yes.

Let's kind of build upon that. What types of resources do you help cities maximize today?

Yeah. So I think one of the things that we focus on most with cities are the things that overrun their waste streams, right? Because again, if we can make cities more regenerative, not only do we boost economically the city, but we also help them meet their climate pledges and environmental strategies. So our focus mostly with cities is around built environment material. For people who don't know what built environment material is, that's just a material that makes up buildings. So if you think about any building you've ever been in, whether it be the concrete or the steel or wood or plastic, those are the types of things that we're most focused on and helping cities reuse as many times as possible to kind of keep out of both waste streams but also even recycling systems. And it also turns out those materials are extraordinarily carbon-laden, meaning that there was a lot of carbon emitted in order to produce those materials. So if we can help reuse those materials locally, not only do we start to solve the waste problem and landfill, but we also get to solve a very central problem when it comes to carbon emissions in cities. And then, of course, these materials are expensive, and with our current global supply chain issues, Even more so. So being able to build homes, be able to build buildings is a little easier when all the supply chain is home. So there's a local resiliency when we focus on building materials, but there's also this really interesting kind of carbon and waste diversion and reduction that we can do as a part of focusing on building environment materials.

Gary, that's a really interesting point about the supply chain, which as we know is just affecting everything these days. Right. So I know that you work with a lot of different agencies. Could you describe the impact that you've seen occur with some of these agencies that you've helped?

Yeah, yeah. So in a couple of different flavors. So one flavor is on the money saved, right? Because one of the big principles about circular economy or a circular city is that it's first a better operating and business model, meaning at the end of the day, more money is in the system than leaking out of the system. So on the money side, one of the things I remember, 2 things here in Chicago. First, the work that we've done with the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago, after I think 3 days of being on Repli's platform, saved something like $750,000 plus. And so for a university, especially in these times, saving, you know, 3 quarters of a million dollars in a few days is something to behold. And we've since, you know, grown our relationship with University of Chicago and done that same thing in other universities. The other area where I think about money saving is actually at the community level. So in, you know, just after COVID was really a thing that we all were focused on, I think you know, somewhere in the terms of like May 2020, Mayor Lightfoot here in Chicago reached out to Replit and said, hey, can we use your technology to create a marketplace where we can share locally sourced PPE material? And as it turns out, back in those days, which seems like 3 years or 30 years ago was only a couple years ago, you couldn't find PPE at your Walgreens or on Amazon because of supply chain backup issues. Meanwhile, there are people making hand sanitizer, face shields here in the city. So we use our technology to connect small businesses and nonprofits who needed to get that PPE for safe reopen to local vendors who had that PPE to sell. And I think we did, in 60 days, we did something like 200,000 plus transactions of PPE across 50 suppliers and about 2,500 small businesses and nonprofits in Chicago. So in both those cases, you can see money being either saved by an organization because they're not double procuring, or you can see new economic opportunity created because you're localizing commerce and you're localizing supply chain. So we like to think about on the money side, not just cost savings, but new economic opportunity being created.

That's what I was just gonna say. I think that what you've discussed so far to me hits so many angles, right? You've got the environmental sustainability angle, and there are certainly jurisdictions that are motivated heavily by that. You've got others that it may be more of a cost savings, operational efficiency, and you just outlined some examples there. And then you know, for a lot of elected officials is the economic development angles. How do I spur job growth, job creation, businesses in my community? In your last example, uh, hit on that.

Sure.

Um, now, you know, when you look at that, whether it's a city, a county, or any local government, they face a variety of challenges, right? And you've hit, you've hit on some of them. What do you see as like the maybe the primary ones that they're coming to you to help?

Uh, it's such a good question, and I think that the, the primary one that I hear, you know, whether I'm talking to a chief resilience officer, a deputy mayor in California, in Miami, in Chicago, it's pretty standard. One, how can we grow our economic base, especially from small, uh, income, small or lower income areas in our city? And kind of one B of that is how can we jumpstart our small business community, especially given the aftereffects of COVID and the COVID realities? So that's one thing I hear all the time is like, how can our cities just produce more economic output and be more resilient against another pandemic? The second thing is how do we make our cities resilient to climate change? You know, as we've gone almost through this pandemic, I mean, every mayor has to be thinking, is there a massive storm coming my way? Are the waters going to rise? Is there going to be an earthquake here or there? Or is there going to be a fire here or there? You know, all these kind of new things. And how can I insulate or make more resilient my city against those types of effects? And we think in both cases, whether you're talking about jump-starting your local economy from a COVID reality perspective or insulating it from a new climate resilient perspective, we think the answer is you have to have local supply chains, local resiliency, and we think you have to maximize the value of that local economic engine by reducing the amount of waste that goes through—

goes to landfill, and that we think the best way to do that Gary, you know, I'm thinking about these concepts more of, you know, not wasting materials, you know, people who are not using these things, these people over here can use them. And then I think about this idea that we often talk about in government technology about breaking down silos, you know, agencies not being completely separate, you know, working together. With all that in mind, Have you seen an opportunity for agencies to start working together to better use their resources collectively?

Absolutely. We've seen it, you know, in San Francisco, which is a partner of ours there. We've also seen it a little bit at the federal government. But again, as we kind of get out of the cloudy years, I will call it, of the COVID reality, There's another reality that governments have to think about is like budgeting. You know, maybe we can't— maybe we all in different departments can't buy the same doodad, the same piece of equipment over and over and over again. Maybe a better system is to use taxpayer money more smartly and buy one of those, but then allowing visibility to this piece of equipment across the government basis so that when it's not being used by the person who originally bought it, it could be used for some time. by another person in that same government. And so the idea of resource sharing shouldn't be remanded to just the citizenry of the city. It should be also something that the local government itself is doing to maximize the dollars that taxpayers pay in order to operationalize governments. But also it's just, again, a smarter way to run any type of organization. No CEO ever in the history of the world wants to buy 2 things when they can buy one. And so, but if you have silos, if you have unconnected people, that's happening unwittingly. And so one of the most important things about what we do at Replete is that we break those down digitally. So if someone in procurement has, you know, 10 chairs or a piece of equipment that they aren't using, maybe someone in streets and SANs can use that same piece of equipment or those chairs instead of buying new ones. That's a net savings both in cost, carbon, and in waste. And it's just, again, a better way to run both a government and a community, in our, in our, in our opinion.

You talked about some of the budget realities of—

Yes.

You know, one of the benefits, I guess, right now is there's a fair amount of federal funding that's flowing into communities across the country. And one of the, the biggest outside of the infrastructure bill has been the American Rescue Plan Act. Have you been seeing communities leverage those funds given the tie-in to economic recovery?

I will say, and I say this with all kindness in the world, kinda. I've been seeing governments talk a lot about what they're going to do with potential ARPA funding. There is some complication, you know, for governments to kind of figure out how to get these grants, how to operationalize them. How to get them back in the community. So I'm not trying to downplay the work that has to happen behind the scenes. However, what I will say is I see more talk than action when it comes to using the funds, not just in my city of Chicago, but in most cities. I think that just bears a number. I think something like 90% of that allotment has not been spent, actually. I think there's a lot of planning and there's a lot of strategizing, but there's not been as much action. I think the— but I think an overarching theme of what I've heard about ARPA, which is super positive, is how can we use this funding from the federal government locally to jumpstart some things that we think are structural problems that COVID exposed, right? Whether that be road and bridge— roads and bridges, whether that be our climate action plan, whether that be, you know, education for low-income, low-income areas, getting them back into the workforce or helping them diversify their skill set or helping them get into a new career that is more insulated from climate or from a pandemic like effects. So I think there are well-intended, smart people, and probably in every community working on how to maximize the federal dollar here. But as a founder, as a CEO of a startup, I'm always thinking about like, what, what could we have done yesterday and weren't we doing it today? So things aren't moving exactly fast enough for me, but, you know, I live in a world where things change within a week.

Yeah, I think this theme of the public and private sectors moving at different speeds, I think this is a theme that we'll continue to see for some time.

Right.

So you've already broken down for us a lot of the things that Reaply is doing and has done. Here at In Case You Missed It, we're always looking forward. So that's, that's why I'm going to ask you this next question. What's on the horizon for Reaply? What are you guys, you know, going to be up to in the near future that we should know about?

I'm very excited about our, what we call our 50 Cities Plan. So over the next 2 years, Reaply is going to go to 50 cities in the United States and work with either the mayor, the deputy mayor, the chief sustainability, the chief resilience officer, and set up reuse programs so that if I'm building a building on the north side of town, I potentially can use materials from a building that was deconstructed on the south side of town. If I am a low-income— if I live in a low-income area, if I'm a small business owner, maybe it's just me, maybe I run a t-shirt shop or a barber shop or a law firm. Instead of having to buy new nice furniture to put into my small business facility, I can get that from a corporate office. who would have been liquidating or actually incinerating that equipment in my— those chairs in my city. So RE-PE is going to be doing that with 50 cities over the next 2 years, and we're going to mostly be doing it at no cost to the city. We are looking to work with these cities, to partner with them. We know they all have very aggressive 2030 climate plans, and we want to help them actually reach their carbon and waste goals. By being their dominant partner when it comes to reuse in those cities. So that's kind of one thing that I can say that I'm really, really excited about. And, you know, we know there's such an emphasis in some cities around recycling, and we think there needs to be that same emphasis locally and with local partners around reuse. And so we're looking to do that over the next couple of years, and we're going to be announcing that very shortly.

Well, excellent. I'm sure there'll be some cities clamoring to maybe get on that list.

So we already got 83.

So Where can our audience learn more and how can they stay in touch with you?

So like, I'm like the most open person ever in the world. So you can actually just email me as the easiest place to get in touch with me. So I'm just Gary, my first name, garry@reaply.com. But I have a lot of buddies and friends who are much smarter than me, and you can reach them by either just going to our website, at reaply.com, R-H-E-A-P-L-Y dot com, or you can, you can email info@reaply.com and one of my awesome, more brilliant colleagues will get in touch with you. But if you want to email me, I'm super open to talking. I love writing and I love reading emails.

Gary, Gary, for joining us, that's awesome. Jed, go ahead.

Gary, one last thing before we let you go, since you're so open. Is Michael Jordan the true GOAT?

Okay, so here's the thought. I'm from Ohio. I live in Chicago. There's things I have to say. Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time in basketball. But here's where it maybe is a little controversial. My Tom Brady, oh boy, he might be the GOAT of all time of all sports. But no, I am a massive Michael Jordan fan. I have a poster of him since I was a kid. Um, and, uh, yeah, I'm a fanboy of Michael, of MJ. So he's the greatest basketball player of all time.

Oh, will be. Right there with you. Right there with you. But that may be more— that may have to do with the era that we watched basketball.

Yes. Yes. When your last name is the first name of many, many babies, you've done something.

All right, Gary, we appreciate you joining us. And for those of you that are— that tuned into this week's episode, Know that we've got two episodes for you next week. On Wednesday the 30th, we're gonna have an interview with Irina Firstman, the founder of the Global Synergy Group and her Stand with the Ukraine initiative. And on Friday, April 1st at 12 o'clock Pacific, we're gonna speak with Maria Alfonso, the founder and CEO of State of Place. Until then, take care, take it easy, and have a wonderful weekend. Gary, well done. Thank you again for for doing that. It was tremendous. I agree, Jordan. Brady's up there. I mean, as a hockey fan, Wayne Gretzky's in that mix.

I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to depart or diverge on this point about Brady now. Definitely one of the best football players ever to play, but he's not even in my top 5 NFL players of all time, you know.

Okay.

I'm gonna go with Deion Sanders, Jerry Rice, uh, Lawrence Taylor, uh, you know, there's a couple, there's a couple of others. I mean, I think Peyton Manning, you know, if you're looking at someone who's impacted the quarterback position, I mean, I don't know if anyone changed it as much as Peyton Manning with all the audibles and So I think, uh, I don't disagree completely with you, Jet.

I think, uh, I, I take my, uh, I take my definitions of GOAT from another GOAT, Shaq.

Oh.

And Shaq said, uh, he, he tells a story that I, that I know pretty well where he's like, you know, he was in the NBA, hadn't won a championship yet. And people were asking Hakeem Olajuwon, they were asking Kareem, like, man, Shaq is the most dominant center ever. No one can hold him down. He's the best ever. And Hakeem was like, how many championships you got? And Shaq had said at that time, he's right. I didn't have any championships. So the way I think about it is like a man who can win 7 out of 10 Super Bowls, who went into retirement and is coming back at 43 and will probably be the 2nd best quarterback at 43 in the NFL. In the NFL. Um, you know, I think that, that's pretty freaking good.

I look at it similarly in, in that just how fortunate Like, all of us here, like, look at the names we were able to rattle off that we've had the luxury of seeing. Sometimes you don't get that. You get one player and then it's a dead era.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

But, you know, on number of championships, though, Mr. Bill Russell—

yes—

has the last word, right? I mean, because he would have to be the GOAT of GOATs if we're talking about number, you know, number of championships.

He's up there, but, you know, I feel like when you got Larry— I mean, when you, when you had his team, there's something about Tom Brady in those championships that I think is just remarkable. I mean, some people don't even go to a Super Bowl.

I gotta jump, guys, but, uh, take care.

I appreciate it.

I've gotta, I've gotta go as well. But, uh, as a Cleveland, as a Cleveland, uh, native and a Cleveland resident, I gotta say, uh, before I moved out to Phoenix, one of my last experiences in Cleveland was LeBron James's big, big announcement. I'm taking my talent to South Beach. I was in a bar in downtown Cleveland when he said that, and the audible smack of every dude's head hitting the bar all the way down the bar was loud enough to shake the entire building. That's when, like, you know, you walk outside, you see people getting ready to turn over cars and putting his jersey in dumpsters and all sorts. That was the most— like, that was the closest I've ever gotten to being in a riot in my life. And I covered, I covered like all kinds of like political and, and all kinds of stuff in Arizona. And that was, you know, I was more afraid of my life after LeBron announced he was going to South Beach than I ever was at a, at a Trump rally or at an immigration rally or anything in Arizona. So, and Arizona is an open carry state. All right, guys, I got, I gotta get out of here. Thank you so much. Have a good day.

Nice talking to you, Gary.