Buildings carry carbon long before anyone turns on a light, locked into the steel and concrete it took to put them up. Josh Lloyd's job is to drive that number down. As Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, the firm ranked the number one green builder every year since 2008, he leads sustainability across 10 offices in eight states, on job sites where one decision about a concrete mix outweighs anything a person could do at home.

That comparison is his favorite way to make the point land. Reducing the concrete on a project by a single truckload beats living car free for a year or giving up meat. The conversation gets specific about how that actually happens, from piloting low carbon mixes with local ready mix suppliers to running renewable diesel and pushing drywall recycling in four states where almost nobody recycles drywall. It also gets honest about the setbacks, including a hauler that changed how it counts and dropped a 75 percent diversion rate to 60 overnight with no change in practice. The story he did not expect to be proudest of started when an administrative assistant on one of his sites asked a simple question: why are we throwing away so much food? Since September, the answer has kept nearly 22,000 pounds of it out of the landfill and put it in front of people who needed it.

Episode in a glance

01:37 What It Means to Be the Number One Green Builder
04:12 Going Beyond What the Client Asked For
07:31 When the Hauler Changed the Math on Waste Diversion
09:15 One Less Truckload of Concrete Beats a Car-Free Year
10:02 Why Data Centers Are His Best Sustainability Projects
13:29 Recycling Drywall and Building a Market From Scratch
16:23 Nearly 22,000 Pounds of Food Rescued From Job Sites
20:53 Designing for the People Who Build the Building

About Josh Lloyd

Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental and operational footprint across 10 offices in eight states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He studied architectural engineering at Alfred State and architecture at Kent State University, and he has built his career around green building since LEED's earliest years. He contributed design and construction documents to the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, built by students at Worthington Kilbourne High School, and previously ran commercial energy efficiency and incentive programs at CLEAResult. He is a longtime US Green Building Council volunteer, organized rain garden builds for local schools through Green Apple Day of Service, and serves on the city of Worthington's green team.

Connect with Josh Lloyd and his work

Josh Lloyd on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualloyd/

Turner Construction → turnerconstruction.com

US Green Building Council → usgbc.org

Send us a message!

Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability work across 10 offices in eight states. He came up through architecture, adopted LEED early enough to have watched it launch, and volunteered the design and construction documents for the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, a house built by high school students. The path there started with a dad who was always renovating something and a college fascination with using sunlight to heat a building.

Josh grew up outside Rochester as a latchkey kid who pitched a tent rather than sleep in his parents' motor home, and that pull toward the outdoors turned into a career built on a single question: how do you get people to move? The conversation draws out the lived experience underneath that, including his candid admission that he is an introvert who had to learn to work a room, and the summit where he clammed up the moment the topic left sustainability. It also presses on the mechanics he has spent a career refining, from reading a room in the first five minutes to knowing when to stop saying the word sustainability and start saying waste reduction instead. What comes through is someone whose North Star never really moved, who just kept finding bigger levers to pull.

Episode in a glance

01:21 From His Dad's Renovations to Passive Solar Design
04:16 The First LEED Platinum Home in Ohio, Built by High Schoolers
07:22 Building for the Community, Not Just the Site
10:36 Getting Kicked in the Pants and Learning to Read the Room
14:29 The Introvert Who Learned to Work the Room
17:11 His Shot at Being a Change Agent at Turner
18:49 Persistence, Questions, and Leading With Your Passion

About Josh Lloyd

Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental and operational footprint across 10 offices in eight states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He studied architectural engineering at Alfred State and architecture at Kent State University, and he has built his career around green building since LEED's earliest years. He contributed design and construction documents to the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, built by students at Worthington Kilbourne High School, and previously ran commercial energy efficiency and incentive programs at CLEAResult. He is a longtime US Green Building Council volunteer, organized rain garden builds for local schools through Green Apple Day of Service, and serves on the city of Worthington's green team.

Connect with Josh Lloyd and his work

Josh Lloyd on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualloyd/

Turner Construction → turnerconstruction.com

US Green Building Council → usgbc.org

Send us a message!

Most people think a solid waste district exists to run the landfill. Mary Cropenbaker's job is the opposite: keep as much material out of it as possible. As the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, she works with businesses, schools, and communities across the Cincinnati region to divert waste, and she does it without a single mandate to force anyone's hand. Her answer to that challenge is 513 Green, a free sustainability certification any business can earn.

513 Green started from a frustration. Mary could help a business start recycling, but she had no way to keep it moving toward bigger goals, until a free program she saw at a conference gave her the model. This episode presses on the mechanics: how a certification built around employee behavior works for everyone from the Cincinnati Zoo to a small Pilates studio, and how a checklist of 45 achievable steps turns good intentions into action. It also draws out the honest parts, including why the hardest thing to measure is the impact itself, and why she built the whole program to be copied by any community willing to try.

Episode in a glance

02:42 The Waste District That Wants to Put Itself Out of a Job
05:12 Why Starting a Recycling Program Is Harder Than You Think
07:39 How 513 Green Went From Idea to Free Certification
11:27 What It Actually Takes to Get Certified
14:36 From the Cincinnati Zoo to a Pilates Studio
21:43 A Certification Built to Be Copied

About Mary Cropenbaker

Mary Cropenbaker is the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, the solid waste district serving the Cincinnati, Ohio region, where she helps businesses, schools, and communities implement waste reduction strategies on the path to zero waste. She holds a master's in environmental science from Miami University's Institute for Environment and Sustainability and an MBA with a certificate in sustainable business, and her background spans psychology research, a sustainability practicum at the Cincinnati Zoo, and a role at the US EPA. She piloted the 513 Green Certification Program, a free sustainability certification that has certified 67 organizations across the region.

Connect with Mary Cropenbaker and her work

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/marycropenbaker

Hamilton County ReSource → hamiltoncountyresource.org

513 Green Certification → 513green.com

Send us a message!