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

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