How Recycle Track Solutions Saved 9M+ Tons of Trash From Landfills

Lightly edited for readability.

Gregory Lettieri: Lucas James (00:02) Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Green Decades. I'm on with Gregory Lethieri of RTS, and he has built an incredible company over the last 11 plus years helping businesses across the United States build better solutions for their waste management. thank you so much, Greg, for being on the show. Gregory Lettieri (00:26) Yeah, thanks for having us. Lucas James (00:28) So let's just start right at the beginning. you had been in an interview recently where you were asked about the use of technology and AI to build sustainable solutions for businesses. I know that's one of the big focuses for your company is making sure that you can leverage these technologies effectively to make sure that we're hitting our sustainability goals as a country. How do you feel about? The different kinds of technology and its potential pros and cons for the sustainability revolution. So, for example, getting toxic chemicals or certain kinds of products out of the waste process or versus let's say AI and the use of that when we're creating technologies. How how how do you weigh the pros and cons of the different technologies and potential waste or damage of these In the supply chain. Gregory Lettieri (01:29) For for sure. So, you know, for us, we we are a a large waste management company. So we're servicing about thirty thousand locations across all of North America. And that's some large NFL stadiums, major league baseball stadiums, some of the largest convention centers, large restaurant groups, hotel groups. So we we've got a vast understanding of waste collection, recycling, and sustainability. And we've also realized that not one model fits all. I think for us, Lucas James (01:56) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (01:57) We are heavily focused in sustainability and tracking of materials. Recycle track systems is what RTS stands for. So that is it's really the the name is is in the technology and in the sustainability aspect of it. And we want to really focus on the service side of the industry. And what we've learned is you can have great sustainability ideas, and I'll share some of those, but you have to be grounded in actually providing real services for your clients. So for us, we we take over the entire waste collection experience. So as clients deal with us, we're removing just traditional garbage, MSW, plastics, glass, cardboard, food waste material is a is a large waste stream as you're aware of, and we focus on that. And then kind of hazardous materials and and kind of everything else that existed from COVID kits to hand sanitizer that expired. I mean anything has been thrown at us over the last 11, 12 years. so it's it's all about kind of giving our clients an understanding of where service happens and then where can where does the material go after it, which is the track systems piece of of recycled track systems. And we want to focus on on getting that material to the right destination and getting a Lucas James (03:15) Mm-hmm. Gregory Lettieri (03:15) clean cardboard, a clean plastic, styrofoam, wood, metals. We want to get those to the right destination to make sure they're certified recycled. That's really what we've been focused on. Lucas James (03:28) That's incredible. And being a father, how has that changed your outlook on everything with climate change, if at all? 'cause I saw a post on your LinkedIn talking about your newborn. And I'm wondering how that might have changed the way you see the future of the planet at all, and maybe how that might have changed your mission, if any, with what you're doing. Gregory Lettieri (03:46) Yeah, it it's it's it's about creating an environment at home that's not about waste. so s simple things that you and I, being from an industry may may be simple, but something as simple as metal straws, reusable not using reusable plastics in in the house and a and little small things, food waste. We have a compost bin underneath our our sink that the kids will put compost food scraps into. So it's kind of part of the way that we've raised them, since there's two of two and a half year old and a five year old. And we've we've raised them since they were, you know, moving in mobile to understand Lucas James (04:25) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (04:25) there's multiple ways to dispose of material and recycle cardboard. we have a lot of cardboard from, you know, packages that come for for kids and stuff. And we make sure that's also properly recycled as well and and source separation at home from glass and plastic. So really trying to To make sure that they they are instilled there. The other thing too, and I always share this on different kind of venues that I speak at, we can do all this source separation at home, but you have to make sure that you're putting it out appropriately. And you also have to make sure the trucks that are coming to pick it up are picking up the the appropriate material. Because what happens a lot is you can do all this work at home and then you put it in front of your house and your apartment building, wherever you live. And it's actually just thrown in the garbage as well. And that's what we really try to focus on and make is making sure that that whole kind of chain of custody, as somebody removes something from their home or office all the way to when it's collected by a truck and brought to a recycling center, that we have full kind of visibility in that chain of custody. Lucas James (05:27) Let's actually leapfrog off that for a second because your product, Pelo, which I've spent a good amount of time researching and trying to understand, is incredible. For those who haven't had a chance to check it out on their website, from what I have gathered so far, it essentially measures the amount of waste in different bins for the actual recycling process and can tell using AI and different kinds of proprietary technology. How much there might be contamination in these different bins. So that way you can improve the amount of actual recyclable materials that goes through the process and reduces excess waste. And you've been doing this at a large scale. And the actual device that's on the bin is I'd love to know more about how that actually looks size-wise, because from the images and from everything I've seen, it looks like it just situates right on the side of the bin and it can do 24-7 monitoring of everything inside of the bin. Is that correct? And maybe you can just explain a little bit more about how that works for listeners because it's pretty fascinating technology you built. Gregory Lettieri (06:28) Yeah, a absolutely. I mean, Pelo Pelo is an incredible product for us and and really Pelo is the future of of of waste management collection, I think, in the United States and and Canada. So what it does for for the audience is it is an IoT sensor. So this is there is a sim card that's based in there that gives us a data connection. And these things have been tested all the way in northern Edmonton at like negative forty degrees Celsius. And they've been, you know, in Miami and the Caribbean at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Like it's it's fully kind of doesn't matter the market that you're in, hot or cold, Pelo is is gonna work for you. And what it does is there's a camera component inside of it that takes photos inside the waste bin. And there's these three ears, and there's a sonar component that kind of like a submarine, and it tells you how full the container is. So if you think about it as you're at a hotel or a restaurant and containers are being filled up, you now have the ability to right size your services and understand what trucks are coming into your facility. So easy use case to understand is you have a waste container and a recycling container, and you're seeing your waste container get filled with cardboard. Well, you want to be able to highlight that, take photos of that, and then educate the staff on site to remove that cardboard, not just in that one incident, but every single day and put that in the recycling bin and vice versa, when there's black garbage bags being thrown into the recycling bin, you don't want that to happen because it contaminates the waste stream. And then because Lucas James (08:03) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (08:03) you have a an understanding of how full the containers are, so assuming both containers are now the correct waste streams, a lot of these customers have been on a set schedule for 20, 30, 40 years. So the local restaurant is being picked up six days a week and it's been picked up six days a week for the last thirty years that it was open. Well now it's like, well, you're not open on Mondays. Do you actually need a pickup on Monday? You have a low volume day on Tuesday. Do you actually need a pickup on Tuesday? Well, Saturday, you have a pickup and you actually don't have a Saturday pickup because you have a Friday and a Sunday pickup. So why don't we schedule a Saturday pickup? Something so simple when you kind of say it out loud, but Most of these things are set it and forget it. And the company that's servicing it has been servicing it like that for a long time. So this gives you visibility to understand, okay, am I on the right schedule? Am I paying the right right amount of money? Am I doing it in a sustainable way? And then how do I right size the way I'm getting my waste services for the future? And then on top of it, for us, it gives us full visibility into the waste and recycling collection. So it tells us if the truck showed up. The number one incident for us, and we deal with roughly thir 3,500 subcontractors across the United States and Canada, is do trucks show up to perform the service in any town? and these are towns spread all across North America. We don't have visibility into that unless somebody goes into the dumpster and looks or they see the truck showing up at some point during the day. This gives us visibility into understanding: did a truck show up? Was it serviced? Was it the appropriate truck that showed up, meaning recycling truck or or a waste truck? And then where did that truck go from an end destination standpoint? So this has really just given us the full ecosystem to revolutionalize the the waste space, you know, on on a massive scale. Lucas James (10:00) And I think that's the key right now with climate technology. I mean, I think there's as somebody who's in the climate technology space myself, I think there's a need for more optimism for people who are trying to get into it because I think right now the the environment seems to be changing a little bit in terms of how people are receiving the idea of climate change being an existential threat, which I certainly believe as well as I'm sure you and the rest of the team do as well. how can you tell, let's say, up and coming technologists that they what is what is the what is the message you might have for them to try to get them to spend more time building solutions in climate technology and maybe something that reaffirms how important it is to be in this space. And even though it may not be the center of attention right now for a lot of people, what's your message for them? at least from the outside, that's how I feel about it. Gregory Lettieri (10:54) Yeah, I mean it and it it could be daunting, but you you you need to find and there's there's a lot of innovation in the space. You need to find a product that can serve a need for clients and clients that are are waste producers. So that is your town, your municipality, your city, or the local restaurant, hotel, sports stadium, as I kind of referenced earlier. And that product has to deliver some type of result. so clients are looking for how much things weigh. So if they understand how much waste they're producing, if you think about it from a large restaurant scenario, you bring in a certain amount of food and a restaurant wants to make food, they want to sell that food, and that's how they make their business. Well, if they're ordering too much food and a lot of that food is now going into the waste bin because it's expired or it it it no longer is okay to eat. Well, you're ordering too much. This gives you another ability to look at that and say, okay, back to my Monday, Wednesday, Friday example. Maybe on Monday we're ordering too much food. Maybe we need a little bit less. So it gives you more of that analytics on the back end. We do a lot of analytical studies on revenue of an establishment, how many people visit an establishment, especially on the sports stadium side. How many people are attending a a game? We service the New York Mets. We service the Baltimore Ravens, Lucas James (12:21) Yes. Gregory Lettieri (12:22) the Kansas City Royals. These are some, I mean, prominent logos with 40, 50, 80,000 people at a game. That is a very different scenario than servicing the individual house in a town, right? The the sports stadium at NFL game on a Sunday is going to produce more waste than your individual house. So you want to get the analytics side right. And then you wanna find a solution if you're creating a new business that is gonna serve the need of the of the clients you're looking to to to serve to service. And I I think there's there's plenty of innovation. I think that's what what makes this industry so great. There's plenty more room for innovation. And I don't think we've gotten this industry r right yet. We're we're on our way, but there is there's still a lot more growth. Lucas James (13:06) Where do you think the innovation focus needs to be? Because you know, there's so many different areas to attack this problem. you are focusing a lot on the recycling, waste management side of things, but just climate change in general and trying to build solutions to affect change the most. As someone who's been in this space for so long, Gregory Lettieri (13:24) Yeah. Lucas James (13:24) do you think it's more of what you're doing? Do you think there's other areas people should also be focusing on as well? What would you say the biggest areas are? Of course, yeah. Gregory Lettieri (13:29) Well, we we we like what we're doing, of course. I I'll reference I'll reference one other company that I that I that I constantly am inspired by, a company called Amp Robotics. So this is a robotic arm that sits in a recycling center on an on on a line, a conveyor belt line. If you've never seen what a recycling center looks like, I I implore you to Google one. But there's conveyor belts where material is dumped on onto a conveyor belt kind of assembly line system. And typically there's two ways you can do it. There can be humans that are lined up and they're grabbing out commodities, right? Things that are worth money. So metals, plastics, cardboard, and they're taking them and putting them in different bins. And robotics created a robot arm that is grabbing those through suction cup capacity very, very quickly and then putting them in in the appropriate bin. So it's another line sorting of the final kind of contamination testing. that the recycling goes through. For us, I mean, at RTS, what we're focused on is the leverage of AI to make less truck traffic. And that's through our Pelo sensor. So understanding when things need to be picked up, because less truck traffic on the road is less emissions, less abuse of the trucks, and less less road wear and tear. Also less traffic. And as part of the New York City contract that we won, one of the big initiatives was to reduce truck traffic at night. And we won the New York City citywide contract for commercial waste zoning. So that allows us to service all commercial businesses for 10-yard containers and above, which is the majority of of New York City, New York City buildings. And we want to then take all of that data analytics and really enhance the customer experience. So for us at RTS, you have a portal, you're able to log in. You're able to see your pillow sensor. You're able to look inside your waste bin. So if you're stationed in Dallas, Texas, but you have a store that you're managing in San Francisco or Chicago or New York, you've got the ability to look and say, okay, here's my waste collection today. Here's what's been serviced. Here's what should be serviced. If you need an extra pickup because you have a construction and demolition project, or there's overflow. or one of the containers needs service, you're able to go into your portal and and make that suggestion or order yourself. And then all of your sustainability analytics comes with that. So as part of our monthly reporting, if we've got a restaurant customer that has 500 locations, you're able to take that data and say across your 500 locations, your diversion rate is 35%. Through Pella, we've highlighted some examples to get your diversion rate to 45%. Here's your suggestion. sugg sugg suggestions for sites and here's what needs to be done to to kind of improve at these individual locations that are not as sustainable driven as as maybe some other locations. And that all depends. I mentioned San Francisco. Those markets are going to be a little bit more kind of forward facing on sustainability than you know some some other markets as an example. So we want to give our clients all of that data at their fingertips so they can understand how do we reduce waste at site. And the waste that we are producing, how do we make sure that it's recycled? Lucas James (16:47) That's incredible. And I think my question from earlier around AI and sustainability, I just want to drill down that for a second, kind of to get your thoughts. Cause I am definitely someone who uses AI and the technologies that we build. So I'm definitely for using AI. But I think the reason I asked that was because there's obviously a debate right now between data centers and using AI technology that is being ran through these data centers that could be emitting waste or using up water, things Gregory Lettieri (17:12) Yeah. Lucas James (17:12) like that. But at the same time, right, as somebody who you know you've studied this quite a lot. Also, study the problem quite lot. There's a lot of other things that can damage the environment quite badly. And you know, one of the stats that you put inside of the PR case study that you had for your your Javit case study is that e-waste is two percent of landfills, but 70% of toxic waste. And Gregory Lettieri (17:34) Yeah. Lucas James (17:34) so I guess in that perspective, how should we think about sort of utilizing AI and these platforms like Claude and OpenAI and things like that to build? And maybe you're not even using, maybe you're using something else and If it's proprietary, you don't have to share it. Okay, we I am too. I am too. And I'm transparent about that, right? But I think Gregory Lettieri (17:47) No where we're using Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Lucas James (17:53) what I'd like to know is just kind of in the context of everything, as people who want to benefit the climate, because that's my goal as well. How should we think about using AI with that in mind? And also how bad is the damage just from your perspective in come on context of everything else? Because I think it's interesting when you look at biotech, for example, right? People are very much for using AI and biotech because. It can lead to all these medical advances. I think people feel the same way about climate, but it's sort of the same, I guess, chicken and the egg problem where it's how can we use these technologies without causing more damage? And I'm just curious how you approach it because people do raise this question. I'm currently Gregory Lettieri (18:32) Yeah. Lucas James (18:32) trying to struggle with this question because I'm very for AI, but I also want to be able to use it in a sustainable way. So I'm curious, is how do you approach that as a leader in this space? What's your thought process? Gregory Lettieri (18:44) i it it's a big world out there and you can you can find the amount of really failures that we have when it comes to sustainability really in in your everyday life. Data centers is is potentially being being one of them. But I think you gotta focus on your individual mission and your individual use case and and doing what's right for yourself, your family and and the business you maybe working for or you're looking to create. I th you know, I I think you could you can you can kind of get potentially depressed if you if you kinda like look at Lucas James (19:21) Mm-hmm. Gregory Lettieri (19:22) all these things like, my little my little thing's not going to change global sustainability. Like I I I push back on that. You gotta keep you got to keep growing. And if everybody can get 1% better, then that's gonna help us from kind of a global sustainability world. And What we're creating every single day, I think it's got the ability to go to Asia, to Europe, Africa, South America. Like we you gotta start somewhere. and we Lucas James (19:52) Right, right. Gregory Lettieri (19:53) we use we see AI as being a benefit for our business. We think it's the future of our business, which is basically taking this entire data set of analytics when it comes to waste collection. your recycling report, how much waste you're picking up, the types of recycling material you're picking up, and kind of understanding, okay, what's the closest distance from your where you're picking it up to the end destination facility? Because we we've had instances where clients are like, we want to, we want to make sure this material is recycled. And it's like, Lucas James (20:27) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (20:27) well, it's nine hours away. And you have 250 pounds of it. So Lucas James (20:30) Okay. Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (20:33) it's not you're not being you want to be sustainable. But the reality of it is, is the infrastructure in the city or town that you're in, in that example, is not as a nine hour drive by a truck. That is going to be worse for the environment than potentially disposing this 200 pounds of material. Or we can wait and why don't we get your 200 pounds up to 2,000 pounds or a ton, and now you've got Lucas James (20:55) No. Gregory Lettieri (20:56) a a a collection. So hold the material for a year or two. And and we've done that before. And now we can pick this up where it makes sense. So you've got to use the data. people throw around AI, but at the end of the day, it's a data it's a data problem and you want to be able to analyze that data through software. and if you can use AI to do that a little bit quicker and that makes sense, then you know, I think that that makes sense for everybody. Lucas James (21:22) Well, and also there's different I mean, one thing we're working on right now is a study on the different kinds of damage that different types of AI does. I mean, there's different kinds of models that are more intensive. There's also different forms of AI, like generative audio, generative video versus text or software agentic development. And so I mean, at least from our research so far, things that are more text based, things that are being used for software development tend to be much less damage than if you use a I mean, everyone who's made made a video ever before knows how massive those files can be. And if you make a massive video file using generative AI, that can be a lot worse for the environment. So it just I think it's about understanding the the risks. one somewhat dumb question, but I think a lot of people want to know is does recycling even work? Because Gregory Lettieri (22:09) It does. Lucas James (22:09) there's yeah, exactly. Because a lot of people Even honestly myself, you know, there's a bit of a myth around the effectiveness of recycling, right? They just think, what's the point? I mean, it's gonna go to a landfill anyways, why would we even recycle? So tell us your experience about maybe dispelling that Gregory Lettieri (22:22) No. Yeah. Lucas James (22:24) myth and also kind of how you answer that for people. Gregory Lettieri (22:27) So th this really depends on the the city and municipality and market that you live in, but let's just start at what is working. So cardboard recycling is working. Cardboard, it's easy to understand. We we as consumers have a lot of boxes that are being, you know, delivered to us or you're picking up at stores. That material, if source separated, will be recycled. And just kind of an easy understanding if you're new to the space is cardboard sometimes becomes toilet paper. So that's a really good example of something being reused and turning into another another product. Metals, aluminum, aluminum has an infinite level of recycling. So if you are drinking an aluminum can, you're putting it in a recycling bin, it's picked up properly, that can will be made into another aluminum product or can again. And that's that's also at the industrial space. So you know airplanes, cars, different things, that material is going to be recycled again. Food waste. Food waste is about 35% of the waste stream. You can do that at home. You do not need a facility to take that to. You can make your own compost. You can drop that compost off at a park. You can there is many drop-off points depending again on where you live. and or you can do it at home for your local garden or plants. so that is something that you you can do at home. Plastics is the most confusing and also the hardest. at at the individual space. You know, there's debate on should you be rinsing the the the container or not. Now, I think you wanna rinse, but to in a you know, to a certain level because you don't wanna get it sparkly clean because is it is gonna be rinsed again when it gets to the facility. The hard plastics, so your laundry detergent bottles, things that are very, very hard, those are gonna be recycled quite well. It's the real soft plastics, so You know, the the why this a lot of cities wanted to ban these these plastic bags. That's a very difficult material to recycle. And the reality is I would say, you know, most of the time that is not going to be recycled unless you have a very large amount of them. But that doesn't mean you should just give up on the entire process because plastic Lucas James (24:37) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (24:38) bags are hard to recycle or plastic film is hard to recycle. There is a lot of material and cardboard, it's very heavy, very dense. You don't want to throw that into the trash because it can be made up. And again, these aluminum metals and woods at the individual level or the commercial level can be recycled. So it does work, but I do understand the skepticism and I do understand the kind of what's the point of it? You know, mentality, but that is Lucas James (25:02) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (25:02) that is not that is not the way we should be focused. Lucas James (25:06) Another myth that I I am trying to dispel with this podcast also is that you can't build a successful revenue generating business in climate technology. I think a lot of people, I mean, you might see exceptions, like obviously people have to see like Tesla and they think, okay, well, here's this huge company, it's in climate tech. But for for the most part, a lot of people I talk to still believe that it's difficult to build something in climate technology. clearly you have built something successful in climate technology. how How do you think about that? Because in your interview you did last year, that's on your LinkedIn, I noticed that someone had asked you about like raising money at the beginning and how like not every business needs to raise money, for example. So how how would what would you what's your answer to people who might think that so that way we can get more people to start businesses in climate tech? Because I think that's a myth too. Gregory Lettieri (25:52) Yeah, I mean I think you could i anything you start, if it's in climatech or or any type of vendor industry, Lucas James (25:58) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (25:59) is gonna be very, very difficult and a lot of things are gonna be thrown in front of you. What you need to solve for at the end of the day is you need you need to have revenue. So that means there needs to be a client experience, a c you have to have a customer. And Lucas James (26:13) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (26:14) if you've gotta bring something to a customer that they don't have today, or you need to do it in a better way. And I I think that that provides a lot of opportunities. I can tell you that there's been iterations of sustainability data. Sustainability data and software is is been a big push. Routing software has been a big push. Something as easy as an in-home compost container is another one that you kind of kind of see a lot of. For one of the fun ones that that we actually purchased. Was three college students started a company called Cycle, which was a r at University of Miami. Yes. Lucas James (26:55) I saw that, yes. Gregory Lettieri (26:57) It's it's a reverse vending machine. So and it's gamified. And we've got them at the Philadelphia Eagles has one, the Los Angeles Dodgers have one, Houston Dynamo is a new one, the the MLS team, so sports teams, entertainment centers. We had one at Comic Con at the Javit Center. It's actually a fun, fun photo for us. We have like Spider-Man recycling some bottles. Lucas James (27:17) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (27:18) But it's it's a gamified experience that incentivizes sustainability and also kind of teaches the younger generation to to to be sustainable. And it's as simple as putting a bottle in, having it recycled, and then getting games and rewards points. We had this at the Super Bowl a few years back, and they gave out tickets to future NFL games if you participated in in in the recycling program. So there are companies wanna incentivize you to be better. the beverage companies in particular, we've got some of our machines with Coca-Cola. And you've got to build something around a a need. So those were three college students that did not have any investment money. I think their parents put a little money in. And we ended up buying that company and and a few of the employees are still with us today. Lucas James (28:08) I love that story. That's incredible. If we Gregory Lettieri (28:09) Yeah. Lucas James (28:09) go, if only we could just get more people into space. I I really love that story. And hopefully more people listen to this and jump in. We only have a couple more minutes with you. So one thing we haven't talked about today is your story really, just going back to the beginning. I saw that you know you did sports early on college. I taught you a lot about endurance. You worked a couple of jobs at like Bank of America, for instance, before starting recycling track systems. Could you just tell me a little bit about how you got started in the space? What gave you the idea and what those early years were like for people who are interested in starting their own business in this space? Gregory Lettieri (28:47) Yeah. I mean like like most young people who go to high school, graduate college, I was searching for a job like everybody else. I started in the technology space, and then kind of grew my career through technology. I never thought I'd be in waste and recycling. I grew up in Staten Island, New York, which had at one point the largest landfill in the United States. And I am Italian American, so I guess there's this connotation with Italian Americans are supposed to be in the garbage industry, but that kind of collided and it it kind of got me to where I was 12 years ago where I had a a neighbor who was four generations in the waste and recycling space. And long story short, we we started a business together and the two of us with a couple laptops and and an idea. And we built our first product, which is not really utilized anymore today, was really inspired by Uber, which was a truck would show up. They would have our tablet and routing software in the truck. And once they arrived, they would say, We're here to pick up the material, a notification would happen. And then that material would get transported to the recycling center. So recycle track systems. And and that would be the transaction. What we've grown to is the Pelo Center because what we learned is it was very hard to scale the on truck technology. So unlike Lucas James (30:12) Mm. Gregory Lettieri (30:12) car service where you're doing business with an individual driver who literally can have their own little enterprise and be an individual employee or business owner, we had to do deals across thousands of waste companies across each city. And it was impossible to scale really at at that time, maybe a little different today. so we went to the the Pelo technology, which is inside the dumpsters. So that gives us visibility into the collection and service at individual sites. and then we use our tracking software. what we what you end up receiving is you get a what's called a dump slip. So there is a record that the material, the cardboard was brought to the facility and it weighed six tons. We get that piece of data and then that data correlates back to the appropriate account and that's how customers can get validation that the material was recycled. Lucas James (31:03) That's incredible. And I'm so happy that you were able to come on. I wish I could ask you so many more questions. I have a million more to ask you, but especially okay. Well, Gregory Lettieri (31:09) No, you give me one more. It's okay. Go ahead. Lucas James (31:14) I I am I we will well for if if we have one more question, I have I have a qu closing question that we ask everybody on the show, which Gregory Lettieri (31:19) All right. Sure. Lucas James (31:21) is because we're trying to inspire people to get more involved in climate technology and just take action to try to solve this massive problem we're facing. if you were you know, president of the United States, or you just had complete authority to do anything you wanted in the climate space, to make us hit our climate goals, what is one thing you would do so that we could actually hit it? What w if you if if you had if you had full authority over everything and you could just snap your fingers, make it happen, what would you do? Gregory Lettieri (31:52) So that's a that's an improbable s situation. because Lucas James (31:55) It is. It is. Gregory Lettieri (31:57) you can't snap your fingers and change things overnight. What I would put, and and I think that we are at the beginning of it, is I do believe in electric vehicles, and I believe that the industry should move from highly diesel vehicles over to electric over the next over the next ten years. Now, right now those electric vehicles because of the size and power you need to to drive a waste and recycling truck, they're quite large. So you're you're still not getting the value and they're they're almost double the cost as that. Like similar you had mentioned Tesla, but as those things combine to where a gasoline car is the same price as a electric vehicle, I think electric needs to be can continue to be pushed. and that will that will reduce emissions quite Drastically. Just to give you an example and and for the audience, typically in a major city like New York, a sanitation vehicle is burning a gallon of gas every two to three miles. Okay. Because of the stop and go and the collection basis. Lucas James (33:08) Right. Gregory Lettieri (33:09) So that adds up when each truck does roughly about a hundred miles in in in a trip. Lucas James (33:15) Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (33:17) And it's costly. Too. And if you think about the cost associated with that for the for the trucker, then if their cost dynamics change, then it's cheaper to pick up material and there's more investment into the sustainable solution. So it's kind of all correlated. I think that's gonna happen over time, as the technology gets better. And I don't know if we'll have flying garbage trucks, but we got flying cars now, and so at least for a couple seconds. Lucas James (33:42) We do. Yeah. Well, thank you, Gregory, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. I know you're inspiring a lot of people, including myself, to go out and build more climate technology. If people want to learn more about you or take action and reach out to your company, where should they go? What should they do? Is there anything you want them to know about right now? Gregory Lettieri (34:03) Yep. So you can you can follow us. RTS.com is our website. I'm on Instagram personally, which is just Greg Lethierry, L-E-T-T-I-E-R-I. also on LinkedIn, Gregory Letiri. And you know, we're we're we've got a pretty good marketing profile. So if you look up RTS dot com, you'll see a lot of our case studies, sports stadiums, hotels, restaurants, convention centers, etc. and some of the technology that we've built. Lucas James (34:34) Awesome. Thank you so much, Gregory. And for everybody listening, this is another episode of Green Decades. Gregory's company recycle track systems been featured on Time magazine. has been doing incredible work in this space for the last eleven years, has diverted over eleven million pounds, correct? From landfills. I saw that on your nine million pounds. Nine million pounds. I saw nine million pounds from your website. Nine million. Yeah. Gregory Lettieri (34:50) That's it depends on the day. It's it's it's it's like nine million in change. not not pounds. That's tons. Nine million tons. Yeah, it's it it Lucas James (34:59) Tons, tons. Yes. It's incredible. It's incredible. Gregory Lettieri (35:03) is yeah, it's it's about twenty thousand services a day. So it we we've grown quite well. Lucas James (35:08) Wow. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I hope to get you back again. And thank you everybody for listening. Till next time.