139. How San Antonio is Turning Construction Waste to Community Wealth

Cory Ames [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the show about the people that make San Antonio go and grow. I'm Corey Ames, your host. This week as I'm revisiting a conversation that feels even more relevant today than when we first recorded it. I sat down with Stephanie Phillips, San Antonio's senior program manager for deconstruction in the Circular economy. Stephanie has what might be one of the most forward looking roles in city government anywhere in the country. In this interview, she shares how San Antonio became the largest city in North America with a deconstruction ordinance, why our built environment holds more value than we realize, and how slowing down demolition can preserve history, reduce waste, and even strengthen our San Antonio community. It's a thoughtful look at how San Antonio is leading the way in rethinking growth and reuse and and why this city, with its deep heritage and close knit connections, might be the perfect place to pioneer a circular economy. Here's my conversation with Stephanie Phillips.

Stephanie Phillips [00:01:05]:
I am a senior program manager for the city's Deconstruction and Circular Economy program which was formally created in 2022. So it's a very new program and I'm so excited that I'm the first person to have what I think is the coolest job title in the city. And like the country, you don't have a lot of people in city government that have circular economy or deconstruction in their title because it's such a new program. And the Deconstruction and Circular Economy program administers the city's deconstruction ordinance which was adopted almost exactly two years ago. So we make sure that older building stock gets deconstructed instead of demolished. And we also work to grow basically our building materials reuse ecosystem through facilities like our Material Innovation center and workforce training efforts like our deconstruction contractor training program. And outside of that, I do a lot of stuff that's related to reuse and embodied carbon because that's my passion. And the biggest thing is recently co launching Circular San Antonio which is a local nonprofit seeking to scale circular efforts here too.

Cory Ames [00:02:12]:
All right, well, a lot that we will certainly get into, but I'm interested first if you could tell me about the story as to how embodied carbon and reuse became your passion, because I imagine that those were terms first and foremost that you kind of had to discover yourself.

Stephanie Phillips [00:02:29]:
Exactly. So I have a background in interior architecture and a graduate degree in historic preservation from ut, so that's how I got to Texas. And historic preservation is kind of a loaded term. But the way That I consider it is a form of retaining materials, stories, cultural heritage in our cities. And San Antonio is probably the best city in the country to be working in this field. But just recently, I would say in the next or the past five years or so, the term embodied carbon has become more synonymous with historic preservation. And essentially what embodied carbon is, is all of the energy and time and effort and materials that went into constructing our buildings. So the bricks that hold up this building, the wood that holds up our houses, is a form of embodied carbon.

Stephanie Phillips [00:03:17]:
And all of that energy is locked into those materials. So it's already been expended. And this is in contrast to operational energy, which I think a lot more people are familiar with, or operational carbon, which is the energy required to power and cool and run our buildings. So I kind of look at as embodied carbon as a way to retain that energy that already exists. So making sure that our buildings can stand and be adapted instead of demolished and thrown away, which necessitates even more energy to be expended.

Cory Ames [00:03:50]:
So how did you get there? You know, working now in deconstruction, when, from what I understand what I could do. Your original interest was in interior design?

Stephanie Phillips [00:04:00]:
Yeah, so I have a professional degree in interior design. But pretty early on in that education I realized that I was more interested in working with existing buildings versus, you know, getting a floor plan and designing in a bubble or designing for anywhere usa. And part of that was because of my environment. I went to undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and they have one of the most incredible pedestrian only main thoroughfares in State street and it's just lined with older buildings. It's the textbook example of how we built our cities before we catered to cars. So I always loved working with those buildings and imagining repurposing those instead of creating something brand new. And from that I pursued my graduate degree in historic preservation originally to potentially become an interior architect or architect that focused on adaptive reuse. But I learned pretty quickly as well that I didn't want to be an architect.

Stephanie Phillips [00:05:02]:
I was more interested in the community engagement piece that came with urban planning, working with communities directly and having, you know, kind of seeing the impact of your work in real time, which isn't always possible when you're designing a building because the lead time for that takes a while. So I that's kind of how I transitioned into, to that space.

Cory Ames [00:05:24]:
And so growing up, was there any sort of, I don't know, upbringing, influence or what have you to encourage you to think about or built environment in a Different way. Can you track that back in any sort of way?

Stephanie Phillips [00:05:37]:
I really do think, like, the kicker was in college. I grew up in the suburb of Milwaukee in 1970s, 1980s, like Track Suburb, and my parents still own the house I grew up in. Like, it's very nostalgic and my hometown is very important to me. But I kind of learned after being exposed to like, a city like Madison and living in that downtown experience that this is the environment that I thrive in, especially because it offers more diversity of experience and people and connections in a more concentrated space, and you don't need a car to do it. So I think that's really where my love for resource use and connecting people and urban planning and policy making for a sustainable world kind of popped into my head. And a lot of that is actually retroactive thinking. I never thought I would work in local government ever, even after I graduated grad school. But when I think back to all of the things that I was innately curious about, it makes a lot of sense why I'm here.

Cory Ames [00:06:42]:
Well, and then from Midwest down to Texas and now specifically San Antonio. What is it like then to be working not only in local government, but local government here in San Antonio? How do you feel being in the position that you are?

Stephanie Phillips [00:06:55]:
I feel incredibly fortunate. I think San Antonio is one of the best places to be in a lot of ways. And for me, I. I went to graduate school in Austin and I was there from 2013 to 2015. And that's kind of right around the cusp of like, the boom that we associate with Austin's like, rapid growth. And it's really interesting to come down here and be a part of that now and see what that meant in Austin without really the strategies and the tools to mitigate growth and kind of balance the environmental integrity of a city. The cultural, historic, physical buildings of that city, we've kind of always seen like that moving down the corridor in San Antonio. So since 2017, I've been so fortunate to be in a role and a department that plays such a big part in how our city is planned and growing and facilitate those conversations with architects, developers, community members? It's just an incredible playground in a way to.

Stephanie Phillips [00:07:55]:
To work and live.

Cory Ames [00:07:57]:
Could you give us an explanation of what the day to day looks like for your position and perhaps what that connects or specifically deconstruction ordinance that you already mentioned? Can you give us greater detail as to what that is, what the implications are for a city and how that ties to your day to day?

Stephanie Phillips [00:08:13]:
When I joined the office of historic preservation. In 2017, I was a senior case manager for our landmarks commission. So working with architects and homeowners on decisions that they were making with their properties and helping them navigate those decisions. And right around that time, city council issued a council consideration request to our department and, you know, our peer departments like development Services, to look at all of the demolition policies that were on the books. And this was largely in response to a community effort around the pace and location of primarily single family and missing middle housing that was being more readily demolished as the city started to grow. So that was a really big inflection point from a policy perspective. And those constituents kind of advocated to their city council member to see can we be doing something better from a city administration standpoint around demolition. And from that came the idea of a potential deconstruction policy or program and what that means as buildings are going through the process, the decision making, the permitting process to be demolished or be removed.

Stephanie Phillips [00:09:25]:
There are a few inflection points where, especially in our office, we have community members coming to us saying, we actually need to save this building. This building is really important to us, but it may not have historic protections. So it's really, really difficult to stop the removal of that building. And this is some of the testimony that we heard, like in that early, those early days of this policy discussion is one day I could see a building that really means something to me, and the next day it's smashed and gone. And that can be really fracturing and almost violent for communities if that critical resource that has been part of their living heritage, honestly for a long time is just gone. And from that came the idea of deconstruction, which is slowing down the demolition process. It's basically unbuilding a building in the opposite way it was constructed or reverse engineering. So instead of heavy machinery smashing a building and throwing it into a landfill, in a matter of days, you have people slowly dismantling from the roof down to the foundation and salvaging those materials for reuse.

Stephanie Phillips [00:10:30]:
So that's the process that we wanted to see more of. I think some of the best policies, especially at the local level, come out of the idea of there is something happening in my community that I don't think is right and I don't think is benefiting me. And this is just one of those examples.

Cory Ames [00:10:46]:
I mean, it seems that there's a much greater opportunity following more intentional deconstruction to keep some cultural continuity, as it seems you're saying more. My brother in law calls one of the new styles of modular Developments, space, barns. You know, I think we're all kind of familiar with that look. Austin's really prevalent with them. San Antonio's getting its fair share of them. But you kind of imagine 20 to 30 years down the line thinking like, ah, that's gonna. It stands out currently like a sore thumb, but it doesn't really fit, you know, in this style. And it's something that's really kind of templated.

Cory Ames [00:11:21]:
And you start to see it whether you're in Boise, Idaho, another city where I have family live, growing very fast and changing Austin or San Antonio. And that breaks my heart a little bit. But I'm curious to what. What would you say to someone who hears that and says, like, that is a really good idea, it's a pleasant idea. But to me, someone slowly deconstructing a building and salvage from materials that sounds maybe inconvenient and maybe expensive, what would you say to someone with that kind of response?

Stephanie Phillips [00:11:51]:
Yeah, so our deconstruction ordinance was adopted in 2022, and we started talking about a policy in 2017, 2018. So we spent about four and a half years kind of interrogating those exact questions with a deconstruction advisory committee, which had anyone from our real estate council, which is, you know, the development arm, advocacy arm of San Antonio, to environmental advocates, preservation advocates, solid waste and affordable housing experts. And I loved that. I think it's such a great tool to develop policy because you have a lot of people coming together in a room pretty consistently that would never share space with each other or very rarely. And that affords the ability for those people to hear each other out and say, this may slow down my development process, but. But another person may say, okay, and it's going to benefit our environment. We're going to have more access to building materials in our community, and it allows those people to have those discussions. So we kind of almost in a way held space for those conversations to happen and stood back and said, what would a policy look like for San Antonio specifically versus like copying one from a different city.

Stephanie Phillips [00:13:04]:
So time and cost, I don't think is something that is ameliorated by this policy or by deconstruction in general? It's always going to be a concern. But in the same way that we talk about any other development, environmental policy, it's like, what are we losing? Or who is getting the brunt of the negative externalities to save $3,000 or to save four days of time? And the answer to that, through our research, through our engagement, through connecting with Our city council members and our constituents was the community. Demolition is, like I mentioned, violent and fracturing. It is a form of air pollution. You know, even if you do it best by spraying down a site, you have particulate matter spreading 200, 400, 600 yards away from a site. I always say demolition doesn't happen in a bubble. And demolition happens to buildings, but it also happens to people spraying down a site, that particular matter can get into our groundwater. And it's just something that we as a society have been kind of conditioned to accept.

Stephanie Phillips [00:14:09]:
Because I know in my generation, I never knew anything different than demolition to remove buildings, right? Like, I loved climbing on cool bulldozers and playing pocket games when I was growing up. That was just something that you constantly saw. But when you recognize how damaging that way of removing buildings can be, it becomes really challenging to justify it in any way.

Cory Ames [00:14:33]:
If the world was, was Stephanie's kind of utopian vision, at least San Antonio specifically, and deconstruction was the blanket policy and the way in which we operated with buildings that had maybe seen the extent of their useful life needed to be repurposed or what have you. What would be the challenges or barriers in the way to scaling deconstruction so that we could apply it on a citywide level, a region level, what's in our way from being able to do that?

Stephanie Phillips [00:15:09]:
I love that question because we get a lot of questions about are we expanding our ordinance? Are we including commercial, are we looking into newer buildings? And there are a few cities across the country who have deconstruction regulations for every single building in their city. A few of them are Boulder, Colorado and Palo Alto, California, and they're aiming to have 85% diversion rates in some cases for the entirety of the building. And it's so incredible and something that I think we, we hope to aspire to. Of course, if you know geographies and no city size, those are a lot smaller cities than San Antonio. So you have to start somewhere. I think some key barriers to scaling it, our workforce that's such a big component of our program is workforce training, because in order to effectively regulate a policy, you need to make sure that you have the people that can do the work on behalf of people that are hiring them. So even before, well before several years before we adopted our ordinance, we launched our certified deconstruction contractor training program, where we bring in a national trainer. We typically hire Repurposed Savannah, which is an all women plus led deconstruction nonprofit in Savannah, Georgia, that trains people how to fully remove buildings, but then also gives them the tools to launch their own reuse center.

Stephanie Phillips [00:16:30]:
So they take down buildings and they also sell those materials to their communities. So they're actually going to be here in October, leading to more cohorts of deconstruction contractor training programs, so we can get even more people locally to do that work. And I think another barrier is actually just how the way we built buildings changed pretty rapidly after World War II. So currently our deconstruction ordinance requires buildings built, houses built before 1945 in certain areas to be deconstructed. And that was a very strategic date because after World War II, you started to see a lot more mass production introduced and a lot more things that make it difficult to unbuild a building, like glues, mastics, staples, basically gluing a bunch of building materials together, which is very different than kind of the Lincoln Logs strategy of how we used to build buildings before World War II. So we're kind of thinking about that as well. There are a few companies and researchers across the country that are figuring out ways to do that, which is super exciting, and I hope we'll be able to bring some of that technology and workforce training to San Antonio to scale it in the future.

Cory Ames [00:17:41]:
And does your department have. I mean, you mentioned the Savannah Organization, for one. Is there something of a national network that you feel like you're developing or have developed in these conversations around deconstruction?

Stephanie Phillips [00:17:55]:
Absolutely. I always say that we would have never been able to achieve our deconstruction ordinance, which I can't believe I haven't said yet, is the largest in North America. We are the largest city in North America to have a deconstruction ordinance, which. Which I always like to say, because we are in San Antonio. And every time I come across someone on the west coast or the east coast or Canada or across the world that hasn't heard about our policy, they're like, texas, really? And I'm like, hell, yeah, in Texas. We learned so much from the city of Portland, Oregon. They were the first city in North America to adopt a policy like this in 2016. And I have to get a shout out to Sean Wood.

Stephanie Phillips [00:18:33]:
He was basically my equivalent at the city of Portland, and he's now at the EPA helping cities and communities with low carbon materials. He really helped us approach our policy effort. And that kind of made me realize that the only way that we're going to affect local change and something that's so new is through the resource sharing and partnership of communities around the Country. So I sit on the board of a national nonprofit called Build Reuse. And it's the major nonprofit in the United States that seeks to turn construction and demolition waste into local resources. So that has been my network and my safe space, if you will, to kind of get out of my bubble and learn more about how other people are approaching this really important topic.

Cory Ames [00:19:20]:
And so you may have mentioned it already, but specifically the ordinance requires deconstruction for buildings built before 1945. Is that the extent of the ordinance? And then a follow up on that if you were to take it further. And maybe it is completely conditional based off of the research and the strategy necessary to be able to construct other buildings that were built at different eras. But where would you take it further?

Stephanie Phillips [00:19:45]:
So right now we have three phases of the ordinance that were adopted in 2022. So we're currently in the second phase. And that states that any residential building, fourplex or smaller, so down to single family built in 1920 anywhere in the city, has to be deconstructed. And 1945 in historic districts and neighborhood conservation districts. So kind of those protected zoning overlays. But our ordinance is actually expanding into its final phase January 1st of 2025, and that will expand to 1945 and earlier anywhere in the city and go up to 8 plex and smaller. So kind of that missing middle housing if it's coming down and 1960 and earlier in those protected districts. So we're starting to creep into some of those newer buildings.

Stephanie Phillips [00:20:32]:
And part of the reason why it's so strategically slow growth. I always say that we wanted to take like bite sized pieces out of our demolition stream to make sure that our workforce and our reuse ecosystem was growing alongside the regulation. We've seen some communities across the country that bit off more than they could chew and maybe didn't invest in workforce development or wanted to do every single building right without those strategic investments. And they've had to pause or stay their ordinances because it just was too much of a disruption. So ours is very intentional and it is very much rooted in the realities. In San Antonio. We looked at 10 years of demolition data to see can we hone in on a build date and a building type and a building year that started with 33% and then grew to 45% and then grew to 65% of housing demolitions to be incremental in that strategic way. So I think it was smart, even though the environmentalist in me wanted to be like, let's get everything.

Stephanie Phillips [00:21:37]:
Yeah, um, I think My dream and where we might go in the future. This would require a future ordinance and a ton more in community engagement. Basically restarting what we did five years ago is looking into commercial structures and potentially looking into major renovations of buildings. A lot of construction and demolition waste is generated through gut rehabs. So we do have a lot of community members coming to us saying, I see dumpsters and dumpsters in old homes next to me that are being completely gutted and that material is just as valuable as a house that's being fully removed. What can we do? So I think hopefully in the near future we'll be able to restart those conversations.

Cory Ames [00:22:18]:
And so demolition is one category, renovation another one, and then that between residential and commercial. Is there anything that stretches to the prospect of conditions for what new builds look like one way or another, residential or commercial? Or is that. Would that be a different department?

Stephanie Phillips [00:22:39]:
I think that we may co lead on that. I'm so glad you asked that because that's also kind of on our radar. We kind of have an example of what we could do in our existing 2% for public art ordinance where city projects have to invent 2%, invest 2% of their budget into public art for a new building. And we're thinking 2% reclaimed materials and some sort of visible aspect of a building like an overhang or cladding or even reused materials for public art. So with. I always say that the deconstruction ordinance is kind of focused on the supply side, making sure that we're intercepting all of these millions of tons of materials that are going to the landfill and redirecting them back into our communities so they can be productively used. And then what you're describing is more on the demand side. How can we generate more incentives or more regulations to inspire or require people to think reuse first instead of relying on virgin materials?

Cory Ames [00:23:40]:
And so where do we feel like we are in that establishing that supply chain? Is there just by no means enough supply or is there a mismatch in the level of demand right now? It's interesting how that's just a completely different supply chain, a much more localized one. Hyper localized supply chain. But where are we do you think, in that system flowing more smoothly?

Stephanie Phillips [00:24:06]:
Yeah.

Cory Ames [00:24:06]:
Where's the choke point?

Stephanie Phillips [00:24:08]:
I think a big barrier right now is volume and consistency. And this is where the material innovation center comes in a little bit. Is that we work. I love working with architects. I love chatting the ear off of designers and specifiers, asking them those questions because we have so many architects in San Antonio that Aren't environmental leaders and they want to specify reclaimed. But when we think about large buildings like community centers or apartment buildings, that requires a lot of material and a lot of consistent material. And part of the charm and excitement of reclaimed building materials is kind of the uniqueness of those. But when you're so used to an architecture industry that relies on volume and consistency, yes, that is a remarkable barrier.

Stephanie Phillips [00:25:00]:
And that's not just a San Antonio thing, it's really a worldwide thing. So I think we do have a lot more work to do here to offer more storage or offer more investment or incentivize more startups and established building material innovators to invest in San Antonio and make it a circular city for our built environment to address those two key barriers, volume and consistency.

Cory Ames [00:25:27]:
Where might there be some other savings for us in. In using more of these reclaimed materials that we wouldn't otherwise consider?

Stephanie Phillips [00:25:38]:
Yeah, I think one aspect that I pretty consistently think about is that if we use more of the materials that are readily available in our communities and started referring to like our houses, like the ones that are being deconstructed as urban forests because they were constructed of old growth lumber, you know, that was felled hundreds of years ago and they grew for thousands of years in some ways. And if we use more reclaimed materials, it reduces the demand for virgin materials, whether that be virgin forests and virgin lumber, or more commonly right now in our environment, our society is plastic and petrol petroleum based building materials. So I think that's one thing that we try to elevate more often is that if you go more reclaimed and if we do that more as a society, then we're leveraging more of the resources that already exist to your point, hyperlocally, instead of relying on mining our earth for more. So I think that's one interesting way of considering it.

Cory Ames [00:26:42]:
And so do you imagine that like the sticker shock would be too high for developers or anything like that from the get go or perhaps with the greater prevalence of reclaimed materials, that costs would go down.

Stephanie Phillips [00:26:55]:
Yeah, so I think Covid was a really big eye opener, if you recall, back in 2021, 2022, or if you blocked it out like me, which is great for our mental health, but there was such a barrier price wise and access wise for construction materials because a lot of people were pursuing those kind of projects. And as a result, supply chains were choked in various different ways and more importantly, lead times. Just the time it would take to access those materials became longer. And time is money in the development world. So I think that was a really big eye opener on, like, how much we rely on those worldwide supply chains. And largely as a consumer, as a homeowner myself, like, I have no idea where, like my West Elm table came from. I have no idea where those materials had to go or travel to be put together. But if we're relying on this hyperlocal source, especially now that we have more materials entering the San Antonio ecosystem because of deconstruction, it just makes us more resilient as a community when we're talking about access to those materials.

Stephanie Phillips [00:28:04]:
So the more materials we have in our ecosystem instead of going to the landfill, the more accessible they are and the more affordable they can be. So that's a really big focus for us too.

Cory Ames [00:28:14]:
And so then currently, on the design and build side, architects, developers, or otherwise, is the door open in some regard? If they wanted to get involved in using more reclaimed materials and thinking about projects that way, where would they get started? Do they reach out to you?

Stephanie Phillips [00:28:34]:
Yes. I feel like I'm like a. Not a call center, but like I. I always get emails multiple times a week or calls from both property owners and even developers, like affordable housing developers or developers that are looking for something that is uniquely San Antonio. Right. I also think this is a bit of a diversion, but just to emphasize how I think our building industry and our design industry is kind of shifting away from like the builder grade style that was so prevalent in the past decade or so into something that is more locally true to where we are. So we have a lot of people reaching out to us saying, I want to build a custom curtain wall out of reclaimed lumber from a local building because you can't manufacture authenticity. Or more commonly, we have property owners saying, I need to restore my home, or I'm building an addition to my 1920s building.

Stephanie Phillips [00:29:34]:
I want to use the same hardwood, I want to use the same siding, I want to use similar doors. Where can I find that? And we're very fortunate to be able to point to a lot of reclaimed stores and deconstruction contractors that can supply that for people. So the door is consistently open. And one of my favorite examples about deconstruction in practice is I said at the beginning that demolition happens in a day or two. It's very quick, it's very violent, it's very fracturing and fracturing, emotionally and physically. You're like splintering all of those materials. You can't reuse them. But when you slow down that process, it's every single deconstruction project without fail, especially in A dense legacy community.

Stephanie Phillips [00:30:18]:
Neighbors shop this site. I started comparing it to like knocking on your neighbor's door for a cup of sugar. But now you're knocking on your neighbor's door for some shiplap or for some siding. And that happens every single time because you're affording that process to happen. And that to me is the definition of a micro circular economy. Like you can't create a better ecosystem footprint wise than that. So the more we do that, the more people can access that. And I will say that there's a growing trend of people just being more cognizant.

Stephanie Phillips [00:30:52]:
That's an option.

Cory Ames [00:30:53]:
Well, and it seems like too with that opportunity just to be able to more sensibly use and reuse the materials that exist within your own community, your own ecosystem, seems like a much greater sense of pride can grow in the built environment that surround you. Like you said, it's already something that can be so devastating as things are demolished and changed and something new is there that may not have the same sort of cohesive look and feel and kind of cultural character. And so it seems like there's a great opportunity for us as San Antonians to take pride in that and start to add little bit of our reclaimed materials to our new projects and renovations and those kinds of things. Stephanie, I'm curious to get to your work outside your day job too, the nonprofit organization that you co founded, and I'd like to get to that by as well framing it in a question. Why do you think San Antonio, and maybe already layered through our conversation thus far, but why do you think this city is so apt and well suited to advance this movement for a more circular economy?

Stephanie Phillips [00:32:04]:
Circular San Antonio, like you mentioned, is a nonprofit organization that really seeks to help San Antonio transition to a more circular city. And what that really means is to tip the scales in favor of reuse instead of the linear economy that we're used to, which is single use over consumption, a lot of waste. And that is not just a San Antonio problem, it's a worldwide problem. But I know from my own work and working locally and kind of leveraging the skills and energy of our community and the talents as well, is that if we come together for this common cause like we can, we can move that needle. And I think that San Antonio is the perfect city for this to happen because we value our existing resources in a very unique way compared to other cities that I've visited or I've lived in. And I think some of that stems from the big city, small town identity that we're so proud of where people are connected to literally everyone. It shocks me every day in every conversation that I have is that there's six degrees of everyone that lives in San Antonio. And so there's already this kind of cohesive network of people being in the tap into their skills and abilities and interests.

Stephanie Phillips [00:33:20]:
But then I also think it stems from, honestly, the fact that we're a World Heritage City and there's such an important identity tied to our cultural heritage. And I mean, every single layer of our cultural heritage, even if it's a little bit messy and complicated, because that identity that we've been able to maintain in our built environment and our cultural legacy is the foundation for us to continue to reinvest in what makes us unique and what drives our local industries. So one big thing that circular San Antonio is trying to do is elevate the businesses that are truly local, right? So we think about the shoe cobblers, the seamstresses, the many general contractors that rehab our existing buildings, the deconstruction contractors that we're building up locally. These are people that live here, that work here, that pay taxes here, that spend money here and believe that San Antonio is where they want to be. And if we invest in more of those people in those industries, you know, that's what circularity is. So I think leveraging kind of the identity and the community and the cohesion that is so unique to this city is the key to unlocking more Reeves.

Cory Ames [00:34:34]:
I love that. Well, and Stephanie, I'm curious, for folks listening or watching, what are some physical projects that exist in San Antonio, if someone was curious to see this? Very tangibly, either from what you think really emphasizes circularity, the principles of circularity, or likewise, deconstruction. What's something that someone could go see in San Antonio that would reflect that?

Stephanie Phillips [00:34:58]:
I think a really big example is something that our office launched a few years ago, which is called our Living Heritage Trades Academy, so related to circularity and having a workforce to reinvest in our buildings. Most of the people that work in construction trades are 45 or older, and out of 100 people on a construction site, only one is a woman. So these two dimensions are intertwined in a lot of different ways. And the only way that we can really make sure that these resources stay around is to invest in the people that dedicate their time and craft and skill to doing that work. We offer a lot of different employment pathways through our traits Academy, whether it's reusing windows, restoring windows, doing deconstruction training, but we Also have a lot of community workshops where even if you don't want this to be your business, but you want to learn a little bit more about how your house works and lives and breathes and ages. That's what we're here for. So I'm always about elevating kind of the hands on way for people to play and learn. So I think that's one big way that people can get involved.

Stephanie Phillips [00:36:05]:
But then I always encourage people to stop by and kind of just watch a house being restored or a house being deconstructed because you can learn so much about that incredible trade and maybe see some things that you've never seen before, like a lumber stamp or a weird archeological find like a kerosene lamp that's in your front yard, which is something that actually happened to me. Um, so there's just so much to uncover by learning more about how our buildings are restored and the materials kept in our environment.

Cory Ames [00:36:37]:
Absolutely. Well, and one final question for you, Stephanie. I'm. I'm very excited about your vision for deconstruction and the possibilities of circularity advancing in San Antonio. If you could wave a magic wand and embed one bit of understanding or one kind of eye opening learning for general San Antonians, what would that be? What would you want people to see or understand that is possible in San Antonio that they may not currently?

Stephanie Phillips [00:37:08]:
The landfill doesn't deserve these materials. Our communities do. And of course I connect that with building materials, but it could mean anything material that we so readily throw away, whether it's plastic or clothes or electronics and really thinking about how those systems don't have to be the way they are. And a lot of the solutions lie in our backyard. We don't have to rely on federal laws, although those would be awesome. But we can kind of seek to reorient those really wasteful systems just by leveraging our own skills and connections here. So I, I just always challenge people to look at what is unseen, which is typically our waste system, where you put stuff at the front of your yard or the back of your yard and somehow it magically disappears and you never see it again. To think about how we can restructure those systems and keep those materials for us.

Stephanie Phillips [00:38:04]:
Because you can't build a community around a landfill. You can definitely build community around sharing and reuse.

Cory Ames [00:38:13]:
Thanks for listening to or watching this episode of Big City Small Town. If you enjoyed it, please send it to a friend, share it with a colleague, helping us to keep telling San Antonio's most meaningful stories. And if you haven't yet. Sign up for the San Antonio Something, my weekly newsletter where I share things to do, places to explore and people to get to know in the city. Just head to corner coriames.com to subscribe. Also, be sure to check out Monday Musings, Bob Rivard's weekly newsletter at bigcity small town.com Big City Small Town is brought to you by Weston Urban Building, the city our children want to call home, and by Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. Thanks again. We'll see you next time.