Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Audit presented by IT Audit Labs. I'm your co-host and producer, joshua Schmidt, and we're joined by Nick Mellum, down in Texas, and our usual host, eric Brown, managing Director. And then today we're joined by Trista Martinson. She's the Executive Director at Ramsey Washington Recycling and Energy. Thanks for joining us in the studio today, trista. Can you give us a little background at Ramsey Washington Recycling and Energy, what you do there, what the day-to-day is like?

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, so, as you said, I'm the Executive Director at Ramsey Washington Recycling and Energy and we process all of the trash for the two counties. So imagine Ramsey County, washington County 880,000 residents produce a lot of trash. All that trash comes through our facility and we process that to take out any valuables that are in the trash. When I say valuables, I mean recyclables and ways that we can reduce what goes to landfill. Our goal is to divert from landfills. Landfills are bad because water always wins and it will get into the landfill and it will leak and then we'll have toxins in our water supply. So our goal is to process waste, getting the value out of the waste and not sending to landfill.

Speaker 3: 1:17

And so do you take those materials that might be contaminated, or do you work with partners that do that?

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yeah, so not exactly. So we're taking recyclables out, so we're taking aluminums, ferrous metals, those kinds of things out. The part that's exciting is our new program around organics, and that is we are collecting household food scraps, as you know, and I know you're a participant and we collect those in these green bags. So people put household food scraps as you know, and I know you're a participant and we collect those in these green bags. So people put their food scraps in, tie it off, throw it in their trash bin. It comes to our facility and we have robots that use AI that can pick those bags out of the trash. And right now those bags go to compost.

Speaker 2: 2:02

So everyone knows, understands compost. They're going to an industrial composter. But here, by 2027, we're in the process of building an anaerobic digester with a partner company. Public-private partnerships are really important, so it's a partner company that is building that digester for our benefit. Then those bags will go to that digester. Technology is really basic. It's kind of like a giant industrial cow, right? So food goes in, it goes through a series of four stomachs that break it down and clean compost comes out the backside.

Speaker 3: 2:35

And with those robots they work optically right. I had the opportunity to see those and that was really cool. So they're sorting through the trash and they're picking out those green bags.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yes, and they're learning because of AI, right, so they're learning as they go. So when we got the robots, they had no data, no memory. No, you know they're learning, so we've been teaching them as they go how to identify the green bags as opposed to something else green in the trash or something else in the trash.

Speaker 3: 3:03

And at Ramsey and now at the recycling center. You're part of critical infrastructure.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Absolutely we are. We are a public health, environmental health tour and when you think about, you know this goes not just cybersecurity but all security. If we think about shutting down infrastructures, if we're not processing trash and that's filling up, people are going to be really sick, really fast.

Speaker 3: 3:28

And trash. There's still the political component of it, because there's regulations around landfill and burning and all of those sorts of things that, if I recall, you invite people that are into politics to come down and have a tour of the facility.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Absolutely so. We are ourselves our own government entity, we're a joint powers board of two counties, and so our goal is not just to process the trash for the community, but for people to really understand what we do and set good future policy for future generations. And the way we do that is showing people what we do. Come see. It makes a lot more sense when you see and I'll just quickly say we have a great online virtual tour as well. So if anyone is like what in the heck is she talking about? I want to see these robots you can just go to Ramsey Washington Recycling Energy slash tours and take a look online of these videos. They're fantastic.

Speaker 3: 4:26

Going into that recycling stream Ramsey Washington Recycling and Energy slash tours and take a look online of these videos. They're fantastic. Going into that recycling stream you and I have had a couple of chats about this. I found it really interesting where we were sending some of our materials to other countries.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yes.

Speaker 3: 4:36

And those other countries were.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Storing it.

Speaker 3: 4:40

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Yeah, I mean, this is what really was my personal turning point. Before the pandemic hit, I had the opportunity to go to China and it was a sister city exchange tour, not about garbage, but I can't help myself, like, once you, once you get the garbage bug, you're, you're there. And so while I was there, I kept asking them because we were selling our recyclables to China. I was like, what are you doing with them? And I thought they were like turning every plastic bottle into a bench or something to that nature. And they were very confused by my question and the more I asked, I think I was frustrating them. But they also were like, fine, we'll tell you. And.

Speaker 2: 5:23

And so they took me out to a countryside area where I saw, literally as far as I could see, just bales and bales of plastic bottles and aluminum cans and all those recyclables sold, just like we do. And I said what are you going to do with them? And they said we're going to sell them back to you. And? And the reason is because, if you think about, this is just fifth grade science class, right, everything created has energy in it and so it's storing energy. How do we get it back out?

Speaker 2: 5:52

And China does strategic planning for 700 years into the future, and they had calculated that they had purchased enough storage of these materials that have value that they didn't need to purchase anymore, and so they stopped purchasing and their plan is to sell it back to the United States in the future because we're going to need it. We're going to run out of resources, we're going to run out of energy and we're going to need it, and that was my turning point. I'm like I'm never buying trash from China and we're going to do it different and we're going to get the value out of it right now.

Speaker 3: 6:22

That's interesting. Yeah, that's so cool, as I've gotten as we've we've gotten to work together in your new role. Yes, I've learned more about this and it's probably, like you know, with with my friends and stuff, when, when I come in, people start witnessing about cybersecurity of, like you know, I'm putting all my passwords in a password manager and I'm blocking my credit, right.

Speaker 2: 6:46

This is the great thing of when we learn what other people do and we can apply it to our lives right. I mean, when you and I started, you were like Trista, you're using the same password for everything, and I was, and I knew better, but I was, because I can't remember all that stuff. And you got me hooked on Bitwarden and other password keepers and it's gone from there.

Speaker 3: 7:06

Yes, how's that going?

Speaker 2: 7:07

It's going well, thank goodness. Awesome. So far, so good. There's always room for improvement and you're always teaching me and I take it verbatim and we're applying that both at Ramsey County but also now at Ramsey, washington. Recycling and Energy.

Speaker 3: 7:22

Yes, yeah, now at Ramsey, washington, recycling and Energy yes, yeah. And that, bringing along that, going on that technology journey to refresh the technology, to position Ramsey and Washington for the future, that's just going to be a great project.

Speaker 2: 7:35

It is really.

Speaker 1: 7:36

You mentioned you're working with a lot of technology. Can you walk us through some of the challenges security challenges you faced there before working with Eric?

Speaker 2: 7:44

Yeah. So before I came on board and as the county was just purchasing the facility, we bought it from a private company and the two counties purchased the facility so that we could process trash. They had a cyber attack and they had a ransomware event and really I think that was the wake-up call of like, oh, we've got to do something different. And you think, as we said, it's critical infrastructure, there's targeted and there are bad actors out there that are doing bad things, and so there had been some work to make it secure and to do what's the next level of security.

Speaker 2: 8:25

But we're relatively new, even though we're coming on 10 years. We're kind of like a pseudo startup company, even though we're government. We've really been growing quickly, and so when I came on board last summer, having worked with you previously and knew your skillset, I was like I got to get I just for my own sense of safety. I was like I got to get Erica over here and I asked you to do a full audit of our systems to say how do we, you know, what are we missing? Where can we do better? How can we, you know, improve our health of our security and our systems, and how do we also teach them, train them and equip them to have so their systems are working, so that we have the greatest productivity.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Awesome, yeah, yeah, happy to do it. Yeah, and you've done a great job, oh well, thank you, we're just getting started, we're just getting started.

Speaker 2: 9:15

But you know, in some of it, when you do a screen, you're like whew, we got some you know, it's like getting a physical at the doctor and you're like you need to lose a few pounds, right? So we got some things to do, but we've got a plan.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Maybe, Eric, you could walk us through kind of your experience joining Trista's new team and kind of what it was like getting an assessment of the new facility when.

Speaker 3: 9:39

Trista left, it was a little bit of a shock of like, oh no Right. And then learning more about the facility was really cool, yeah, and everything that went into it. It kind of got me in a different mindset too. With the downstream part of waste, yeah, the environment. It seemed really at an opportunity to come in and really rebuild that foundation so that when you bring your vision forward you're stable and you have a comfortable place to operate from. So I think we're still going down that path. We're coming out of the audit work and now starting some of that implementation, getting into that phase, and I think it'll be a fun summer.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Yeah, it's going to be well, not just a fun summer, but like we've got a five-year, 10-year plan that we're working on right now to think about strategic direction and how we do what's next. We've talked a lot about the organics and that's coming online, but now that you know that train has left the station and we know we're going to get there and achieve our goals, but we got to look at what else is there right? There's still value in that trash, things that we haven't recovered, and so, as we're thinking about how do we process, how do we gain traction on the next thing, we're going to need technology and the infrastructure there and, as we grow as an organization, we're expected to probably gain another 10 to 15 staff in the next two years and we need to make sure that they have the equipment and technology. And there's an expectation from the community that people are accessible and reachable and responsive, and all of that requires technology and to do it in a safe way, which we talked about, human behavior, and that's the hard part.

Speaker 3: 11:24

One of the more interesting conversations that I've had with a few folks on your team recently was around okay, we're collecting all of this data. Now what do we do with it? So there's a ton of information to be had. And how do we get that information, do something with it and then educate people so that we're getting more of the right stuff, you know, in the trash stream. And looking at where AI is and everything that AI could bring to help the people. Maybe do less repetitive work similar to what you're doing with the robots on the line. Let's do the same thing with robots or AI in the office space.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Absolutely, and if we think about our goal, our ultimate goal is zero waste, right, and it's the waste hierarchy of zero waste reduce, reuse, recycle, and then we get to turn it into fuel, right? So that's kind of our hierarchy. At the end, if you look at the waystream, you can see what's left, right and how people are changing or not, and so that's why that data is so important. But we also want to be able to set realistic metrics, goals and then assess ourselves accordingly, and so you're going to help us do that.

Speaker 3: 12:38

Absolutely With the advance of AI and soon quantum. We got a podcast coming up on quantum here in a couple of weeks with Bill Harris. But the energy needs are just huge. It's just skyrocketing. I guess we could call it the working part of Three Mile Island. And they're going to start that reactor up again and I think there's other talk about the need for reactors. But in the same vein I saw that I think it was in France had a vision reactor.

Speaker 3: 13:19

I don't know if I'm getting that right, Whereas that's kind of clean energy to produce electricity. So lots of innovation going in that space. But even having clean energy hydrogen to produce electricity would be awesome Right.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. And the other thing is, your folks have to figure out how to use less energy to do the same amount of work with all the cyber AI, right, it's like we're doing it, we're building more things, but we're not reducing the energy usage. So we got to come at it from both ends. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:55

I remember having a conversation with one of the other board members and went into his office and because he's a public figure there's lots of recordings of him speaking. So I grabbed a couple of those recordings and then ran it through. But it was able to then copy his voice so I could type in something and then it sounded like he was saying it. But that kind of blew his mind. And nowadays there's AI out there that with Google Notebook LM, it'll take content and create a two-person podcast on that content.

Speaker 3: 14:37

So really mind-blowing, absolutely. And on the AI side, at Ramsey Washington, recycling, you've got those robots working. How are those robots? What's the AI in them?

Speaker 2: 14:51

Yeah, so our robots have a visioning system right and so they're watching. And then we have a partner company that uploads neural network updates. So there's actually people watching that video screen right and hours of data and identifying green bag, not green bag, green bag not, and then they upload that data to the robot. So that's how they're learning as they go. I mean, there's still a human interaction component to that. The robots, specifically to the organics, as I said, they came with no data because we're the first of its kind. Nobody else is doing this, not like this. For this purpose Now we use similar robots and a similar visioning, the same visioning system for other recyclable like aluminum cans but, people have been.

Speaker 2: 15:40

You know lots of places are recycling aluminum cans and use similar systems because there's so much more data. It goes to that data and data sharing as they get those uploads of new neural networks, but also as the market changes, right, and you think about cans don't look the same as they get those uploads of new neural networks, but also as the market changes, right, and if you think about cans don't look the same as they did even five or 10 years ago. If you look at an aluminum can and so thinking about like they're always learning and growing, but it's different neural networks that get uploaded.

Speaker 3: 16:06

Got it so that third party is helping and maybe they're using, like Mechanical Turk, Amazon's Mechanical Turk where humans get maybe a three second video clip and they're identifying that that's a green bag.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Precisely Again, as I'm sharing this, I'm both sharing all this information but also feeling a little vulnerable, because I'm sharing, like, where we might have vulnerabilities, but we have IT Audit Labs, so I'm feeling secure and safe. But if we think about the process of trash and processing trash from a security aspect, there are bad actors. The same bad actors Nick and I were chatting earlier, the same bad actors that we've been fighting for hundreds of years are now doing it in this new way with cybersecurity.

Speaker 4: 16:47

Yeah, you know, jumping into the military aspect, you know, is there any ways that you are directly connecting your military experience to your job now, and how ITI Out of Labs is helping in this security space?

Speaker 2: 16:59

Well, so I mean, once you have been trained in the military, that journey never goes away, and so for me it's like. It's like it's like being someone who is new to an area and, through assimilation, is learning the language how I have team meetings, to how we're identifying workloads and schedules, and even where we put additional safety equipment or cameras up. It all, for me, goes back to that original training and where there might be vulnerabilities.

Speaker 4: 17:30

Yeah, I don't know For me. Maybe, trista, you feel the same way and a leader outside of the military told me this once and I use it to draw back to my military experience we had a major outage. This is 10, 10 plus years ago, and you know I was a little bit more frantic earlier on in my career and he just looked at me and said nobody's, nobody's dying. You know, we're, we're, we're all good you know we're, we're all good.

Speaker 4: 17:54

So now I think you know when we're working with organizations, big or small, you know it's. I think it's a lot easier for us now to you know put these items into boxes and move them strategically around. What's important now, what's important in the future? Uh, so we can you know if there's a risk register maybe that we're working with. We can pick items three and seven and work on them first, versus maybe one and two that aren't, you know, maybe as big of an issue right now but could be in the future. So being able to, you know, maybe dummy some things down that aren't as big of a deal in the moment, has been, has been big, and I'm sure you know, maybe you're seeing the same thing.

Speaker 2: 18:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just when you all did the audit report for us, after kind of giving us a good assessment, you know, and Eric's like where do you want to start? And I'm like you tell me, like what is the biggest risk? I want to start at the most vulnerable and go from there so that we and for us, you know, as you mentioned, we're a working facility it is a dangerous place to work or can be a dangerous place to work. So you know, there are lives at stake if we get it wrong on certain areas. So if we're not calculating loads and input and outputs of just the weight and volume and what's there, that becomes a risk. And so we, you know, we kind of have that risk there of analyzing what that looks like and it all comes back to do we have a good hygiene on our network.

Speaker 3: 19:11

Do you see the opportunity for more automation in the space and maybe using machines that would maybe help save human lives?

Speaker 2: 19:21

Yes, I do. I do think that there's room for more automation. Some of the work is always going to be manual, right? So maintenance of machines, repair of equipment. But there's opportunity in making our work easier so we can do more.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Just connecting several dots here with what's going in the garbage. Is there anything we shouldn't be putting in the trash from a security perspective, or even a cybersecurity perspective?

Speaker 2: 19:46

No one's looking that close at the trash and it's going to be ground up in stuff, so I think that that is actually probably safe From a physical security aspect. Things that shouldn't go in the trash are what's going to harm our equipment or destroy our cameras or other infrastructure. Like lithium batteries no, they're great for technology, they're in everything. They can't go in the trash. They start fires very easily. Also, don't put them in your junk drawer at home because you're going to have a fire at some point. So, just as a reminder, because everyone's got their batteries in their drawer, don't do that with lithium batteries. They start fires.

Speaker 2: 20:22

We have a website that is got a ton of information and they can learn more. They can even type in, you know, on the question of like where do I take whatever information? If it's a, where do I take my propane tank? And it will help you search where to go. Obviously, there's all kinds of search engines, but they can come directly to our website. So just recyclingandenergyorg. You can go on and takea look. There's tons of information. Again, you can watch the virtual tour and watch the robots we've been talking about and see firsthand. You can sign up for a tour or you can just shoot me an email and I'm. You know I love showing off our facility so people can come and take a look.

Speaker 4: 21:00

I think we need to corner the market for the recycling and energy for the military. Yeah, all of our trash in theater in Afghanistan. Um, I don't know, maybe that probably can't be the best method. There's always something going off over there and the smell will never leave.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Yeah best part about it, nick, is you can go visit the cats at the factory at the uh there I can't wait to visit all the cats at the factory.

Speaker 2: 21:27

We do have. We have unionized cats at the plant, yeah, but Nick, actually that's like a whole other after-hours podcast about them the.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Nick can name your cats for you, trista, mr.

Speaker 4: 21:45

Meowgie. Caddy Perry. Caddy Perry, yep General Meow. Sp. Catty Perry. Catty Perry, yep General Meow.

Speaker 1: 21:53

Those are his cat's names. Well, this is a great place to leave it for today. You've been listening to the Audit presented by IT.

Speaker 4: 22:00

Oh, there we go. We're back in the military smoke bed.

Speaker 3: 22:04

You have been listening to the Audit presented by IT Audit Labs. We are experts at assessing risk and compliance, while providing administrative and technical controls to improve our clients' data security. Our threat assessments find the soft spots before the bad guys do, identifying likelihood and impact, while our security control assessments rank the level of maturity relative to the size of your organization, thanks to our devoted listeners and followers, as well as our producer, joshua J Schmidt. Thank you.