Our Climate Journey with Shilpan Patel
“When I think about building a sustainable future, I think about running a marathon. A marathon as a whole is very daunting. Twenty-six miles! That’s a lot of running. But if you break the race up into bits, it becomes manageable. I think we need to take the same approach to building a sustainable future—chipping away at it, one day to the time.”
Shilpan Patel
School Operations, Routing & Training
Shilpan joined Zum in 2019, and has since contributed in a variety of valuable roles, predominantly in Zum’s bus yards. Last year, he was instrumental in helping the company’s East Coast debut, and today continues to keep Zum on the leading edge of student transportation in Howard County, Maryland. Originally from India, he moved to California at a young age, and has lived there since. In his free time he loves staying active; you’ll often find him playing basketball, on the archery range, or backpacking in the great outdoors.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
When most people talk about sustainability, they jump right to nature and greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s definitely those things. But to me, it’s more about how we do things, our behavior. It’s about finding the sweet spot between how we behave now, and how we think about the future. We have to live our lives and take care of the population today, but we also have to set ourselves up for success in the future. It’s about balance; finding the right mix of today and tomorrow.
When I think about building a sustainable future, I think about running a marathon. A marathon as a whole is very daunting. Twenty-six miles! That’s a lot of running. But if you break the race up into bits, it becomes manageable. I think we need to take the same approach to building a sustainable future—chipping away at it, one day to the time. We have to run at a pace we can sustain in order to cross the finish line.
Let me give an example. At Zum, I currently help oversee operations in Howard County, Maryland. Part of that means trying to make our routes and student transportation service as efficient as possible. It’s a challenge I enjoy—the struggle of optimizing all of our routes, while not making so many changes that our drivers, students, and families can’t keep track of what’s going on. That’s what I mean about balance—if you make too many changes too quickly, it upsets the current ecosystem. But you also have to solve bigger problems and ultimately drive toward a bigger goal, whether that’s a more effective bus depot, or a more sustainable planet. To me, it’s the same process.
Climate change is the single greatest threat to our way of life, but it can sometimes feel abstract, far away, a problem for another time. How has climate change affected you personally?
I’m originally from California. When I lived there, I used to play and coach basketball. California is known for having great weather, right? And it used to. When I was young, I remember playing outside on the courts for hours and hours on any given day in the summer. Growing up, my team of kids that I would coach would play for four or five hours, no problem. But weather patterns are getting more and more volatile.
In recent years, I’d notice the heat getting so intense that you couldn’t really be outside for a long duration—not without putting the kids at risk. Or there would be wildfires throughout Northern California, with smoke reaching far up or down the state and dramatically worsening the air quality. So we’d play for an hour or two, and then we’d have to go back inside or call it a day. It’s unfortunate, because the great outdoors is part of what makes California so great, and doubly unfortunate because so many greener, more sustainable choices actually take place outside—walking, running, or cycling instead of driving; playing outside instead of using electricity inside.
It’s a tiny example, but that makes climate change real to me.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
At a high level, the company is already taking a big bite out of climate change by converting all of our buses to EVs in the next few years. That’s huge. At a small level, we’re also contributing in our yards by shifting away from printing paper and doing everything digitally. Routes, communications, checklists—all of that is automated, all of that is digital. We’re saving a ton of paper, which is great.
As we grow, I’d also love to see us do more volunteering. Could we plant trees? Could we clean up parks? Could we partner with schools to provide transportation to student volunteers? I’d love to see us donate old clothes and food, or create something like a “back to school drive” at our yards, where we partner with local organizations to provide school supplies to underserved parents and families. As a society, we create so much waste, and there are families who could use help.
Sustainability is a mentality, and we can all do more to act in accordance with that mentality. At Zum, I’d love to see us do the same, and I’d be happy to lead the charge.