Our Climate Journey with Don Davidson
“To me, sustainability is paying attention to the long chain of cause and effect–how everything we do impacts something else down the line.”
Don Davidson
Charter Account Executive
Don Davidson, Charter Account Executive for Zūm in Omaha, Kansas City, and Spokane, brings over 10 years experience selling sustainability product solutions in both the US and abroad. He is tasked with scaling Zūm charter business in local markets.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
To me, sustainability is paying attention to the long chain of cause and effect—how everything we do impacts something else down the line.
I grew up part of a farming family in Iowa. That meant living off of the land, understanding exactly where our food came from, being acutely aware of how human beings affect the environment around us. As a kid, I learned that soil is a living organism—that pumping the earth full of chemicals leads to bad runoff and unhealthy soil, which leads to less nutritious plants, which leads to unhealthy animals, and poor sources of nutrition for humans. In short, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
When I entered the workforce, I found myself in regenerative agriculture—I wanted to be part of systems that took care of the land, of the planet. Today, I work at Zum, but I’m still very aware of the cause and effect of our decisions: how important it is to minimize packaging, limit single-use plastics, aim for reusable materials at every point of purchase. We exist in a circular ecosystem with the planet, so a circular consumer economy is very important. Respecting the long chain of cause and effect, maintaining that circular economy—that’s what sustainability means to me.
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?
My family is originally from Scotland—the northern part, the Highlands, where there are lots of farmers and open fields.
A few years back, my father, my brother, and I went back to visit. I was blown away by many things, though perhaps none more than how our relatives still grow food—in small batches, taking the greatest care of what goes into the soil, making sure everything is nutrient rich and actually nutritious to eat. It’s so different from the way we do things in America, where everything is about scale and industrialization.
That’s what makes the discrepancy in how they experience climate change so frustrating. Small farms in Scotland hardly contribute at all to climate change, yet they have to bear the brunt of weather swings and increasing global temperatures like everyone else, and because they’re small, local operations, they don’t have advanced tools and resources to deal with the effects of climate change, like scaled-up, industrialized food producers in the U.S. do. Seeing the obstacles these farmers face, when they’re trying to do everything right—it’s hard.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
I work on our Charter business, deploying our buses when they’re not in use by our school district partners.
Think about it: a school bus is only in use part of the time—in the morning and afternoon, when transporting students to and from school. The rest of the time—at night, and especially during the weekends—most buses sit idle and aren’t used. That’s where our team comes in—maximizing the use of each bus, and helping as many people get around as possible. We support tons of organizations and groups across the country with rides on our buses, and we’re doing more and more of this kind of work each year.
Recently, in Omaha, Nebraska, I met with the leadership team of a museum that displays and preserves the history of the United States’ Midwest region. As it turned out, — the museum wants to use our charter services for not just area students, but to also get senior citizens from their retirement centers and living facilities to the museum and back. We are thrilled to support their group—and we found out during the process that they chose us precisely because we’re electrifying our fleet and leading the way toward decarbonized transportation. The museum staff is full of older volunteers who weren’t sure what impact they could have as they entered their later years, particularly in the fight against climate change, but by partnering with Zum, they’re contributing to the electrification of transportation and a future where people get around via sustainable, clean-powered sources.