Our Climate Journey with Victoria Plummer
“To me, sustainability means being smart about energy use, taking only what you need, and trying to leave things better than we found them.”
Victoria Plummer
Vice President, Operations-West
Victoria Plummer is Zum’s VP of Operations, West, and comes to the company with over 30 years of experience in operations and hospitality management. The youngest of five siblings, Victoria enjoys spending time with family throughout the world, including in England, Spain, and throughout the U.S. In her free time, she enjoys hot yoga, hiking, skiing, and anything outdoors.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
To me, sustainability means being smart about energy use, taking only what you need, and trying to leave things better than we found them.
I grew up in a very small village in England, where resources were often limited and not readily accessible, especially compared to modern life in the U.S. So we were fairly self-sufficient—my parents grew most of our produce, and instilled the value of being resourceful and respectful of nature.
That has strongly informed my outlook on sustainability today. I’m a big proponent of recycling and conserving resources, things that prioritize long-term environmental health. For instance, I live in Arizona, where it’s certainly hot in the summer—but I only turn on the air conditioning when it’s necessary. If I can cool the house down passively, by opening the windows, I’ll do that instead. Or, because it’s hot in Arizona, we’re always trying to be conservative with water, especially as communities start limiting use with respect to watering lawns.
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?
Before living in Arizona, my family and I were in Seattle. It sounds counterintuitive, but we moved to Arizona in part because of climate change.
In Seattle, over the last two decades, weather was getting more and more extreme. Summers were hotter, winters brought more severe storms that left us and many others without power. Air conditioning used to be uncommon; by 2015, it was essential. Forest fires destroyed acres of natural landscape and greatly lowered our air quality. These were material factors in my family’s decision to leave the Pacific Northwest.
Of course, living in Arizona, we’re also feeling the impact. Arizona just experienced the hottest summer on record, with 113 consecutive days of temperatures reaching over 100°F. I personally don’t mind the heat too much, but it raises concerns—the planet will only get hotter, temperatures will only climb higher.
To deal with that, as mentioned before, my family and I do the best we can to reduce energy consumption and conserve resources. We’re exploring solar panels for our home, and have reduced our water consumption by installing turf instead of live grass.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
In my work, I spend most of my time at our yards, so that’s where I see our company tackling climate change.
Other people have talked about reusable cups at our yards—which I love—and how, by being more efficient with our routing, we’re saving our school districts money and minimizing the number of buses that need to be on the road on any given day, which is of course better for air quality.
More efficient routing is great in and of itself, and it leads to so many other positive changes as well. Because of our cutting-edge routing technology, we ARE much more efficient—and that means we have more buses free more often. At Zum, we deploy buses not only for home-to-school and school-to-home transportation, but also for after school extracurricular activities, like sports and field trips. The more efficient we are with our daily school routing, the more we can support our school district partners with rides to and from field trips and sporting events. Our yard in Spokane is doing a particularly fantastic job of getting young students to and from sports and field trips.
This is critical on so many levels. Deploying our buses to support extracurricular activities means there are students who get to experience a fuller school experience who otherwise might not have. The students who might not otherwise get to attend field trips or sports are the ones who are already underserved, so offering these services makes the school experience more equitable. And of course, transporting students in buses is much more efficient than having fifty separate families all driving their children to and from events in private cars, so it’s an environmental win as well.
Zum can continue fighting against climate change by supporting after school activities, which is an academic, equity, and environmental win all at once.