Room 289

Join us for a frank and transparent discussion on how TerraCycle has embraced and continues to support each aspect of the waste hierarchy – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Tom Szaky, CEO and founder, will bring us through a holistic overview of TerraCycle, through their various community, home and corporate partnerships. With each journey we’ll learn what happens to a specific example product; we’ll follow it through, hear and see it’s lifecycle stages from form to finish. Hyper-local and national partnerships supplement the efforts across all these efforts. They serve at home, at facilities, at businesses; they offer reuse (and refill), new life products, volunteer-driven, and sponsored programs. Hear how each of these unique offerings and partnerships have developed, some out of necessity, some organically (pun intended). Bring your questions, Tom will leave ample time at the end for audience Q&A.

Speaker:
Tom Szaky, CEO & Founder, TerraCycle

Room 289

Last year, we agreed that business can make the world a better place. This year, we’ll continue our conversation about one powerful tool that inspires individual and industry-wide change: carbon labeling.

Transparency is the foundation of ESG, and carbon labeling can provide a standardized method for comparing the environmental impacts of products. The auto industry labels vehicle emissions and food and CPG businesses voluntarily detail, and display the carbon footprint of their products.

Discover why product labels can better our planet; get inspired by fresh perspectives from industries pioneering product transparency. Join the discussion on how the waste industry can standardize carbon labels. Don’t miss this session - so unique you can’t google it.

Just a bit of what you can expect:

• Learn just how transparent product-level carbon footprints are.
• Hear how other industries are faring with adoption, authenticity, and overcoming challenges.
• Discuss next steps for standardizing carbon footprint communication, especially related to equipment and bales of recyclables.                                                                                                     

Speaker:
Kristin Kinder, VP of Research and Waste Stream Sustainability, Wastequip
Additional panelists to be named.

Room 289

If every home in the U.S. had adequate access to recycling, we would STILL lose more than half of all residential recyclable material – that amounts to roughly 15 million tons of economic value and environmental benefit lost each year. Our industry know why - Americans are confused about what and how to recycle and lack confidence in the processes. If we want to improve recycling, and ultimately mobilize household participation in the circular economy, we need to help strengthen recycling behavior in homes.  

In this session, The Recycling Partnership will share their new research from The Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact that will help shed light on how we can help communities optimize recycling, including:

• Consumer segmentation and ethnographic research that document resident barriers and sentiments towards recycling.
• Insights from research - residents motivations, challenges, and systems for recycling; areas where we can better assist.
• Learnings from 19 different intervention strategies – what worked, what didn’t.
• Measuring the impact of programmatic and educational programs effectiveness.

Speaker:
Louise Bruce, Managing Director, Center for Sustainable Behavior and Impact, The Recycling Partnership

Room 289

A behind-the-scenes look at what’s needed to enable the reuse economy to become mainstream. Leading experts from three different sectors will discuss the current state of reuse infrastructure and what is required. Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of Re:Dish, will focus on industrial scale washing solutions for reusable food packaging. Damon Carson, President of Repurposed Materials, will discuss the infrastructure needed to recapture commercial products for reuse that would otherwise go to waste. Mike Newman, CEO of Returnity, will discuss the building blocks needed for your audience to develop scalable packaging reuse programs.

Attendees can expect to:

• Understand the complex system behind scaling a reuse economy.
• Gain in depth understanding of challenges and opportunities experienced by leaders in the world of reuse.
• Confirm how the zero waste hierarchy plays an important role in the overall mission to repurpose materials and reduce waste.

Speakers:
Caroline Vanderlip, CEO, Re:Dish
Damon Carson, President, Repurposed Materials
Mike Newman, CEO, Returnity

Room 289

A circular economy is like mom and apple pie. It’s fundamental to materials management, everyone supports it and we can’t have a circular economy without recycled content. So, minimum content should be easy peasy. During this session, you’ll hear about the barriers that are keeping this from crossing the finish line.

Moderator and Speaker:
Bill Keegan, President, Dem-Con Companies
Additional panelists to be named

Room 289

Scope 3 emissions are defined as emissions caused by indirect impacts from your operations. Hence, the concept of waste diversion falls into Scope 3 territory for companies and represents opportunity for our industry. Notably, Scope 3 also specifically includes GHG emissions reduction efforts.

Nerd-out with us as we explore the Scope 3 approach to project work and how our industry can directly help companies deliver on their emissions goals. We’ll learn about prioritizing efforts on minimization and reuse. You can expect to hear more on this and also:

• The best GHG impact for disposal – hint: it’s almost always not landfill/incineration.
• Mapping out a zero waste event.
• Examples of where and when GHG calculations trump weight-based zerio wste operations.
• Location, location, location – why distance is often the differentiator.

Let’s look at this together with a different lens. It’s about stepping outside of immediate profits to prioritize future emissions benefits.

Speaker:
Monica Rowand, Sustainability Consultant, WM

Room 289

There’s impact and then there’s unique and extraordinary impact. In Philadelphia there’s an unlikely relationship between the for-profit C&D recycling company, Revolution Recovery (RR), and the art & culture nonprofit, Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR). By existing in the same space, RAIR’s creativity is a deep a source of pride for RR and in turn, RR gives artists an immersive experience in the waste stream. A truly unique enclave for arts & culture.

Hear how this 10+ year partnership, with international recognition, is demonstrating how the juxtaposition between art and industry, with functionally different organizations, can be mutually beneficial and stronger in surprising ways.

This session will show how embracing creativity can spur a larger dialogue on, and unique diversion methods for the waste industry. It will also:

• Demonstrate how for-profit/nonprofits partnerships multiply impact.
• Show how creativity opens dialogue and inspires behavior change at the individual, organizational, and community scales.

Join us, if like these companies, you’re willing to think differently, find common ground, and have a desire to help change the way people think about waste.

Speakers:
Billy Dufala, Co-founder and Director of Residencies, Recycled Artist In Residency
Fern Gookin, Director of Sustainability, Revolution Recovery