Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Co-located with WasteExpo
Join us for real talk as the waste and recycling industry takes on plastics, packaging, and other environmental challenges – and our role in building a sustainable future.
The tsunami of plastics is here, what now? Amazon has forever changed the waste stream, how do we evolve with it? Textiles and food waste are filling up landfills and causing climate change at a staggering rate.
Beyond recycling…how can we all do our part and lead this charge? Landfills alone won’t do the trick. Who’s ready to innovate toward a sustainable future?
Sessions Include:
- Setting the Stage for Sustainability in the Waste Industry
- Taming the Chaos of the Plastics Crisis
- Recycling’s Role: Talking Big Ideas + Solutions
- Unpacking the Business of Sustainable Materials
- Sustainability Is Good Business
- Undressing Textile Waste to Achieve Circularity
- Taking a Bite Out of Climate Change through Food Waste Solutions
- Understanding the Science of Sustainability in Waste & Recycling
- CAPSTONE: So, Where Do We Go from Here?
8:20 - 9:00am
Keynote: Setting the Stage for Sustainability in the Waste Industry
Speaker: Susan Robinson, Senior Director of Sustainability & Policy, Waste Management
9:00 - 10:00am
Taming the Chaos of the Plastics Crisis
Dave Ford, Founder of the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network, and Ian Rosenberger, Founder of First Mile, will take us on a journey around the world intended to deepen our understanding of one of the most complex crises of our time.
While there is much agreement on the problem, there are significant differences across stakeholder groups about solving the issue. We’ll explore the vast, in many cases, oppositional stakeholders involved with the plastics crisis. In addition, we’ll explore the leading activist-driven solutions, industry-driven solutions, the burgeoning call for a Global Plastics Treaty, and an in-depth look at the waste crisis in the Global South and the waste collectors who are the last line of defense between waste in the environment.
Speakers: Dave Ford, Co-Founder, Ocean Plastics Leadership Network; Ian Rosenberger, Founder & CEO, First Mile and Day Owl
10:00 am - 10:45 am
Recycling’s Role: Talking Big Ideas + Solutions
Speakers: Nick Doyle, North America Recycling Area Sales Manager, TOMRA Recycling; Ty Rhoad, Regional Director Americas, TOMRA Recycling
11:00 am - 11:45 am
Understanding the Science of Sustainability in Waste & Recycling
Speaker: Bryan Staley, CEO, Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF)
11:45 am - 12:30 pm
Sustainability is Good Business
Speaker: Paul Stauder, President, Covanta Environmental Solutions
1:15 pm - 2:00 pm
Undressing Textile Waste to Achieve Circularity
Progress over the past 5 years – textile circularity is now firmly on the sustainability agenda; reuse and recommerce is scaling and becoming more socially acceptable; brand and industry commitments indicate their potential willingness to adopt important supply chain shifts like replacing virgin fibers with recycled ones; and supportive tech is beginning to target data gaps across the value chain through companies like Eon, Digimarc, and others.
Now comes the heavy lift – we must build textile recovery infrastructure and networks: collection, sorting, and processing capacity for end of life textiles. We have to invest in R&D for advanced sorting technologies and integrate those technologies into the networks of domestic charities and graders and fill gaps where they exist.
Many questions remain including:
• What are the most effective collection systems?
• Economics
• Processing
• Composition
• Demand
Speaker: Marisa Adler, Senior Consultant, Resource Recycling Systems
2:00 pm - 2:45pm
Delivering Hope Through Sustainable Packaging
Speakers: Cory Connors, Sustainable Packaging Consultant, Landsberg Orora; Jonathan Quinn, E-commerce Packaging Market Manager, NOVA Chemicals
3:00 pm - 3:45pm
Unpacking the Business of Sustainable Materials
Speaker: Jonathan North, VP, Sustainable & Core Solutions, Rehrig Pacific
3:45 pm - 4:15 pm
CAPSTONE: So, Where Do We Go From Here?
Speaker: Susan Robinson, Senior Director of Sustainability & Policy, Waste Management
Speakers Include:
Marisa Adler
Senior Consultant
Resource Recycling Systems
Cory Connors
Sustainable Packaging Consultant
Landsberg Orora
Nick Doyle
North America Recycling Area Sales Manager
TOMRA Recycling
Dave Ford
Co-Founder
Ocean Plastics Leadership Network
Emily Broad Leib
Clinical Professor & Director
Food Law & Policy Clinic
Harvard Law School
Jonathan North
VP, Sustainable & Core Solutions
Rehrig Pacific
Jonathan Quinn
E-commerce Packaging Market Manager
NOVA Chemicals
Ty Rhoad
Regional Director Americas
TOMRA Recycling
Susan Robinson
Senior Director of Sustainability & Policy
Waste Management
Ian Rosenberger
Founder & CEO
First Mile and Day Owl
Ryan Schoenike
Co-Founder
OceanCycle
Bryan Staley
CEO
Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF)
Paul Stauder
President
Covanta Environmental Solutions
Marisa Adler
Senior Consultant
Resource Recycling Systems
Marisa Adler is a senior consultant with Resource Recycling Systems. In her role at RRS, Marisa develops strategies and approaches for corporate and municipal clients to advance their waste reduction and sustainable material management goals. Her interest in systems-level thinking has led her to pursue scalable end-to-end recovery pathways for waste materials, with a focus on textiles. Marisa has studied PET material flows in light of competing demands for rPET among brands and across industries; conducted sourcing analyses of cotton and polyester textile waste for emerging chemical recycling technologies; and developed recovery strategies for large scale generators of textile waste. She is a member of the Textile Exchange’s rPET Working group and Home and Hospitality Recycling Working Group. Marisa has also been a guest speaker on textile recovery with the Sustainable Furnishings Council, DC Sustainable Fashion Collective, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Textile Exchange.
Dave Ford
Co-Founder
Ocean Plastics Leadership Network
Dave Ford is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network.
His introduction to the plastics crisis took place on an impromptu one-day waste tour in Delhi, India. He toured the Ghazipur landfill, a mountain of waste on the outskirts of town. The giant mound was smoking from fires deep underneath, and hundreds of people were wading through the trash, reclaiming plastic. The impact and understanding that this profound experience garnered catalyzed his passion for taking executives to experience the plastic crisis firsthand.
Eighteen months later, the Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit set sail and immersed 165 corporate and NGO leaders into the heart of the Atlantic Garbage Patch (500 miles off the coast of Bermuda). CEOs and activists had difficult conversations and gathered plastic in the middle of the ocean. The 100+ organization activist-to-industry Ocean Plastics Leadership Network (OPLN) was born on this mission.
In 2021 the OPLN launched the Global Treaty Dialogues, a global virtual summit series engineered to build capacity and understanding around a Global Plastics Treaty. Participants include one hundred forty organizations from 34 countries across the vast plastic stakeholder spectrum.
Dave has Baltimore roots, living with his wife and four-year-old daughter in the Hudson Valley, New York.
Susan Robinson
Senior Director of Sustainability & Policy
Waste Management
Susan Robinson leads WM’s Sustainability Team. In this role, she is responsible for WM’s sustainability policy, advocacy and reporting. Her 30+ years in the industry includes work in the public sector, non-profit environmental work, consultancy, and over 25 years in the private sector. Susan’s experience includes global commodity marketing, research and analysis of industry trends, and twenty years managing municipal solid waste and recycling contracts.
Susan is active on several boards including the American Institute for Packaging and Environment (Ameripen), Paper Stock Industries (PSI), the Southeast Recycling Development Council (SERDC), and the ReFED Advisory Council.
Susan attended Stanford University and holds a B.S. in Applied Earth Sciences from the University of Washington. Her Masters work in Environmental Studies is from The Evergreen State College.
Bryan Staley
President & CEO
Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF)
Dr. Bryan Staley currently serves as President and CEO of the Environmental Research and Education Foundation (EREF), one of the largest sources of research funding and scholarships related to solid waste management. He joined the EREF in 2008, where he started as vice-president of environmental programs, and has 25 years of experience in the environmental engineering field (with 16 of these years related to solid waste). He is recognized nationally as technical expert in sustainable solid waste management issues and holds degrees from N.C. State University (PhD, B.S.) and the University of Tennessee (M.S.).
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