Think you know your waste stream?  Or what’s been causing more contamination?  Strong interest in a December 2021 National ZW Conference session indicated a more in-depth webinar on these topics were warranted.  This webinar drills down into recent shifts in waste characterization, and successful strategies for addressing contamination. 

Webinar description: An early step in planning for zero waste is having a good understanding about what items our communities are discarding in their waste bins—but how has this shifted during the pandemic? This session will share findings on pandemic waste trends, including key takeaways about the big shifts we’re seeing with regard to specific materials, such as plastics, organics, and paper items commonly discarded by residents and businesses.

… And with the fervent interest in cleaner materials that can be marketed successfully and used in the US and internationally, the second part of the webinar dives into the array of strategies being used to address contamination – and 1) what short and medium-term strategies are proving successful (and which are NOT), 2) what can and cannot beat economics, and 3) what options are likely to be effective in the bigger scheme of things.

Bring your questions for the experts!

SPEAKERS:

Amity Lumper: Amity is President and Owner at Cascadia Consulting Group, a small women-owned sustainability firm with offices in Seattle, WA and Oakland, CA. She brings 25 years of experience in Zero Waste and has served various cities, corporations, universities, and institutions across North America.

Lisa Skumatz:  Lisa is an economist and has been active in planning, performance evaluation, measurement, and funding issues in solid waste for more than 40 years.  Her work is data-driven, and she has conducted projects at the local, state, and national level in the US and overseas, and has more than 150 publications in the field.  She is Principal of Skumatz Economic Research Associates (SERA), a WBE based in Colorado.  

Ann Gibbs Vander Vliet:  Ann excels at Excel modeling in the solid waste field, and has developed cost, performance, and scenario models of residential and commercial collection options, as well as detailed models of MRF flow and metrics of cost-assignment from dump and pick operations through mega-MRFs.  She also leads SERA’s survey work, and is currently task manager for SERA’s work on the State of Colorado Organics Plan.