Free NRC Legislative Committee Webinar on Key Topics for EPR for Packaging Legislation
May 12, 2022
The idea of holding producers accountable for the packaging that they use is being recognized as a way that state and local governments can reduce packaging waste and increase recovery for reuse or recycling without burdening local governments with the cost of managing these recovery programs. The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) Legislative Committee has been discussing the topic of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for Packaging as it relates to NRC Policy and has recently developed a draft document entitled “Key Topics for Consideration Regarding EPR for Packaging and Producer Responsibility Legislation”. The NRC has begun circulating this document as a draft to the NRC membership with the NRC Legislative Committee collecting comments to assist the NRC in further refining and building consensus regarding the document’s content. The NRC Legislative Committee is hosting this free webinar to outline the draft document and facilitate a constructive dialogue regarding these topics.
When: May 12, 2022 – 2:00-3:00pm EST / 11:00-12:00am PST
Webinar Presenters
Pete Adrian, Recycling Coordinator, Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, Illinois (SWALCO)
Wayne Gjerde, Recycling Market Development Coordinator, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Moderator
Lisa Skumatz, Principal, Skumatz Economic Research Associates (SERA)
Registration Link: https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zQDLQx_fQhCjcYvxHwzpVQ
Presenter Biographies
Pete Adrian is the Recycling Coordinator for the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, Illinois (SWALCO). He has been with SWALCO since 2001 and is principally managing the Agency’s Electronics Collection Program, monitoring 40+ municipal residential and commercial waste and recycling service contracts and implementing various food waste diversion and composting programs, including the coordination of a USDA Community Compost and Food Waste Reduction Grant. He also assists with implementing various recycling education and awareness programs and their household chemical waste collection program. Pete holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Northern Illinois University. As a board member of the National Recycling Coalition, he is Co-Chair of the NRC Legislative Committee. He is currently Vice President of the Illinois Counties Solid Waste Management Association and is serving as the SWANA Sustainable Materials Management Technical Division liaison to the International Solid Waste Association, Recycling and Waste Minimization Working Group.
Wayne Gjerde is the Recycling Market Development Coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Wayne consults with startup and expanding companies in the areas of finance, new product development, business plan development, sales and marketing. Wayne has also done extensive work in economic analysis linking the environment and economy and extended producer responsibility and management. He has worked in the private and public sector. He earned his B.S. in Business Administration at St. John’s University-Collegeville, MN and attended the Minnesota Bankers Commercial Lending School and Robert Morris Associates Commercial Lending School. Wayne is an NRC Board member, was elected to the Executive Committee and Co-Chairs the NRC Markets Council.
Moderator Biography
Lisa A. Skumatz, PH.D. is an economist and has been active in performance evaluation, measurement, scenario modeling, and funding issues for solid waste programs and policies 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. Recent work focuses on Triple Bottom Line measurement, state and national policy / legislation options, national level work on contamination and carbon strategies, and state / local Organics and ZW Plans. She has been active in NRC since the 1980s, and currently serves as Board Chair. She is also an elected member of SWANA National’s Policy Advisory Committee. She has won multiple national and state-level Lifetime Achievement Awards for her work in Pay As You Throw and quantitative policy analyses. Lisa is Principal of the research and consulting firm Skumatz Economic Research Associates (SERA), a WBE based in Colorado. She can be reached at skumatz@serainc.com, www.serainc.com.