Bios and Presentations of Conference Speakers [listed alphabetically]

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Peter Anderson [email] [top] [conference page]

Peter Anderson is President of RecycleWorlds Consulting, Executive Director of the Center for a Competitive Waste Industry, and Project Director for the multi-state Plastic Redesign Project. He has been Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Department of Applied Economics on recycling systems, chairperson of the National Recycling Coalition Policy Workgroup and its Landfill Subcommittee and landfill consultant for the Grassroots Recycling Network. Previously, he has operated a buyback and processing center. He received his BS in economics from Cornell University and his MS in solid waste planning and industrial organization of the solid waste industry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He has published articles in Beverage World, BioCycle, Resource Recycling, Environmental Decisions, MSW Management, Recycling Times, Waste News, Elements 2000, Waste Age, Environmental Protection Magazine and other solid waste journals; and he has been an invited speaker at the National Recycling Congress, the National League of Cities, the World Recycling Congress, the US Conference of Mayors, the Solid Waste Association of North America, Bev-Pak, Pack-Expo, the BioCycle National Conference, the Northeast Recycling Council, the Rose Institute for State and Local Government, the U.S. Composting Council, the University of Wisconsin Extension Solid Waste Seminars, the California Resource Recycling Association, the Association of Oregon Recyclers, the Association of Recyclers of Wisconsin, the Illinois Recycling Association, the Pennsylvania Recycling Conference, the North Carolina Recycling Association, the Colorado Recycling Association, the Recycling Association of Minnesota, the Recycling Council of Ontario, the Minnesota Environmental Initiative and elsewhere.

Rick Anthony [email] [top] [conference page]

Richard V. Anthony began his career in Public Administration in 1971 as a manager of the California State University Long Beach Recycling Center. He received a MS in Public Administration in 1974. Mr. Anthony has worked as a program manager in the Resource Management, Conservation and Recovery field for more than 30 years.

Richard Anthony is a founder and member of the Board of Directors of the California Resource Recovery Association, the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Zero Waste International Alliance, the USA National Recycling Coalition (past board member) and Keep California Beautiful (board member).

Karen Asp [email] [top] [conference page]

Karen is a senior environmental planner and policy analyst with Gartner Lee Limited, a Canadian environmental consulting firm. She started her career over 13 years ago as a program manager with Ridge Meadows Recycling Society, one of Canada’s oldest - and still thriving - community based recycling service providers. She has since worked for the Environmentally Sound Packaging (ESP) Coalition of Canada and as Director of Policy and Communications for the Recycling Council of British Columbia. Most recently, as a policy analyst for the BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, she played a key role in the development of the proposed Extended Producer Responsibility Regulation, a performance-based regulation that would incorporate a range of existing EPR programs as well providing the basis for inclusion of new product categories, including electronic equipment.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr. [email] [top] [conference page]

As governor, Brown presided over a state where 25% of the nation's new jobs were created. He established the first agricultural labor relations law in the country, started the California Conservation Corp (CCC), enacted into permanent law the California Coastal Protection Act, successfully pushed for the country's first building and appliance energy efficiency standards, halted nuclear power development and made California the leader in solar and alternative energy. He brought more women, minorities, gays and lesbians into high government positions than any other chief executive, including the first woman, African-American and Latino to the California Supreme Court. Brown also legalized the practice of acupuncture and strongly supported the rights of chiropractors, osteopaths and lay midwives.

Finally, Brown restructured the California Arts Commission and filled it with artists and increased funding by 1300%. As governor, Brown signed into law the removal of criminal penalties for sexual acts between consenting adults.

After his defeat by Pete Wilson in a 1982 U.S. Senate race, Brown spent six months in Japan and worked briefly with Mother Teresa in India. He practiced law in Los Angeles and in 1989 became chairman of the state Democratic Party. He resigned that position in 1991, expressing his disgust with the growing influence of money in politics, and sought the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination. During that campaign he refused to take contributions larger than $100 and used an "800" number to raise funds.

Despite limited financial resources, Brown defeated Bill Clinton in Maine, Colorado, Vermont, Connecticut, Utah and Nevada during the 1992 Presidential primaries and was the only candidate other than Clinton to receive enough voter support to continue until the Democratic National Convention.

Brown began broadcast of his radio program, "We the People" with Jerry Brown on January 31, 1994. He continued conducting interviews with global players on such issues as the environment, philosophy and political issues on the air until October 28, 1997, the start of his campaign for Mayor of Oakland, California. Running on a platform of crime reduction, education, downtown revitalization (his "10k Plan") and a celebration of the arts, Brown won the mayoral primary in June of 1998 with close to a 2/3 vote, and was inaugurated in January 1999. He led the City in a unique inaugural gala, which celebrated the cultural diversity and richness of Oakland's neighborhoods. Brown was recently re-elected to serve a second term as Oakland's Mayor, a term which began in January 2003.

Paul Connett [email] [top] [conference page]

Since 1983 Dr. Paul Connett has taught chemistry at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he specializes in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Over the past 20 years his research on waste management has taken him to 49 states in the US, and 47 other countries, where he has given approximately 2000 pro bono public presentations. He has co-authored 6 peer reviewed articles on dioxin and numerous other articles on waste management (see http://www.no-burn.org). His most recent publication on waste is a booklet "A Citizens' Agenda for Zero Waste" co-authored by Dr. Bill Sheehan (see http://www.grrn.org). Dr. Connett is currently producing a series of videotapes on Zero Waste.

Sheila Davis [email] [top] [conference page]

Ms Davis has worked on electronic recycling and environmental sustainability issues for the past eight years. While Community Development Director for Materials for the Future Foundation (MFF) Ms Davis worked with Northern California municipalities, businesses and community based organizations to integrate environmental and community economic development goals. She implemented the first curbside residential collection pilot program for electronic waste and was instrumental in implementing a ban on televisions and computer monitors from California municipal landfills.

Ms. Davis received a bachelor degree in American Studies from the University Of California Santa Cruz. She served as a journalist in the cities of Miami and Orlando Florida before joining the legislative staff of California State Senator Milton Marks. As a legislative aide Ms Davis advised the Senator on local environmental and social service issues and assisted in the development of the first state electronic recycling legislation in the nation. Currently, Ms Davis serves as Project Director of the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition Clean Computer Campaign.

Resa Dimino [email] [top] [conference page]

Resa has over a decade of experience in recycling and materials policy, practice and coalition building. She serves as the chair of the Bronx Solid Waste Advisory Board and holds a gubernatorial appointment to the NYS Solid Waste Management Board. Resa started her recycling career as a policy analyst and campaign coordinator for Environmental Action Foundation's Solid Waste Alternatives Project, where she directed national, grassroots campaigns including Take The Wrap Campaign (1992-94) and Campaign for the Executive Order on Recycled Product Procurement (1993).

In the mid-1990s, Ms. Dimino served as the program director for Bronx 2000, a community-based development company that developed recycling enterprises as a means of creating jobs and increasing economic opportunity in the inner city. She was also the environmental affairs advisor for Big City Forest, a reclaimed wood products manufacturing subsidiary of Bronx 2000. Resa currently serves as the Director of Programs and Development for the Bronx River Alliance, a public-private partnership dedicated to revitalizing the Bronx River and the communities it runs through.

Omar Freilla [email] [top] [conference page]

Omar Freilla has been named one of “The New School of Activists Most Likely to
Change New York City” by City Limits magazine, 2000. A life long resident of the
South Bronx, he has gained international recognition as an outspoken environmental justice activist who has dedicated himself to seeking solutions to the disproportionate environmental impacts faced by low-income communities of color. He is the founder and director of Green Worker Cooperatives (GWC), a new organization dedicated to the creation of worker-owned and environmentally friendly manufacturing businesses in the South Bronx. Through GWC, he is working to develop a building materials reuse center and a South Bronx recycling industrial park that will preserve manufacturing and reduce the generation and export of waste. He is also a board member, and former program director, for Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to the creation of development projects that improve the environmental and economic health of South Bronx neighborhoods. Prior to that he worked with communities throughout New York City on environmental justice campaigns as part of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance

Randy Hayes [email] [top] [conference page]

Randy Hayes, an action-oriented organizer, is working for Mayor Jerry Brown as Oakland’s Sustainability Director. He is the founder of Rainforest Action Network. Randy’s training ground as an activist was human rights support for Indigenous peoples and documentary filmmaking. He produced the award-winning film The Four Corners, A National Sacrifice Area? which documents the tragic effects of uranium and coal mining on Hopi and Navajo Indian lands in the American Southwest. As Board President of Rainforest Action Network, Randy is a leader in the efforts to stop old growth logging, halt destruction of tropical rainforests, and to fight for the rights of indigenous people. He works with organizers and regional networks worldwide in building a movement for effective social change. He campaigns to replace fossil fuels with wind and hydrogen and to reduce the over-consumption of wood and paper in the US. His “500 Year Forest Plan” spells out a vision of a sustainable society and how to get there. He contributed to Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible. Published by San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2002.

Tim Hicks [email] [top] [conference page]

Tim Hicks works as Zero Waste Coordinator for the City of Nelson and Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) in British Columbia, Canada. He began his work as Zero Waste Coordinator in May 2004 as a student intern after graduating from Selkirk College, BC as valedictorian with a diploma in Integrated Environmental Planning. He brings a passion for people and the environment to his waste reduction work. Tim has traveled extensively, studied Permaculture Design, and is an award winning furniture designer/builder.

Dan Knapp [email] [top] [conference page]

Dan Knapp serves as chief executive and general manager of Urban Ore resource recovery park in Berkeley, CA. Founded in 1980, Urban Ore grosses over $1.5 annually.

Mr. Knapp has a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Oregon. Prior to his work with Urban Ore he worked for County government in Oregon and taught for 6 years at what is now the University of Illinois- Springfield.

Annie Leonard [email] [top] [conference page]

Ann Leonard is the Director of the Multinationals Resource Center (MRC), an organization that supports environmental activists in the Global South with information and campaign guidance. Through MRC, Ann has organized workshops on toxics and environmental health issues, especially incineration, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Prior to joining MRC in 1996, Ann spent eight years (based first in Washington and then in New Delhi) with Greenpeace International's Toxic Trade campaign, working for a ban on the export of hazardous waste from industrialized countries to the Third World. Ann is also a co-founder and International Co-Coordinator of GAIA, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives; International Co-Coordinator, Health Care Without Harm; and a board member of Environmental Health Fund, Asia-Pacific Environmental Exchange, Greenpeace India, and Global Greengrants India. She studied environmental science at Columbia University and City and Regional Planning at Cornell.

Gary Liss [email] [top] [conference page]

Gary Liss has over 26 years of experience in the solid waste and recycling field. Gary Liss is now President of Gary Liss & Associates (GLA) which helps public and private sector clients on strategic solid waste and recycling policy and program analyses; develops public and private Zero Waste Plans; evaluates and develops Resource Recovery Parks; designs incentive-based solid waste and recycling RFPs, contracts and systems; and develops proposals and joint ventures among innovative reuse, recycling and composting companies.
GLA helped write and edit the nation's first local government Zero Waste Plan for Del Norte County, California, and organized state and national conference sessions and presentations on Zero Waste Businesses and Local Government Incentives to achieve Zero Waste. As Solid Waste Program Manager for the City of San Jose, California, in the 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Liss developed nationally recognized waste reduction programs. Mr. Liss served as Executive Director of the California Resource Recovery Association, Resource Recovery Director for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Resource Recovery Administrator for the New Jersey Department of Energy. He co-founded and was past President of the National Recycling Coalition.

Eric Lombardi [email] [top] [conference page]

Eric has been Executive Director of Eco-Cycle, Inc. since 1989, and has more than two decades of recycling, energy and water conservation and non-profit management. Founded in 1976, Eco-Cycle is considered a nationwide pioneer in the recycling industry and has grown to become the largest community-based recycling organization in the U.S.A. with a staff of 55 and monthly processing of over 3400 tons of materials. Eric has been a keynote speaker and advisor on the social and technical aspects of creating a “Zero Waste… Or Darn Near” society across the USA and in five countries. Eric is on the National Recycling Coalition’s (NRC) Policy Work Group, a current Board member of the Colorado Association for Recycling, and a member of the Governors OEMC Task Force on Electronic Scrap Recycling. He has been invited to the White House as an advisor on national recycling issues. Lombardi has a Masters degree in Technology and Human Affairs from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Jeffrey Morris [email] [top] [conference page]

Jeffrey Morris Is a Ph.D. (University of California at Berkeley) economist with Sound Resource Management, an economic and environmental research and consulting firm with offices in Bellingham and Seattle, WA.

Jeff has taught economics at the Universities of Washington and Colorado and published peer-reviewed articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Resource Management and Technology, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, the International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis, and The Journal of Hazardous Materials.

Jeff has been researching and writing about the economics of resource use, waste, pollution and waste prevention, recycling, externalities and free market imperfections/failures, and sustainability for almost 20 years.

Brenda Platt [email] [top] [conference page]

Brenda Platt is the Co-Director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). She is also a Board member of the national GrassRoots Recycling Network and a former Board Member of the National Recycling Coalition and Container Recycling Institute. In her 18 years with the Institute, Brenda has documented model recycling programs and the economic benefits of recycling. She is the author of several groundbreaking reports including Beyond 40 Percent: Record-Setting Recycling and Composting Programs and the U.S. EPA’s Cutting the Waste Stream in Half. Her 2000 report for the GrassRoots Recycling Network, Wasting and Recycling in the United States 2000, includes a 10-page zero waste agenda for action. Her latest report, Resources up in Flames: The Economic Pitfalls of Incineration versus a Zero Waste Approach in the Global South, was released in April.

Mary Tkach [email] [top] [conference page]

As the Executive Director, Environmental Sustainability for Aveda, Mary Tkach is responsible for developing strategy and designing programs that support the company’s commitment to social and environmental leadership. Ms. Tkach develops corporate policies, reviews marketing, research and development and design and packaging initiatives as well as retail and office operations to ensure they meet Aveda’s environmental sustainability criteria. She oversees the annual publication of Aveda’s CERES Report—a self-commissioned environmental assessment of its business operations. She joined Aveda in 1998. Previously, she spent 16 years in the environmental field working for the non-profit, community-based St. Paul Neighborhood Energy Consortium, which she helped found.