CRRA2021

Policy Director

Miriam Gordon is the Policy Director for UPSTREAM and a leading architect of policies that reduce single-use products and packaging. Miriam has been a leading advocate for plastic bag, polystyrene foam, and microbead bans and is an expert on waste, water quality, and toxics policy. She has launched campaigns to protect communities whose health is threatened by incineration, fracking, and chemicals in consumer products. She has also created award-winning pollution prevention and water quality programs for local, state, and federal government agencies. Miriam holds a JD Degree from Vermont Law School and was an undergraduate at Vassar College.

A 360 View of Reduce and Reuse Policies

In 2021, reduce and reuse is being built in policies at the local, state, and federal levels in the U.S. and at a more macro level in Europe. This presentation will provide an overview of the policy landscape and set the stage for this panel, while other presenters will highlight more specific policy initiatives in play.

Coastal and Marine Scientist

Emily works to keep our oceans and marine ecosystems healthy and clean by advocating for strong legislation and enforcement both locally and statewide. She focuses on plastic pollution, marine protected areas, sustainable fisheries, and climate change related issues. Before arriving at Heal the Bay, Emily earned a M.A.S in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, where she conducted research on sea turtle conservation in El Salvador. When not advocating for ocean rights, Emily can almost always be found on the shore catching a wave or soaking up some L.A. sunshine.

ReusableLA Driving the Reuse Policy Agenda with Grassroots Advocacy

ReusableLA, a coalition of environmental and community advocates in Los Angeles, is  shifting the focus of City and County policy from bans on plastic to reduce and reuse solutions. This presentation will highlight the Coalition's work to implement reuse systems in Los Angeles food service and enact policies that will help them scale. The multi-stakeholder approach this coalition is using to drive policy across the finish line engages local businesses, community watershed groups, environmental justice organizations, and other stakeholders is seeking alternatives to single-use products that drive up food service costs and end up in incinerators or the local watershed. 

Policy Associate

Genevieve has been with Ecoconsult since January 2017, and she currently represents the Clean Seas Lobbying Coalition, a coalition of eleven CA non-profit organizations dedicated to plastic pollution policy solutions with an emphasis on source reduction and transitioning to reuse. Before joining, she worked on both statewide and local plastic pollution policies and campaigns for Californians Against Waste. In the past she has worked as a Landfill Reduction Technician at various events and sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean studying microplastic pollution with The 5 Gyres Institute.

State Policies in Play in California to Reduce Single-Use

The California legislature has often been a leader among states in responding to the plastic pollution crisis. From the first state plastic bag ban, to foodware policy that banned polystyrene foam packaging for state facilities, to a ban on microbeads to personal care products, California has been a beacon for other states. But in 2020, efforts to enact two comprehensive waste reduction bills (SB 54/AB 1080) failed to cross the finish line. In 2021, the Clean Seas Lobbying Coalition brought two ideas to the California legislature, seeking to reduce single-use in food service and promote refillables in California's Beverage Container Recycling Program – both as part of a larger Circular Economy Package. In addition, the California Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act (#19-0028) recently qualified for the 2022 ballot, giving voters an opportunity to both enact fees and a source reduction mandate on producers of single-use plastics. This presentation will focus on California’s current plastic pollution policies and how (or if) they may or may not be poised to implement reduce, reuse, or refill strategies.

Executive Director

Heather joined Zero Waste Washington in 2016. Prior to Zero Waste Washington, Heather has been active in zero waste issues, including helping lead the Seattle bag campaign and helping get the ban on styrofoam serviceware products passed. Previously, Heather was Director of Science and Policy at Futurewise, focusing on habitat, shoreline, stormwater and other issues related to land use. Before that, she worked on similar issues and including toxic pollution and plastics. Heather earned a BS in geology from Yale University and a PhD from UCLA in geochemistry 

Threading the Needle on EPR - Responsibility for Packaging

As state legislatures are increasingly considering EPR as a means to address the tsunami of hard-to-recycle packaging and single-use products waste, questions abound as to what the primary goals of these policies should be and how much control to give producers, regulators, waste haulers, and local government. What are the policy guideposts that need to be in place to ensure that producers will achieve higher levels of recycling than current systems? How will future policies need to be tweaked to accomplish source reduction? And how do we ensure that recycled packaging doesn't mean recycling and increasing the toxic substances in packaging, especially food packaging? In this session, Heather will provide some recommendations as to the policy guideposts for the next wave of state EPR packaging legislation.

Senior Commercial Zero Waste Coordinator

Food service businesses struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic have had to pivot and innovate to stay afloat. Most have focused primarily on take-out and delivery in order to survive. This pivot has presented challenges to the City of San Francisco's goal of reducing waste generation by 15% by 2030. But it has also presented an opportunity for innovation both in reusable food service models and policies aimed at bringing reuse into the food delivery space. This presentation will highlight some of the reuse business innovations in food delivery that have launched in San Francisco. It will provide an overview of the policies that the City has enacted to date to reducing single-use in take-out and some that are currently being considered.