CRRA2021

Senior Associate

Nancy Roberts has over 25 years of experience in marketing and public relations, communications and project management for mission-driven organizations, including over 10 years with Gigantic Idea Studio. She focuses on strategic communications planning, metrics and integrating social media into traditional outreach campaigns for many of Gigantic's clients, including Zero Waste Marin, Livermore Recycles, Carpet America Recovery Effort, Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Respect Wildlife. She holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from The George Washington University and an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise from Dominican University of California.

Selling Nothing: Outreach to Reduce Consumption

Bombarded by endless advertising, Americans are conditioned to identify themselves as consumers first, and to believe that personal success is linked to buying more stuff. How can environmental outreach position non-consumption to make it the exciting and desirable choice? This session will explore examples of waste prevention outreach from local and overseas campaigns and will include the results of a brief statewide survey of attitudes toward consumption. Session participants will gain ideas on which messages and benefits to highlight in upcoming zero waste campaigns.

Director of Business Innovation

Samantha Sommer, former director of the award-winning Rethink Disposable project, joined Upstream as their Director of Business Innovation in March 2020. She brings 15 years of zero waste industry experience disrupting disposability in food service and co-creating conditions for reusable and refillable systems to thrive.

What’s even better than reducing...reusing!

Reusable services - and the growing number of businesses providing these experiences - are where consumers should be investing their dollars. In the circular economy of today and the one we are building for tomorrow, consumers can get what they want and need without all the single-use waste. Everything from your food and beverages, consumer and retail goods, and even shipping and packaging can be reusable. This session will explore successful business reuse case stories, like Just Salad’s Bring Back Bowl program and Dishcraft’s Serve It Safe pilot, including how we leverage communications and marketing to recruit and sustain happy end users in a B to B (to C) strategy.