CRRA2021

Executive Team

Ms. Carson serves as a consultant to government, business, and nonprofit on community improvement challenges and program management. As a national nonprofit leader, Cecile assisted with forming over 150 affiliates representing urban and rural cities, counties, and colleges, and watershed districts. While at Keep America Beautiful, she created the National Youth Advisory Council. Her government experience includes economic development, code enforcement, and solid waste management. She was instrumental in developing the city’s recycling program at schools, University of North Texas, and community-wide. Ms. Carson currently serves on the CRRA K-12 Technical Council. Cecile is pursuing a doctorate at Baylor University.

Engaging Youth to Reduce Organic Waste and Promote Recycling

Keep California Beautiful annually hosts a K-12 Recycling Challenge. In 2021 due to the challenges of COVID, KCB in cooperation with CalRecycles, CalTrans, corporate sponsors, and school leaders launched a reimagined youth contest. The 2021 K-12 Challenge included a recycled content art contest, a video, and/or a litter assessment using the KCB Environmental App to determine litter conditions in neighborhoods or around schools. The presentation will highlight the winners from the Challenge including but not limited to the youth messages to reduce organic waste and promote SB1383 one of the two topics for the video contest. The session will also share best practices working with schools and the Food Packaging Insitute to address waste reduction and recycling using the K-12 Challenge. 

Sustainability Manager

Nancy Deming is a Sustainability Specialist for K-12 schools. She consultants with school districts on a variety of waste reduction and diversion issues. For the Oakland Unified School District, Ms. Demmin develops, supervises, and executes District-wide sustainability programs of all Nutrition and Custodial related programs to control and reduce food waste and improve resource conservation. As a consultant, Ms. Deming provides the technical support of the how-to's, infrastructure, tool kit, and guidance to starting or increasing waste reduction and sorting systems from a school and school district perspective.

Meeting requirements for SB1383 to Benefiting Our School Communities

Nancy Deming and Amanda Halte work directly together in the Bay Area, focusing on various waste reduction and diversion issues. The speakers will share their work in meeting SB1383 requirements as well as benefiting our school communities. Additionally, the speakers will discuss the challenges of foodservice packaging, including working with the market and haulers to make changes impacting what goes to landfill vs. recycling or composting. 

School Sustainability Specialist

Amanda is developing and implementing K-12 waste reduction strategies with multiple schools and school districts in Alameda and Central Contra Costa Counties. To test new programs and cultivate best practices for waste reduction in schools, Amanda collaborates and partners with a large community of zero waste advocates including: the Sustainability Manager for Custodial and Nutrition Services at Oakland Unified, Stopwaste, RecycleSmart, Piedmont Evergreen, the Northern California Recycling Association, and the OUSD Environmental and Climate Change Literacy working group. Amanda's work is driven by her passion towards making an environmental impact for our youth and community.

Meeting SB1383 Requirements and Benefiting our School Communities

Nancy Deming and Amanda Halte work directly together in the Bay Area, focusing on various waste reduction and diversion issues. The speakers will share their work in meeting SB1383 requirements as well as benefiting our school communities. Additionally, the speakers will discuss the challenges of foodservice packaging, including working with the market and haulers to make changes impacting what goes to landfill vs. recycling or composting. 

Environmental Scientist

Mallory Burden is an Environmental Scientist for CalRecycle, where she participates in many hands-on project teams including the Schools Team and being staff lead of the Organics Team. Mallory, a frequent speaker at local industry events, started her educational pursuits through receiving a Bachelors in Civil Engineering from CalPoly Pomona before focusing her interests on environmental issues through a Masters degree in Green Technologies from the University of Southern California.  When Mallory isn’t working she enjoys hiking, camping and working with local nonprofit, Algalita, on preventing plastics pollution.

Providing Assistance to Successful Implementation of SB1383

CalRecycle staff will provide an overview of SB 1383’s timeline and requirements for local education agencies, including requirements to recover edible food. CalRecycle staff will be available during the session to answer SB 1383 related questions and share templates or resources CalRecycle has or is developing. 

Recycling Coordinator

Debbi works for the Carton Council of North America, a trade association comprised of carton manufacturers with the goal of reducing the impact of their package on the environment by expanding recycling programs across the country and continuously improving their environmental performance.    Though she has been with the Carton Council for over 20 years, over the past 11 years she has been the school recycling coordinator for the Carton Council.  In this role she assists schools in implementing, expanding or improving their cafeteria recycling programs.  Her personal goal is to have every carton in our school districts recycled. Every carton counts.  Debbi is also a member of the Executive Council of the CRRA K-12 Technical Council.