This Week in Waste: Top Stories from December 6 - 10

Waste360 continues to profile and celebrate its 2021 40 Under 40 winners. Recipients play an integral part in revolutionizing the waste and recycling industry. The EPA's National Recycling Strategy generates discussion surrounding sustainable packaging, climate change and ocean plastics. Read all this and more in this week's top five stories on Waste360.com.

1. Celeste McMickle: Upstream Needs to Happen Simultaneously

Communication is Celeste McMickle's specialty, especially when it comes to helping companies reinvent their approach to waste.

McMickle recently told Waste360 more about her current role, how the sustainability movement has evolved and why upstream thinking needs to happen.

Read the full article here.

- Stefanie Valentic

2. New York City Takes Major Commercial Waste Zones Step

On November 16, New York City’s Department of Sanitation released the second and final part of its Request for Proposals for private haulers interested in participating in the Commercial Waste Zones city plan. In this month’s edition of the Business Report, we synthesize the key factors in the process.

Read the full article here.

- Leone Young

3. Is an Anaerobic Biodigester a Public Utility?

Famous and infamous law enforcement officers abound in print, broadcast and film. Inspector Clouseau features prominently in the "Pink Panther" series as a mostly incompetent sleuth who solves cases fortuitously and with lots of help. (Is there a resemblance to Inspector Gadget?)  Inspector Javert, the main antagonist in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables, is obsessed with the pursuit and punishment of Jean Valjean. Helen Mirren is unforgettable in the British television drama “Prime Suspect” as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison.

Read the full article here.

- Barry Shanoff

4. Episode 133: Building Reuse at Scale

In this week’s episode of NothingWasted!, you will hear from Meagan Knowlton, director of sustainability at Optoro. We spoke with Meagan about leveraging AI to fuel reuse, the power of donation channels to keep returns out of landfills, the importance of engaging with consumers to optimize circularity and more.

Listen to the full episode here.

- Liz Bothwell

5. A Quick Look at EPA’s 2021 National Recycling Strategy

Reduce, reuse, recycle is a catchphrase that we all grew up with and may suffer from a form of semantic satiation – that is, losing its meaning through overuse. But when presented as a strategy to fight climate change and reduce ocean plastics - as a cog in the machinery that will take redesigned sustainable packaging and use it as input for make new products, thus closing the circle - it becomes topical and trendy.

Read the full article here.

- Anne Germain