Washington DC – The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) announced this week that US Environmental Protection Agency Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus will keynote the first-ever Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Summit to be held May 12 – 13, 2015, at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Stanislaus will join EPA Region 2 Administrator, Judith Enck and a diverse set of stakeholders representing the greatest minds in sustainable materials management, determined to elevate the issues around discards management back to the forefront of national policy.

Stanislaus heads EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, leading the agency’s land cleanup, solid waste and emergency response programs. As EPA’s primary person in charge of SMM nationally and internationally, he will anchor the event by defining SMM and providing a foundation for the national policy discussions of the Summit.

“We are pleased to have EPA’s leadership open and jumpstart the SMM Summit dialog,” said Gary Liss, SMM Summit co-chair. “The future of SMM is critical for the thousands of NRC members and others across the country working each and every day to manage discards through waste reduction, reuse recycling, composting, product stewardship and other diversion methods.”

Delegates and attendees from a broad spectrum of interests and expertise will contribute to the creation of a new, forward-thinking, strategic National SMM Action. In addition to EPA, the Summit will highlight efforts of some of the most innovative companies, programs and SMM efforts across the U.S., including experts from the Toyota, US Composting Council, the Cities of New York and Austin, and the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).

“The Summit is the launch pad for what NRC and the 200 organizations and businesses participating in the event see as the first of an on-going effort,” said Julie L. Rhodes, SMM Summit co-chair. “The recommendations that come out of this first Summit and compiled and prioritized in the National SMM Action Plan become the roadmap for NRC’s advocacy and work for the coming years.”

NRC also announces two new webinars as part of its Recyclers Guide to Understanding SMM series to prepare attendees for the Summit and to help SMM practitioners better grasp the broad concepts of the issues, including:

Register for these webinars and view the two previous webinars at: http://nrcrecycles.org/smm-webinars/

Those interested in attending are encouraged to review the Summit Program, check out all the organizations joining the effort and register today! Those who register by April 15 can still submit White Papers to contribute to the National SMM Action Plan in advance of the Summit.

The SMM Summit is led by the NRC in partnership with the Syracuse University Center for Sustainable Community Solution and University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center, and supported by ISRI, Starbucks, Steel Recycling Institute, ReTRAC, SCS Engineers, and SMART Recycling South Carolina LLC.

About the National Recycling Coalition

The National Recycling Coalition is a non-profit organization focused on promoting and enhancing SMM in North America, with a network of more than 6,000 members extending across waste reduction, reuse, composting, and recycling. For more than 30 years, the NRC has been a leader in driving education and policy around SMM. Learn more about the NRC at www.nrcrecycles.org, and the SMM Summit at http://nrcrecycles.org/get-involved/2015smmsummit/.

About Sustainable Materials Management

The US EPA defines SMM as “an approach to serving human needs by using/reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their life cycles, from the point of resource extraction through material disposal. This approach seeks to minimize the amount of materials involved as well as associated environmental impacts, and account for economic efficiency and social considerations.” SMM includes actions across the full life-cycle of materials, including but not limited to managing materials after they have been discarded. SMM is about environmental justice, regional solutions, job training and local job creation, new materials science and design for recycling, innovative financing, product stewardship, sustainable organics management, a nexus of market-based and policy-based solutions, reuse and repurposing, highest-and-best use analysis for local decision-making, new management technology, enhanced recycling, and many more.

Leave a Reply

Skip to content