.jpg)
ZERO WASTE CANADA continues to grow as an organization committed to creating a world without waste. As a not-for-profit, ZERO WASTE CANADA is moving forward with steps to effectively promote ZERO WASTE solutions to citizens and government.
ZERO WASTE CANADA is building an Advisory board to give professional and knowledgeable advice to the organization in their individual fields of expertise. Our advisers can help with facts, statistics, philosophy and tactics, as well as represent Zero Waste Canada on specific areas of expertise. Advisory board members are all supporters of ZERO WASTE CANADA . Each adviser shares a deep concern for the planet and conserving resources. All advisers use the internationally recognized Zero Waste International Alliance definition of ZERO WASTE and the ZERO WASTE hierarchy as guidelines when advising ZERO WASTE CANADA.
New members of advisory board will be added as ZERO WASTE CANADA grows our knowledge base.
Newly appointed Advisory Board members are:
Erich Schwartz is part of the Zero Waste Canada Advisory Board due to his deep experience in developing and implementing strategic sustainability plans and solutions for a variety of organizations globally and across industries. Specifically, he has been highly successful with sustainability programs and educational technology projects for Crown Corporations, Governments, and mid-size businesses throughout the world. His no-nonsense grass roots approach emerged in the 1980’s with the development of Edmonton, Alberta’s first community plastic recycling program. From those early beginnings he has become an experienced leader and has worked with business, government, and community stakeholders to develop long term strategies and influence policy. He has also combined the breadth and depth of his business experience with his life-long passion for sustainable practices by establishing and running Greenomics Corporation. Greenomics combines business smarts with education and community leadership to help transition organizations to profitable sustainable practices including Zero Waste.
Mike Ewall is founder and director of Energy Justice Network (www.EnergyJustice.net), a U.S.-based network supporting communities threatened by unnecessary and polluting energy and waste facilities, such as biomass and waste incinerators, landfills, and nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. Active since high school in 1990, Ewall has become a leader in the student and community environmental justice movements. He has led winning campaigns stopping numerous incinerators, power plants, ethanol biorefineries a multi-state nuclear waste dump, a coal-to-oil refinery, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal, water fluoridation and much more. In 2003, he predicted and warned that the rebuilding of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania trash incinerator would drive the city into bankruptcy, which it did eight years later in one of the nation’s largest city bankruptcies. Since 2006, his efforts brought together grassroots networks to stop proposed coal power plants and biomass and waste incinerators throughout the U.S., contributing to over 100 community victories against these facilities. In 2008, his extensive work against environmental racism earned him a “tuition-free law school for activists” scholarship to the social justice activist-run law school at the University of the District of Columbia. Before law school, he authored the nation’s strongest mercury and dioxin air pollution ordinances and has used these local laws to stop proposed polluters in small Pennsylvania towns. Ewall drafted the zero waste hierarchy that became the basis for the hierarchy adopted by the Zero Waste International Alliance and Zero Waste Canada.
Dan Phillips is a designer/builder working in Huntsville, Texas, who, working with his wife Marsha, builds low-income housing, with unskilled workers, from free, salvage and recycled materials. Their company is recently trying to move into a commercial market for clients who have a taste for recycling and social entrepreneurship. Having been associated with the construction industry in many capacities for over twenty years, he is now concentrating on using one social problem to solve another, with his recycled housing initiative, The Phoenix Commotion. Experience in his business of art and antique restoration has served him well in the reclamation of construction waste in fabricating attractive, energy-efficient houses. Fine Homebuilding, People, The New York Times, Natural Home, Houston House and Home, Change Magazine, Reason, and many others – as well as CBS, ABC, HGTV, CNN, PBS, TNN, The Texas Country Reporter, and The Discovery Channel – have all featured his projects in their respective media, in addition to television and print media around the world. He regularly lectures for civic groups, at regional, national, and international conferences, and at universities, including A&M School of Architecture, University of Texas – Austin School of Architecture, University of Kansas School of Architecture, Boston College, Austin Community College, Yale University and Sam Houston State University. His website,www.phoenixcommotion.com, includes discussion of his philosophy with numerous photographs. Spring, 2012, he lectured at the 9th International Convention on Architecture in Budapest. He was awarded the 2003 Award for the Most Innovative Housing Model Worldwide by the Institute for Social Invention in London. In 2009 he was awarded the Beacon of Light Award by the National Interfaith Council. And in 2010 he received the Edison Green Award in New York, sponsored by Rutgers University, and the Environmental Excellence Award sponsored by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The background leading to his current activity is eclectic. He variously rode Brahma bulls, worked in intelligence in West Berlin during the cold war, served on the dance faculty of Sam Houston State University for ten years, and has a number of degrees. His wife, Marsha, has recently retired as an art teacher. Their son, Ian, flies an F-16 for the Air Force, and their daughter, Phoebe, is a patent attorney in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They have four grandchildren.
Pal Martensson
Pål Martensson, who also calls himself “the garbage man,” has been dealing with waste and campaigning for zero waste for more than a decade already. He worked at the Department of Sustainable Waste and Water Department for City of Goteborg for more than ten years, Sweden where he oversaw five resources recovery centres, including the first ECO-Park in the world – Kretsloppsparken Alelyckan – that he founded and is now used as a model to public and private sectors worldwide. Pål shares his long and internationally respected experience in waste management with different audience and networks around the world as active member of the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA), Zero Waste Europe and the Swedish Waste Management Group for Recycling and Export group to name a few of the advocacy groups he is involved in. He is a valued speaker in many international events where he had shared his technical knowledge and field experience on Zero Waste concept, strategies and implementation, passing/entrance systems for recycle centres, the role of ECO Parks on waste management and waste prevention, EPR and take-back policies; recyclables redemption value (recyclables deposit systems) for electronics, PET-bottles, aluminium cans, and special packaging; household waste analyses and reduction strategies; and community waste management educational outreach programs. Pål has not only been actively promoting the principles of zero waste among civil society groups, but has also been active in influencing the policy-makers towards making a policy shift to a more sustainable way of living and waste-free resources management through his numerous national and international speaking engagements with different stakeholders – community dwellers, youth, environmental experts, policy makers and state leaders, business, etc. These events include Peoples’ Forums, meetings with experts, and parliamentary discussions to name a few.
Zero Waste Canada (ZWC) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that promotes solid waste solutions that eliminate the use of landfills and waste-to-energy plants. ZWC works with all levels of government for responsible resource management and policies, legislation and initiatives that eliminate waste and support continuous reuse of resources. ZWC provides resource management demonstration projects and education, and is a reliable go-to resource that collaboratively promotes social, environmental and economic well-being.
http://www.zerowastecanada.ca/