Author: Josh Reid

While visiting the Twin Cities to exhibit at the 2015 AASHE Conference, Chris Ronson and I met with Minnesota Twins Stadium Operations Manager, Jase Miller. He graciously offered to give us a tour of the 39,021 seat, LEED-certified baseball stadium located in Minneapolis’ bustling Warehouse district.

A month ago, an opinion article questioning the merits of recycling was published in the New York Times. The response from the recycling community has been swift and decisive. In addition to a general sense of outrage that has inspired many passionate conversations, a lot of organizations have written articulate and effective rebuttals that lay waste to the inaccuracies and flawed logic on which the author bases his claims.

While it’s unfortunate that we have to defend the industry from such spurious attacks, it’s been great to see the strength of the community’s response. And perhaps the discussion that has been generated will help more people learn the truth about recycling and gain a new appreciation for the importance of diverting waste from the landfill.

We have assembled a collection of some our favorite rebuttals.

Overall System

Bringing New Features to the Table
We have introduced a new style of tables to Re-TRAC Connect. The new tables include a search feature so you can easily find the data you’re looking for. You can also click any column header to sort your data in ascending or descending order.

This year’s Resource Recycling Conference was another great success. Informative sessions, impassioned keynotes, and everyone’s favorite community-building event, Party-TRAC, all helped to make RRC 2015 a memorable experience.


Check out the slideshow for highlights from this year’s conference.

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Pair with Existing User
Program Managers Only
Program Managers can now use the Register feature to pair a new organization with an existing user. Quickly select from a list of users already approved into the program, directory, or tool. This feature is especially useful when a member of your program reports on behalf of multiple organizations.

The smell of fallen leaves, sharpened pencils, and bagged lunches is in the air and that can mean only one thing – it’s BACK TO SCHOOL TIME!

All across North America, parents, students, and educators are getting ready for another year of learning the all-important “3Rs”: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle! We’re here to help you start the year off right with eco-conscious back to school tips and tricks!

Overall System

Quickly switch between locations
Users can now type the name of the organization into the search box to quickly find the location they want to switch to.

If you’ve been to a sustainability conference in the last year, you’ll agree that food waste is often the “topic du jour”. My fascination with organics management really took off after I had the opportunity to hear Jen Rustemeyer & Grant Baldwin present at the Washington State Recycling Conference in 2014. They produced and directed “Just Eat It” a documentary that asks the questions:

“Why are we throwing over 40% of our food in the garbage?”
“How much of it is edible?”

These aren’t easy questions to answer but I was sure that I wanted to be a part of the solution so this week I attended the City of Winnipeg’s Organics Diversion Strategy Symposium. Here’s the symposium synopsis:

We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to attend recycling conferences across North America each year. This year has already seen many noteworthy events including Kyle Wiens’ keynote at AOR and National Recycling Coalition President, Mark Lichtenstein’s presentation at the Michigan Recycling Conference. Now entering it’s sixth year, the Resource Recycling Conference (RRC) has been the gathering place for industry leaders across the continent and this year will not disappoint. We are extremely excited for this year’s RRC in Indianapolis, IN and here are our top five reasons why: