Description
The USA throws away over 300 million tons of waste annually and boasts the world’s largest landfill sites. However, there is no “away” on earth—everything we discard ends up in the water, land and natural cycles. Despite the US waste industry earning over 140 billion U.S. dollars in 2023, trends are not going in the right direction for society, which strives to “reduce, reuse, and recycle”—moving towards a resource-efficient and circular economy.
In this interview, we ask Robert Watson, one of the world’s leading experts on resource efficiency, about progress towards the goal and the economic, employment, and development opportunities that come with a shift to a circular economy.
Register and watch webinar here
Speakers
Rob Watson – President SWEEP
Robert Watson, president of the Solid Waste Environmental Excellence Performance (SWEEP) Standard, is a trailblazer in sustainable materials management-seeking policies in the United States. SWEEP is a “LEED for Solid Waste” standard that seeks to transform the North American industry's policy frameworks and waste management program structures.
Complementing the market transformation work of SWEEP is the industry-transforming work of Upland Road, where Rob is a Principal, which has developed a system to separate mixed waste into 90-95% pure feedstock streams and convert those feedstocks into new products, soil amendments and clean energy…on the same campus, eliminating the inefficiencies of the current market, dramatically reducing collection and conversion costs and recovering up to 90% of everything consumers and businesses discard.
Guy Eames, VP Growth at earthbot.io.
Guy Eames MSc. BA. is a Sustainability Protagonist and Social Entrepreneur with over 20 years of international business development experience in Multinationals, Start-ups, Industry Associations. Guy believes in delivering change through developing business tools, online training and launching new cutting-edge technologies in emerging markets. Lived and worked in 6 countries.. He has a Master degree in Climate Change and Sustainable Development from Demontfort University, Leicester and a BA in European Business from Reutlingen University (Germany) and Middlesex University. Guy has played various roles in establishing Green Building Councils in 5 countries and has been engaged as a sustainability expert in many large scale projects. He was co-author of the reports to the International Olympic Committee for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. More recent projects include advising the BRE to adapt BREEAM for implementation in non English speaking countries and creating instruments to expand sustainable construction techniques between the BRICS countries. Guy is one of the founders of earthbot.io
