Sustainable Materials Management Webinar Series 2020 – 2021

NextCycle – An Innovative Pathway to Elevated Material Recovery and Recycled-content Manufacturing.

Missed the Webinar? Find it in the RMC Webinar Library

To create a true circular economy, you need to have the full value chain working together: manufacture/production, consumer, collection/recovery, material sorting/processing, end market, and repurposed/new production.

Easier said than done, right?

Presenters

• NextCycle Overview – Matt Naud, Associate Senior Consultant, RRS
• State Program Perspective – Kendra Appelman-Eastvedt, RREO Program Administrator, Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE)
• Participant Perspective – Lou Troiano, President, FoamCycle

There is an innovative approach that does not push the full responsibility to municipalities, but instead involves public, private, non-profit, university, and impact investors.

NextCycle is an innovative pathway that elevates material recovery and recycled-content manufacturing ideas to vetted, shovel-ready projects. NextCycle has been successfully implemented for two cycles in Colorado, and now Michigan has expanded upon the program and initiated a multi-focus approach. The program connects the idea-generators with mentors and experts to develop business plans, data to understand region-specific industry and economics, and potential investors to make the ideas a reality. By creating a competitive opportunity for teams to develop their ideas into projects ripe for investment and implementation, states, residents, and businesses win through leveraging private investment, spurring end market development, supporting infrastructure improvement, ensuring equitable impact, as well as accelerating environmental and economic progress.

---

Presenter Biographies

Matthew Naud joined RRS in 2019 as an associate senior consultant. Matthew was the first environmental coordinator for the city of Ann Arbor, Mich. in 2001 and has 28 years of public sector sustainability, climate adaptation, and emergency management consulting experience, as well as four years of academic and industry molecular biology research experience. He has direct experience building sustainability into the culture of an organization and working with universities to identify policy relevant data for city planning efforts.

He has played a formative and leadership role in several national networks of city sustainability staff including the Urban Sustainability Director’s Network. Matthew also has 11 years of environment and emergency management experience with federal and state clients.

He was recently reappointed to a three-year term on the USEPA Board of Scientific Counselors Sustainable and Healthy Communities Subcommittee.

 

Kendra Appelman-Eastvedt is the Recycling Resources Economic Opportunity (RREO) Program Administrator for the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) and works in the Sustainability Unit where she oversees a team of grant monitors. The RREO program offers statewide funding opportunities to Colorado recyclers and is tasked with the dual mission of diverting waste and creating jobs.

Following extensive experience in the financial services industry and higher education administration, Kendra earned a Master’s Degree in political science from Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

Her studies focused on American environmental policy, public administration, and American politics.

 

 

Lou Troiano is the President of Foam Cycle. With 23 years of waste and recycling industry sales experience, Lou founded Foam Cycle; an early stage recycling company pioneering a unique closed loop foam recycling system, to help solve the “foam problem”.

Foam packaging and food service foam (aka Styrofoam) are one of the most plentiful, yet least recycled plastics in existence today. Foam Cycle systems can be found operating successfully in several states throughout the country, tackling a global issue on a local level.

As a participant in the NextCycle Colorado Program, Lou was able to utilize the resources provided to further refine the Foam Cycle mission, in removing the myths and stigmas attached to foam recycling by establishing a new model that can be scaled across the country.