Mayor's Cup Challenge

Lineup of Speakers

Industry Panel

Moderated by Andre Duurvoort | Cupertino's Sustainability Manager

Sally Houghton, Executive Director
Plastic Recycling Corp of California

Sally Houghton is the Executive Director of the Plastic Recycling Corporation of California, PRCC. She is no stranger to the plastic recycling industry and has worked for the California non-profit since 2007. In this role Sally coordinates a team that manages all aspects of the plastics recycling industry including a strong supply chain, knowledge of the PET industry, logistics, quality control and legislative understanding. It is this broad experience of the industry that provides her a firm grasp of all elements in the recycling chain.

A big believer in the importance of a strong recycling industry, Sally supports the role of PRCC and its goal to sustain healthy markets for recycled PET.
Before joining PRCC she taught High School English and Drama in her native England for 10 years. She loves to cook, read and anything related to soccer.

Jeff Donlevy, General Manager
Ming's Recycling

Ming’s Recycling is an independent, family-owned recycling corporation based in Sacramento, California with two facilities in Sacramento and one in Hayward. From a small and humble beginning in 1989, Ming’s has grown to become one of the largest recycling companies in California handling over 7 billion CRV containers every year. Ming’s has built long term relationships with quality suppliers and with end users to ensure continuous and seamless movement of recyclable material. Over 80% of all material handled by Ming’s is recycled in California and the United States.

Jeff has over 25 years’ experience in the recycling industry. With experience in the design, construction, start-up and management of recycling facilities ranging in size from small CRV buy-back centers up to 10,000 tons per month Material Recovery Facilities and transfer stations.

Jeff currently is a member of the California Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling. For the past few years, he has been advocating for major reform of the California Bottle Bill to help more Californians get their deposits back and to get cleaner and drier CRV containers recycled.

Bruce Olszewsky, Professor
San Jose State University

Bruce Olszewski (Ol-chef-ski) has worked in fields of energy efficiency, urban water conservation, recycling, urban planning, academia, and has been a community board, foundation, and commission member. A member of the Environmental Studies faculty at San Jose State University (SJSU) since 1989, Bruce teaches Introduction to Environmental Issues, Sustainable Materials Management, Global Trade and the Environment, and Special Projects.

He is the founding Director of SJSU’s Center for the Development of Recycling (CDR), and manages the student-operated faculty-managed Recycling and Household Hazardous Waste Call Center for Santa Clara County and the recycling\reuse website, RecycleStuff.org, for the counties of Santa Clara and San Mateo. CDR has been recognized with awards from the California State University and the California Resource Recovery Association.

Science & Technology Panel

Moderated by Carrie Young | Cupertino Library Foundation

Corinne Scown
Lawrence Livermore Labs

Corinne Scown is the Vice President and founder of the Life-cycle, Economics, and Agronomy Division (LEAD) at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), Deputy Director of the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts (EAEI) Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Head of Sustainability at the Energy and Biosciences Institute (EBI). She is also a co-founder of Cyklos Materials. Scown’s expertise includes life-cycle assessment, technoeconomic analysis, biofuels and bioproducts and co-management of energy and water. She has received awards for her work, including the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship and the Department of Energy Secretary's Achievement Award. Scown earned a B.S. in civil engineering with a double-major in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and she received her Ph.D. and M.S. in civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Jeff Dobert, Director of Operations
Bay Counties SMaRT

Jeff has fourteen years of experience working for Bay Counties Waste Services, the last ten of which have been focused on operations management for the SMaRT (Sunnyvale Material and Recovery Transfer) Station, which uses advanced equipment to sort and bale recyclable materials. He oversees all aspects of the Station including researching new markets for currently recycled and non-recycled commodities.

Joey Schmitt
Action Research (Behavior Change)

Joey Schmitt is a Project Director at Action Research with over ten years of behavior change experience. Joey has extensive experience managing and directing projects for multi-jurisdictional public agencies, non-profits, and private businesses. He has directed CBSM projects on stormwater, composting, energy conservation, water conservation, and transportation. His background is in applied social psychology, and he has expertise in designing field experiments in a research environment. He has worked in both professional and academic positions where he has conducted field research in the areas of environmental attitudes, community outreach, and behavior change. His most recent publications appear in the Journal Energy and the Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing.

Policy Panel

Moderated by Darcy Paul | Mayor of Cupertino

Obai Rambo
Recology Corporate VP of Govt Affairs

Obai Rambois the Director of Government Affairs at Recology. In this critical role, Obai oversees Recology’s political involvement, strategies, and works with each region on the company’s important policy and regulatory initiatives.

An activist at heart, Obai Rambo has been involved in politics before he was old enough to vote. Born and raised in San Francisco and Vallejo, Obai earned his degree in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Obai was selected as a California State Assembly Fellow then went on to serve as a legislative aide in the California State Legislature. Obai has since worked in private and governmental roles on both coasts. While earning his Master’s in Public Policy with a concentration on Housing and Urban Development at Columbia University, he worked as an Administrative Policy Officer for the City of New York.

Prior to joining Recology, Obai represented clients at Strategies 360 - a Seattle based consulting firm with one of the largest footprints west of the Mississippi River. Obai also served as the Bay Area Field Representative and for U.S. Senator Kamala Harris. In his roles, he has developed policy and strategic recommendations, acted as a liaison with Bay Area leaders, offered insightful advice and practical solutions on an array of critical issues facing Californians, including housing and homelessness, healthcare, and environmental policy. Obai is motivated with the belief that the Bay Area, and companies like Recology, have great potential to innovate and set an example for the rest of the country to follow.

Obai holds a B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in Human Rights with a focus on housing and urban development from Columbia University.

Nick Lapis
Californians Against Waste

Nick is CAW's Director of Advocacy and has been with the organization since 2007.

In that time, Nick has led CAW’s team of advocates in campaigns to pass groundbreaking laws that have positioned California as a global leader in reducing and recovering waste. By building strong coalitions, he has helped enact policies to reduce the impacts of climate change, recover organic wastes, reduce plastic pollution, and develop sustainable markets for recyclable materials. Nick also engages in policy development and research, representing CAW on a variety of boards, commissions, taskforces, and coalitions.

Nick completed his Bachelors of Science in Environmental Biology and Management, with minors in Political Science and Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning, at the University of California, Davis. Before joining CAW, he interned at the Coalition for Clean Air and California State Parks and worked on native habitat restoration and youth leadership development through several positions at the Golden Gate National Parks.

Lloyd A. Holmes
President of De Anza College

Lloyd A. Holmes, a veteran educator with a track record of removing barriers to student success, became president of De Anza College on July 1, 2020. He is the college's fourth president since its founding in 1967.

Before joining De Anza, Holmes was vice president of student services at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system of two- and four-year schools. He also provided statewide leadership in the SUNY system by mentoring other colleges on a student success initiative and serving on a statewide task force on student hunger.

Holmes was previously an administrator at North Shore Community College in Massachusetts, Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina and the University of Mississippi. He has taught graduate and undergraduate students, and worked as a residence hall adviser, financial aid adviser, coordinator of student wellness and alcohol and drug abuse programs, and dean of students. Throughout his career, he has been devoted to expanding student equity and success.

Ursula Syrova
Environmental Programs Manager, Cupertino

Ursula manages Cupertino's Environmental Programs Division of Public Works, which ensures the City's compliance with state waste diversion and stormwater pollution prevention regulations. Cupertino has been prioritizing waste reduction for years, including early implementation of organics diversion services and single-use plastic carryout bag restrictions, a ban on expanded polystyrene foam foodware, and adoption of a zero waste policy. Currently the division is working on a new single-use plastic foodware ordinance. Ursula earned her B.A. from UCSC in Language Studies and an M.A. from the University of Denver in International Technology Analysis and Management. Prior to joining Cupertino in 2016 she worked for the City of Sunnyvale in the Recycling Division, volunteered with Sustainable Silicon Valley, and was Energy Manager for Sunnyvale School District.

S4 and Art

S⁴

The Super Summer Science Search (S4) is a science competition for middle school students. Hosted annually in the summer by the Cupertino Teen Advisory Council with support from the Cupertino Library Foundation, students are challenged to solve a problem in the field of or using Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, or Mathematics (STEAM). In 2021, the challenge focused on plastics and a video comprised of the winning entries will be shown during lunch.

Alicia Escott

Alicia Escott is an interdisciplinary artist based in the land we currently call San Francisco, she/they practices in solidarity with thinkers across fields undoing the construct of “nature” as a thing separated from us and our world. Escott work is informed by how we each are intimately negotiating our immediate day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate chaos, mass-extinction and the social and political unrest this rapid change, unprocessed grief and latent anxiety produces. Her work seeks to make space for the unspoken individual and collective experiences of loss, heartbreak and grief. She/they approach these issues with an interstitial practice that encompasses writing, drawing, painting, photography, video, sculpture, social-practice, and activism. She feels nostalgia for the Last Universal Common Ancestor from which all life on earth is descended when we were all connected— but lucky to be born in a moment of unprecedented species diversity that she has witnessed diminished in her own lifetime.

Escott’s work has been shown in over 100 art institutions, galleries, museums and alternative spaces. and reviewed in Momus, The San Francisco Chronicle and others. Escott is a founding member of 100 Days Action who were a recipient of the 2017 YBCA100 List Award. She is half of the Social Practice Project The Bureau of Linguistical Reality that have been featured in The Economist, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, ABC News and others. She works Nationally, Internationally and locally.

Kathy Aoki

Kathy Aoki is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who uses satire to critique the absurd value systems that dominate gender, pop culture, and politics. Her printmaking work can be found in major collections across the U.S. including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has been an artist-in-residence at numerous venues including MacDowell (NH), the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium). Aoki has completed commissions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Her studio is located in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is a Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University.

Perhaps the most important take-home lesson from the inaugural Mayor’s Cup Challenge is that the work of addressing the complex social, industrial and scientific issue of Plastics and Sustainability is ongoing. Following the panels, we asked Cupertino City Council Summer Interns to reach out to the panelists with follow-up questions. Here are those questions and the answers the panelists provided:

Jeff Donlevy: You mentioned how pigmented plastic bottles cannot be recycled into new bottles. How can we encourage manufacturers in the United States to be proactive and follow the steps of other countries–such as Japan–who have switched to all clear recyclable bottles?

What a great question and catching one of the key points of the whole plastics discussion.

Many people like to say something is “recyclable” but many people have a different understanding of recycling truly is.

1. Is it re-making a new product out of the same old product?
2. Is it making something new out of something old? Or
3. Is it finding a different use for something once we are done with it?

• True recycling is re-making a new product out of the same old product. A can into a can, a bottle into a bottle, a newspaper into another newspaper, or a cardboard box into another cardboard box.
• Downcycling is taking something (a bottle, newspaper, or metal can) and turning them into a new product with a different use. Taking a plastic bottle and turning it into carpet or clothing, taking newspaper and using it for insulation, or taking a tin can and making rebar or a tire and using it as playground flooring.
• Conversion is taking something like a bottle, wood, or green waste and converting it into energy to capture the energy value. This can be done by burning the material or cooking the material down. Combustion and burning do not count as recycling or “diversion” in California. On the federal level, combustion counts as diversion. This can be very controversial, so we will just stick to recycling.

The problem is that people understand that recycling is good, with recycling covering a wide variety of potential outcomes. People don’t understand the different potential outcomes.

There is theoretical recycling and actual recycling.

Technically, a manufacturer can say almost anything is recyclable. If the manufacturer takes all the orange bottles of the same type and color, they could be recycled into a new bottle. That would be post industrial recycling where the material has never been out into the consumer world and only cleaned up from the factory floor.

The actual real world process is not that clean and easy. There are so many different types of plastic materials using different polymers, different labels, and different barriers. There are no facilities in California (or the world) that are actually color sorting plastic bottles. Even with the cheapest labor in the world or the best optical sorting equipment (very costly) this is not happening in wide use.

Plastic recycling involves slowly melting the plastics from a solid state to a semi-liquid state. So only the clear PET and Natural HDPE plastics can then be used to make new bottles. The FDA has approve clear PET being used for a bottle to bottle re-use. The FDA does not allow bottle to bottle use for HDPE, so a milk or water bottle cannot become a new milk or water bottle, but they can be used as a new detergent jug.

With SB 54 passing, the bill was going to include an “Advanced Recycling” option where the plastics could be melted into a fuel and diesel product to be burned for fuel. That provision was withdrawn at the last moment. It will be interesting to see with SB 54 how much plastic actually gets recycled and how much gets downcycled.

The manufacturers want to sell their products and attractive packaging helps sells products. A green bottle helps you think about a lime drink, if that same clear drink was in a clear bottle you might think that there are lots of artificial flavors and not want to buy it.

Getting US manufacturers to change will take a lot of hard work, because change costs money and they are always afraid of spending and losing money on decreased sales. Ultimately, it will take legislation to force a change.

In Japan and South Korea, they have switched to clear PET for many reasons. The material is truly recyclable and both countries use waste to energy conversion technology to capture some energy out of waste material, thus limiting the amount of plastic they burn is better for they conversion systems.

Prof. Bruce Olszewsky: As the founding director of SJSU’s Center for the Development of Recycling, how can we further maintain and distribute recycling information to people who are unsure of what can be recycled, and how they can be recycled?

The best thing to do is to share with the community answers on how and where to discard anything in Santa Clara County. We're the experts on what can be donated, recycled, composted, and what is household hazardous waste. If we don't have the information, we'll research it and find a clear answer. We also have other interesting info on the countywide recycling website, RecycleStuff.org.

Corrinne Scown: The concept of utilizing enzymes of organisms to depolymerize plastics is really fascinating! How would you and your team implement this technology into the state and even global communities? How would you and your fellow scientists open this up to the state/global community?

Enzymatic recycling processes are already being commercialized for PET (polyethylene terephthalate), along with a variety of other advanced recycling processes. I'm particularly interested to see what happens when we start embedding enzymes in the plastic itself. The next steps at research institutions and startups will be to find clever ways to speed up these advanced processes and make them more energy efficient and cost effective.

Joey Schmitt: How do you think we can change people's behavior towards recycling and the environment? Is simply making it more accessible/convenient the key?

In order to change people’s behavior when it comes to recycling, we need to first understand what is preventing them from engaging in the proper behavior. Importantly, barriers are often different for each individual behavior. Making it convenient is one of the behavior change tools we can use, but it may not be enough for each situation. For example, many jurisdictions are making food scrap recycling more convenient by offering curbside collection of organic waste. However, some of the barriers include forgetting what goes in what bin, and not thinking it is a worth while behavior. To address these barriers, we’d develop a program that includes prompts to remind people to place food waste in their green bin and highlight social norms of how people value not wasting food. Now, contrast recycling food scraps with recycling a peanut butter jar. Recycling that jar is also convenient because of the curbside bin but has a different barrier of needing to wash out the peanut butter. In this case we may provide people with a ‘bottle brush’ or something similar to help them thoroughly get the remaining peanut butter out.

Jeff Dobert: How do you and your team plan to ensure that there is a balance of effectiveness and efficiency at transfer stations (e.g. overcoming the shortcomings of optical sorters)?

This is a great question as the biggest concerns with technology in the waste industry, especially the processing side, is effectiveness. The industry started out with optical sorters which were great at doing high volume levels of sorting, but were still misfiring 15% of the time and required an employee after it to clean up the final product. Over the fifteen years I’ve been doing this, the key to keeping effectiveness high at the facility is making adjustments. I am constantly doing waste characterizations of our residual material to see how effective our machinery is and to identify where we may be experiencing deficiencies. Back in 2015 we installed a new optical sorter and since then we have noticed that the wear and tear has caused for a 5-10% decrease in efficiency. This meant that we identified that we needed to do more picks and to make up for this without adding additional costly labor was to use robotic equipment. We are able to install robotic sorters after the optical sorter to help clean up the final commodities that we domestically market without adding any additional labor. We make sure every vendor we use to manufacture and/or install any new automated equipment here understands there are minimum performance requirements that need to be met. These standards are truly set by the domestic markets we sell to. Hopefully this helps a bit and makes sense. There are of course a lot of direct factors to making sure our equipment works as efficiently as possible like preventative maintenance, but in the end the best way to measure how well you are doing as a processor is waste studies to determine what is missed and where.

Nick Lapis: Do you see a policy being implemented in the near future that will require the simplification of packaging and materials for manufacturers?

I think it’s a fairly complex question, because it isn’t just one policy. Everything the state has been doing has been designed to increase producer responsibility for packaging and products (whether through manufacturer-run programs, recycled content mandates, deposits, manufacturer-funded collection, direct regulatory mandates, and truth in labeling). Each of these will lead to internalizing the costs of managing products and packaging at the end of their useful life and I believe most manufacturers will look for packaging types that reduce those costs by having existing infrastructure.

Obai Rambo: Would you please share some initiatives by Recology to work towards the goal of reducing the production of single-use plastics by 25% in California as contemplated by the plastics reduction ballot initiative and now as required under recently-passed SB54? What are the next steps and what policies do you think need to be enforced on the producer side to work towards this goal?

SB 54 represents a fundamental change in plastic waste regulation by focusing on production, rather than exclusively end-of-life disposal. Recology has long advocated for an extended producer responsibility policy for the plastics industry to place more obligation on manufacturers and retailers. Despite significant effort and investment, numerous forms of plastic simply cannot be effectively collected, sorted, and sold in municipal recycling streams, and the long-term cost of disposing this material is exponential. In addition to requiring these plastic products to meet certain recycling rates to be sold in California, SB 54 requires a direct reduction in the total volume of plastic in packaging, helping to stem the tide of plastic arriving at landfills and recycling facilities daily. The bill also establishes a plastic mitigation fund supported by $500 million in fees annually collected from producers and manufacturers, which creates a direct financial stake for plastic producers in solving the environmental issues that the over-production of single-use plastics has created.

Recology and other stakeholders are actively engaged at the state level as CalRecycle reviews, approves, and enforces compliance plans and allocates funding to ensure the regulation proceeds in a way that is consistent with the intent of the bill and truly improves the resource ecosystem of plastic. Numerous local measures aimed at reducing and reusing single-use plastics have been passed in jurisdictions we serve, which further bolster the effort to eliminate plastic waste. While SB 54 is revolutionary, it represents only the first step in rethinking how we produce, manage, and dispose of all types of waste and shift to a more circular economy.

Ursula Syrova: Asking places for feedback about legislation is a great idea. I wonder what type of responses have been shared and how they impact policies?

As we prepared the draft Single-Use Plastics Ordinance, we wanted to make sure that we made a robust effort to make the businesses that would be impacted aware of the proposed ordinance and what it contained as well as providing opportunity to provide feedback. When we conducted outreach in summer 2021, we heard from businesses that they had concerns about cost and availability of different types of foodware and some, such as bubble tea shops, were particularly reliant on certain single-use plastic foodware items and had concerns for their business model. That said, we also heard from the businesses and customers that, as a majority, they understood the concerns about single-use plastics and waste and were not opposed to making changes to improve the health and welfare of the environment. In the case of this proposed ordinance, we heard the concerns and refined the temporary exemptions that can be allowed. This is one way policy can provide an option for a business to get some extra time, use up existing inventory, or show that no compliant foodware item exists to meet the needs of the product and ease transition into the new regulations.

Ursula Syrova: What policies can be enforced on the producer side that will help consumers identify the different types of plastics in the products they are buying?

If producers were to limit their packaging to materials commonly able to be recycled and stopped using problematic materials with limited recyclability, it would be easier for consumers to know how to handle the materials at end of life and for cities to promote that messaging. This is something that SB54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act really targeted. As a first step, CalRecycle will conduct research and establish a list of materials that are considered recyclable or compostable in California. That process will likely involve determining that a majority of jurisdictions have access to curbside recycling of each material and that markets exist for the materials to be recycled and composted and put to use. Producers will then need to change the packaging they use for certain products to be one of those approved recyclable or compostable materials. This is a bold set of regulations that will take a long time to fully implement. SB54 has a goal date of 1/1/2032 for all covered materials to be recyclable or compostable. There will still be categories of products will not be covered by this law, including items such as medial products and prescriptions, packaging containing federally regulated insecticides and other such chemicals, and packaging to contain hazardous materials.

For this event, Mayor Darcy Paul and the Cupertino City Council proudly partnered with: