Welcome To
BioCycle West Coast Conference 2012
We welcome you to BioCycle's 26th Annual West Coast Conference in Portland, Oregon. It is exciting to be in the Pacific Northwest region, where examples of waste diversion, composting, anaerobic digestion, renewable energy and community sustainability abound. Here in the city of Portland alone, it is amazing to see the significant strides in organics diversion since BioCycle last held the West Coast Conference here in 2006. Such progress includes, for example, Portland's rollout of residential food waste collection and shift to biweekly trash collection. Composting facilities in the region are permitted to receive source separated food waste under Oregon's revised compost rules. A dedicated anaerobic digester for food waste is to be constructed within the city limits.
And that's just the city of Portland! Over the next three days, you will learn about programs, projects, policies, research, technologies and systems on the West Coast and around the country (and globe) that are moving the management of organic waste streams and recyclables away from disposal and combustion and toward recovery and generation of high-quality by-products including compost and soil blends, and renewable power, fuels and natural gas. Several sessions will expose you to new ideas about how to value and monetize the environmental benefits of your projects and products.
Please take advantage of the opportunity to network with speakers, exhibitors and other participants during the lunches in the Exhibit Hall Tuesday and Wednesday, at the reception Tuesday evening, and during the continental breakfasts and refreshment breaks on both days. And we encourage conference attendees to tell BioCycle staff about your innovative projects and programs so that we can stay in touch for future articles and breaking news in BioCycle and on our new website, www.biocycle.net.
See page 10 of this program for two Special Events on Wednesday, April 18. The first is the Zero Waste Community Connection, where you can meet and greet Zero Waste players attending the BioCycle Conference who are striving and working toward a future without waste. The second is an open forum with members of the Compostable Plastics Task Force to improve the dialogue between the compostable plastics and composting industries.
BioCycle West Coast 2012 is striving to be a Zero Waste Conference. Use the sorting stations in the Conference venue to recycle and compost your materials. To avoid contamination in the compost stream, please look at the signs carefully before placing your materials in the specially marked compost and recycling containers.
On behalf of the Goldstein family — our founder Jerome Goldstein as well as Rill, Ina and myself — along with our coworkers, Doug Pinkerton, Teri Sorg-McManamon, Dan Sullivan and Celeste Madtes, we thank you for coming to BioCycle's 26th Annual West Coast Conference. We also thank our sponsors, speakers, moderators and our host city of Portland for their generous support.
