2008 Global Waste Management Symposium

The 2008 Global Waste Management Symposium (GWMS) served as a forum for the presentation of both applied and fundamental research and case studies on waste management. The entire community of designers, facility owners and operators, policy makers, and researchers participated.  The GWMS was held in a setting in which all participants were able to share ideas and solve problems.The Symposium included both oral presentations and posters, as well as social events to provide opportunities for technical interaction and discussion. The core of this event was the submission of extended abstracts reviewed by a program committee with accepted abstracts published in a proceedings.

The Symposium was held in concert with the Intercontinental Landfill Research Symposium (ICLRS), the premier international meeting on landfill research. In addition, under the direction of Robert Koerner, a Geosynthetic Research Institute (GRI) sponsored and arranged session was held. A full-day Geosyn-thetic Institute (GSI) Focus Group meeting providing research on geosynthetic materials and applications in the solid waste industry was also conducted.

A broad coalition of government agencies, waste services companies, consultants, vendors/suppliers, researchers, and leading trade organizations and scientific foundations were participants and beneficiaries of the Global Waste Management Symposium.  Over 500 people attended the first Global Waste Management Symposium, with 25% of those coming from abroad.

The GWMS officially kicked off on Monday, September 8 with two keynote presenters: Dr. Michael J. Walsh, Executive Vice President, Chicago Climate Exchange and Mr.Hakan Rylander, CEO, SYSAV Company Group, South Scania Waste Company, Sweden. Dr. Walsh’s presentation was on The Potential for National Carbon Emissions Trading to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Mr. Rylander spoke on Maximum Recycling of Material and Energy-Minimum of Landfilling: Perspectives from Europe.

At the GWMS, awards were presented for the following presentations:

• Best Manuscript – Fugitive Methane Emissions from Landfills: A Field Comparison of Five Methods of a French Landfill - Antoine Babilotte, Veolia Environment R&D
• Second Place Manuscript – Considering Carbon Capture and Storage for Energy Generation from Municipal Solid Waste - Frank Zeman, WTERT / Columbia University
• Third Place Manuscript – Potential and Limitations of Passively Vented Biofilters for the Microbial Oxidation of Landfill Methane - Julia Gebert, University of Hamburg
• Best Student Manuscript - Electricity Production from the Management of Leachate with Microbial Fuel Cells - Lisa Damiano, University of New Hampshire
• Second Place Student Manuscript – Estimating Sorption Equilibrium and Kinetic Parameters for Organic Containments in Landfills - Jovita Saquing, NC State University
•  Third Place Student Manuscript – Relative Contributions of Moisture and Biological Activity on Compression of Municipal Solid Waste in Bioreactor Landfills - Christopher Bareither, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Through receptions, networking functions, breaks, and the GWMS golf outing, participants had the opportunity to share ideas and problem solve with their colleagues and the 50 GWMS sponsors including Waste Management, Republic Services, Golder Associates, Waste Connections, Brown and Caldwell, Civil and Environmental Consultants, Inc., GeoSyntec Consultants, Geotech Environmental Equipment, Inc, SCS Engineers, Shaw Environmental, Inc and Weaver Boos Consultants, LLC. 

Leadership

Leadership for the Global Waste Management Symposium rested with two committees. The Technical Committee developed the programming, including speaker identification, publication of the proceedings and developmed peer-review journal submissions. The Business Committee guided venue selection, sales/marketing and the identification of strategic partners/sponsors.

Conference Co-Chairs:

Conference Business Chair: