This webinar will introduce several innovative policy ideas that support clean materials, clean production, enhanced product lifespans, and reduced waste. Join us on Thursday, May 22, 2025, from 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM PST.
These policy innovations were recently daylit in a landmark report to Oregon’s legislature on opportunities for the state to reduce its consumption-based GHG emissions. While many of these emissions physically originate outside of Oregon’s borders, the study uncovered rich opportunities to reduce them through state policy, and in doing so, to level the playing field between in- and out-of-state producers, while delivering benefits to in-state producers, communities, and the environment.
Several of these policy innovations have already been adopted, as part of Oregon’s Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act. The Act, which goes into effect this summer, is more than just a recycling law. It includes pioneering policy elements, such as: product stewardship mandates on global producers; mandates, incentives, and standards for assessment and disclosure of life cycle environmental impacts; and a new program to reduce life cycle environmental impacts of packaging and printed paper through means other than recycling. Related efforts involving building materials are also underway in Oregon as part of the state’s work to reduce embodied carbon in the built environment.
Speakers
Mel Clark, President & CEO, CleanTech Alliance
Mel Clark is a leader with 25 years of nonprofit experience, as well as for-profit business experience in real estate and human resources. She has a demonstrated track record of strong fiscal stewardship and program development. She joined the CleanTech Alliance in April 2020.
She has two adult children, one in college studying computer science, the other a theatre technician at Disneyland.
She was born in Massachusetts, raised in Kansas, spent summers on the beach in Connecticut, and attended colleges in New York and Washington. She is a life-long learner, and loves to read, travel, cook, bake, and garden, and enjoys hiking, yoga, swimming, diving, and tolerates running (long enough to finish a marathon in 2017).
David Allaway, Senior Policy Analyst, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
David Allaway has worked at the intersection of waste, materials and environment for over 35 years. He is currently a senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, where his work applies research into the environmental impacts of materials across their lifecycle to inform policies and programs addressing climate and product stewardship.
David’s work has been featured in publications such as Time and Sierra magazines, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the National Law Review, as well as PBS Frontline, Vox Consider It and even Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He has testified before Congress and contributed to the New York Times bestseller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. He has received awards from the administrator of the US EPA and the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment.
Please join us on Thursday, May 22 from 12:30-1:30pm PT to learn more about these and other new frontiers in clean materials policy. Registration is free.