By Rebecca Jewell, RU Co-Organizer and Portia Sinnott, Editor
68 surveys were received out of 430 registrations – 16%; 10% is considered a good response. Approximately 120 comments were submitted including 29+ recommendations for next year. Only a few respondents skipped questions, except for Q11. NCRA Events Outside of Zero Waste Week, received 21 responses and 47 skips.

Q1. Overall: 91% of the respondents said the Conference was Excellent – 54% or Good – 37%. Nine percent said okay and no one – 0% said they did not enjoy the Conference.
Q2. Topics: 90% were satisfied or very satisfied with the Speaker topics.
Q3. Recommendations: Almost half – 46%, made speaker recommendations or other suggestions for next year.
Q4. Subjects: The top ten subjects they would like to see more of in 2020 were EPR, Food Waste Reduction, Public Education Strategies, Food Recovery, Legislation and Regulations, Reuse/Repair, Product Bans, Product Redesign, Franchise Innovations and Zero Waste Businesses.
Q5. Price: 80% said the price was just right for the content; 9% would pay more, 7% a little expensive, 4.69% too expensive.
Q6. ZWW Events: When asked which of the other Zero Waste Week events they found valuable, more than half – 55%, said they were not able to attend the other events, 31%, said Green Drinks, 14% Zero Waste Youth Convergence and 13% Devil We Know film screening and discussion.
Q7. Zero Waste Week: 76% of folks said they think we should continue to offer Zero Waste Week, 1.5% said No and 22% No Opinion.
Q8. NCRA News: 88% read the NCRA News; 47% said they read it monthly while 41% said they read it occasionally. (One suggestion was to include it on the NCRA Facebook page.)
Q9. Membership: 79% of the respondents are NCRA members.
Q10. Member Satisfaction: 73% are satisfied with the services and information NCRA offers to its membership; specifically, 31% are very satisfied, 42% satisfied and 5% are neutral; 19% are non-members. There were zero comments.
Q11. NCRA Events Outside of ZWW: Only 21 respondents answered this question. 57% attend Tours, 52% Networking Mixers, 33% Annual Meetings, 29% the Annual Picnic, 24% Board Meetings and 10% the Semi-annual Holiday Party.
Q12: Lunch: 75% thought highly of the lunch: Excellent – 53% or Good – 22%. Nine suggestions were provided including a better system rewarding folks who brought their own plate and telling folks in advance what’s on the menu so they can choose to bring their lunch.
Q13: Profession or Affiliation: 53% of attendees are government employees, 13% consultants, 7% educators; 10% franchised waste haulers/recycler; 7% are non-profits, 7% are educators, 6% businesses, 6% activists, 7% other and 0% Independent recycler/composter.

Comments List In Question And Submittal Order
Editor’s Note: One comment was edited to remove identifiable references. The two specific individuals were apprised of these comments via email and phone.

Q1. Overall

1. There were a few sessions I found informative, but it lacked interesting/new/innovative speakers that the conference has showcased in the past.
2. Please print Name and Organization in larger font on the tags. The tags were almost illegible. There is plenty of room, and this will facilitate conversations.
3. Such range and depth — love the format too!
4. Topics seemed a little bland and heavy focus on recycling vs higher up the hierarchy (rethink, redesign, reuse, refuse). My favorite presenter was ironically the least technological -Plate Scrape!
5. Best NCRA I’ve ever attended.
6. I just love hearing from all aspects of the recycle community.
7. Need to touch more topics like implications of China’s ban
8. I very much like the lightning style, but I think you should allocate 5 minutes for questions. There are always more questions than time, and not enough networking time to follow up later.
9. I wish there was more diversity with presenters and we could hear from communities too instead of solely industry speakers.
10. It is my Not To be Missed annual event!
11. The ten minutes format was a bit too short. Fewer, and more selective, choices would be better.
12. Presentations were not particularly engaging, but event was well organized

Q2: Topics

1. I would have liked to see more food waste reduction topics, more focus on topics that are current news, issues cities and counties are faced with such as SB1383, Plastic reduction (great to see Berkeley’s ordinance), more innovative public/private partnerships.
2. Some good topics. Others felt like they had been discussed before.
3. Because we do not live a society with a justice system that benefits everyone I did not care for the illegal dumping topic. I also did not care for the XXXXX speaker as she clearly does not know what Environmental Justice means and joked about it.  XXXX.
4. It was such a wide variety, and some were not relevant to my work. Some were a little too far “out there”, and for example didn’t think Sabatini’s presentation offered anything. I would like to see more “practical” presentations, case studies or pilot studies of new programs, outreach ideas, etc. For example, Gigantic Idea’s presentation was great.
5. Is it possible for NCRA to review speaker slides ahead of time & help edit down? Some of the speakers had way too much text/hard to read charts or graphic illustrations on their slides. If NCRA can provide guidelines for slides–maybe even limit the total number of slides the speaker can have/text, it would make their presentations more effective. Also, help speakers do a run through of their videos to make sure they work before the presentations. Some speakers had more success than others with showing video content.
6. Not enough cutting edge, need more about plastic, some speakers not very good
7. There were a few that got zero questions, and that was often l indicative of who might have been left off list in my longer-than-ten-minutes suggestion.
8. Some presenters had poor presentation skills, and others presented on topics that were forgettable

Q3: Recommendations

1. Please make sure to include statewide policy directions. I missed that.
2. Loop (Terracycle)
3. Given the recycling processing market crisis, this topic is something many people are interested in learning more about and would be good to cover more of this
4. Generally I appreciate the speaker themes you come up with. I find I like the cutting edge/hard to handle discard issues the best-such as alternatives to landfilling dog shit!
5. David Alloway,
6. Markets, which companies are recycling materials into new products, where are they?
7. Folks from out of state. There are too many locals we’ve heard from before
8. New take on upcoming policies (state and local), how to actively implement 1383 (maybe more than one consecutive speaker)
9. The Berkeley foodware and litter reduction ordinance
10. Max Weschler – Urban Ore, James Slattery, SF Environment – C&D, Michael Siminitus, ZW Events, mark Funkhauser, Chumash Casino Resort – Tribal ZW & TRUE ZW Certification Process
11. Would love some sort of global bin comparison study – who’s using what and how happy they are with them. so difficult when each entity has to do the research from scratch!
12. A few speakers on SB 1383. What about a pre-recorded talk from a processor from China?
13. Can we hear from more school-based programs? Universities and K-12 alike.
14. Please have the projector set up and expanded as much as possible before presenters begin speaking. Many of the presentations in the morning were hard to view until the projection was expanded later in the day.
15. More details on SB1383 requirements and how to do it; recycling markets – let’s hear from the sellers or processors of materials
16. More on latest technologies
17. It would be interesting to have speakers from environmental organizations like: Women’s Environmental Network (WEN), Cascadia Consulting Group, Green Mary, Replate, Olio, Farming Hope, Imperfect Produce, Rethink Waste, Stopwaste
18. More on circular economy, hazards in plastics, more on how we can create policies that galvanize more reuse, recycling like a requirement for x% of recycled content in everything!
19. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sunrise Movement, 350.org’s Youth vs. Apocalypse, anyone who cares about creating a more inclusive zero waste/environmental movement.
20. More on how cities etc are approaching SB 1383, AB 1826 compliance, etc.
21. Provide presentation guidelines to all presenters with some basics (1 page and some helpful links) on how to create and deliver engaging presentations in the given time restrictions. Many presenters are not prepared (don’t know they have 10 minutes, don’t know how to give a 10 minute presentation) or cram too much into their time. It’s a unique challenge to be asked to present, often very complex topics with narratives in a short period. Presenters could use some help from NCRA to guide them on how to make the most of their time and the audience’s time. Simple suggestions could include a major emphasis on keeping presentations to 10 minutes, practicing, giving a slide # recommendation (15 or less), and being consise with their stories and complex concepts. OVERALL, some presenters are great and all usually have relevant and important stories to tell. However, the way that some people present distracts from the audience’s ability to digest, understand and appreciate their message.
22. Allow 1 & 5 minute speakers again too. Limit number of slides, words per slide and font size (no unreadable slides). Encourage more than powerpoints–mix it up. Allow people to talk with each other outside–it’s often better than the speakers. Thanks.
23. I think the private company folks should be vetted further – like the first speaker who talked about circle economy and highlighted ikea and other companies’ greenwashed tactics as a good thing.
24. Ellen MacArthur Foundation representative that can present the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment report efforts to address plastic pollution
25. More examples of partnerships versus individual representative
26. Cutting edge products like platescaper or new cutting edge services, toxicity of plastic pollution
27. Longer than ten minutes. Actually, have some longer, some shorter. I once went to a conference where a session had several 99 second talks, and it was FUN, and not for the faint of heart presenter.
28. It’s interesting to hear of innovative new products, but I don’t think vendors necessarily need to have their own presentation slot
29. Mark Nicolas, SFE re: SFRecycles & presenting clearly

Q4: Subjects

1. Who are the “players’ with legislation? (industry, key legislators)
2. Reduction: foodware and litter
3. C&D
4. Textile Management / Microfibers / Reuse & Recycling
5. Markets
6. Technology
7. Regional/multi agency partnerships
8. Suggest that you might offer roundtable discussions to brainstorm policy/legislation
9. Outreach, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
10. Scaling source reduction and reuse beyond boutique efforts.
11. Emphasis on waste prevention

Q5 Price:

1. Great learning/$

Q6 ZWW Events

1. I wouldn’t mind a 20-30 minute Q+A session for the entire group to be able to bring up certain questions/issues and see how other folks/municipalities are handling/facing those challenges (separate from the dedicated speaker format)
2. Very nice & tasty reception. Loved the veggies & tater tots.
3. I wish I had heard of swap-o-rama earlier, as I wasn’t able to make it because I somehow missed the memo until after the date passed!
4. Once BART is available from San Jose, I will be able to attend more events.
5. Was everything on the website? I didn’t see all of these listed.
6. Living so far away, I was unable to attend other events but would have enjoyed many of them if I were closer
7. Green Drinks is always great
8. Green Drinks was great! An awesome opportunity to meet people.
9. Getting pretty crowded at Spat’s, time to try a different venue with more space

Q7. Zero Waste Week

1. Altho it depends on the amount of work /effort required for a full week of events.
2. I think it’s fantastic to offer ZWW because it helps build the culture.
3. YES, it is a very educational and inspiring week of Zero Waste events!!!
4. If there are enough people participating in the other ZWW events besides RU. It’s hard for me to make the other events during the week, so for me only able to attend RU. Definitely think ZWYC over the weekend is a good event to sustain.

Q8. NCRA News

1. Crazy busy
2. I like to keep abreast of trends.
3. Good content, but I get too many emails to stay on top of them all
4. Didn’t know about it
5. I am newly subscribed to NCRA News, but I’d like to read more of it!
6. I am interested in the content.
7. I don’t get it.
8. I signed up on the FaceBook page immediately after the conference, and hope to stay more frequently updated that way.
9. busy
10. I don’t receive it, not a member
11. I read the newsletter
12. Updates, Jobs and events
13. it’s very valuable material and perspective
14. Keep up on lies, rumors and gossip
15. I’m new. Not bored
16. Good information to stay abreast of current events, but I really only read when I have time
17. Great article topics and updates, helps keep me well informed.
18. Just learned about NCRA prior to this event.

Q9. Membership

1. The City of San Jose’s structure requires a staff rotation for memberships and conference attendance.
2. Colleague is one, and NCRA topics don’t have enough composting/organics related topics for me to warrant membership
3. No longer based in Bay Area but considering joining anyway again
4. Just learned about NCRA prior to this event.

Q10. Member Satisfaction – 0 comments

Q11. NCRA Events Outside of ZWW

1. none
2. The traffic from South bay is too hard to overcome.
3. N/A
4. Hard these days due to family commitments.
5. Haven’t been able to attend Bay Area events since I moved to San Luis Obispo
6. I would attend a networking mixer located in the South Bay.
7. I’m new. First event for me

Q12: Lunch

1. I always go out for vegan food since I am in Berkeley and there isn’t much at the RU.
2. I’m gluten-free, not meat-free, so I wind up taking a sandwich and throwing away the bread. Not ideal!
3. Quinoa is great, but every year it seems the same recipe?
4. The bread in vegan option was dry
5. Why does the side salad always have to include quinoa? Yuck!
6. Great food! Please let people know what’s on menu so we know whether to bring our own (for those with food allergies). You provided GF and vegan which was awesome! And I did bring my own lunch which wasn’t necessary.
7. I really enjoyed having a vegan option and coffee creamers. The lunch and snacks were great.
8. Cookies at lunchtime and/or breaks. Not at breakfast.

Q13: Profession or Affiliation

1. I wear lots of “hats!”
2. Staff for UC’s system wide Zero Waste Working Group
3. University
4. Student
5. Family office

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