Speaker Biographies
Session I: Recycled Content is Better than Virgin Material!
Dave Cornell, Technical Consultant, The Association of Plastic Recyclers
Mr. Cornell is a 43-year veteran of the PET packaging industry, with experience going back to the very early days of commercial PET bottle polymer. He worked in the initial product and process development for commercializing PET for bottles, supervised PET production, worked for the last 32 years on product stewardship and recycling matters for PET and other polymers, served as the founding Technical Director for the Association of Plastic Recyclers for 13 years, and now serves as Technical Consultant to the trade association. The author of 15 patents, Mr. Cornell is well aware of the developments in PET technology and problems facing the plastics resin, fabricating, and recycling industries. Mr. Cornell, a licensed professional engineer; owns DD Cornell Associates LLC, a plastics stewardship, assessment, and feasibility consulting company; is associated with SBA-CCI Inc., a PET consultancy; and is a plastics editor for life cycle inventories with Ecoinvent. Mr. Cornell was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2018.
Session II: How the Circular Economy is Responding to International Scrap Bans
Dylan de Thomas, VP of Industry Collaboration, The Recycling Partnership
Dylan de Thomas is Vice President of Industry Collaboration for The Recycling Partnership, working with the team there to increase both the quantity and quality of the curbside collected recyclables across the U.S. The Partnership is a non-profit that provides grants and technical assistance to governments and recycling facilities and shares research on measurement and best practices. Previous to joining the Partnership, Dylan worked for Resource Recycling for a decade, directing and producing content for three publications and three conferences covering various aspects of the recycling industry. Dylan lives in inner SE Portland with his wife and two newly teenage daughters, one dog, one cat, two guinea pigs, four fancy rats and four fish. They also partially lease a horse, but let's not get into that. Dylan loves recycling and loves talking about it in all its complicated glory anywhere they ask him to.
Session V: Manufacturers Talk about their Businesses and RMDZ
Yaniv Scherson, Managing Director, Western US, Anaergia
Dr. Yaniv Scherson is the Managing Director for the western U.S. region for Anaergia. Dr. Scherson is based in Carlsbad California where he leads Anaergia’s projects integrating organics recycling from solid waste with anaerobic digestion and wastewater for production of renewable power and renewable natural gas. He leads Anaergia’s turnkey system offering and supports Anaergia’s Design, Build, Own, Operate, and Finance arm. Dr. Scherson has wastewater and research experience at the doctoral level focused on resource and energy recovery from wastewater. Dr. Scherson has published his work in leading peer reviewed journals, patents, and book chapters and has presented internationally as an invited speaker. He is a licensed professional engineer in California and holds Ph.D. and Master degrees from Stanford University.
Juan Carlos Anota, Plant Manager (Phoenix), Aquafil
Juan Carlos Anota holds an MBA and a degree in Industrial Engineering from Monterrey Tech in Mexico. Mr. Anota has an engineering and operations management career spanning 20 years, working with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, US Greenfiber, Jabil, and now Aquafil. As a Plant Manager for Aquafil, Juan Carlos' current endeavor has been launching a first of its kind Carpet Recycling Facility in Phoenix, Arizona, which supplies recycled nylon fibers for use in their innovative Econyl product.
Keith Beswick, Plant Manager (Woodland), Aquafil
Keith Beswick is a graduate of San Diego State University (2003). Mr. Beswick has 15 years of manufacturing experience. The last 8 years focused on Maintenance and Engineering in the Food and Beverage industry before becoming the Plant Manager with Aquafil in August of 2018. Mr. Beswick has a Six Sigma Green Belt certification from Villanova University and a Lean Green Belt certification from the University of Southern California. He is currently overseeing the build out of Aquafil’s second carpet recycling facility in the US in Woodland CA. The facility is scheduled for commissioning in late September 2019.