Agenda
Welcome
Paul Presendieu, Co-founder WASS, Chair, New Rochelle Natural Resources Advisory Committee
Introduction: The Problem with Waste
Courtney M. Williams, PhD, Founder, WASS
Keynote Speaker: Kirstie Pecci, Executive Director, Just Zero
Solid Waste in Westchester County – How to Save Money, Reduce Waste, and Protect Your Health
Though the landscape of waste reduction can seem complicated, there are a number of specific areas where a simple change can have a high impact on 90% of what’s in our current waste stream statewide. Municipalities can form Zero Waste plans, enact pay-as-you-throw policies, implement diversion programs for food scraps, textiles, and other materials, and support producer responsibility in legislation.
Panel: Legislative and Policy Frameworks for Solutions
Legislator Erika Pierce, District 2 Westchester County Board of Legislators
Assemblyman Steve Otis, NYS Assembly District 91
Charlotte Binns, Sustainability Director, Village of Irvington
Since 2010, extended producer responsibility legislation has been pushed in the New York Senate and Assembly, currently in the form of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, sponsored by Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick. We cannot recycle our way out of current trends, where consumption of material is rising and the length of its lifecycle is falling, and these trends continue to get steeper. At the county and municipal level, a distributed network of small composting facilities need to be constructed to handle food scrap recycling. Small businesses and organizations can take donations of furniture and construction materials for reuse or collect materials for diversion, and towns can highlight them using directories or maps like the Town of Irvington has done. Constructive enforcement of the county’s Upon Request law regulating single-use utensils in takeout food is a good way to keep Zero Waste practices visible.
Community-Based Solutions
Lightning Round: Program Descriptions from Orgs in Attendance
Scaling Solutions: Suzie Fromer, Coordinator Hudson Valley Repair Cafe
Repair cafes have been numerous and well attended, saving $30,000 of manufacturing costs with around a 75% fix rate. They also provide an excellent opportunity to connect with individuals about the need to divert material from the waste stream systemically. Support right-to-repair legislation and fight against planned obsolescence to boost the benefit these cafes provide.
Panel: Implementing Solutions
Liz Sun, Hudson Valley Regional Council; Funding Solutions
Anthony Carbone, Sustainable Materials Management; Scaling Food Scraps Recycling
Lou Vetrone, First Deputy Commissioner Westchester County Department of Environmental Facilities; Implementing Waste Solutions
In order to fund reduction and recycling programs and provide the necessary public education about them, Hudson Valley Regional Council provides a consolidated model of grant application and publishes a monthly grants guide to its mailing list. Sustainable Materials Management, Inc. runs a 2-acre composting facility in Cortlandt, at about 60% of its annual capacity of 2500 tons, which represents 3% of Westchester’s food scraps. Establishing new facilities is a straightforward but lengthy process, and only scalable in a dispersed system, so we need to prepare for an increase in food scraps collection, and we also need to make good decisions about what compostable bags to use, if any. Westchester County is in the process of siting a large-scale composting facility, but would still need to rely on a distributed network and would have nowhere near enough capacity for all the food scraps in the county. The county Department of Environmental Facilities is focused on supporting statewide extended producer responsibility legislation and recycling education in multifamily housing units.
Speaker Biographies
Courtney Williams
Courtney M. Williams, Ph.D., is a scientist, activist, and community organizer living in the environmental justice community of Peekskill, New York. She holds a BS in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from Yale University, a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, and did her post-doctoral training in Biological Engineering at MIT. She brings over two decades of experience researching cancer and the molecular mechanisms of disease to parse the emerging data on the health and environmental impacts of pollution from energy infrastructure and shale gas development. She has worked closely with local, state, and federal officials to educate them on the public health issues surrounding fossil fuel infrastructure, industrial pollution, and climate change. Courtney founded Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions (WASS) to close the WIN-Waste trash incinerator in Peekskill and move Westchester County toward Zero Waste.
Kirstie Pecci
Kirstie Pecci is the Executive Director of Just Zero, a national Zero Waste non-profit that partners with communities, advocates, and policy makers across the country to implement just and equitable solutions to climate-damaging and toxic production, consumption, and waste disposal practices. Kirstie established and was the Director of the Zero Waste Program at Conservation Law Foundation, and is a former MASSPIRG Staff Attorney. Kirstie started her legal career as an associate in Nixon Peabody’s Real Estate/Environmental Practice Group. A graduate of Boston College Law School and Harvard University, she lives in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
Assemblymember Steve Otis
Assemblyman Otis has served in the Assembly since 2013 and previously served as mayor of the City of Rye. His other legislative highlights include helping initiate the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2015, which has awarded over $3 billion in clean water grants to over 1100 municipal projects. Assemblyman Otis has also been a successful advocate for state funding to school districts, environmental protection, consumer protection, flood mitigation, and local government issues. Before joining the Assembly, he served as long-time Counsel and Chief of Staff to State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer.
Legislator Erika Pierce
Erika has lived in New York for most of her life and has raised her two kids in Westchester County, where she has lived in Bedford for over 25 years. She has served as a Legislator representing District 2 (Mt Kisco, Bedford, Lewisboro, North Salem, Pound Ridge and half of Somers) since she was first elected in 2021. She chairs the Parks & Environment committee, and previously chaired the Public Works and Transportation (2024-25) and Environment, Energy and Climate (2022-23) committees. She also serves as a Vice Chair for the National Association of Counties’ Environment, Energy and Land Use Committee and is a member of the New York State Association of County’s Environment Committee. Prior to entering government, Erika was a licensed school teacher, ran a non-profit arts organization and a printing company. She was awarded the Local Public Health Legislator of the Year award by the New York State Public Health Association in 2024 and credits her interest in the environment to her time in 4-H.
Charlotte Binns
Charlotte Binns is an environmental leader, social entrepreneur, and community organizer serving as Director of Sustainability for the Village of Irvington, New York. Her work focuses on advancing practical local solutions in waste reduction, clean energy, climate resilience, ecosystem health, and community engagement. She has helped secure significant climate and conservation funding, guided Irvington to New York State Climate Smart Communities Silver Certification, and developed innovative public programs that connect sustainability with civic participation and behavior change. Charlotte holds a Permaculture Design Certification, stewards a 1,000-tree food forest upstate, and organizes Ecstatic Dance gatherings exploring the relationship between community, embodiment, and resilience.
Elizabeth Sun
Liz Sun joined HVRC as Senior Clean Energy & Climate Smart Communities Coordinator in March 2023. She works on the NYSERDA Clean Energy Communities Program and NYSDEC Climate Smart Communities program, providing support to communities working to reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions through the implementation of cost-saving clean energy projects. She previously was a Legislative Fellow for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, providing technical and research support to promote sustainable environmental policies. Ms. Sun received her master’s degree in Public Health with a certificate in Environmental Health Policy from Columbia University and her bachelor’s degree in Biology and Public Health from The George Washington University.
Anthony Carbone
Anthony Carbone is the Founder and President of Sustainable Materials Management, Inc., the first commercial composting facility approved in Westchester County, which contracts with Westchester County under the RFSTAD program to compost the municipal food scraps of 26 communities. He is also the General Manager of CRP Sanitation, his families’ private hauling company. He has over 25 years’ experience in the trash recycling industry. His family has been in the trash recycling hauling business in the NY Metro area for over 100 years.
Louis Vetrone
Louis Vetrone currently serves as the First Deputy Commissioner of the Westchester County Department of Environmental Facilities, which operates the County’s refuse disposal district, sewer districts, and water districts. Prior to that he served as Deputy Director of the County’s Solid Waste Commission, a watchdog agency fostering fairness, honesty and competition in the waste and recycling industry. He has previously served in the General Counsel’s Office of the New York City Council, and as a Nassau County Assistant District Attorney. He currently serves on the Board of the NY Chapter of Solid Waste Association of North America and is a former Chapter president. Lou is a resident of Scarsdale, NY, where he volunteers as an EMT and serves on the board of the local ambulance corps. He is a graduate of Fordham Law School and the State University of New York at Albany.
Suzie Fromer
Suzie Fromer is the coordinator for Sustainable Hudson Valley’s Repair Cafe Hudson Valley program, a consortium of almost 75 Repair Cafes in the Hudson Valley, Catskills and Capital Region. As the daughter of antique dealers who specialized in furniture and tool restoration, Suzie grew up steeped in the twin values of environmentalism and restoration. She learned metalsmithing and jewelry making first as a camper at Buck’s Rock and later as a jewelry studio teaching assistant at Dartmouth College. She has spent the last 20 years in Westchester, NY, where she has run a food allergy support group, been an advocate for OIT food allergy treatments, chaired the board of her local farmers market and run a jewelry making and repair business. She started volunteering as a jewelry repair coach at the first Hastings Repair Cafe in 2019 and quickly fell in love with the concept. She is a frequent speaker on the topic of repair cafes regionally and nationally. Suzie also serves as the outreach chair of the NYSAR3 Reuse Committee and is a member of their 2026 preconference day committee. In addition, she has served on the planning board for the last four Repair Economy Summits which are put together for and by the U.S. community repair and tool library movements. Suzie lives in Irvington, NY and can be found fixing jewelry at a repair cafe throughout the Hudson Valley almost every weekend.