Hanson Steps Down as RCO Leader

After 14 years as executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO), John Hanson is stepping down from his leadership post. Hanson will remain involved with the Toronto-based RCO as a senior policy advisor.

Hanson is leaving the RCO to found Hanson Research & Communications. Hanson and his new company will manage a number of RCO programs, including a new national Waste Minimization Web site, an expanded Canada-wide Waste Reduction Week, a municipal electronics recovery infrastructure survey, an experts’ forum on bio-solids management, analysis of municipal waste diversion data and the monthly ReNews bulletin.

Another of Hanson’s goals over the next several months will be to establish a national recycling association for Canada. “I’m going to make it a priority to found such an association. I would hope [the organization can be established] by the spring of 2002. We don’t want it be anything that will be bureaucratic or cumbersome in any way.”

Hanson says the establishment of the Web site and the observation of a national Waste Reduction Week provide an ideal foundation for a national association. “We see these two projects as first steps in establishing a national association.”

Looking back on his 15 years with the RCO (14 of them as executive director), Hanson says a highlight was the Council receiving a United National Environment Award in 1989 for its blue box recycling collection program. “That was 12 years ago, and predecessors did a lot of the pioneering work,” he comments. “In terms of widespread adoption of blue boxes by a jurisdiction, Ontario was certainly the first in North America. That was certainly our focus, to get that kind of institutionalization of recycling. We ended up exporting our technology and knowledge all over North America.”

More recently, Hanson and the RCO authored a recycling roles and responsibilities report that was an impetus for pending legislation in Ontario that will address waste reduction methods for the next several years.

The RCO’s executive committee will oversee the search for a new executive director for the organization. Hanson, who is not on that committee, speculates that the RCO will probably aim to have a new executive director on board to oversee the five-person staff by this fall.

Also leaving the RCO is event manager Ana Almeida, who is leaving to assume coordination responsibilities for a number of other conferences and events. Joining the RCO staff is Kristine Black as coordinator of Waste Reduction Week in Ontario. Black was formerly with the Festive Earth Society.