UH to Host Summit on Economic, Environmental Benefits of Recycling

Two months after the city of Houston renegotiated a deal that ended curbside glass recycling, the University of Houston’s Center for Sustainability and Resilience (CeSAR) and the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) are co-hosting a symposium to consider the future of recycling and other waste management.

The symposium, set for Tuesday, May 24, on the UH campus, will focus on policy and economic issues driving recycling and other forms of waste management, as well as the emerging technologies that will shape the issue in years to come.

“We want to inform the recycling discussion in Houston, but we’re also trying to put that in a market context,” said Bruce Race, CeSAR director and a professor in the UH Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture.

The issue of glass recycling is timely – the city signed a new contract which omits glass recycling with Waste Management in March, saying that the market for recycled glass was no longer profitable. But Race said the subject is far bigger and involves not just recycling but other economic development, environmental and policy issues.

“We need fiscal and economic development policies that better connect to our environmental policies,” he said.          

WHAT:                           Symposium on the challenges and economic issues related to recycling and waste

                                         processing, sponsored by the UH Center for Sustainability and Resilience (CeSAR) and

                                         Houston Advanced Research Center.

 WHO:                             In addition to Race, speakers include David Post, IBM; Lee Reisinger, ReiTech

                                         Corporation; Rick Perez, Avangard Innovative; Ron Sass, Rice University; Brian

                                         Yeoman, C40; Mat Everhart, Stadler America, and Michael Weber, University of

                                         Texas at Austin.

 WHEN:                           8:30 a.m.-noon Tuesday, May 24.

 WHERE:                        UH Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, Room 150.

                                         Map: http://www.uh.edu/maps/

 MEDIA CONTACT:      Jeannie Kever, 713-743-0778; m – 713-504-3769. jekever@uh.edu.

 RSVP:                             Register here. Contact events@HARCresearch.org for more information.