Municipal Solid Waste Recycling in the United States: Analysis of Current and Alternative Approaches (2025)
Chapter: Appendix A: Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Appendix A
Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Don Fullerton is visiting professor at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara (2023–present). From 2008 to 2023, he was Gutgsell Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, having previously taught at Princeton, Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, and Texas. Dr. Fullerton’s research analyzes distributional and efficiency effects of environmental and tax policies. After completing research on taxation, he switched his focus to environmental economics and policy, where he analyzed household behavior in response to a price per bag of garbage by measuring the reduction of curbside garbage and the increase in curbside recycling. Dr. Fullerton’s current research is on the circular economy, including policies to reduce negative effects of extraction, production, and disposal. He studies economic effects of climate policy, energy efficiency mandates, renewable portfolio standards, cap-and-trade permits for emissions, and carbon taxes, including the distribution of the burdens of policy as well as effects on the environment, on cost efficiency, and on overall social welfare. From 1985 to 1987, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the Treasury Department, and in 2014, he was a lead author of the United Nations. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC Fifth Assessment Report). Dr. Fullerton received a B.A. from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley.
Debra Reinhart is a Pegasus Professor Emerita at the University of Central Florida. Prior to her retirement in June 2021, she was Associate Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the University of Central Florida and a member of the Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering Department. Dr. Reinhart’s research area is solid waste management, with a focus on optimized waste collection, recycling, and processing as well as sustainable operation of landfills. From 2011to 2013, she was a program manager at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Reinhart is an associate editor for the journal Waste Management and is a registered professional engineer in Florida and Georgia, a Board-Certified Environmental Engineer, and a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. She holds a B.S. in engineering from Florida Technological University and an M.S. in sanitary engineering and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Malak Anshassi is an assistant professor at Florida Polytechnic University teaching solid waste management, sustainability, and life cycle assessment courses. Her research focuses on incorporating life cycle thinking into solid waste management. Dr. Anshassi previously conducted research using principles from sustainable materials management (SMM) to analyze the application of life cycle thinking into Florida’s solid waste management system to achieve the 75 percent recycling rate target. In her current research she formulates SMM-based solid waste management and policy approaches that decision makers from any region of the world can use to measure their waste management system’s environmental and economic impacts. She received her doctorates degree from the University of Florida in 2020 and is an active member of Solid Waste Association of North America, Air and Waste Management Association, and Recycle Florida Today.
Fatima Hafsa is a circular economy specialist and materials engineer. Her research focuses on sustainable supply chains, recycling economics, and voluntary governance. Dr. Hafsa’s work experience spans private businesses (Mitsubishi Chemicals, Engro Foundation), non-profits (World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan), and government agencies in the United States, Pakistan, and West Africa. She is current working as a circular economy specialist at the World Bank, where she is assisting Global South governments
in implementing circular economy at a national level, and she has extensive experience in recycling systems within the United States. As a postdoctoral scholar at Arizona State University, Dr. Hafsa assessed the efficacy of U.S. recycling systems. She mapped local recycling supply chains, assessed waste trade, identified recycling innovations, and identified ways in which U.S. local governments can use sustainable purchasing to improve recycling systems. Dr. Hafsa has a master’s in materials engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and she completed her Ph. D. in sustainability at Arizona State University in 2022. She is also a Fulbright scholar from Pakistan.
Tracy Horst is the Environmental Compliance and Recycling Director for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and has been with the tribe since 2007. In her current position, she has assisted with creating and maintaining a compliance program to ensure the tribe is following environmental regulations. Horst has helped to establish the tribe’s recycling program and set up and manages two recycling centers. She assists rural communities in southeastern Oklahoma in learning and understanding more about what recycling is, how to start recycling, and options for recycling. Horst currently serves on the Tribal Waste and Response Steering Committee for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals and is active with the Oklahoma Recycling Association including serving on the Board of Directors, as vice president, and president. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Durant Sustainability Coalition and the planning committee for the Texoma Earth Day Festival. Horst has degrees in biology and chemistry from Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas.
Derek Kellenberg is a professor in the Economics Department at the University of Montana. He specializes in the fields of international and environmental economics, with particular interests in international environmental policy, international pollution haven effects, and the determinants of hazardous waste trade across countries. Dr. Kellenberg has published articles in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among others, and he currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and the International Journal of Sustainable Society. He was the keynote speaker at the Symposium on International Waste Trade: Economic Research and Policy Implications in Brussels, Belgium, in 2015 and authored a chapter in the Annual Review of Resource Economics on the economics of international waste trade. Dr. Kellenberg received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado.
Jeremy O’Brien is a solid waste management researcher and consultant who has more than 45 years of experience in the industry. From 1979 to 1989, O’Brien served as a program manager for Public Technology, Inc., a local government research organization with 160 member governments, which served as the technical arm of the National League of Cities and the International City Management Association. From 1989 to 1998, he was a senior professional associate and project manager for HDR Engineering, Inc., a national civil/environmental engineering firm with 3,300 employees in 90 offices throughout the United States. O’Brien was HDR’s Recycling Technical Director in 1991–1992. Since 1999, he served as the director of applied research for the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), is a professional association of over 10,000 solid waste and recycling practitioners in the United States and Canada. During his tenure, O’Brien established the SWANA Applied Research Foundation that has developed over 60 reports in the areas of solid waste collection, sustainable materials management, waste conversion and energy recovery and landfill disposal. While he retired from SWANA in January 2025, he continues to work for the association on a part time basis. O’Brien received two degrees from Duke University: a B.A. in religion in 1974 and an M.S. in urban and environmental engineering in 1978.
Susan Robinson retired from Waste Management (WM) in 2021 after 23 years of service. She has 40 years of experience in the waste/recycling (W/R) industry and has worked in the public sector, as well as for a private recycling company. Robinson currently consults for trade organizations, consultancies, and corporate clients.
At WM, she managed municipal contracts and implemented several large W/R programs before moving to a corporate role leading WM’s policy team and ultimately WM’s sustainability team. Robinson served as a subject matter expert on recycling markets and operations, and was a frequent speaker on waste, recycling, and sustainability issues. She worked on an internal team that developed an analysis of the cost and emissions impact for the entire U.S. solid waste stream, presenting the results publicly upon completion. Robinson published a monthly sustainability column for Waste 360, as well as articles for Air and Waste Management Magazine.
She is currently an appointed member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Advisory Council. She has served on multiple industry-related boards and on the Washington State Governor’s Beyond Waste Task Force. She was a five-time recipient of the WM’s Circle of Excellence Award. She attended Stanford University before receiving her B.S. from the University of Washington.
Hilary Sigman is a professor in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She conducts empirical research on the effects of environmental policy and has focused particularly on the economics of waste and contaminated land. Dr. Sigman’s research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and she has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the World Bank. She has served on EPA Science Advisory Board committees and on the Board of Directors and other committees of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. Dr. Sigman holds a B.A. in economics and environmental studies from Yale, an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mitchell Small is a professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research involves mathematical modeling of environmental systems, environmental statistics, and risk assessment, and his current projects include models for leak detection at geologic CO2 sequestration sites; the value of scientific information for conflict resolution among polarized stakeholders; and multi-objective design of solid waste management systems. Dr. Small has published over 200 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings.
He has participated in a number of Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board (SAB) panels and U.S. National Research Council (NRC) committees, serving as chair of the 2012–2014 NRC Committee on Risk Management and Governance Issues in Shale Gas Extraction. Dr. Small was elected fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in 2003, received Distinguished Educator Awards from the SRA in 2013 and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) in 2017, and served as an associate editor for the journal Environmental Science & Technology between 1995 and 2011, where he helped to introduce new areas of focus for the journal, including lifecycle analysis, industrial ecology, and environmental policy analysis.
Rebecca Taylor is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics. She is a leading expert on the economics of regulating waste from consumer items, and particularly the regulation of plastic carryout bags. Dr. Taylor analyzes the effectiveness of environmental and food policies in changing consumer behavior, especially when there is debate over optimal policy design. She also studies how these policies interact with issues of equity and how these policies displace consumption in unintended ways, such as consumers buying more garbage bags when plastic carryout bags are banned. Dr. Taylor’s research has gained international attention and has been covered by news outlets in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia. Dr. Taylor’s papers have also influenced policy recommendations, such as those given by the Unites Nation’s Environmental Programme “Legislative Guide for the Regulation of Single-Use Plastic Products,” and have won distinguished award, such as the 2020 Best Paper Prize for the Journal of Environmental Economics & Management. Dr. Taylor received her Ph.D. in agricultural and
resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.A. in economics at Washington & Lee University.
Sofia Berto Villas-Boas is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at University of California (UC), Berkeley. She holds the Class of 1934 Robert Gordon Sproul Chair in Agricultural Economics. She has published in top economics and field journals such as Review of Economic Studies, RAND Journal of Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Marketing Science, Management Science, and Review of Economics and Statistics. Dr. Berto Villas-Boa’s research interests include industrial organization, consumer behavior, food policy, and environmental regulation. Her recent empirical work estimates the effects of policies on consumer behavior, such as a bottled water tax, a plastic bag ban, and a soda tax campaign and its implementation. Other published work has focused on the economics behind wholesale price discrimination banning legislation, contractual relationships along a vertical supply chain, and identifying the role of those contracts in explaining the pass- through of cost shocks along the supply chain into retail prices that consumers face. Dr. Berto Villas-Boas received her Ph.D. in Economics from UC Berkeley in May 2002, and she has an undergraduate degree in economics from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
