The Residual Waste Working Group is comprised of eight members. Short biographies of each member follows.

Kathleen D.V. Reil, Chair
to meet the specific characteristics of Toronto’s residual waste. Kathleen Reil is the president of a management consulting and social research firm. Throughout twenty years of work in the environmental field, she has led environmental projects, facilitated multi-stakeholder negotiations, and developed policy, processes, guidelines and procedures for social impact assessment and public consultation. In addition, she has trained environmental practitioners, lectured at universities, and authored publications in the environmental field. She has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. (abd), specializing in research methodology, and social and environmental policy analysis. She is an experienced practitioner and technical reviewer in the field of environmental impact assessment with involvement in projects at the municipal, provincial, federal and international levels. Kathleen anticipates that RWWG will continue to collaborate with the City in the development of a waste management system designed.

Lee Doran, Vice Chair (pro tem)
Lee Doran is an environmental consultant specializing in environmental impact assessment at increasing levels of responsibility since 1970. He has degrees from McGill University (B.Sc (General Honours) 1965; M.Sc, 1967) and is a former President of the Ontario Association for Impact Assessment. Lee lives in Toronto and has worked on environmental assessments in markets around the world. He helped manage the technical EA team for the County of Wellington/City of Guelph (Ontario) landfill site selection process in the early 1990’s. During 2006-7, Lee served as Vice Chair of Toronto’s Community Environmental Assessment Team (CEAT). He believes that stakeholder engagement is integral to state-of-the-art impact assessment and provides an essential ‘driver’ for successful project implementation, as well. Lee expects that RWWG, as one of CEAT’s successor groups, can continue to assist the City in finding an effective and practical management system for its residual waste stream in a timely manner.

Jennifer Agnolin, Member
Jennifer Agnolin is an environmental lawyer at Willms & Shier Environmental Lawyers LLP in Toronto. Jennifer regularly advises municipal and corporate clients on waste management issues and approvals. She received an Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo in 2001 and a law degree from Dalhousie University in 2005 with a certificate of specialization in environmental law. While at Dalhousie, Jennifer was Editor-in-Chief of the Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies, worked as a pro bono student for the World Wildlife Fund and spent a term at the Dalhousie Legal Aid Clinic.

Tanya Atkinson, Member
Tanya Atkinson is an environmental professional with over a decade of experience working with governmental agencies, international NGOs, a United Nations agency, and research centres. She has an M.A. Degree in environmental studies from the University of Toronto (1995), with her research thesis on the topic of hotel waste and recycling material generation and composition in Toronto.

In 1996, she undertook a follow-up of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Halton Region Landfill after ten years of operation, investigating and comparing to those impacts predicted during the EIA. Subsequently, she has developed her career in the environmental field working in various research and policy development government positions around the world including five years of working in the United Arab Emirates at the government environmental agency on the development of EIA procedures and environmental management regulatory system for the country and evaluation of environmental impacts of new industrial and infrastructure projects.

Currently Tanya is participating in a research project on the question of how the community’s perceptions of the positive and negative impacts of the Halton Waste Management Facility have changes over the years. The findings will be presented at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the Association of European Schools of Planning, Fourth Joint Congress scheduled for July 6-11, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois

Karen Buck, B. Ed., Member
In 1987 Karen joined Citizens for a Safe Environment, a predominantly east end Toronto community group, advocating for sustainable waste practices. “Zero Waste” is a major focus of the group’s work at all three government levels. Karen herself embraces the goal of “Zero Waste” and with 100% participation in Toronto’s recycling and composting programmes the Buck household has managed to reduce their waste to 3 bags of garbage a year.

Karen has a past that attests to her commitment and interest in “Zero Waste” strategies. She co-authoured the “Garbageless Lunch”, a teacher’s Manual on school waste reduction strategies published by Addison Wesley Publishers Ltd. Karen, qualified as a Master Composter, implemented and supervised a composting program for 11 years at a local Toronto school to complement their “Garbageless Lunch” initiative.

Karen’s advocacy and actions reach beyond Toronto. She co-managed and co-authoured the Rosseau Compost Pilot Project that demonstrated how families who separated their food wastes would significantly contribute to a municipality’s waste reduction efforts. The results of the Rosseau Compost Pilot Project were published by Baywood Press in the Journal of Environmental Systems

Karen states that it’s time for Provincial and Federal governments to pass policies and regulations that require manufacturers to produce products and packaging that are not toxic and that, as waste, are easy to recycle and compost. If Toronto can’t recycle or compost the packaging and products that Torontonians “throw away” then Toronto shouldn’t be left holding the “garbage” bag. As a matter of fact, she states, we need better design right upfront. Globally we need industrial designers to take a look at what’s inside the garbage bag and “design out” the toxicity and the waste.

Prior to becoming a member on the Residual Waste Working Group, Karen was a member of the City of Toronto’s New and Emerging Technologies, Policies and Practices Committee and, more recently, the Community Environmental Assessment Team.

Chris Caners, Member
Chris Caners is a consultant with ICF International, where he works on issues surrounding carbon markets and climate change. Prior to this, he was the coordinator of the Sustainability Office at the University of Toronto. Chris has experience in the analysis and evaluation of energy conversion technologies and has also worked on various projects involving alternative fuels such as wastewater treatment biogas, renewably generated hydrogen and municipal solid waste.

Isabelle Faucher, Member
Isabelle Faucher has a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science and International Development Studies from the University of Toronto at Scarborough and a Masters of Arts in Environmental Geography also from the University of Toronto. She has just over four years experience working in communication and research with non-governmental organizations, including the Canadian Environmental Network and the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Since 2006, Isabelle has been working at Corporations Sharing Responsibility (CSR), which acts as the secretariat to Stewardship Ontario, the Industry Funding Organization representing the companies that introduce packaging and printed paper into the Ontario consumer marketplace and who contribute 50% of Ontario’s municipal Blue Box waste diversion programs. In this position, she is providing support to the Efficiency and Effectiveness Fund, whose mandate is to assist Ontario municipalities in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their Blue Box recycling program. Originally from Quebec City, Isabelle has lived in Toronto for nine years and in addition to English, she is fluent in French and Spanish.

Alasdair Love, Member
Alasdair Love is studying Environmental Studies at York University and during the summers, he works as a gardener for the City of Toronto. Alasdair studied commercial composting at Olds College in Alberta. Prior to university, Alasdair worked for the City of Toronto as a vermicomposter at Metro Hall, where he helped rehabilitate the commercial vermicomposting operation and instituted the semi-annual compost giveaways. Since then, he has worked for the Ontario provincial government as a building profile analyst, exploring opportunities to reduce energy use and waste generation within government and as composting project manager for the Generous Helpings Kitchen initiative of the Ontario Association of Food Banks. His volunteer work has focused on food security; he has experience in all aspects of food production from seed to plate, back to seed again. He has worked with Field to Table and is currently the Maloca Community Garden coordinator at York University.