Maureen Hart, Sustainability Consultant
Before she had learned the term “recycling,” Margaret (Maggie) Gainer’s parents raised her with the Appalachian cultural value of “making do.” A smart person knows how to make do with what they’ve got. Maggie has worked for 40 years to change how we think about, generate, and reduce waste. Her practical experience in recycling processing operations and marketing at Arcata Community Recycling Center (ACRC), informed her advocacy in California’s legislature and led to her groundbreaking research, analysis, and public education work.
She directed ACRC (1976-1981) during a crucial growth period for recycling in Humboldt and most cities nationwide. ACRC became known nationally for rigorous processing of its recyclables to sell to markets at the best prices possible.
Maggie’s greatest contributions to the U.S. sustainable materials management field are in Recycling Economic Development and promoting methods for Waste Prevention. She has helped to create local end-use markets for locally collected materials, with many innovative collaborators, and has helped to develop proactive systems methods for Waste Prevention.
Gainer was honored in 1991 by the California Resource Recovery Association with the Recycler of the Year award and was a frequent keynote speaker at state and national recycling conferences throughout the 90s. By the mid-1990s, the California Department of Conservation and Garbage Magazine recognized Maggie and her Gainer & Associates consulting team as “visionary” and trendsetting. They developed a 5-point strategy for integrating recycled materials into the economy that the U.S. EPA and state agencies hired them to present in “train-the-teachers” workshops throughout the U.S. to guide state and local economic development staff. In the 2000s, their focus on the importance of integrating recycled materials into the economy was dubbed “The Circular Economy” by a MacArthur Foundation research report.
Maggie is a strong proponent of adhering to the hierarchy of First-Reduce/Prevent Waste, Second-Materials Reuse, and Last-Recycle and Compost for individuals, consumers, business systems, and government planning. For the California Integrated Waste Management Board/Cal recycle, Gainer & Associates conducted extensive research, analysis and training on the need for more investment for source reductions systems, now known as Waste Prevention.
Keenly aware of the impending curbside recycling contamination crisis, she wrote regularly for recycling industry, government, and environmental publications about the weakening of recycling systems brought on by the plastics packaging industry, and the garbage recycling industry’s switch from consumer presorting to single stream curbside collection.
In 2011 she was part of a cadre of Humboldt County residents who founded Zero Waste Humboldt to emphasize the waste reduction hierarchy’s top priorities of Waste Prevention and Materials Reuse. Her leadership at Zero Waste Humboldt has been dedicated to local grassroots organizing and leadership development in Waste Prevention and Materials Reuse demonstration projects, such as:
- Zero Waste methods for the North Country Fair board (2012-2016) to dramatically reduce the waste the Fair generated by ⅔, becoming an inspiring model for outdoor events.
- The Refill-Not-Landfill Project awarded 10 water bottle refill stations to local governments and two high schools to reduce single use plastic water bottles. Because each station counter tracked use, this project demonstrated a reduction of 50,000 single-use plastic water bottles in a typical year.
- The Zero Waste Solutions Speaker Series brought inspiring presenters to Humboldt from California businesses that had successfully adopted Zero Waste methods, and presented ideas for what to do about plastics and food waste.
Maggie continues to communicate with Zero Waste leaders around the U.S. and provide Zero Waste technical assistance and training. Her current passion is to change shopping habits and increase the public’s understanding of how investment in reuse systems will help to combat the overwhelming problems caused by single-use plastics.