Commission for Environmental Cooperation

Matt Sullivan is the executive director of the Prince Edward Island Aquaculture Alliance (PEIAA), an industry association for the cultured mussel, oyster, and finfish sectors on PEI. The PEIAA leads research and development projects for the aquaculture industry, collaborates with government in policy and regulations, and is an overall advocate and support system for aquaculture companies on PEI. Sullivan grew up working on his father’s mussel farm and processing plant in eastern PEI.  After graduating from the University of Prince Edward Island with his business degree, he started several IT companies on the Island, developing seafood traceability software systems.  He is also a board member for the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) and the PEI International Shellfish Festival.

A biologist from the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and holder of a PhD in conservation ecology from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand, Eduardo Nájera Hillman is the current general director in Mexico for WILDCOAST (COSTASALVAJE México). Besides supervising all of the organization’s conservation, fundraising and management programs in Mexico, he has recently led WILDCOAST’s expansion to Cuba, with a coral reef conservation project and established collaboration between Cuba and Mexico to promote policies of adaption and mitigation to climate change from natural protected areas.

Nájera Hillman’s experience in the field of conservation extends to the academic, governmental, and civil society. Before joining WILDCOAST, he worked for the National Commission on Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) as a professional consultant on projects pertaining to coral reef monitoring and restoration, and was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Network for Vertebrate Biology and Conservation in the Institute of Ecology (INECOL), in Xalapa, Mexico. He has published 12 peer reviewed scientific papers and has been a lecturer for high school, undergraduate and graduate students in Mexico and abroad.

A graduate of Saint Louis University in marketing and finance and with an Executive MBA at Washington University in St. Louis, Eric Moraczewski has been executive director of the Gateway Arch Park Foundation since April 2016. He is responsible for construction of the project and building a conservancy for the Gateway Arch grounds, Kiener Plaza, and the St. Louis riverfront.

Moraczewski has had considerable experience with business investments in Asia. He co-founded FDI Strategies, LLC, which specialized in that sector, and was the chief financial officer of Gallagher & Associates, LLC—one the largest museum design firms in the world—where he established the San Francisco, Singapore, and Shanghai offices. In 2016, he wrote and published the book, Succeeding at Business in Southeast Asia: Common Mistakes Companies Make and How to Avoid Them, and was named a 2015 Top Young Professional in Colorado by ColoradoBiz Magazine.

Gustavo Alanís Ortega received his law degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where since 1994 he has taught the environmental law course as a full professor at the law school. Alanís Ortega also holds a master’s degree in international law from the Washington College of Law, American University, Washington, DC. Since August 1993, he has been president of the Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (Mexican Environmental Law Center—CEMDA), a public interest environmental law firm based in Mexico City. He is also active as a columnist for El Universal, one of Mexico’s most widely read and influential newspapers; and columnist for the bimonthly journal Derecho ambiental y ecología published by the Centro de Estudios Jurídicos y Ambientales (CEJA). He is a member of the seventh cohort of the Leadership on Environment and Development Program (LEAD) of El Colegio de México.

Alanís Ortega serves on the boards of directors of the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) and the World Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) of the IUCN Environmental Law Programme. He is also a member of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), the Climate Change Advisory Committee in Mexico, and the Environmental Law Advisory Group at the Department of Sustainable Development of the Organization of American States (OAS). Between April 2008 and January 2015, appointed by the Mexico City Legislative Assembly, he served on the Citizen Board of the Office of the Environmental and Zoning Prosecutor (Procuraduría Ambiental y del Ordenamiento Territorial—PAOT) and, from 2009 to 2016, he was part of the Public Participation Group of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), which contributed to make the company more socially responsible.

In December 2012, Alanís-Ortega was named to the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) for the third time, having previously served from 2001 to 2004 and 2008 to 2011.

Kerry-Ann Charles is a Member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation and is the environmental coordinator/by-law enforcement officer for her community. She manages several diverse environmental programs within her community, such as the First Nations’ Waste Management Program and the Climate Change Adaptation Program.  Charles is also responsible for researching and developing funding proposals which help sustain the Environment Department, building relationships with various environmental organizations such as the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, developing partnerships to co-ordinate and carry out various projects and activities as well as promoting education and community involvement in environmental health within her community. Over the past two years she has also been the lead in working with four First Nation Communities to build capacity and develop adaptation and implementation plans within those communities to address the ever-growing stresses of climate change.

A defender of community rights, conservationist and promoter of change through education and citizen engagement, Dora Patricia Uribe Jiménez is currently general secretary of the Cozumel municipal government in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Previously, she held various public positions, such as deputy general counsel for Banco Rural and counsel to the presidential cabinet from 1982 to 1985.

Uribe Jiménez is a member of the natural areas advisory board for the Cozumel Reef National Marine Park and the northern and eastern coastal portions of the island, declared a protected natural area in 2012. She is also president of the Cozumel Island Strategic Plan Foundation and a member of the Cozumel island Inter-Sector Group Board. Born in Mexico City, she holds an LL.M. from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and has taught courses in environmental law, human rights, international law and the philosophy of law at Universidad Partenón in Cozumel.

Teresa Crean is a coastal community planner at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography’s Coastal Resources Center & RI Sea Grant (URI GSO/CRC/RISG) where she works on state agency and municipal-scale projects that address coastal adaptation to climate change and sea-level rise. This involves evaluating policy information, scientific research, and spatial data to identify challenges and opportunities with municipal authorities and stakeholders, collaboratively considering policies and projects that may increase coastal resiliency. Prior to joining URI GSO/CRC/RISG, Crean worked for non-profit regional planning commissions and in the private sector for planning/design firms. She earned a master of landscape architecture degree (M.L.A.) from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse, and a B.S. in environmental policy/natural resource management from the University of Michigan.

Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Ph.D., is founding chair and professor of the department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University (NAU), where she also teaches courses on tribal nation building.

Throughout her professional career, Professor Trujillo has been involved with education, health, social services, and cultural enhancement programs in conjunction with communities, tribal government entities, and higher education institutions.

She is the principal investigator (for community outreach) at the National Cancer Institute-funded Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention, which focuses on alleviating the burden of cancer among Native Americans of the southwestern United States through research, training and outreach programs that allow the Partnership to collaborate closely with the Hopi, Navajo, and Tohono O’odham communities it serves.

Professor Trujillo is also the NAU research, education and training co-director of the Center for American Indian Resilience (CAIR), a partnership with University of Arizona’s College of Public Health to reduce American Indian health disparities.

In 2011, Professor Trujillo served as a visiting fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Previously, she was director of the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University, and was formerly a member of the Tribal Council of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona.

Professor Trujillo received B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University.

She has served on a number of local, national and international boards. These include the Global Diversity Foundation, which promotes agricultural, biological and cultural diversity around the world through research, training and social action. Professor Trujillo is also a member of the US Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which advises the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who serves as the US representative on the governing Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).

Karen Wristen is executive director of Living Oceans Society, a non-profit ocean conservation organization based in Sointula, British Columbia, Canada.  She has worked in the environmental movement in British Columbia since 1994, when she joined Sierra Legal Defence Fund (now Ecojustice) to practice environmental law. Wristen holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a law degree from Osgoode Hall. She resides with her husband on board their sailboat in Snug Cove, Bowen Island, and divides her time between Living Oceans’ Vancouver and Sointula offices.

An authority on carbon cycling in lakes, biofiltration and wasterwater treatment, Frédéric Thalasso is a recognized and widely published researcher at Mexico’s Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechique Institute (Cinvestav). He holds a PhD in biotechnology from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and has been a visiting scientist at the universities of Alaska (Fairbanks) and Magallanes (Chile). He has published some 70 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and has directed 15 PhD and 25 masters’ theses.

Howard Learner is an experienced attorney serving as the president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. He is responsible for ELPC’s overall strategic leadership, policy direction and financial platform. Before founding ELPC, Learner was general counsel for Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a public interest law center in the Chicago area, specializing in complex civil litigation and policy development. He is an adjunct professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Michigan Law School, teaching advanced seminars in environmental and energy law and climate change solutions policy. He holds a J.D. from the Harvard Law School (1980) and a B.A. degree from the University of Michigan (1976).

Fatou Ndoye is the acting regional director of the UN Environment’s North America Office. Ms Ndoye joined UN Environment in 2005 and has worked for UN Environment’s Major Groups and Stakeholders Branch. Ms. Ndoye has 20 years of experience in environment and sustainable development focusing on policy analysis, stakeholder participation in policy and decision making, project development and execution, networking and partnerships, and environmental assessments integration. Additionally, she has also worked on issues ranging from environmental governance, public participation, the linkages between labor and the environment, and access to information. Prior to joining UN Environment, she led the international NGO Network for Environment and Sustainable Development in Africa (NESDA), a collaborating center for the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report series and its Africa Environment Outlook series, headquartered in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire.

The challenge topics our project will be addressing are the reduction of air pollutant emissions and the diversion/reduction of food waste. We are proposing an innovative, all-in-one device that converts food waste into biogas, and biogas into energy, to create electricity to power businesses. The device will convert food waste to biogas with the help of anaerobic digesters, which will then pass the biogas through several stages to yield energy.

We are currently targeting grocers who, with the help of our device, will have the potential to run on a closed system that will allow them to produce electricity from their waste and not require them to have an external source of energy.

1. Innovation – The existing Waste to Energy (WTE) facilities are limited to large industrial facilities, resulting in inequitable access to WTE waste management systems. Our solution is taking a rapidly growing sector of energy production and scaling it down, making it more accessible and increasing sustainability to benefit the businesses implementing it. The innovation behind our device lies in scaling down a large process and creating an all-in-one device that addresses food waste at the source of the problem.
2. Impact – By allowing grocery stores to produce their own energy out of their food waste, our device will eliminate the organic waste that would otherwise be sent into landfills, ultimately contributing to the reduction of air pollution and the diversion of food waste. Additionally, our device will allow businesses in the grocery industry to become fully energy independent, drastically reducing their carbon footprint and allowing them to showcase corporate social responsibility.
3. Feasibility – The current solutions targeting food waste, WTE facilities and organic waste management, are inefficient and underfunded. Our device, on the other hand, can be implemented across North America and is inexpensive (C$5000). It solves the issue of food waste at the source as it is compact and can be easily incorporated into a business. It will allow businesses to profit from their own waste by taking responsibility for it, easing the burden off of the government.
4. Replicability/Scalability – The governments of each North American country recognize air pollution and food waste as being two major issues affecting our world and are always looking for new innovative ideas to tackle these problems head on. Our device does this, as it can be easily applied to operate in any part of North America—it will be the same device replicated for every grocery store. The process of converting the food waste into energy will be identical, regardless of the type of food waste or where the device is operating.

ROCAPET arises from the idea of using PET (polyethylene terephthalate) in the construction industry to make use of a waste material that, in Canada, Mexico, the United States, and other countries, has yet to be used extensively in the sector. This new approach to building will contribute to reduced pollution and the preservation of other materials.

ROCAPET sustainable structural concrete is suitable for buildings of all kinds: commercial offices and industrial, educational, cultural and athletic facilities, as well as housing and other lower-weight constructions. ROCAPET enables lean construction with a durable compound that offers significant savings plus a resistance to compression similar to that of concrete: a specified compression strength (f’c) of 150 at 350 kg/cm².

The use of this material addresses the serious problem of postconsumer PET pollution and contributes to the reducing the overuse of sand and gravel, whose extraction, processing and transportation emit carbon and other gases into the atmosphere. By reusing PET as a raw material in construction, replacing stone aggregate at a certain rate, first reduces and redirects thousands and thousands of tons of postconsumer PET per year, so that waste driven by runoff and rains do not end up in the rivers and oceans, where their components (dioxins and phthalates) are released, affecting the health and stability of the most vulnerable species. Second, it supports the preservation of two nonrenewable natural resources (gravel and sand), mitigating the negative environmental impact of their extraction and transport.

This innovative proposal seeks to take postconsumer PET—an extremely abundant material whose waste is harmful to the environment—and treat it through nontoxic, mechanical processes, turning it into a raw material suitable for use in construction. Recycling PET this way will have a direct and favorable impact on the environment, not only by decreasing waste in soils, rivers and seas, but also by reducing the pollutants produced in the extraction, transportation and manufacture of other materials.

We found that this to be viable in a model in which a construction firm and a PET company work together: their value chain is supported by local scavengers and community collection associations to manufacture and market the concrete, thereby sharing the social and economic benefits with their collaborators while benefiting the environment. Our business model is easily adaptable and reproducible at any scale, as the proposed PET treatment methods can be used to easily make concrete with locally available traditional materials.

Introduction: Soulfull is a company dedicated to providing nutrient-rich products that are healthy both for our bodies and also for our environment by reducing food waste while minimizing our carbon footprint.

Problem: Each day 27 million pounds of food are being wasted in restaurants. Soulfull is a start-up venture whose founders became frustrated by the amount of food thrown away every night from restaurants, so they decided to do something about it. Much of the food being thrown away each night is untouched, rich in nutrition, and a staple ingredient in many products.

We soon realized that protein products currently on the market are items with the same ingredients being thrown away at restaurants every night. Fortunately, because of the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, federal law protects restaurants for any goods donated.

Jackpot: We began formulating our superfood protein product line: bakery items, protein powder, crackers, and other delicious snack items derived from viable, untouched food surplus from restaurants. Our first product offering will be a line of baked goods that comes from the food waste of donated juice pulp from juice bars, and whole grains (brown rice and quinoa) from local restaurants.

The founders are also deeply passionate about finding sustainable ways to feed the homeless. A unique aspect of our solution is that for every item that is sold, we will donate an equal amount to food relief organizations that work to alleviate hunger across the country.

We chose San Diego as the fertile ground in which to build a successful model that we can easily replicate in other major metropolitan areas around the world. The key to this success is that we foster strong relationships with the key suppliers (our restaurants and juice bars) in which we are perfecting the sanitary, safe pickup and delivery system between our partners and to our commercial kitchens. Once this system is perfected, it can easily be set up in other major metropolitan cities.