STAR North Texas Council
STAR North Texas Council held Steering Committee elections in July. The Council is now represented by Wendy Chance (chair), Sergio Gonzalez & Lora Hinchcliff (co-vice chairs), Mike Bednar (secretary), Robert Medigovich, Lanny Shivers, Clayton Swize, Terry Shultz, and Daulton O’Neill.
NTX has been holding regular monthly Networking Happy Hours and Lunch & Learn events since March. Their next Happy Hour event will be on September 21st at The Network Bar in Dallas. Click here to register.
Coming up: The Council is planning another Lunch & Learn for October and a holiday party and membership meeting at EarthX in December. Details to come!
The NTX Council's recent August 17th Lunch & Learn was held in Grapevine and had a great turn out. Three local experts (Antonio Ramos, Spot-On Services; Kim Jennings, City of Denton; Edward Washington, Frito-Lay Arlington) presented on the challenges of hard-to-recycle items.
For Earth Day, STAR NTX organized a large group that joined TRWD's Trash Bash river litter cleanup in Fort Worth on April 22nd!
STAR Business Council
The STAR Business Council elected new and past steering committee members to the helm in August: Richard Abramowitz, RMA Consultants, LLC (chair); Steve Shannon, Orion Solid Waste Resources Management, LLC (vice chair); Karan Bali, Dow Chemicals (secretary), Chris Luce (SmartSort Technologies Inc.), and Ken Thomas. Congratulations to all and thank you for your dedication.
The Business Council (BC) continues to hold regular monthly online meetings on the first Thursday of the month. These are open to all who are interested. Register to participate here.
Council Vice Chair Steve Shannon presented at Keep Texas Beautiful's annual conference in June on the recycling infrastructure deficit in Texas "and the need for local and regional governments and agencies to coalesce and cooperate with their Economic Development Corporations to solicit and facilitate the development of collection, densification, transportation, processing and end-use market facilities and systems."
To that end, the BC is also in discussion with the Texas Economic Development Council (TEDC), which represents the 725 local Economic Development Corporations in Texas. The TEDC is interested in partnering with STAR to promote and conduct workshops to stimulate the development of collection, densification, processing and consuming manufacturing industries; particularly in the non-urban, underserved communities. The BC has just forwarded a proposal for these workshops to be held to the STAR Board.
On March 28th, the BC held one of the most successful "Walk the Halls" events they've had to date, with nearly 25 people sharing the Council's legislative platform with key Texas legislators. The platform contains follow-up recommendations to the Council's successful work on the Recycling Market Development Plan (RMDP), published by TCEQ in August of 2021. Over twenty five visits to House and Senate members and/or their staff’s were made in pairs of at least two per meeting. STAR Mission Partners Universal Recycling Technologies (URT) are especially thanked for sending almost 10 people to participate.
If you are interested in participating, or in working with the Business Council, please contact Business Council Chair Richard Abramowitz at: richard.abramowitz@outlook.com.
Central Texas Council
STAR Central Texas Council (CTX) is currently lead by Amy Thomaides as acting chair, and Quincey Pugh as acting Secretary. They will be sending out a survey to current STAR CTX members soon to gather input on what they would like to see the Council focus on, in addition to tours, meetings and meet-ups for 2023.
If you are a STAR member and would like to be involved, make sure that Central Texas Council is checked in your membership profile in order to be added to their mailing list (log in to our website with your email address; click "Forgot password" to create one, if needed). Announcements will be sent to our general email lists, as well.
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