CEO Column

Is 2020 over yet?

By: SWANA CEO and Executive Director David Biderman

It’s been a year unlike any in our lifetimes. The combination of the Coronavirus, economic downturn, social unrest, the November election in the midst of the pandemic, and far too many of us know people who sadly have passed away.

SWANA cannot stop the spread of the Coronavirus, but we did respond quickly to provide an abundance of resources and information to our members and the industry. We distributed more than 2 million masks to employees in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, and elsewhere. We continue to distribute money from the Sanitation Workers Support Fund to eligible workers who tested positive for COVID-19 or were laid off in response to the pandemic, and are providing added financial support to the immediate families of eligible sanitation workers who died from this terrible virus. We established a webpage that contains the latest information from the CDC, WHO, and others on the Coronavirus.

We shifted our events to digital, and held SWANApalooza in June and a very successful MRF Summit last month. We will continue to hold important SWANA events online for the next few months. This includes our Annual Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony next week on Wednesday, December 9, virtual WASTECON on January 26-28, 2021, and a virtual Safety Summit on February 25. Please join us for these important events. We have re-scheduled SOAR from April to June 2021 in Kansas City, and are hopeful that the vaccines will be distributed by then and SWANA members and others will want to get together in person (It’s been hard not seeing most of you for more than a year! I miss y’all).

Speaking of vaccines, earlier this week, SWANA sent a letter to the CDC urging it to prioritize the waste and recycling sector for the vaccines. As an essential industry, our sector should be one of the first to receive the vaccines after the health care and medical community. It is our expectation that our sector will start to receive the vaccine in early 2021, and we will continue pushing the CDC and others on this.

Until then, things will remain challenging. More Zoom calls (yay?). The December holidays of Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa are likely to be very different from past celebrations. Very few of us will be getting together with family and/or friends to open presents, enjoy seasonal goodies, or celebrate the New Year. My extended family had a festive Zoom Thanksgiving Day cocktail hour, and I suspect that something similar will take place later this month.

The good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel that has been 2020. The next few months may be very difficult, but I ask each of you to continue to social distance, wear a mask, and take appropriate measures (wash those hands!) to avoid infection. We will all be getting back on airplanes and attending SWANA events next year. We will be hanging out together at the bar sharing Zoom stories from 2020. It will be FANTASTIC to see everyone! And I really want to see everyone, so please, stay safe.

Best wishes to you and your family for a safe and happy holiday season.