CEO Column

Are you ready for 2020?

By: David Biderman, SWANA CEO & Executive Director

I hope that all of you had some “downtime” during the December holidays and had a chance to spend time with family and friends, perhaps on vacation. The new year will likely require all of us to work both a little harder and more efficiently to be successful in both our professional and personal lives.

How are you going to get smarter this year?

SWANA offers a growing array of educational options for solid waste professionals at every stage in his or her career. These include webinars on timely and important topics (safety, recycling), regional training centers where you and your staff can take MOLO and other SWANA certification courses, SWANApalooza in Atlanta (March 23-25, with tours on March 26), terrific chapter events, and of course, WASTECON.

In 2020, I expect SWANA to start updating several of its core educational offerings, including MOLO (Manager of Landfill Operations). If SWANA intends to continue to play its traditional leadership role as a key “educator” of the solid waste industry, we need to offer training and education that is up-to-date, useful, and accessible to potential students in the United States and Canada. This will be a top priority for the upcoming year.

Later this year, SWANA will hold a Training Center in Bogota, Colombia, which will be the culmination of our two-year State Department-funded project. We hope to use the experience gained from this project to develop additional educational resources for both North America and Latin America.

Learning isn’t limited to conferences or certification courses. Reading about leadership, innovative technologies or operations, whether in MSW Management or another reliable publication, is another great way to stay current on cutting edge activities that will make you a more valuable solid waste professional. One of my goals for the coming year is to do more “high quality” reading, and I welcome your thoughts about publications, podcasts, or bloggers who you might recommend.

If you are a Young Professional (YP), I invite you to participate in SWANA’s MentorMatch program, which connects you with seasoned solid waste professionals interested in sharing their experiences. And if you aren’t a YP, please consider being a mentor to another SWANA member. It’s a terrific way to “pay it forward,” and sharpen your own communication and teaching skills.

Discovering new information, ideas, and concepts. Connecting with new people. Expanding your network. These are all laudable goals for 2020. SWANA was recently recognized by a leading trade publication as the 2019 “ Organization of the Year,” which was quite an honor. However, it’s a new year (and decade!), and there’s trash, recycling, and compost to manage. It’s time to go to work.