Dr. Krista Thyberg (Associate Director) and Dr. Firman Firmansyah (Research Manager) of the Waste Data and Analysis Center (WDAC) traveled to Palm Springs, CA, last week to participate in the 2026 Global Waste Management Symposium (GWMS), held from February 22–25, 2026.
The symposium provided a premier platform for the WDAC team to engage with a global audience of solid waste researchers, engineers, and policymakers. During the technical sessions, Dr. Firmansyah presented preliminary findings from two ongoing studies focused on the efficiency and impact of New York State’s waste management systems.
The first presentation, titled “Which Program Has the Cleanest Recyclables? Examining Contamination Levels in Single-Stream and Dual-Stream Recycling in New York State”, provided a comparative analysis of contamination rates across different collection methods.
The second presentation, “Does New York’s Bottle Bill Still Work? A Material-Specific Comparison of Deposit and Non-Deposit Containers in Waste Stream’s Composition”, examined the continued efficacy of the state’s container deposit legislation in the context of modern waste streams.
Both sessions were met with interest, leading to a constructive exchange of insights with fellow researchers and industry peers. The feedback received will be instrumental as WDAC moves toward the finalization of these research projects.
GWMS serves as North America’s leading biennial technical conference for the exchange of innovative research and policy developments in the waste industry.