Board of Directors
CRA Board members are elected through a nomination and formal election process. Any member of the CRA may run for the Board. The Board is elected by the membership every year during CRA’s annual conference.
Will Sagar, CRA Board President
phone: 828-507-0123
willsagar@gmail.com
Will Sagar is Policy Director with the Southeast Recycling Development Council. SERDC’s mission is to unite industry, government and non-government organizations to promote sustainable recycling in the Southeast. Efforts include a specific focus upon the economic impact of the recycling industry.
Will Sagar graduated from the University of North Carolina with a double major on Economics and Mathematics. After selling the excavation business he built and operated for a decade, he was the Solid Waste Director for Transylvania County, NC for 16 years. While there he started the recycling program, built the first lined landfill in WNC, implemented PAYT, established permanent HHW and electronics collection. Later with Henderson County, he started electronics collection and created a county energy accounting system.
Will serves as President of the Board of Directors the Carolina Recycling Association. The mission of the Carolina Recycling Association is to conserve resources by advancing recycling and waste reduction throughout the Carolinas. He also chairs the Board of The Free Clinic of Transylvania County, which serves the medical needs of the uninsured and operates a community pharmacy for the same population. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Transylvania Vocational Services, an ongoing program assisting and training those with barriers to employment. When not at meetings, Will can be found on his bicycle.
Sandi Childs, CRA Board Vice President
sandichilds1@gmail.com
Thomas W. Jones, MEd. LEED-AP, CRA Board Treasurer
Clemson University
Director of Facilities for Custodial, Recycling & Special Events
Klugh Avenue
Clemson, SC
TWJONES@clemson.edu
864.656.4940
Tom has 27 years of management experience in retail, the service industry and university facilities and earned IBM’s warranty service technician certification. He rebuilt hundreds of corporate computers and donated them to schools for computer labs. He started the first Recycling program at Bob Jones University in 1994 and joined the Greater Greenville Sanitation Commission as a commissioner in 1996 and has served as their chairman since 1999. G.G.S.C. is a leader in the Upstate of SC in community services providing curbside recycling, yard waste, MSW, commercial and industrial waste disposal. As chairman he has looked for effective cost efficient ways to collect process and market all of the materials discarded by Carolinians. Joining Clemson University in 2006, he has brought that same approach to an award winning program setting goals to increase its landfill diversion. He joined the CRA board in 2009 and was elected treasurer.
He is an active member of his church, his neighborhood home owner’s association and his community politics. He lives in Greenville, SC with Melody his wife of 27 years and plays golf in his spare time.
Alec Cooley
Director, Recycling Programs
Keep America Beautiful
acooley@kab.org
phone: 843.278.7686
Alec has nearly 20 years of experience in the recycling and waste reduction field. Before coming to his current position as Director of Recycling Programs for Keep America Beautiful, he managed solid waste and recycling at Humboldt State University in northern California for nine years and most recently worked for the National Recycling Coalition as a program manager overseeing the RecycleMania competition and other projects. He has served on the boards of the Arcata Community Recycling Center and the California Resource Recovery Association, and is an appointed member of the Charleston County Green committee.
Alec lives in Charleston with his wife, Christine. He enjoys canoeing, traveling and salvaging building materials in his free time.
Amanda Cutshaw
Recycling Coordinator, Madison County
Madison County Solid Waste
Amanda Cutshaw has been the Recycling Education Coordinator for Madison County, North Carolina since May 2005. Her job consists of developing all new outreach materials pertaining to waste reduction for the county; organizing and developing new waste reduction programs for the local schools, businesses, and community groups; and visiting all pre-school through 5th grade classrooms once a year and 6th through 12th as needed. Other aspects of her position include organizing and maintain the collection of recyclable materials in the county, marketing those materials, and dealing with customer service issues. She also seeks and writes some grants for waste reduction efforts and helped implement and maintain Madison County's award winning Penny-a-Pound program.
Barry B. Edwards, P.E.
Director of Utilities and Engineering
Catawba County
PO Box 389
Newton, NC 28658
Phone: 828-465-8261
Fax: 828-464-5216
barrye@catawbacountync.gov
phone: 843.278.7686
Barry Edwards was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he grew up in a rural setting in northern Wake County, approximately twenty miles from North Carolina’s Capital City center. Barry is married and has two children and one grandchild.
Barry has a 27 year engineering, construction, and management background in both public works and the private sector, which include feasibility studies, planning, design, inspections, and project, personnel and customer relationship management. He has been involved in a wide variety of public works and private sector projects including MSW landfills, recycling and waste reduction programs, co-generation, C&D landfills, sanitation and waste collection, materials handling, hazardous waste, public utilities, roadway, bridges, stormwater systems, parking facilities, single and multi-family housing, building inspections, land development and recreational parks.
Barry served on the Professional Engineers of North Carolina Practice Qualifications Steering Committee in 1998 and on the Professional Engineers of North Carolina Public Policy Committee in 1999. Barry is a 1999 honored member of International Who’s Who of Professional Engineers for his professional, academic and civic efforts in the public services and civil/environmental engineering fields. Barry served on the Solid Waste of North America’s North Carolina Board of Directors and acted as the Policy/Legislative Committee and Recycling/Waste Reduction Committee Chairman, and the Technical Committee Vice-Chairman.
Academic Credentials
Institute of Government, University of NC at Chapel Hill, County Administration, 1997
Registered Professional Engineer, NC#22058, 1996
North Carolina State University, BS Civil Engineering, 1990
James L. Hickman
Managing Director
Open Window Consulting, Inc.
Jim began his career in integrated municipal solid waste management as a legislative and regulatory analyst for the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) in Silver Spring, MD. From there he moved on to a position with the NC Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance (now NC DEAO) where he assisted local governments with implementing new waste reduction programs and fine tuning existing programs with a focus on financial efficiency and program effectiveness. He was named CRA’s Recycler of the Year in 2008. He has assisted not-for-profits, municipalities and counties of all sizes with the implementation or modification of various types of waste reduction programs and managed numerous grant rounds for NC DPPEA. After 12 years with NC DPPEA, in January 2010, Jim took over the daily operation of a Raleigh based IT and environmental consulting firm and has since worked with numerous clients throughout the southeast.
Jim has taught courses on integrated waste management practices at the University of Maryland and since 1998 has been a regular speaker at CRA, SWANA and APWA conferences. He has also been an instructor for CRA’s PRQT course. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resource Management from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Christopher C. Hodgdon
Winthrop University
2634 Starnes Rd
Edgemoor, SC 29712
hodgdonc@comporium.net
803-517-7102
Chris received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from The Citadel in Charleston, SC. After graduation, he served as an artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps and then worked as a Journeyman Carpenter in heavy construction for five years. Chris also had a small business installing septic tanks and drain fields in the Aiken, SC area. He has worked in higher education since 1979 serving as Assistant to the Dean of Arts & Sciences, Instructor of Business Administration, Visiting Professor of English at Shanghai International Studies University in Shanghai, China, Materials Services Manager and Recycling Coordinator. He served on numerous University committees including the University Computing Committee, Employee Grievance Committee, The Rock Hill Clean Cities Committee and University Sustainability Committee.
Mylinda Jacobsen
Purchasing Manager
Envision Plastics
mylinda@envisionplastics.com
336/342-4749 ext 240
Heather Cashwell
heather.cashwell@ncdenr.gov
919-707-8127
Heather is the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the North Carolina Division of Environmental Assistance and Outreach where she manages the State’s three recycling campaigns: Recycle Guys, RE3.org and Recycle More NC. Heather’s focus is providing education/outreach materials and technical assistance to local governments, schools, parks, venues, businesses and citizens with the overall goal of increasing the commitment to recycling. Currently, Heather is working on growing opportunities to recycle outside of the home with some new Recycling-on-the-Go initiatives.
Prior to her work with NCDEAO, Heather worked for the Town of Cary specializing in waste reduction/recycling, litter prevention and community involvement and volunteerism. Heather has also conducted environmental research with agricultural waste and pollution reduction, water quality and sustainable forestry practices and studied stakeholder perception of environmental regulations at NCSU and Duke. When she’s not peeking into trash cans or evaluating the effectiveness of recycling messages, Heather enjoys photography, vegetable gardening, lacrosse and camping.
Ron Moore
American Recycling of SC
1240 White Horse Road
Greenville, SC 29605-4932
TEL (864)277-7722
FAX (864)277-7733
CELL (864)313-3117
rmoore@amrecycling.com
www.amrecycling.com
Ron Moore started American Recycling (ARSC) in March of 2003 with just a driver and a shared building. ARSC has since grown to one of the largest Materials Recovery Facilities in the Upstate. ARSC handles post industrial waste from manufacturers, printers and office buildings and has expanded to processing both single and dual stream residential materials also. ARSC handle all grades of paper and cardboard, plastic, and even some metals. Prior to running ARSC, Ron worked for both Caraustar Industries and the Newark Group. During this time he ran waste facilities, handled procurement for several 100% recycled paper mills and brokered material in regions up and down the East coast and including Canada.
Ron is originally from Atlanta and attended the University of Georgia. Ron lives in the Greenville area with his wife Renee’, his son Tristan (7) and daughter Ayden (2).
Lauren Steele
Vice President, Corporate Affairs
Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated
Charlotte, NC
704-557-4551
Michael Talbert
Mecklenburg County
Solid Waste Department
Charlotte, NC 28202
704-432-0399
Michael.Talbert@MecklenburgCountyNC.Gov
Michael joined Mecklenburg County’s Solid Waste Department in 2000 and divides his time between commercial and construction recycling programs. Previously, Michael worked for the NC Division of Pollution Prevention as the Industrial Discards Project Coordinator. This EPA funded project was successful in demonstrating that over 20,000 tons of solid waste could be diverted annually from just 35 businesses.
He spent the bulk of his career with Hazen and Sawyer, an environmental consulting firm, where he managed a variety of projects for local, state and federal governments that included solid waste management plans, collection efficiency studies, program design, recycling implementation assistance, state-wide market development strategies and North Carolina’s first state-wide solid waste management plan.
Prior to his tenure with Hazen and Sawyer, Michael served as Charleston County, SC’s first Recycling and Solid Waste Manager. While there, he developed their initial recycling program, drop-off centers, processing facility, provided guidance to policy makers and was also responsible for public relations and public education efforts.
Michael received his Bachelor’s Degree from UNC-Chapel Hill with a major in Public Policy Analysis and an area of specialization in Environmental Policy. He also has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration.
Dave VanDeventer Ex Officio
