Keynote - Scott Cassel
Thursday, February 25, 2027 at 9:00 AM
EPR – The Future is Now – Materials Management in Wisconsin
Over the past 45 years, Scott Cassel’s personal and professional path has mirrored the evolution of the waste management field in the United States—from voluntary recycling to municipal and state recycling programs to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Scott will explain how the EPR transformation took place across the country through successive “waves of interest,” and how Wisconsin stakeholders can build an EPR approach geared to their own unique interests. He will explain the basics of all EPR policies, what they seek to achieve, and why including the interests of governments, industry, and other stakeholders in policy is the best approach. Scott will also provide insight into the organization’s facilitation and mediation techniques that helped develop the nation’s first multi-stakeholder mediated EPR program.
Scott Cassel is a pioneering leader in the extended producer responsibility (EPR) movement, with 45 years of experience solving waste management challenges across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. In 2000, he founded the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI), a nonprofit policy and consulting organization that has helped enact 150 EPR laws in 34 states and the District of Columbia, across 22 product categories — including electronics, batteries, and packaging. As PSI's CEO, Scott leads research, policy analysis and development, and facilitated stakeholder engagement dialogues using a methodology he developed to design and advance EPR policy. Prior to founding PSI, he served seven years as Director of Waste Policy and Planning for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, where he developed and implemented solid and hazardous waste management policies and programs.
Scott is the author of Perspectives on Product Stewardship: Navigating an Extended Producer Responsibility Path to a Circular Economy (Bernan Press, 2023), which chronicles the EPR movement in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including how EPR bills are developed, and features case studies on batteries, paint, and packaging. In 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) appointed Scott to its Marine Debris Foundation founding Board of Directors, where he contributes to policy, infrastructure development, and innovative technologies to address pollution in our waterways and ocean. In the 1990s, Scott was a founding board member and past president of the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association.