About

Garbage Critic is a niche consultancy with a passion for stopping waste before it starts. We specialize in extended producer responsibility (EPR) to link company supply chains to their product disposal chains and close the loop on waste.

Serving the Pacific Northwest and beyond, Garbage Critic supports organizations of all kinds – governments, businesses, institutions and ENGOs – in the transition from government-based waste management to producer responsibility collection programs.

We collaborate with clients to find customized solutions. Our services include strategic direction, zero waste planning, policy development, business development, research and training. We use life cycle analysis to guide product design and waste management decisions, and help clients divert maximum waste, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and prevent pollution.

At a time when zero waste and renewable energy are being co-opted by incineration interests, our company name is a tongue-in-cheek reminder that garbage is not a resource – it’s a problem to be eliminated. Our name also captures our founder’s writerly side. There are food critics, movie critics, art critics and literary critics. And now, there’s a garbage critic.

Garbage Critic was founded in 2009 by Monica Kosmak.

Monica Kosmak is a zero waste planner, EPR expander, and emerging waste writer. She’s also an i-dotter and a t-crosser, with a reputation for producing thoroughly researched, exceptional quality work. She founded Garbage Critic out of her twin passions for reducing waste and greening the economy.

Monica is recognized as one of British Columbia’s experts in extended producer responsibility (EPR). Known for her creative strategies, Monica is constantly searching for opportunities to shape BC’s product stewardship policies and introduce new takeback programs. She is a provisional member of the Canadian Institute of Planners, a director of Computers for Schools BC, past co-chair and revitalizer of the BC Product Stewardship Council, and former local government representative on advisory committees for Electronics Product Stewardship Canada and Tire Stewardship BC. For several years now, she has been recruited to the Recycling Council of British Columbia’s policy committee, served on RCBC’s EPR working group, advised zero waste organizations, and mentored university students in sustainability. Her provocative presentations have entertained conference audiences as far as Florida, and she has guest-lectured at the University of British Columbia and the BC Institute of Technology. She graduated with distinction from the University of Victoria with a B.Sc. double major in environmental studies and resource management geography.

Monica is on a mission to popularize producer responsibility and build a movement that will transform the economy. She’s an equally open challenger of any attempt to rebrand garbage as a clean, green, renewable, carbon neutral, alternative or sustainable source of energy. From her perspective, at this point in history, our only choice is to deal with the problem at the source.

Monica grew up in the Rocky Mountain ski town of Fernie, British Columbia, raised by parents who immigrated to Canada from the former Czechoslovakia. Her heritage taught her to crave nature and preserve more of it by wasting less. It also led her to believe in the possibility of revolutions.

She likes poppy seeds, buttercream, winter sports, water sports, mountains, metaphor and irony. She is grateful for all books, but two in particular – Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, and Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind, a combination that set her on this career course.

Monica lives in the Vancouver “mid-burb” of Port Moody, British Columbia. She has fascinating conversations with her common-law husband, who happens to manage the company that operates BC’s second-largest landfill in Cache Creek.

Her motto: Change the system.

Garbage Critic customizes virtual teams to bring the best minds to your project. Our network includes experts in:

• extended producer responsibility
• zero waste planning
• life cycle analysis
• environmental economics
• facilitation and organizational change



Garbage Critic is also available for subconsulting.

Roughly three-quarters of garbage is made up of discarded products and packaging. Who should be responsible for managing it? Extended producer responsibility, also known as product stewardship, puts the onus on those who produce it: the companies that manufacture and sell the products that eventually end up as waste.

Here at Garbage Critic, we think of EPR as the next generation of corporate social responsibility programs. Through CSR, companies have made great strides to improve working conditions and reduce the environmental impacts associated with their day-to-day operations. And in recent years, CSR has taken that same awareness upstream to ensure that a company’s social and environmental standards are practiced throughout the length of its supply chain. Now, in a green economy, being a good corporate citizen will mean extending company responsibilities downstream, past the factory gates, and dealing with products and packaging once they become waste.

We like to decode the EPR jargon by breaking it down into a simple formula:

EPR = green design + takeback programs

With the right mechanisms in place, EPR drives cradle-to-cradle thinking and opens up design opportunities – design for durability, repair, reuse, recycling, even what we like to call “design for disappearance,” or waste elimination. Meanwhile, takeback programs are the to in cradle-to-cradle. They’re the collection infrastructure that companies set up to take back their products and recover the resources in them. Together, takeback programs and green design allow companies to take full responsibility across the entire product life cycle and close the loop on waste.

Historically, municipalities have been legally responsible for dealing with product wastes, leaving them scrambling to offer recycling programs and dispose of leftovers in incinerators and landfills. Hence the term municipal solid waste (MSW). The concept of producer responsibility, however, redefines the “m” in MSW, from municipal to manufactured solid waste. Through EPR, the focus shifts from city-based garbage and recycling collection, to company-based takeback programs. Over time, EPR will dis-intigrate the waste management function from government utilities, and integrate it into the product life cycle.

Why is this important? Because pulling the true cost of waste into the price of products gives consumers a direct relationship with the full cost of their consumption, allowing them to make informed choices. And the more manufacturers feel the financial pressure of wastefulness, the more they will be rewarded for designing less wasteful products. Meanwhile, taxpayers who choose not to buy certain products don’t have to pay to have them managed, and local governments can avoid waste management costs.

EPR programs have tremendous environmental benefits. Well-designed takeback programs, especially those with built-in financial incentives, encourage high recycling rates – often much higher than government-operated programs. (British Columbia, which has a deposit-refund system, or bottle bill, enjoys a 100% recycling rate for some types of beverage containers.)

Governments at the local and provincial/state levels are increasingly developing EPR policies to help them meet their waste reduction targets and reduce government spending. Meanwhile, progressive companies are moving ahead of the EPR regulatory curve – designing out waste and offering takeback programs to demonstrate environmental leadership, provide better customer service, and strengthen brand loyalty.

Takeback Programs (full producer responsibility model)
British Columbia’s Product Stewardship Programs

Organizations
British Columbia Product Stewardship Council
California Product Stewardship Council
Northwest Product Stewardship Council
Product Policy Institute
Recycling Council of British Columbia

Policy Papers
British Columbia Industry Product Stewardship Business Plan (BC MOE)
Canada-Wide Action Plan for Extended Producer Responsibility (CCME)
Canada-Wide Principles for Extended Producer Responsibility (CCME)
On the Road to Zero Waste: Priorities for Local Government (RCBC)
Toward a Zero Waste Future (Ontario MOE)

Bean bag blowup (North Shore News, 21 Apr 2010)

Expansion of garbage burning assailed: Waste analyst criticizes incinerators’ classification as a green power source (Vancouver Sun, 22 May 2009)

District proposes ‘take-back’ recycling (Vancouver Sun, 22 May 2007)