Expert Review Panel

Judith Enck is a Visiting Professor at Bennington College in Vermont and a Senior Fellow in the Bennington College Center for the Advancement of Public Action. She is also the President of Beyond Plastics. She was appointed by President Obama to serve as a Regional Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency. She was Deputy Secretary for the Environment in the New York Governor’s Office and a Policy Advisor to the Attorney General of New York.

Dr. Enzo Favoino is with Scuola Agraria del Parco di Monza, a not-for-profit Research Centre based in Northern Italy.

He and his team have long been involved across Europe in scientific and technical issues related to optimisation of schemes for separate collection, definition and implementation of Zero Waste programmes, process management in composting and anaerobic digestion site, strategies to tackle the growing plastic problem.

They have largely contributed to the development of separate collection, composting, reuse programmes and Zero Waste schemes in Italy, Spain, UK and other Countries, in the EU and outside it.

He was a co-founder of ECN – European Compost Network. From 2004 through 2012 he was Chair of the WG on Biological Treatment at ISWA.

Currently, he serves as Chair of the Scientific Committee of Zero Waste Europe.

In recent years, he’s been particularly involved in defining policies and strategies, and implementing practices, to trim the overflow of plastics, with specific regards to single-use ones, and reduce their leakage into the environment. He contributed to documents and papers issues by relevant global networks working on the issue, he took part in the expert panel that carried out the research “Breaking the Plastic Wave” to define strategies (and their potential contribution) to minimise leakage of plastics.

Dr. Jorge Emmanuel is an adjunct professor in the Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences and in the College of Engineering and Design at Silliman University, Philippines.

Before joining Silliman, he was Chief Technical Advisor for Global Environmental Facility projects of the United Nations Development Program from 2003 to 2015 and President of the Environmental & Engineering Research Group in California which he founded in 1993. In the 1970s and 80s, he worked as a researcher at the GE Corporate Research Center, North Carolina State University, and University of Michigan in the field of plastics, in particular, polymer synthesis and characterization, rheology of polymers and polymer blends, mathematical modeling of plastics processing, and fluid mechanics and heat transfer of polymer solutions.

Since then, he has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, United Nations Environment Program, National Institutes of Health, other international agencies, Ministries of Environment and Ministries of Health, and non-governmental organizations in over 40 countries dealing with solid waste management, hazardous waste, medical waste, treatment technologies, environmental remediation, environmental health, health risk assessments, infection control and prevention, waste-to-energy technologies, climate change mitigation, and climate adaptation. His current research interests include microplastics and approaches to zero waste.

He is the author or co-author of eight books and four book chapters, two dozen technical guidelines for the United Nations Development Program and World Health Organization, and many scientific papers, technical reports, and conference presentations. He received his doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, and holds degrees and certificates in chemistry from North Carolina State University, environmental management from the University of California at Berkeley, energy innovation and emerging technologies from Stanford University, and public health from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Stephanie Borrelle (Pākehā [descendant of settler-colonisers to Aotearoa New Zealand]) completed her PhD researching seabird island restoration and conservation ecology in Aotearoa, with a focus on marine threats to seabirds, including plastic pollution. She held the prestigious Society for Conservation Biology’s David H. Smith Post-Doctoral Fellowship, where her research used country level and global scale models to quantify the emissions of plastic into the environment, and measure the impact of interventions aimed at reducing plastic pollution. This work contributes to informing policy about the most effective strategies and amount of effort required to achieve meaningful reduction in plastic pollution. Stephanie has advocated for policy advancement on the issue of plastic pollution in prestigious and widely read scientific publications, including Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – and has also been featured in the media. She is a member of the United Nations Environment Program Expert Scientific Advisory Committee on Marine Litter and Microplastics, and has contributed to OECD reports on plastics pollution. www.stephborrelle.com

Dr. Mao Da is now the director of Shenzhen Zero Waste (Toxics-Free Corps), a non-profit organization in China. He holds a PhD degree in environmental history. Over the past 16 years, he has been actively working with different environmental NGOs in their efforts to reduce pollution from waste and toxic chemicals, and promote environmental health. In the academic area, he has published a book on the history of waste disposal in the ocean in the United States and finished a post-doctorate report on the history of social debate on dioxin. Currently his work focuses on sound management of chemicals, greening of E-commerce, plastic pollution prevention, and promotion of zero waste strategies.

Yuyun has more than 25 years of experience in environmental health and active involvement in the negotiation process of chemical and waste conventions. In 2000, she co-founded BaliFokus, later rebirthed as the Nexus3 Foundation. She also co-founded and has been involved as a steering committee member with various NGO networks at the national and global levels. Yuyun holds an Environmental Engineering bachelor’s degree from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia, and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford. She has published various reports and scientific papers on mercury pollution, mercury in rice, mercury health impacts, dioxins in eggs, the plastics waste trade, and gender and chemicals, which can be found on ResearchGate. Yuyun received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2009 for her work implementing sustainable, community-based waste and sanitation management programs in Indonesia.