The Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation, US EPA and SERDC have teamed up to plan the 2018 Measurement Matters Summit February 27- March 1 in Chattanooga, TN.
We've had some great questions asked recently about who should attend and we wanted to share here:
1) Most of the discussion seems to be geared toward statewide measures and the use of the EPA’s State Data Measurement Sharing Program. If a city has little control over the use of the state sharing program, could you describe the value you see for cities to participate in this discussion?
Response: The first main value is understanding the big picture - How do we become more consistent between the cities in a state, how is this local data used at the state and national level and what impacts does poor data quality at the local level impact the state and national level such as implementation of bad policy based upon misinformation, duplicated data, or a poor understanding of what is being expected. Many of the sessions will speak to these issues.
Secondly this is not a conference, but a summit designed to bring those with understanding of measurement and the ablility to change the industry standards and benchmarking together to identify future policy and practices to push and implement in the future.
Thirdly, we need municipal perspective to make sure the cities, towns, villages, and similar chartered government organizations have input in the discussion. We have pushed this out to our state municipal government and are encouraging participation.
Day 2 will include sessions and discussion on new methods of measuring curbside performance and also ways in which non-tonnage metrics can be applied to assessing recycling success.
2) Could you address whether you think the conference will aid cities in measuring their waste diversion?
Response: I believe that cities would benefit and learn techniques, strategies and most importantly knowledge in consistent measuring. Sometimes just using consistent terms or identifying what to measure makes all the difference.
3) Do you think that Day 3 would be valuable for a city participant, given that the focus may be national?
Day 3 will include a deeper discussion on improving local program performance measurement. We need input as to the needs of municipal governments related to establishing outcomes from these discussions. Example - should we push to include measurement and metrics into future certification programs in organizations like SWANA and their Managing Recycling Systems coursework, what do local material (waste and recycling) characterization studies look like? What is the methodology? While many of these discussions will lead to post-Summit action steps, this is an opportunity to be a part of this national effort and help define the framework to make it happen.
Learn more at www.measurementmatters.net