‘Microplastics and Producer Responsibility’ Webinar

Matt Gove has worked in coastal management for 20 years with Surfrider, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. He holds a master’s in coastal environmental management from Duke University. Contact Matt directly at mgove@surfrider.org.

Angela Noakes is a plastics policy analyst at Ocean Conservancy, where she focuses on state and federal policy solutions to prevent plastic pollution. Angela leads efforts to reduce waste from single-use plastics, promote producer accountability, and address microplastics. Before joining Ocean Conservancy, Angela was the associate director, U.S. policy development in the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Washington, D.C. office, where she provided research, policy analysis and policy development support across a range of international and domestic policy issues. Angela earned her J.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle and bachelor’s degrees in environmental management and government from the University of Redlands in Redlands, California.

Sara Weitzel is a natural resources planner with the Maryland Department of the Environment in the Waste Diversion Division. Her work supports the Resource Recovery Plan for Maryland including: Food Residual Diversion, Recycling Market Development, and Extended Producer Responsibility laws. She received her B.S. in environmental science and management from the University of California, Davis. To contact Sara directly, please email sara.weitzel@maryland.gov.

Steve Raabe founded the non-partisan, independent research firm OpinionWorks in 2001 to study perceptions and attitudes on important questions related to sustainability, public health, and education. Steve began his career in the 1980s as a phone room supervisor. Today, he measures public priorities for state and local agencies from Oregon to New York, is the principal author of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Index, and has been the public opinion pollster for The Baltimore Sun newspaper since 2007. He offers his social science expertise nationally to behavior change initiatives and perceptions studies for The Recycling Partnership, the Chesapeake Bay Program, Long Island Sound Partnership, Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean, and others, and has conducted brand awareness studies for two dozen colleges and universities from coast to coast.