About the Waste and Materials Management Program

The Waste Management Program has recently reorganized and changed its name to align staff and services around updated environmental and service goals.

As of March 1, 2006, "Waste and Materials Management" is the new name for the former Waste Management Program, which will focus on promoting the vision of "Moving Towards Zero Waste."

The new name reflects the program's updated emphasis on developing policies and offering technical assistance to actively encourage the reduction, recycling and reuse of wastes as raw material for making new products.

Program staff promote the best use of materials in their day to day work with businesses, local government, the general public and representatives of interest groups.

When today's waste becomes tomorrow's resources, Wisconsin's communities and businesses benefit from a more efficient economy and a cleaner environment," says Suzanne Bangert, Director of the Waste and Materials Management Bureau.

The program's shift toward a more active focus on "materials management" is possible thanks to the maturing of the recycling markets and the demand for raw materials. Recycling markets are now global, and industry is regularly identifying new products and technology that use a growing array of recyclables - such as construction and demolition debris that previously were difficult or uneconomic to process for recycling.

"More and more used materials are simply too valuable these days to put in a landfill," Bangert said. "We need to work with businesses, local governments and citizens to continue capitalizing on that reality, which makes beneficial use of valuable raw materials and limits our need for additional landfills."

Our Strategic Goals

Jointly with our stakeholders we identified five strategic goals. Each goal contains several smaller objectives for meeting that goal. Our goals and objectives reflect our commitment to increase recycling and beneficial use and reduce waste disposal, illegal open burning and fugitive gas emissions from landfills.

How We're Organized

The program has a central bureau and five regional headquarter offices. Each regional headquarters is further divided into several service centers.

Bureau staff now are organized into three sections:

Recycling and Solid Waste Management;
Hazardous Waste Prevention and Management; and
Business Support and Information Technology.

New functional, cross-program teams for Innovations, Communication and Outreach, and Information Technology coordination will be created soon.

Waste management specialists in the regions will work in two of the major program areas: hazardous waste, mining, recycling and solid waste. They will focus on reducing and reusing waste as a material and work on green tier and other 'beyond compliance' efforts in the program.

Regional engineers and hydrogeologists work in one of two plan review groups, either active landfills and incinerators or closed landfills and other solid waste facilities. Two plan review experts in the bureau will assist the regional plan review groups on significant, precedent-setting issues.

The program redesign will make it easier for staff to streamline regulatory processes, invite more public involvement in policy development, provide greater public access to information and data on the Internet, and encourage innovative ways to reduce wastes.

For example, the program recently put some of its important solid and hazardous waste facility and groundwater monitoring information on the Internet, and plans to add more information, such as landfill gas emission data.

Use our staff directory to help locate the right person to answer your questions. Our directory will help you to search by subject, name and county. Organizational charts are provided to help you understand how staff are organzed in the central office and in the five regional offices.

Need more information? Contact DNR Waste and Materials Management Program or call 608-266-2111.

Last Revised: Wednesday October 14 2009