These great forums connect industry peers facing similar challenges through a series of virtual meetings and tours throughout the year. We organize these domain-specific gatherings to help both members and non-members share their current initiatives, ideas, and progress in solid waste management and reduction. Each group has a facilitator, and participants help shape the agendas based on their current interests and needs. Most meetings include presentations and a roundtable where individuals can share updates.
Meetings are held online, and tours are in-person. Each meeting follows a basic, similar format that includes information-sharing and awareness-building roundtables along with presentations that are meaningful for learning about new technologies, processes, or best practices.
Past meeting summaries serve as learning resources, and new resources and news articles are sent out over a year to keep everyone in tune.
To share meaningfully within group topics, participants should be working on solutions in that specific area.
A note to sales gurus: these groups are rich resources for information, and you are welcome to bring valuable information and expertise. We encourage building rapport, sharing expertise, and helping be part of solutions, over hard-selling.
In 2025 this group was co-led by Kaolin Mallette (Berry & Smith Trucking) and Joseph Pitre (Western Rubber Products). The inaugural year allowed us to determine the ideal goals of the group and it was clear that the best approach will be to manage ad-hoc roundtables for specific topics. Please join the list to stay up to date with this group.
Co-led by Mike Nestor (Denman Island) and Abby McLennan (Let’s Talk Trash) and includes ongoing updates, presentations, problem-solving discussions, successes and challenges for managing waste from BC Islands, rural, and remote areas. Meetings are quarterly.
This is a small but mighty working group of LFG collection field and flare operators in BC who come together to discuss LFG topics and problem-solve together. Meetings are held every two months. *By invitation.
This group comes together for roundtable updates, problem-solving discussions, sharing information, successes, and challenges to keep each other informed and learn from one another. This group meets four times a year and provides additional support to one another between meetings. *By Invitation
This discussion group is co-led by the Let’s Talk Trash team and Mallory Palliyaguru of the Township of Langley. This group brings together educators and communicators from corporate organizations, nonprofits, and local governments to discuss best practices, challenges, and opportunities for communicating with the public. This group meets 3 times a year, plus ad hoc discussions as needed.
Co-led by Todd Johnston (Regional District of Central Kootenay), this group meets on specific topics related to building, construction and demolition waste diversion, from policy to innovations. Topics are determined by attendees and range depending on the group’s interests and needs.
Crosses all areas of the topic from policy to compostable. This group aims to better understand the challenges and potential solutions for reducing plastic waste and bring relevant information back to the local industry via an annual workshop or panel discussion.
This group meets to stay on top of what is happening with organics management and food recovery across BC. Topics are determined by attendees and range depending on the group’s interest and needs. This group has three planned meetings/roundtables and one major event per year. Ad hoc meetings for specific challenges are added as needed.
Co-led by Renée Macdonald (Galiano Island Recycling) we continue to grow and determine the ideal goals of the group, as the interests in this area are vast and include discussions on recycling, repair, re-use, and reduction. This group meets twice a year and has added a tour in 2026!
Northern communities across BC are dealing with the day-to-day waste management challenges in the North, which are very unique compared to other geographic areas. This group includes an invitation to elected officials whose area portfolios include solid waste management. Two Roundtables in 2026. One for Staff and One for Staff + Elected Officials.
CWMA has annual and ad-hoc roundtables that can bring an important discussion or exploration of a specific topic that also includes summary updates from everyone around the table to bring each other to a heightened understanding of the work of colleagues across the industry. Our roundtables hold all participants on equal footing, and ideas are equally exchanged by participants on a given topic.
Hosted by Regional District of Nanaimo, Capital Regional District, City of Victoria and including an update by the Ministry of Environment and Parks. Local Governments come together to share updates on solid waste management initiatives and challenges in a roundtable facilitated format. This event is specifically for Local Government and First Nations Solid Waste Managers only. Date this year: October 8, 2025