The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) and its partners announced the National Zero Waste Conference has been reformatted as a virtual conference, now scheduled for December 1-3, 2020. The original in-person conference set for March 2020 in Berkeley, California was originally postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The original 32 hours of sessions will be restructured to fit into half-day programs, with some of them now to be featured in a limited webinar series extending from late August through the fall. Each day of the conference will be organized by theme, with December 1 focused on Zero Waste Businesses and December 2 centered around Zero Waste Communities. December 3 will feature the first National Recycling Congress since 2008, with programming focused on broader topics including recycling market development, composting and single use plastics. The conference will also feature a virtual expo hall with a new interactive online platform, Remo, allowing vendors and attendees to network with video chat, screen share, and in other ways. The full program can be found at the official conference website, zwconference.org

Programming kicked off in late August with the first of 6 biweekly webinars. Included in the conference registration cost, the webinars feature topics and speakers originally planned as breakout sessions from the in-person conference. Upcoming webinars include Product Policies (Sept. 10); Zero Waste in Buildings on Campuses and Businesses (Sept. 24); Reduce and Reuse (Oct. 8); ReThink and Redesign, and Zero Waste Community Planning (Oct. 22); National Legislation and Regulations (Nov. 5); and, still to be confirmed, Markets for Hard to Recycle Materials (Nov. 19). The National Zero Waste Virtual Conference is being produced by the NRC in partnership with the Northern California Recycling Association, Zero Waste USA, US Green Building Council TRUE Certification, Zero Waste International Alliance, California Resource Recovery Association, Zero Waste Campus Council and Cal Zero Waste.