Robin Plutchok joined StopWaste in June 2001, helping cities roll out the curbside food scrap recycling program, promoting multifamily recycling, and managing the backyard compost bin sales program. Before StopWaste, she worked in public information and as a staff scientist for an environmental consulting firm focused on water resource management. She is a graduate of Amherst College with a degree in Theater and Dance. 

What do you do at StopWaste?

I have had a few different roles during my time here (I’m celebrating my 18th anniversary this month!), but I am now primarily focused on advertising and social media outreach for our food waste reduction team through our countywide Stop Food Waste campaign. I also manage the countywide used oil recycling campaign, our online search tool, RecycleWhere? and represent Alameda County on the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition (BayROC)- a collaboration among Bay Area cities, counties, and agencies to promote personal action around reducing waste. I recently started working with the packaging team with a special focus on meal kit packaging to help develop sustainability guidelines and best practices.

What are some takeaways from the last 18 years?

It’s important that our messages have an emotional resonance to inspire action; facts alone don’t always influence people to take action. It’s finding that magic place where a story or call to action resonates and has a clear, single action – whether it’s bringing your own coffee cup, putting your food scraps in the green bin, or storing your produce properly. It’s easy to focus on the negative aspects of environmental issues; turning that around to come up with a positive personal action, perhaps with a touch of humor, that is doable and realistic that reaches the larger community is the sweet spot.
 
What is your favorite part of working at StopWaste?

It’s fulfilling to work for a mission -driven organization, feeling like we are leaders driving change, and working toward a mission that I also strongly believe in.  I really love working with my colleagues who are smart, passionate, resourceful, and fun. It’s motivating to see my colleagues live their environmental ethics so passionately in their personal lives, but in a way that is grounded in reality. I’ve also been inspired by how passionate many public servants in our county are about driving change – both working within the existing systems and pushing the boundaries of those systems – to become leaders locally and beyond.  

How has working at StopWaste impacted you?

I have always been pretty environmentally driven. For example, when I was in college we did not have on campus recycling, so I was part of program to pick up the cans and bottles and drive them in a van to a local place called Soda and Pet Food City for recycling. After that I served as an Environmental Educator in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, and saw the unfortunate packaging shift from refillables to disposables without any recycling program in place. When I was younger, I wanted to be a marine biologist or an actor. Somehow, working on communications around environmental issues feels like a good fusion of my passions.

What do you do when not working?

I am someone who has had many passions over time – for several years I trained and did triathlons, and performed with a found-object puppet theater company. I currently spend most of my time with my family of two young boys trying to reduce our own waste in our house, which seems like a regular struggle. Really, though, I try to keep the train moving – keeping my children’s media habits in check, avoid stepping on Legos, and getting them to eat (rather than compost) green veggies.