Wayne Rifer

Operations Manager, EPEAT - Green Electronics Council and Product Stewardship Manager, Zero Waste Alliance

Wayne Rifer has provided environmental consulting to public and private sector clients for over 25 years with a focus on integrated waste management. In 2000, he was one of the early initiators of product stewardship in the electronics sector with a focus on multi-stakeholder solution-oriented processes. Under an EPA grant he managed the Western Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative (WEPSI), a regional stakeholder dialogue, that had two major objectives: 1) to address the need to establish recycling programs for electronic products at the end of their useful life and 2) to promote improved environmental design through market-place incentives.

The first objective resulted in Wayne’s participant as a negotiator in the National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI), a stakeholder negotiation that sought to develop a national system for the management of end-of-life electronics. Following the closure of NEPSI, he has continued to work with industry to find solutions to this as-yet unsolved challenge on the state level.

The second objective resulted in the initiation of the project to develop the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Wayne served as the project manager of EPEAT through the multi-stakeholder development and implementation process, and is now a member of the GEC team.